Destiny of titlepacks + consequences

[novationx]

djhubertus as titlepack-creator, what is your suggestion?

I really cant find a good suggestion.

[djhubertus]

I'm with kremsy aka Lukas about suggestions. I want 1 tile per env. with all servers/mods. Then titlepacks will work as data packs.

[haenry]

Titles as Datapacks is a great idea!

I'd even go as far and make one all environment title for TM.
So if you have bought only one Environment, you can only play a certain part of the campaign and only on certain servers of the list, if you want to play as long as you want. Else you'd get kicked out after your demo time runs out.
Thus everyone would play more closely together and the community is very united, so everyone can easily see what's up in the world of TM.
Additionally players experience what they miss out when they don't have all envis to motivate them to buy all environments

Maybe, titlepacks could still be used, but just for very very big projects. e.g. RPG titlepack with campaign, ladder, mods, objects... to limit the amount of titlepacks reuierements like "pay 50k planets to create a titlepack" could be added. Then those should be accessible from inside the all environment title, so that we don't need the extra layer of menu - The maniaplanet menu. (To switch between sm and tm a single button is enough imo )

It's not a simple suggestion and a lot of work. Especially the "titlepacks as datapacks" part.

[Dommy]

Id like to see 4 base enviros with each one serverbrowser and mode-packs in their menus:

- Storm
+ Invasion title
+ HG title
- Stadium
+ Nascar title
- Canyon

Etc.

[jui]

I'm with kremsy aka Lukas about suggestions. I want 1 tile per env. with all servers/mods. Then titlepacks will work as data packs.

Is it not kind of like this already with the new serverbrowser? When i open Storm (main title) i see Obstacle servers in the serverlist when i click on them to join is get to the store to install (this popup could be better direct install button).
In the TM2 main titles serverlist every server gets displayed who runs maps of this title e.g multi-eniv servers get displayed in every TM2 title serverlist and Stadium titlepack servers get displayed in the Stadium serverlist. I even saw that players are complaining when they join to a multi server from Canyon serverlist because they did not know its a multi server.

Tbh sometimes i think we search for a culprit because the game is not as popular as it could be. But maybe its not the titlepack system alone but other reasons or more reasons together.

For TM2 i think we would need a "community" multi-eniv titlepack. Which basically makes the Nadeo TM2 title obsolete. Custom objects get integrated there instead that every object maker makes his own titlepack. But that titlepack would need to be published from a neutral account for two reasons. First to show that it is the creation from the "community" and not a single player, second that more "admins" can update the titlepack.

This titlepack would need a public development process (git) and clear rules what kind of objects and other things get integrated (quality, type of object ...). The question is, is there enough custom objects of high quality right now to make it worth creating such a titlepack. IMO the reason why only high quality objects get integrated is because otherwise it looks too amateurish -> players do not like it very much.

[Tom.K]

The main problem about titlepacks are also servers. Not many people will host a game specifically for one titlepack.
Examples of titlepacks which have no multiplayer servers:
- Invasion (btw Solo mode is broken, too)
- Platform (TM and SM, both don't have any servers)
- Storm Ultimate (barely even works, outdated)
- Royal and Elite (Experimental titlepacks, outdated too)

That's pretty much what I've installed since titlepacks were available. There are probably many more, but I don't have enough stations to install them all at once (neither do I have enough storage on my drive).
Note that these titlepacks are mostly worthless without at least one server which has few active players (Platform TM should be the only exception due to Solo mode, Invasion Solo mode doesn't work for me).

Another problem is that resoruces for titlepacks couldn't be used on other titlepacks, so you end up with some feature you like that is not on other titlepack, and if that titlepack implements it, you'll just get a duplicate object, and with that you might even get titlepacks with duplicated stuff which take your storage for no logical reason.

I've just saw "ManiaPark Object Collection" titlepack. If no one is going to host a server containing objects from titlepack, how are you going to play maps created with that titlepack (with exception of embedded objects)?

I've posted this on wishlist thread, but I guess it could work if I post it in here just as suggestion (I already see similar idea given, agreeing with datapacks).

Title packs should be split to add-ons:
2 title packs only: TM2 and SM.
Solo map pack add-on - Installs map pack on Solo menu of TM/SM.
Skin add-on - Installs skins for enviroment, existing objects and sounds. Allows using skin on map editor.
Game Mode (Script) add-on - Only for solo modes and in case of hosting a game, for multiplayer mode.
Object pack add-on - Installs pack of custom objects. Allow use more than one object pack on map. Allow embedding in case of small amount of custom objects used.
And at least Add-on pack - Pretty much like Title Pack, installs a collection of individual add-ons.

Solo maps could be picked from Solo menu, ranking included within map pack (like Star Tracks on TMUF) and there would be no need to download whole update of titlepack, only download individual custom objects, scripts or skins.
However, single map could depend on many add-ons and joining some server might take some time to download them. Main problem would be that this could seriously break whole current title pack system.