pathing

I am a very new mapper (I am working on my first TF2 map, though I have general game dev knowledge) and one of the things I noticed in pretty much any quality community map (using the pro versions of Valve maps as reference) is that there seem to be paths built into the texture similar to what...

So I am setting up some payload tracks on my map, and I had a weird issue I'm not sure what to make of: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/277343345085055814/1D8586B468C926E2A9125F9614A5291A119DEDAE/ Note: The cart does follow the nodes properly, but I'm not sure why it's oriented...