TRACKMANIA

[Salacious Snake]

If it doesn't have platform mode, I'm not interested!

[clyde]

I like the look of it, but really it just makes me want to play the Trackmania2 Stadium demo some more.

 

Edit: On a related note, there is an unofficial GiantBomb server currently up and populated.

[prettyunsmart]

I like the look of it, but really it just makes me want to play the Trackmania2 Stadium demo some more.

 

Edit: On a related note, there is an unofficial GiantBomb server currently up and populated.

 

So I ended up buying Turbo after reading some reviews and watching the Quick Look. The look and feel of the game are both really great. Everything surrounding the races (menus, UI design, etc.) is all a massive improvement over the ManiaPlanet setup. Jumping from environment to environment online or solo is also pretty great. Online races just don't feel as good. I miss the Jurassic Park dubstep remixes of the Giant Bomb server and the unreasonably complicated user created tracks. I even miss the stupid horn sounds. 

 

I ended up playing Turbo for as long as I wanted to play by myself and then switching over to stadium when I wanted some weird music and online play. 

[Dewar]

I imagine that the unreasonably complicated user tracks are coming. From what Jeff showed in the Quicklook, you can do some pretty tricky stuff once you get out of beginner mode.

[clyde]

I'm interested in seeing how the VR-integration works out, though I don't know when I'll be getting a high-end headset or which brand it will be.

[clyde]

OPEN WINTER DEMO is live again!
So that basically means I can play all the Trackmania I want for free.

I don't know what happened,  but the Trackmania2 Stadium multiplayer servers don't seem to have music anymore. So now I'm playing Trackmania2 Canyon. The drifting is a significant difference and I'm really enjoying it while I listen to erotic EDM that I would never know about otherwise.

Also, it seems that the demo clock will start again if you switch between Stadium and Canyon. If you do that and run out, you'll get your hour again on the next day, and the clock won't start ticking until you switch between the games again.

There is something really valuable about playing custom tracks and listening to the same public playlist with people from around the world at the same time.

 

 

[clyde]

Here's a neat video that was included in a Rock Paper Shotgun article about maps built where you are just supposed to press forward.
 

 

[clyde]

I made a tutorial video on how to download custom tracks in Trackmania Turbo on PC.
 

 

[clyde]

So I had a really cool experience this evening. A good amount of context will be beneficial to my testimony:

I've been playing the demo of Trackmania 2 Stadium and Canyon off and on for a year or so. The way the demo works is that when Persephone is in the land of the living, you get an hour a day to play what appears to be the full game of either version which are separate applications somehow unified by something called "ManiaPlanet"; when Persephone is in the land of the dead, you are supposed to get unlimited time with the demo. Over Thanksgiving-break, I ended up over-extending the demo somehow, multiple times.
Now I will explain what the appeal of Trackmania 2 is for me: I play on the multiplayer-servers. The ones I play most are the "Full Speed" servers which exclusively feature maps that require no braking. Sometimes they play unlicensed music and that really hooked me. Eventually though, I started to appreciate how the game required a similar amount of attention to what Bejeweled requires on casual-mode. (I often don't finish races within the 5 minutes, so my standards have an impact on how focused I feel a need to be). That, mixed with the sense of other people from all over the world experiencing the same simulated space and music simultaneously without an expectation for interaction beyond witnessing each other's existence.
I recently tried surfing in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (what an appropriate name!). In fact, I bought CS:GO because I heard about surfing in it. But the required skill-level for the beginner-maps is ridiculously high. Trackmania 2 Stadium Demo helped me get the CS:GO surfing-experience without the high dexterity requirements or the toxic chat. I should mention that if you download the Trackmania 2 Stadium Demo -> go into the online multiplayer Full-speed room and start playing, you probably won't be able to finish the races; I wasn't able to initially, but the expectations that the tracks put on the players were fascinating to me because they weren't purely dexterity challenges; sometimes the tracks seem more like mazes , but most of the time they just have paths that are intended to surprise rather than challenge. Once I start zoning out a bit, the tracks become cathedral-like in a way. I didn't mind failing over and over and I quickly adapted to the short-races and frequent restarts. The 5-minute limitation, non-interactive presence of other players, and the jukeboxy nature of the music and all of it somehow made the failures digestible.

So from what I understand, these servers are run by players rather than by the developer. The various servers often have HUD-links to PayPal for donations and Facebook for community-organization. They also keep persistent global and personal race-time records. I've briefly looked into running a server just because I was curious about the unlicensed music-track aspect, but I quickly realized that running one of these servers takes a load of commitment (not something I have). But still, this is an important part of my story: I have a respect for folks who are organized and committed enough to curate custom-made maps and music in order to create these fascinating and populated digital spaces. Wouldn't it be cool to have the opportunity to be one of those curators without all the work or commitment?

A lot of the reviews for Trackmania Turbo focus on the lack of customization and lack of support for a 3rd-pary leaderboard-system or dedicated-servers and the damage that would do to the existing Trackmania 2 community if they were to move over to this newer title. I myself am disappointed with the lack of ability to upload .oog that is played on speakers around the world as we race, but est quod est. In deciding between buying the games I've demoed for 18 collective hours (Trackmania 2 Stadium and Canyon) or buying the simplified and newer Trackmania Turbo, I went with the newer one because I figured the older ones were going to be harder for map-making and map-sharing. Plus I can just continue to play those demos

OK. So now that I've caught you up, let me tell you what happened yesterday: I spent some time figuring out how to download hobbyist maps, how to follow authors, and how to create a public room where I get to show other folks the maps that I've decided to curate. All of this is detailed in the video I posted here most recently.

So last night I made my first room. I populated it with all the maps I could find by one particular author who had caught my attention as I played in someone else's room. I tried to set them up in what looked most like chronological order so I could get a sense of how this artist has progressed in this creative medium. I assumed that there would be some duds (there were), but that this would be a good way to figure out which ones I liked and the others I could "remove from favorites" during the race and then when I make a room next time, the playlist will be a bit more refined. And I went ahead and made the room public.

It didn't take long before two other players joined and I think those two players stuck around for half of the playlist. More came in. At max it was five players. I was so excited, I felt like I got a chance to roleplay as a Trackmania 2 server host! They weren't listening to the same shoegaze, but I didn't notice that too much. By the time the playlist started repeating, pretty much everyone left and I had flagged the maps I didn't want in my future rooms using the "remove from favorite" system. It was really neat playing through an oeuvre with randos!

So after this experience I had some more thoughts, specifically about the assumptions that I kinda shared with the folks who are disappointed with the lack of support for dedicated servers, unlicensed music, and customization. It's counter-intuitive that a lack of cross-platform map-support would be a good thing. I mean, doesn't it make sense that it would be better to be able to play a Trackmania Turbo map made on PS4 on the PC? I would think so, but now that I've had this experience with game's lack of cross-platform support, I kinda think it is a good thing. Making maps and curating maps are super rewarding roles to fill, but at some point everyone kinda gravitates together and it makes it so that only the most committed curators and the most talented and/or skilled map-makers will be played. I like that the communities are broken away from each other in the case of this particular game. I'm sure it would be cool to fill a room to the max in Trackmania Turbo (PC), but there isn't really that much difference between playing with 2 people or with 12 like there would be in a competitive first-person shooter. Because the communities are asunder, it allows for casuals such as myself to fill the vital roles of curation and map-making and feel some amount of appreciation for our smaller efforts. I think that is really neat. Right now I've collected all the maps of about 6 different authors and I'm going to work through each of their oeuvres and develop a taste from my combination of their various sensibilities and technical capability. I'm psyched.

 

Oh, here is the music playlist I've been listening to as I play btw: