No Vehicle Physics Changes?

[Trackmaniack]

All right, well, I don't know what little world you're living in, but A) in practice, this doesn't work this way because people want to get the most bang for their buck, e.g., not buying more environments if they have a physics tool to tweak with, and B) you must not have heard the rampant levels of complaining -already- about this or that, the price is too high, it's too much like Stadium, it's not enough like Stadium, this game is so much crap I'm never buying another Nadeo title again...it goes on and on. So, how exactly do you think the ability to change a vehicle's physics is going to be the magic bullet? You haven't even addressed how you think Nadeo will handle the inept scripters who will break the game, or trolls/griefers who will ruin it simply by making the physics as screwy as possible... Personally, I like Kuro's suggestion. If you buy all 3 TM2 environments, you're flagged as a "loyal customer" or something like that, and you get a devkit as a reward, or something.

[TGYoshi]

Take the current server controllers. Nadeo allowed us to 'modify', or actually 'remotely control' the servers ----- whatever. Let's say: Make the server to our own wishes. We can put some kind of GUI on the green (manialinks), spam the chat with messages blablabla. Why wouldn't it work with physics? If you don't like what people do with it, then don't use it. Enough people think like that.

[SurferIX]

And don't you think hackers could rapidly make a working version of the devkit without buying the 3 environments?
My ex-boss was like you.. . and he changed his mind 2 years ago (it took 10 years for me to make him understand how he could earn money with "developping open source software"), so I guess I won't be able to explain you "why", in my small world called "Internet" where I've been working for more than 12 years, I know that giving power to the other ones don't bring you down, but help you creating better software, and, as silly as it sounds to you, earning lot of money.

I can give you another example : Drupal. Only one developper. Thousands of people around developping "modules". Without the other ones (= without open sourcing it) it would never have been famous at all.

Same principle apply to physics. You think that this game is perfect, that you enjoy it, but you have absolutely no idea if it could be better because you can't test other physics.
You could really say it's perfectly balanced if you just could say:
"I've tested tons of other physics modules, and they're all crap. Only Nadeo has reached something cool and I just keep playing official drivin'."
Nowadays you just can say:
Nadeo has reached something cool.

[eyebo]

Oh also, not to ask 2 questions in one, but I had thought you could change the time of day using the media tracker, so like you go into a tunnel during the day, and come out at night. I can't seem to find that option.

That was just in the videos. It's a video editing technique using two seperate rendered videos of the same map at different times of day.

You can however set MediaTracker to turn on headlamps in a day map if you have a particularly dark section of track.

Regarding the ability to change physics or not, I believe that would add a layer of complexity and confusion to the game on par with custom blocks or car-to-car collisions. It would ruin the flavor of the game.

The beauty of TM is that you always know exactly what to expect from the car and from the blocks someone used to craft a map. It's those consistencies that makes the game reliable. Nadeo has spent a long time working on the physics, car handling, and the blocks to make sure everything was optimal for a great user experience. If we could mess with that formula, I'm absolutely sure the game would turn to crap in a hurry.

TM is all about a level playing field. Everyone has the same car handling (regardless of model they use), the same track, and nothing standing between them and the finish except their own skill. It's the ultimate game of skill. It's much like bowling. There's nothing standing between you and the goal, except yourself.

[SurferIX]

There's nothing standing between you and the goal but yourself.

Wow, nice sentence! That could make the headlines
In some way you're right. Maybe there could be another 4th environment named "crash test" or whatever with changing physics enabled? People interested in such things would pay. How about that?

[eyebo]

As long as it was clearly marked as such, and as long as it's not a main environment, I'm fine with whatever.

[Serpwidgets]

All right, well, I don't know what little world you're living in, but A) in practice, this doesn't work this way because people want to get the most bang for their buck, e.g., not buying more environments if they have a physics tool to tweak with, ...

You could say the same thing about the track editor itself (people wouldn't buy new games because they can just keep making more tracks in the old one) but that obviously isn't true.

In practice it works quite well. You have heard of Quake, HalfLife, Unreal, etc, right? People weren't just buying Quake the day it was released, they were buying access to all the mods and conversions that they knew would be produced by other users. Then you also get all the extra sales from people who didn't like the retail game but bought it later because they saw a specific mod like Team Fortress that they wanted to play.

One of the biggest limiting factors on game development is time. If you split that time out to the fans who can create more content, you can focus more on making the best engine, which will then have the best content.

[KuroBit]

I do forget how important it is to some to have a solid official and competitive mode that's completely separate from the creative side of things. I learned this through that whole argument where TrackMania Carpark wasn't sure whether or not to add a "silly cars" section (which was remedied by only making these cars show up if you use the car search function). I think a 4th, fully customizable, "crash-test" environment would be a great idea.

...I believe that would add a layer of complexity and confusion to the game on par with custom blocks...

Urk, am I hearing you right? Did they scrap the idea of letting us use custom blocks? I had thought that feature was just delayed while they got all the bugs worked out. I was really looking forward to this one... (Although again I can see how it could be abused, but this was something they had claimed was in development unlike the physics changes I mentioned)

[eyebo]

They've never said it was scrapped. If I remember correctly Hylis said something on the order of "We might do it sometime in the future". I can foresee that custom blocks would be a lot more welcome in a game like ShootMania than in TM2. I'm not 100% against the idea, I just think it could introduce a lot of problems to the gameplay.

We'll see what happens.