it takes a while to learn how to make the jumps, after you get the learning curve down maybe an hour or 2. if you want to do a simple track without anything crazy, then maybe 5 minutes. you can auto populate and you're good to go. it all depends on how advanced you want to get. the farmville sucks track me and my buddies worked on took us 2 hours, we were trying to figure out how to make jumps and how to change the jump properties. once we figured out all the advanced stuff it just fell together.

and yes, you can do up to 4 people split screen, and you can do split screen online racing as well.