Questions and answers

[Hylis]

yep, object import, not block however

[serujio]

-how many people work as game developers at Nadeo?

-the same who work with Shootmania work with Trackmania?

-Do you work by title, like: do Canyon, after do Storm, after do Valley? Or there´s a permanent team for each franchise?

[Omnixor]

yep, object import, not block however

so what is the difference?..

[eie]

Any plans of making blocks which can be placed in the air? (floating blocks) I thought this would make jumping pads more interesting because then you could make different platforms to fight on.

[xis101]

I have a question about maniascript for Trackmania. People told me that maniascript has a lot of potential in SM, but there isn´t much you could do at TM. So, my question is:

Will there be an update of maniascript, where we get a lot of variables for TM? (for example: length of jump, length of drift, distance driven, distance to checkpoint, number of checkpoints passed and a lot more I hope )

[tcq]

Haven't played SM for a while, but here are some more general questions.
1) Will there be a possibility to create offline accounts in the future. For example like in TMU. if I'm creating a map with a friend and want to show both of us as the author =>"tcq_playerX" and validate the map with this profile.
2) About the shootmania server list.
a) Will there come a possibility to sort after ping?
b) Will there be a possibility to sort after multiple factors at the same time (game mode, ping, location, PW protected/not protected, relay/game server)
3)Will there be improvements of the join a server function
a) The join a server dialogue, after finding a server. Will it be possible to show this one depending on the server type? E.g. If you join a relay server to remove the button "join as player". At the moment, if you join a server but don't know if it is a relay or not, you waste time by clicking play and then getting kicked out of the whole joining process.
b)If a friend is playing on a server that is PW protected, but a relay server exists that is currently connected to that server, redirect the player to that server?
4) Will there be different configurations possible for different titles (including graphical settings, input settings, profile customisation)? This one is very important in my eyes.
5) Will there be something like a waiting queue for different game modes? E.g. you want to play elite and don't find a suitable server. Then you join the queue of players that want to play elite. If there are at least 6 players in this queue, the game prompts you and asks you if you want to join the game. If you click yes and five other players did, you will be moved to one server to play your match. A good idea might be to allow server owner to apply for a "queue registered server", which would be PW protected servers with one according relay and this servers can only be entered through the queue. Just one idea I just had, because I really love to play Heroes/BattleWaves, but it is so damn hard to find a server you can just join to have fun (Heroes is always empty -_-).

Just the questions that came just now into my mind.

[eyebo]

After the second TM2 or SM environment is released... will it be possible to play multiple environments/titles of the same game (genre) in a single server? (much like United)

I understand that it wouldn't currently make sense with the way the multiplayer ladders are set up, but in the future could there be like a "merged" title pack or something... to enable you to play all environments (that you own) of a given game in the same title pack?

Much of the fun in United in multiplayer was because you were gradually introduced to environments that you didn't really like at first. You would play on a server where all environments were played, and sometimes you would find yourself gradually getting used to an environment that you didn't necessarily like at first, like Coast or Rally... whereas you might otherwise not have played those environments much if you had to choose only one environment per server.

It also gives a lot of variety to the gameplay to have the option for all environments on the same server.

I hope that in the future Canyon and Valley (or Storm and Cryo) will somehow be able to be played on the same servers. That is probably the thing I'm most concerned about as I look towards where ManiaPlanet is going.

If you could clarify or give some hints at what might be possible in the future, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Omnixor]

4) Will there be different configurations possible for different titles (including graphical settings, input settings, profile customisation)? This one is very important in my eyes.

this is very important imho. firstly, because when you change inputs for TM, SM inputs are getting messed up, and vice versa. secondly, because canyon lags less for me than sm, and I'd like to enjoy cool graphics of tm and better performance of sm.

[Hylis]

Serujio
30 people that works on Maniaplanet more than on games. Since 90%+ of the work is about Maniaplanet, it makes little difference. Only production is divided sometimes, but it is a fraction of the dev. So, we can say that we work on TM, SM and QM at the same time.

Eie
More aerial blocs maybe, air floating blocs unlikely in short term.

Xis
We are on object import and other stuff, but good little list I added into the wishlist. I don't know when we can do this. We have tons of things to do, and some goods for TM, such as object importer or script opening to web via xml parsing

Tcq
1. Not scheduled for the account. For multiple authors, it would be another 'feature' that I doubt we would do in priority.
2.
a) not at the moment. I hope there will be enough good servers soon so you browse first by region/mode/map styles than ping. Ping will become less of an issue with increasing knowledge of hosts and established good servers
b) we released the API. As for the evolution of it, we will wait a little more for when we welcome much more people
3.
a) polish to be done later
b) same
4. Yes for some options. Nickname for example has already been discussed internally, and it should be like that. When is another question. It is the spirit of the apply all vehicules
5. All game modes, or nearly all will have a queue. We will provide a library as well for it. But it will be more for an already playing server. You jump into it into spectator and enter the queue. It avoids to go back to warmup and avoid also to do esc + spectator off so many times ^^ I know it is less good to start another server, but it will be less of an issue with more players

Eyebo
I don't know what we will do no this part. Maybe will a server list more than a title list on the same server, maybe titles based on multiple titles, I don't know. I think it is early a little for that question even if it is a common one.

[Mandark]

Will we ever see Puzzle coming back in TrackMania ?
Or any other title for Canyon (or Valley) like platform ?