Don't hesitate to participate by posting links to (non copyrighted) confirmed information here.
The biggest news for the moment is, drum roll, that the NDA on the Alpha of the first ShootMania environment, Storm, that already is quite functional as you might have seen in the trailer on the ShootMania Homepage and the images and info coming from different tournaments, will be lift Friday June 15th at 18.00 CET.
So expect masses of really great and unique information and great footage in full moving colour will find the way to your pc's very soon.Hylis wrote:Ok, we have postponed the release of the NDA to Friday 15th at 18h00 pm CET
Because in normal peoples language that means that the lucky ones that already have a test version, have the right to show it to other people, starting Friday June 15th.
So youtube will have a hard time with us all trying to up and download amazing new footage.
And i can assure you that you will be astonished!
Until then, have fun reading the refreshed first post of this topic.
Regular visitors might notice that i removed some stuff, most of it is because it has become obvious since the TM² Canyon release, and thus has lost it's news value.
Note that the text in Italic under the quotes are my personal observations, feel free to comment or critic that in a reply.
Great Links:
Some moving image:
ManiaPlanet & ShootMania @ PGW 2011
(go to 1.00 for SM footage)
ShootMania First Preview ESWC - PGW 2011
(starts at 4.19, don't forget to click the HQ button)
This shows a lot of duelling
And some more here...
A list of links to articles in the press can be found on the official blog:
http://blog.maniaplanet.com/blog/2012/0 ... mania-out/
The environments:
The first environment that has been revealed is Cryo, click here for some pics
But the first environment that will be released is Storm, as you can see on the ShootMania Homepage.
I wonder what happened with Cryo, as no more info has been revealed about that ever since...
BLaHiTiS wrote:So do I see that you can use each environment in night time as well ?
So the four "moods" (morning, day, evening, night) will be available, like in TM and TM².Hylis wrote:yes, for track and shoot, the four moods are available.
The influence of this on a shooter is more important than in a racing game, considering that roads have borders, are often decorated with lights and have a certain logic to maintain drive-ability, contrarily to a shooter where it is a big advantage when you're less visible. Of course, a mood applies to all players and therefore is an equal factor for all.
For the moment that tempo is not reached yet, but the first game of each series logically takes the most time as everything is new, including ManiaPlanet that binds the games together.Hylis wrote:The idea is to release around three titles per year, one for each game. I would like to see one TM², one SM and one QM environment each year. Now, this is more like the general idea. We may do less if there is too much work on each, or may be more if we have a better production capacity (it is really not linked to the number of people only, but the quality and ability to be more while keeping deepness)
I suppose that next environments could be released with a smaller interval than we are seeing now, in between TM² Canyon and SM Storm.
Game Modes :
Akbalder wrote:Est-ce que ça sera un mode de jeu "classique" (deathmatch, ctf, domination...) ?
Translation:Hylis wrote:De ce côté là , je ne peut pas dire, mais il se trouve qu'on fait nos modes en maniascript, directement depuis le jeu. Pour l'instant, cela nous a réussi. Je ne pense pas que notre préféré ait un nom qui existe.
Je ne sais pas encore comment on va intégrer cela au jeu. Peut-être le fait de faire un ladder par mode. A voir. Mais j'entrerais trop dans des débats interminables à mon avis, et je n'ai pas le temps de faire ça aujourd'hui
Akbalder askes if there will be a classic gamemode (deathmatch, ctf, domination...)
Hylis answers:
I can not confirm that yet, but it appears to be that we make our game modes in maniascript, directly from the game. For the moment we have managed to do just that. I don't think that our favourite mode has an existing name.
Translation:Hylis wrote:le dernier mode que l'on a essayé est entièrement codé dans l'éditeur interne merci gugli
Hylis wrote:
The latest gamemode we tried was entirely coded with the ingame editor Thanks Gugli
About capture the flag mode:
Hylis wrote:We will surely make this mode possible, but I don't even know if we are going to use flags for it.
So, it seems that the gamemodes will be easy to create by players, the Mania way.
Endless possibilities, that is what it's all about.
Importation of blocs ?
Translation:Hylis wrote:evets, je ne sais pas quand l'import de bloc arrivera. Il est fait en grande partie mais on attendra peut-être un peu, pour éviter le maniaboxon ^_^
Hylis wrote:
Evets I don't know yet when blocimportation will be arriving. A big part of it has been made already, but we will wait for a while to prevent from ManiaChaos ^_^
SM et l'eSport ?
wells. wrote:Cool. So do you think that TM2 and SM will have their places on the eSport scene ? And what about TMNF which has a big place now on eSport ?
Seeing the effort that Nadeo currently puts into tournaments including ShootMania, and the reactions of the public, it looks like ShootMania and Esports are going to have a great future together.Hylis wrote:Yes, they will have all their place. But the question is how big and which ones bigger than others.
Time is the answer. Take the TrackMania history and look where we ended. Think maniaplanet the same way. We will start somewhere, in some time, and will see things evolve from there. Maybe we will do a Nations 2, maybe we will not. I don't need a petition for it in order to think to it. But today, it would be useless to do it. If players want to do esport on Nations, the game is good enough in that respect, and it is not a hotkey or customizable interface that would make it a revolution.
So, we are always looking after competition because that's what action multiplayer games are often about at the highest level.
Classes
Translation:Hylis wrote:Arnoz31
tu as tout à fait raison qu'il faut probablement pouvoir progresser sans cesse dans un jeu. Le système de classe multiple permet de démultiplier ce temps de progression je suppose, un peu comme les gameplays de TM différent. Mais avec un bon gameplay, comme chacun de TM, il est aussi possible de progresser longtemps. C'est cela que nous devons avoir sans pour autant que la progression soit laborieuse avec des marches de progressions trop grandes.
Je rajouterais que c'est peut-être bien de pouvoir progresser sans avoir à apprendre. Je trouve un peu pénible de devoir connaitre tous les trucs de toutes les classes, leurs meilleures utilisations et leurs points faibles, leurs meilleures armes dans telles ou telles situation etc.
Ca pourrait se résumer par le fait qu'on cherche la profondeur plutôt que la largeur.
Hylis wrote:
Arnoz31, you are absolutely right, in a game one should probably be able to progress endlessly.
The multiple class system multiplies the available time to progress i suppose, kind of like the different gameplays in TM. But with a good elaborated gameplay, like each one in TM, you can also progress for a long time.
That's exactly what we need, but we mustn't make that progression too complicated, with too big steps up.
I add that it could be good to be able to progress without learning new things.
I find it a bit too difficult to have to know everything about all classes, their best applications and weak points, their best weapons in each situation etc.
For the moment i've only seen one character in the footage that has been released, so we can be fairly sure that there will be no difference between the players, and that everyone has the same properties, the Mania way.
The ManiaScript :
Translation:Hylis wrote:Notre idée, avec ManiaScript, est de faire un langage orienté jeu. Cela veut donc dire qu'il devra savoir manier les principes de sauvegardes, temps réel, interface et réseaux assez facilement. Il doit aussi pouvoir évoluer. Il y a beaucoup à faire dans ce domaine mais on avancera lentement et surement.
Hylis wrote:
Our plan with ManiaScript is to design a game oriented language. That means it should know how to manage savegames, real time, interface and networking with relative ease. It has to be able to evolve. There is a lot to do in this domain but we advance slowly and surely.
Translation:Hylis wrote:pour un mode de jeu, un script s'éxécute côté serveur
pour un manialink ou un mediatrack, par exemple, le script s'exécute côté client (protégé)
Hylis wrote:
For a gamemode, a script is executed server side.
For a ManiaLink or ManiaTrack for instance, the script is executed client side (protected).
Translation:Hylis wrote:à guise d'exemple, le premier ManiaScript réalisé en interne est un jeu de solitaire type spider qui se lance lorsqu'on roule sur une voie annexe d'un circuit et qui se referme lorsqu'on quitte cette voie.
C'est débile, je sais
Hylis wrote:
To give an example, the first maniascript we realised internally is a game of spider (the card game) that starts when we enter a certain zone and quits when we get out of that zone.
It's kinda stupid, i know
Ergonomics and Datamanagement :
refresh wrote:Il serait vraiment appréciable d'avoir une véritable gestion du contenu dans TM², SM et QM:
pouvoir gérer les maps, les voitures, les skins, les blocs et tout autre contenu additionnel directement dans le jeu.
Parce que actuellement, on peut juste ajouter du contenu via le jeu, mais on ne peut pas déplacer, supprimer, renommer, créer des dossiers... Ce serait vraiment agréable car c'est ce qui fait que j'ai un bordel monstre dans l'éditeur de circuits: je ne pense jamais à aller trier tout ça dans Windows avant de lancer le jeu: on ne s'en rends compte qu'une fois qu'on a l'éditeur sous les yeux.
Et puis même... Ca serait tellement plus pratique et "user-friendly" !
Translation:Hylis wrote:@refresh
Je ne suis pas certains que ce sera au lancement. Maniaplanet devra ensuite évoluer pour rendre plus confortable un certains usage du système.
Refresh wrote:
It would be really appreciated to have a real data management system in TM², SM and QM:
To be able to manage the maps, the skins, the blocks and every other content directly in the game.
Because right now we can only add things in the game, but we can't move, erase, rename nor create folders...
It would really be nice because that is what made a mess in my track editor: I never think of ordering everything in Windows before starting the game, one only starts realizing it once in the editor.
Even, it would be practical and user friendly.
Hylis responds:
I'm not certain that will be included at launch. ManiaPlanet has to evolve to make certain applications of the system more comfortable to use.
In TM² we already see a great progression in this matter, comparing to earlier Nadeo titles, and we can assume that ManiaPlanet evolves with the ShootMania release, like Hylis has foreseen.
Thanks, Yrp360 for the quotes!