Ask A Dev Event! Submit Your Questions Now!

[Cuba.CZ]

Any plans on
1) tweaking the ShootMania netcode in the near future?
2) making longshots more reliable?
Great to see such an event taking place btw, good job guys

[Frezap]

1. Titlepack-Disaster
"Will there be any changes or improvements to be expected about the current position of custom community-made Title-Packs in Maniaplanet? At the moment they are of little value and mostly dying out within a month after release."
This question is closely related to the question about the current Ingame Menu Design.

There is no advertisment for custom titlepacks at all, new players dont even know about the titles already existing but not in a station. Will this change?

[Pedal]

C'mon guys, bla bla bla bla,,,,,,, i appreciate the effort but honestly; you should have spent these 30 minutes on improving MP instead of doing this stunt.... Seems also all you want to talk about is SM......Seems you have totally forfotten/lost your roots.... I'm just sad now witnessing what truly is the fall of trackmania.......

[TMarc]

Pedal...
Do you really prefer the community managers to work on the game?

[hackie]

C'mon guys, bla bla bla bla,,,,,,, i appreciate the effort but honestly; you should have spent these 30 minutes on improving MP instead of doing this stunt.... Seems also all you want to talk about is SM......Seems you have totally forfotten/lost your roots.... I'm just sad now witnessing what truly is the fall of trackmania.......

Right. +1


Only I heard is shootmania and a lot of uhm , uhm , ehhh , oh , uhm .....

Why don't they pull the plug out right now ?
Saves us a lot of frustration and Ubisoft a lot of money.

Sorry to say but I've seen people from the community ( Xymph , Undef ....... and more ) build stuff in a short time , some great stuff !
I expected from Nadeo a lot more.


btw Pedal , You missed the fall of trackmania.
It was when they added F.... Freezone.

[Pedal]

Pedal...
Do you really prefer the community managers to work on the game?

TMarc, either you are just plain stupid or you have an extremely bad sense of humor. But your postcount increases and it seems to me that that's all that matters to you.

Hey Everyone!
I am very happy to announce our upcoming Ask A Dev live stream event! I (Johkr aka @JustinJKruger on twitter) will be moderating the event and will asking questions to Edouard Beauchemin, Product Manager at Nadeo. We will cover everything from TrackMania, ShootMania, and will try to answer questions to the best of our ability.
-Johkr
Community Manager

[Akbalder]

Which questions have been answered? Is there a short summary of the event?

[TMarc]

TMarc, either you are just plain stupid or you have an extremely bad sense of humor.

Humor is always good

Neither Johkr nor Mr. Beauchemin are the developpers who are working on the things you'd probably like to get fixed.
And half an hour of work is certainly not enough to do anything technically valuable.
That the new CM tries to get the long missed communication running again is great,
so please don't criticise this until we see what they are really doing.
thanks.

[Omnixor]

Neither Johkr nor Mr. Beauchemin are the developpers

why was this event then called "ask a DEV event"? pretty misleading.

[eyebo]

Which questions have been answered? Is there a short summary of the event?

You can listen to a recording of the event here:
http://www.twitch.tv/shootmaniastorm/c/3140222

Below is notes I've taken while listening to the live stream. It is not a word for word transcript. Also, I sometimes change between first person and third person. I hope that doesn't confuse anyone. I recommend listening to the recorded event linked above, as it was very enjoyable.

I apologize in advance if I write any names wrong or misspell anything. I wrote all this out in a hurry.

Just launched ShootMania Elite demo. They've received positive feedback. Helps expand player base, beyond traditional markets of Germany and France. More people in America and Eastern Europe, etc. They're very pleased with it, and they hope it keeps growing.

10th Anniversary TrackMania. Blog posts announcing contests. What can fans expect to get into? There are cool things coming for the TrackMania community, but they're not ready to reveal them yet. Then they talked some more about the contest. Winners will be announced at the big anniversary event in December.

Question: viperbird mulinare - What is plan to expand audience of player base?

Answer: The question is more towards the publishers, since that's their job to grow the player base. Although the devs acknowledge that they try to make the best game possible. There will be some stuff for 10th Anniversary of TM, that will have a very positive impact to grow the player base. They'll probably get more into doing some advertising, because of ShootMania Elite. It's a good entrance for new players into the game. Beyond that, challenge is to make better games, improve the games they have. A lot of the devs are present on the forums, they answer on many topics, including very specialized ones. So everyone is invited to interact on the forums. Most speak English and are kind.

Question: urinstein - Are there any major changes or improvements coming for the track/map editor for the games?

Answer: The question would be more for Florent. But the philosophy for the creative tools... it's probably not a good idea to overhaul the Track/Map editor since everyone has been used to it for many years and are very proficient with it. So it's more about improving the existing editor. There's been many new features the last few years, such as copy/paste and macroblocks, etc. They try to make sure things work well before they are ready to release it, so they can't talk about what comes. Map developers know that they take care to make the tool (the editor) as best they can.

Question: urinstein & big mike - Any changes or improvements to the positioning of custom community made title packs and will you create an official tool to help creating and sharing community projects and events?

Answer: The questions kind of go together in regards to the sharing aspect of the game. They will be quite pleased regarding the evolution of title packs. There will be some new stuff about this. They can't give a release window yet. It's going to change a lot for creative people. And it's something they put a lot of importance to and they're not forgetting that. For the official tool to help sharing community projects and events there is a development being made on the ManiaFlash application which is similar to Twitter that allows you to inform people who follow you. The good thing is that people who follow you can hear about it. But the bad thing is that many players don't follow other players. There will be improvements to allow players to communicate better with others. He talks a bit about ManiaPub on TMUF and how the new tools will share similarities with that.

Question: wormi - Will you start promoting community websites? Will you start communicating more about community websites more and forget about unnecessary things like Steam Workshop?

Answer: Calling Steam Workshop unnecessary is a bit going too far. When we decided to make the development to get into Steam Workshop, our idea was to increase the community of people sharing online. The idea isn't to have people leave community sites like ManiaPark and MX if they're happy there. The idea is to connect people who are already on Steam with the great communities already mentioned. That was their objective. Don't know if it'll turn out that way. But they decided to give it some publicity as it was new, and to implement it in the game. Ubisoft was behind it, and the community managers. Many of the community websites are mentioned when they talk to journalists or on social media. So they try to give visibility to community websites as well. They don't believe they should favor one website over another. So they try not to do it too heavily. They don't want people to feel like wormi did when they were giving publicity to Steam Workshop. He can rest assured it was made because it was new, and because of the partnership with Steam, which can bring in a lot of new players into the game. He hopes everyone continues to do fun stuff, cause they have a lot of fun watching it and participating in it as well.

Johkr talks about how he's amazed with all the community websites and creative people in the game. He says it's one of the most creative communities he's ever seen. And he's trying to promote different websites, including Mania Exchange and others. He says you can't escape the creativity. He wants to see more of it. The more platforms it's on, the better. He gives a tip of the hat to the people creating all this stuff.

MrBob says they're (creative players) passionate about what they do. He mentions PapyChampy and Sprint (not by name) (who are from the community) and how they work for Nadeo now. So it's quite outstanding what they're able to do. And it's for a lot of fun. We love them.

Question: novation - Will there be another $100,000 event soon? And will you try to get SM picked up by leagues such as ESL, etc. if they still support PC games? And will you be supporting the multiplay insomnia festival again?

Answer: Regrouping the eSport topics together. MrBob had to ask a colleague about it, because he's not really involved with that part of the game. Nadeo's position is that they make no plans to do a $100,000 tourny short term. It was an initiative made from Ubisoft for publishing purposes. If we would spend $100,000, which is quite a bit of moeny (they laugh), they would probably do 100 or 1000 competitions giving more prizes to more people. They believe there are many passionate competitors who enjoy ShootMania for the sake of competing. Probably giving a little prize to these is a good incentive for these players to compete and feel the pressure. Because they always want to win. It doesn't matter how much money it is. So we prefer to do that. It's more in our core values. But that said, it doesn't exclude bigger tournaments. They talk about some bigger tournaments coming at PGW and such. And other people are having good initiatives online. Regarding Multiplay and insomnia: They're working with them on servers and things (and other things). They're great people. He makes a joke about how they love British people, their beloved enemies. He doesn't know if they'll be at the next one, but they're holding discussions about it. And they send their love to all British gamers.

Johkr talks about Multiplay and how he loves what they do, including fan events.

MrBob talks about how they do LAN packs for SM and TM, and they're always sending out boxes to different LAN events all over the place. They find it very interesting to help small LANs. People in the community, doing stuff for the community. They find it much more interesting to do stuff like that.

Question: Do you guys play TM or SM in your free time or even at work?

Answer: Yes we do. We believe it's tough to make a game if you don't play it. We're relatively small. We test most of the features we implement. Sometimes it's not as fun as just playing, because we have to also being testing the game at the same time. We also work sometimes after work, and some colleagues at Nadeo are quite good sharp shooters who can hold their own in Elite. MrBob plays just to get some extra points, and he even managed to get to echelon 6, even though he's usually playing with more advanced players. He talks about what times they play.

Johkr says how he's really obsessed with TrackMania. He talks about the huge Stadium track that he posted on social media not long ago. They laugh about how the map is 20mins, but he finished in like 30mins. MrBob jokes that people who make endurance maps deserve a penalty. It's torture. Johkr talks about driving for 30mins straight is just exausting. MrBob talks about RPG maps and how they're complete madness. PF maps for a bit of fun. LOL maps, etc. And MrBob says he started as a TM racer back in 2003. Johkr says he must be a pro. MrBob says he's still last in the race, but he honks the horn and still enjoys himself. MrBob's first team was RushRiders. He gives a French name which means "the man who falls all the time".

Question: What are the top 3 factors you're happy about when talking about the game and the bottom 3 factors?

Answer: MrBob says he's worked the most on the Elite demo. The accessibility is there, and people can see that they can shoot and enjoy themselves. Playing in a team. He talks about some of the other modes, like Combo and Joust. Combo in a team of 2, and it's a nightmare, because the guys are so good. And it's a good thing, the competition there. He mentions the crazy number of title packs made but not played enough. He mentions a few title packs: Invasion, Speedball, Under Siege, Card Melee (great mechanics, very fun stuff), and quite funny ripoffs like QuakeLike. Those are types of things people are able to do with the creative engine, even though the community is small, people are already creating an insane amount of good stuff. So cheers to them for that. The deep mechanics of the game are not always understood. Some people see it as a lazy and shallow shooter. He disagrees and most of the people who play disagree. You discover a lot as you play, but it may not be understood at first. The sharing system, title packs, message notifications with maniaflash, etc. All of that stuff is a bit hard to use. People also think that there's not enough people playing. He always finds people playing when he goes on to play. But people tend to focus on where other people are playing. He talks about how you can't see all the game modes in one place. So that is a factor that didn't come across as well as they hoped. TrackMania2 is just a blast just to drive around. It looks great. Diversity is there. Quality is there. Games are good for long play. People are online creating a lot. People still playing Canyon two years after launch. Unfortunately, people didn't get into the way environments are separated per title. He tends to like it, cause you can focus where you want and on what you like. That's the main negative thing he's seen regarding TrackMania.

They joke about how how he gave such a long answer, and how it's in his second language. Then the usual thank yous, etc. And Justin (Johkr) is thanked for his initiatives. They apologize for the questions they didn't get answered. Best is to get on the forums and talk with people. They're going to try to do more Ask A Dev events as well.

Some more friendly banter between them.