Teknopathetic
Member
The GAF TMU group info is:
login -- neogaf
password -- believe
To join a group, go to profile -> add on the right.
As was recently posted the US release of Trackmania United is right around the corner, so here's a chance for you all who have either not picked TMU up or have deliberately avoided the game due to starforce to read up a little about the game.
The Steam version of Trackmania: United has *no* Starforce at all, in any way, shape, or form.
Ok, back to the game. Trackmania United is the perfect game for people completely new to Trackmania because it's actually a compilation of ALL the Trackmania games to date. Trackmania Original (2003), Trackmania Sunrise (2005), and the free download Trackmania Nations (2006). This game is pretty much an arcade racing equivalent of a Hot Wheels set, including the ability to create tracks with a very healthy track editor and then share those with everyone. It includes 7 environments (Stadium, Island, Desert, Rally, Bay, Coast, Snow) and 3 modes (Race, Puzzle, Platform). Back to those in a minute...
When you create your user profile, you also select your ManiaZone. Your ManiaZone is your Country and State/Province. These are used for one reason, when on single player or multiplayer your times, skill points, and multi-player ladder points are all added up and compared first in your state, then in your country, and then worldwide.
Groups:
Something like a clan, but not really. Groups are pretty much what they say they are. You join the group and from then on out, when looking at times for tracks, you can switch from the default World view, to one of your groups (you can join multiple groups) and then compare times and download replays solely from members of your group. It's a great way to play with people you know. GAF already has a group, PM Agent Icebreezy and he'll give you the name/password.
Coppers:
Coppers are the in-game currency that is used for a lot of the community features. When you want to download a replay of someone's time, you pay a small amount of coppers (5) and it's stored on your hard drive. If you run out of tracks to play and set official times on, you can click Get a New Challenge and pay 10 coppers to get an all new user-created and uploaded track. Coppers are gained in a handful of ways. You pay 10 coppers to set an official time, if the time you post is fast enough for a bronze medal (this doesn't mean that it was the 3rd fastest time, this is a preset time for the medal), you receive 5 coppers, Silver 10, and Gold, 15. These all stack, so if you get a gold time, you actually receive 30 coppers. You cannot repeat a track and get more coppers out of it, once you've gotten a gold medal, that's it, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to get a better time for the hell of it. Optionally, there's a green medal which is the Author's best time. This awards no coppers, however. All replays you have can be turned on as an opponent that you'll see in your race so that you can follow their lines and see what you can do to improve your time.
Environments:
The environments in the game dictate the blocks you'll see (and use for making tracks, if you choose to) as well as the car you use. All the seven environments have different cars and those cars drive and handle differently. All cars have a degree of air control. As you reach a jump, you can quickly press left or right to send the car spinning, and while in air, you can press the opposite way to stop spinning. Also, if you hold the gas in air your car will go further and if you brake you'll land shorter.
One of the best things about Trackmania is the (almost) completely freeform track creation. You don't have to use a traditional road, anything that's a block in the game, including things that you'd think you'd normally use for scenery, get frequently used as part of the course. Including the tops of buildings,
Stadium - Probably the most played and well known environment. Stadium takes place (as you'd guess!) inside a stadium. This car looks very similar to and F1 and is fast and very grippy. While it isn't very agile, you won't be sliding around at all barring dirt and grass sections. Letting off the accelerator going through some turns will prevent you from hitting the sides of the track, slowing you down.
Island - Island environment is a very bright and colorful locale. Very Outrun-looking and this also goes for the car. The Island car, based visually on various exotics like Lamborghinis or Ferraris, is incredibly fast with a tendency to powerslide. This can be both good and bad. While you can generally power through sharp turns without letting up on the gas at all and not lose much time, it's the subtle turns that require a very slight touch that, should you end up sliding, can cost you some time. Keeping your traction when you can will shave time off. Island tracks are usually very over the top with loops, very long jumps, and wide sweeping turns that you'll powerslide the whole way through.
Desert - Based on American muscle cars, the Desert car accelerates slowly but tops out a fast speed. However, the handling is very clunky. If you try to take a hard turn with enough speed, you'll find that the Desert car will begin to flip over. While you can manage to balance this on two wheels for optimum speed, if the car loses balance, it'll spin you around backwards, obviously ruining your time.
Rally - The rally environment takes place in a very grassy, backroads area. The roads are all very narrow including some nasty bridges that aren't much wider than the length of the car. Modeled after the sporty hatchbacks seen in the WRC, the rally car is really straightforward. It handles moderately well, is moderately fast, and has a moderate bit of grip, and really good acceleration. One of my favorite environments.
Bay - A San Francisco-esque area with lots of the blocks revolving around bridges, docks, boats, as well as driving through (or on top of) an Urban bay city. The Bay car is an SUV (Part of me wonders if this is a subtle knock on Americans
) that is fast and handles deceptively well.
Coast - Inarguably the environment with the longest learning curve, the coast car is weighty, has poor acceleration, and will very, very easily get out from underneath you on a turn. The key is watching your acceleration through turns, as stepping on the gas too early (or not letting off at all), will have you losing control near-instantly and hitting the wall/barrier, your time then wittles away as your car struggles to regain its lost speed. As bad as this may sound, once you've got your head wrapped around how to drive coast properly, the sense of speed is actually just right and it's really fun to drive.
Finally, Snow - My favorite environment and the one I've probably put the most time into is Snow. An Eastern-themed Winterland that uses small 4x4 trucks. While not the fastest, Snow cars are absolutely the most nimble. No matter the speed, the Snow car won't lose grip and will turn on a dime. Unique to the snow environment is a block that is pure ice. While your car is on ice, no matter how you turn or in what direction, you will not change directions or lose speed. You can slide down backwards if you want, doesn't really matter. This means that you need to pick your angle beforehand or you'll find yourself nowhere on track.
The Modes:
Race - As you would expect, this is self-explanatory. The goal here is to reach the finish line the fastest, passing through the checkpoints. The most played mode online and off, this has the most tracks made for it as well. There's no dearth of tracks here, with 16 (5 for each difficulty: Easy, Normal, Hard, plus 1 for Extreme, the final difficulty) tracks stock per environment, as well as the challenges you can continue to download.
Puzzle - The original intended game mode for Trackmania. Each puzzle track sits you down in a specific environment with already predetermined checkpoints and blocks for you. The goal here is to create a track (and then race on it), that can achieve the fastest time possible while passing through all the checkpoints.
Platform - A personal favorite, though I spend more time with Race. Your time in Platform mode DOES NOT matter. What does matter is getting through a variety of tricks, turns, jumps with the least amount of checkpoint restarts. You can take all day long so long as you get to the goal. The tracks designed here are deliberately tricky and tough, with the most usage of blocks that will cut off your engine, thus leaving you to coast until the next checkpoint. Also, lots of speed sensitive areas where success won't always be gained through going as fast as possible.
Multiplayer:
Similar to solo mode with ghosts, Multiplayer is an online time trial (although, there's also Stunts mode, where you get points for doing tricks) where all players compete with each other trying to get the fastest time within a time limit (about 5-7 or so minutes, some servers shorter, some longer. Your cars WILL NOT touch, instead, like a ghost, they'll simply pass right through you and you them. While this may sound like a bummer, play a few of the tracks and you'll quickly understand why.
The Track Editor:
As user-created content and community is one of the biggest draws to trackmania, it's also fitting the game has an extensive, easy, block-based track creator/editor. Each environment has its own set of blocks that are used for just about everything you see in the track. Buldings, terrain height changes, twists, turns, loops, buildings, everything is made from blocks. Due to the way checkpoints work, everything is game when it comes to track creation. You can start your track in mid air and use ramps to have cars jump from roof top to roof top in Bay. You can use the speed of Island and Stadium cars to launch them across the track, then bounce off the water and back on the road again. Experiment and go nuts, Frequently when I play online I run into a track that uses the environment in a way I'd never seen before. Also, there's the MediaTracker which you can use to add cinematic intros and outros to your track and add new music.
The Replay Editor:
One of the biggest features in Trackmania (and you may have seen a good example of this in the net-famous 1K project video, where 1000 replays were all merged together) is the replay editor. In the replay editor, you can add several extra replays that are on the same track, alter camera angles and camera routes, effects, text, and then use the in-game export to churn it straight out into a video you can post online and share.
The Paint Job Editor:
Not happy with the standard liveries that come with the game? You can use the paint job editor to create your own unique paint job that EVERYONE you play online with or watches a replay of you will see. While you can choose to share it or even put it up on your ManiaLink or just plain ole anywhere you want on the web, you can choose to keep it just for yourself.
ManiaLink:
http://en.tm-wiki.org/wiki/Manialink
http://en.tm-wiki.org/wiki/ManiaCode_Tutorial
Everyone can use and register ManiaLinks. A ManiaLink is a website you design for use in-game that you can use to host and/or charge (with coppers, silly) for paint jobs, cars, tracks, movies or just a general clan/team page. From what I understand, ManiaLinks are coded in XML, but are somewhat limited in the tags Nadeo allows, so no crazy sicknuts flash sites. You then register the ManiaLink name with Nadeo, and then in an AOL Keyword type way, you type in the registered keyword and bam, you're sent to the site you wanted. Manialinks are hosted by yourself, not Nadeo, so you'll already need your own webspace.
It's also worth noting that while earlier I mentioned how cars are designed on exotics, F1, etc. You can also import your own 3D models into the game.
And, that pretty much wraps it up. There are a handful Webisodes Nadeo created that went over some of these, but I felt like typing it all anyway. That you can see here.
The game comes out on Steam on June 14th, currently for a 24$ pre-order for US or 39$ for European folk. But, the game's already out in brick and mortar stores in Euro-land and Canadia. It's incredibly fun, with a never ending mountain of tracks and a fairly large (mostly in europe for now) community that also has a good douche:cool ratio. So go buy it if you're in the US for sure, as it's a ****ing steal. It also has pretty low system requirements. Athlon 1600+XP, P4 1.6ghz, 256mb of RAM, 16 MB video card.
GET IT.
Corrections welcome as I frequently talk out of my ass.
login -- neogaf
password -- believe
To join a group, go to profile -> add on the right.
As was recently posted the US release of Trackmania United is right around the corner, so here's a chance for you all who have either not picked TMU up or have deliberately avoided the game due to starforce to read up a little about the game.
The Steam version of Trackmania: United has *no* Starforce at all, in any way, shape, or form.
Ok, back to the game. Trackmania United is the perfect game for people completely new to Trackmania because it's actually a compilation of ALL the Trackmania games to date. Trackmania Original (2003), Trackmania Sunrise (2005), and the free download Trackmania Nations (2006). This game is pretty much an arcade racing equivalent of a Hot Wheels set, including the ability to create tracks with a very healthy track editor and then share those with everyone. It includes 7 environments (Stadium, Island, Desert, Rally, Bay, Coast, Snow) and 3 modes (Race, Puzzle, Platform). Back to those in a minute...
When you create your user profile, you also select your ManiaZone. Your ManiaZone is your Country and State/Province. These are used for one reason, when on single player or multiplayer your times, skill points, and multi-player ladder points are all added up and compared first in your state, then in your country, and then worldwide.
Groups:
Something like a clan, but not really. Groups are pretty much what they say they are. You join the group and from then on out, when looking at times for tracks, you can switch from the default World view, to one of your groups (you can join multiple groups) and then compare times and download replays solely from members of your group. It's a great way to play with people you know. GAF already has a group, PM Agent Icebreezy and he'll give you the name/password.
Coppers:
Coppers are the in-game currency that is used for a lot of the community features. When you want to download a replay of someone's time, you pay a small amount of coppers (5) and it's stored on your hard drive. If you run out of tracks to play and set official times on, you can click Get a New Challenge and pay 10 coppers to get an all new user-created and uploaded track. Coppers are gained in a handful of ways. You pay 10 coppers to set an official time, if the time you post is fast enough for a bronze medal (this doesn't mean that it was the 3rd fastest time, this is a preset time for the medal), you receive 5 coppers, Silver 10, and Gold, 15. These all stack, so if you get a gold time, you actually receive 30 coppers. You cannot repeat a track and get more coppers out of it, once you've gotten a gold medal, that's it, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to get a better time for the hell of it. Optionally, there's a green medal which is the Author's best time. This awards no coppers, however. All replays you have can be turned on as an opponent that you'll see in your race so that you can follow their lines and see what you can do to improve your time.
Environments:
The environments in the game dictate the blocks you'll see (and use for making tracks, if you choose to) as well as the car you use. All the seven environments have different cars and those cars drive and handle differently. All cars have a degree of air control. As you reach a jump, you can quickly press left or right to send the car spinning, and while in air, you can press the opposite way to stop spinning. Also, if you hold the gas in air your car will go further and if you brake you'll land shorter.
One of the best things about Trackmania is the (almost) completely freeform track creation. You don't have to use a traditional road, anything that's a block in the game, including things that you'd think you'd normally use for scenery, get frequently used as part of the course. Including the tops of buildings,
Stadium - Probably the most played and well known environment. Stadium takes place (as you'd guess!) inside a stadium. This car looks very similar to and F1 and is fast and very grippy. While it isn't very agile, you won't be sliding around at all barring dirt and grass sections. Letting off the accelerator going through some turns will prevent you from hitting the sides of the track, slowing you down.
Island - Island environment is a very bright and colorful locale. Very Outrun-looking and this also goes for the car. The Island car, based visually on various exotics like Lamborghinis or Ferraris, is incredibly fast with a tendency to powerslide. This can be both good and bad. While you can generally power through sharp turns without letting up on the gas at all and not lose much time, it's the subtle turns that require a very slight touch that, should you end up sliding, can cost you some time. Keeping your traction when you can will shave time off. Island tracks are usually very over the top with loops, very long jumps, and wide sweeping turns that you'll powerslide the whole way through.
Desert - Based on American muscle cars, the Desert car accelerates slowly but tops out a fast speed. However, the handling is very clunky. If you try to take a hard turn with enough speed, you'll find that the Desert car will begin to flip over. While you can manage to balance this on two wheels for optimum speed, if the car loses balance, it'll spin you around backwards, obviously ruining your time.
Rally - The rally environment takes place in a very grassy, backroads area. The roads are all very narrow including some nasty bridges that aren't much wider than the length of the car. Modeled after the sporty hatchbacks seen in the WRC, the rally car is really straightforward. It handles moderately well, is moderately fast, and has a moderate bit of grip, and really good acceleration. One of my favorite environments.
Bay - A San Francisco-esque area with lots of the blocks revolving around bridges, docks, boats, as well as driving through (or on top of) an Urban bay city. The Bay car is an SUV (Part of me wonders if this is a subtle knock on Americans
) that is fast and handles deceptively well.
Coast - Inarguably the environment with the longest learning curve, the coast car is weighty, has poor acceleration, and will very, very easily get out from underneath you on a turn. The key is watching your acceleration through turns, as stepping on the gas too early (or not letting off at all), will have you losing control near-instantly and hitting the wall/barrier, your time then wittles away as your car struggles to regain its lost speed. As bad as this may sound, once you've got your head wrapped around how to drive coast properly, the sense of speed is actually just right and it's really fun to drive.
Finally, Snow - My favorite environment and the one I've probably put the most time into is Snow. An Eastern-themed Winterland that uses small 4x4 trucks. While not the fastest, Snow cars are absolutely the most nimble. No matter the speed, the Snow car won't lose grip and will turn on a dime. Unique to the snow environment is a block that is pure ice. While your car is on ice, no matter how you turn or in what direction, you will not change directions or lose speed. You can slide down backwards if you want, doesn't really matter. This means that you need to pick your angle beforehand or you'll find yourself nowhere on track.
The Modes:
Race - As you would expect, this is self-explanatory. The goal here is to reach the finish line the fastest, passing through the checkpoints. The most played mode online and off, this has the most tracks made for it as well. There's no dearth of tracks here, with 16 (5 for each difficulty: Easy, Normal, Hard, plus 1 for Extreme, the final difficulty) tracks stock per environment, as well as the challenges you can continue to download.
Puzzle - The original intended game mode for Trackmania. Each puzzle track sits you down in a specific environment with already predetermined checkpoints and blocks for you. The goal here is to create a track (and then race on it), that can achieve the fastest time possible while passing through all the checkpoints.
Platform - A personal favorite, though I spend more time with Race. Your time in Platform mode DOES NOT matter. What does matter is getting through a variety of tricks, turns, jumps with the least amount of checkpoint restarts. You can take all day long so long as you get to the goal. The tracks designed here are deliberately tricky and tough, with the most usage of blocks that will cut off your engine, thus leaving you to coast until the next checkpoint. Also, lots of speed sensitive areas where success won't always be gained through going as fast as possible.
Multiplayer:
Similar to solo mode with ghosts, Multiplayer is an online time trial (although, there's also Stunts mode, where you get points for doing tricks) where all players compete with each other trying to get the fastest time within a time limit (about 5-7 or so minutes, some servers shorter, some longer. Your cars WILL NOT touch, instead, like a ghost, they'll simply pass right through you and you them. While this may sound like a bummer, play a few of the tracks and you'll quickly understand why.
The Track Editor:
As user-created content and community is one of the biggest draws to trackmania, it's also fitting the game has an extensive, easy, block-based track creator/editor. Each environment has its own set of blocks that are used for just about everything you see in the track. Buldings, terrain height changes, twists, turns, loops, buildings, everything is made from blocks. Due to the way checkpoints work, everything is game when it comes to track creation. You can start your track in mid air and use ramps to have cars jump from roof top to roof top in Bay. You can use the speed of Island and Stadium cars to launch them across the track, then bounce off the water and back on the road again. Experiment and go nuts, Frequently when I play online I run into a track that uses the environment in a way I'd never seen before. Also, there's the MediaTracker which you can use to add cinematic intros and outros to your track and add new music.
The Replay Editor:
One of the biggest features in Trackmania (and you may have seen a good example of this in the net-famous 1K project video, where 1000 replays were all merged together) is the replay editor. In the replay editor, you can add several extra replays that are on the same track, alter camera angles and camera routes, effects, text, and then use the in-game export to churn it straight out into a video you can post online and share.
The Paint Job Editor:
Not happy with the standard liveries that come with the game? You can use the paint job editor to create your own unique paint job that EVERYONE you play online with or watches a replay of you will see. While you can choose to share it or even put it up on your ManiaLink or just plain ole anywhere you want on the web, you can choose to keep it just for yourself.
ManiaLink:
http://en.tm-wiki.org/wiki/Manialink
http://en.tm-wiki.org/wiki/ManiaCode_Tutorial
Everyone can use and register ManiaLinks. A ManiaLink is a website you design for use in-game that you can use to host and/or charge (with coppers, silly) for paint jobs, cars, tracks, movies or just a general clan/team page. From what I understand, ManiaLinks are coded in XML, but are somewhat limited in the tags Nadeo allows, so no crazy sicknuts flash sites. You then register the ManiaLink name with Nadeo, and then in an AOL Keyword type way, you type in the registered keyword and bam, you're sent to the site you wanted. Manialinks are hosted by yourself, not Nadeo, so you'll already need your own webspace.
It's also worth noting that while earlier I mentioned how cars are designed on exotics, F1, etc. You can also import your own 3D models into the game.
And, that pretty much wraps it up. There are a handful Webisodes Nadeo created that went over some of these, but I felt like typing it all anyway. That you can see here.
The game comes out on Steam on June 14th, currently for a 24$ pre-order for US or 39$ for European folk. But, the game's already out in brick and mortar stores in Euro-land and Canadia. It's incredibly fun, with a never ending mountain of tracks and a fairly large (mostly in europe for now) community that also has a good douche:cool ratio. So go buy it if you're in the US for sure, as it's a ****ing steal. It also has pretty low system requirements. Athlon 1600+XP, P4 1.6ghz, 256mb of RAM, 16 MB video card.
GET IT.
Corrections welcome as I frequently talk out of my ass.
