TrackMania2: Centralised News about the Game

[Knutselmaaster]

No, not yet.

[tcq]

This is all well and good.
But is there any way of narrowing the beta release date to a specific month? For SM and TM2?
I am aware of the work to be done in both of these games. But assuming that things go the
way they have been, could we come to a conclusion?

I doubt that you'll get a month, because then you will put pressure on the team, if there are unforseen hassles. At least, i wouldn't do this as boss of a software deveolping firm. Sure they have intern milestones and such stuff, but they wouldn't tell them us

[Hylis]

it is even confidential inside the team

because you know, when you give a dates, people always takes more ^_^

so, the team asked me, 7 years ago, to avoid giving them the real dates

[metoxys]

so, the team asked me, 7 years ago, to avoid giving them the real dates

[RC-Scottyboy]

But hylis,
Will TM² beta be released this year or the next year.

[Hylis]

we had discussion about it this week, and it is going to be next year. I can't tell when.

It is unfortunate, since we really want to get into the action with the players, but there are many things to prepare on many sides. When I wrote Q4 2010 at E3 time, I really believed it. The game is well playable at the moment. The team is working on making more blocs (they take more time to do than original ones!) and still on making the maniaplanet application. This application is quite simple, but it needs some arrangements in order to welcome all the update that we want to do afterward.

There are two things I would like to insist on:
1. I don't want you to think that we are adding a lot of features.
Our goal at the moment is really to make only what is needed. Like I have read somewhere: something is perfect when you can't remove more, not when you can't add more. That's the spirit and our goal at the moment. We target a pure fun game at the moment. After, the players activities will tell us where to expand.

2. I don't want you to think that we are losing our time
We are moving fullspeed! All the team is working hard and is really concentrated on a daily basis. And with all the experience of the team, we are making the right choices to make things quickly but solid enough for a big future of maniaplanet.

Even with this two parameters, we have a lot of work. When we announced TrackMania 2, our plan was to first release one full game. Now, we have added ShootMania and QuestMania to take care but also the maniaplanet application and servers. So, things takes more time. For example, I still have to decide if I will include the splitscreen mode and the block import at first release. The engine is done to welcome both features, but the interface are to be done. My idea is that since we want to release three TM² environments, we may use those occasions to update the game with these features.

There is still some months to wait before getting the beta but be sure we would like to be there!!! So much!!!

[Knutselmaaster]

Thank you Hylis, for taking the time to explain us all of this.
There are so much rumours running around that this post was very needed to clear things out.

The idea of extra functionality/options reflecting the usage is quite appealing, that way the game will evolve together with the community, instead of forcing the community in a certain direction.

[Timmeh7]

Respect for taking the time for us. And I'm sure Nadeo is going the right way with the idea of not making so much new features, since you will give us more ways to be creative with ManiaScript and the Usermade Blocks. In addition with the basics of TMF and some cool environments, I think it will rock!

[haenry]

Thanks for your long statement of the situation right now.

I'm a little bit disappointed, that the splitscreen-mode isn't included right from the beginning, but as long as it comes a bit later as a feature, all is good

[MrA]

It all sounds good, and it gives us more time to work on the parts of the new tmx that do not need to see any files or parts of the game

All I can say is I'm glad we have more time