Maniaplanet Update #3 information

[niarfman]

About the server list, IMO, the best is to list servers by sorting by ping and performances the host server can afford.

The goal is to allow the best experience for each player with minimum risk of lag or latency in the game.

[Off Topic]Unfortunately, at the moment, the CPU on the host is very important for a Shootmania server. We have experience many issue with low cost solution based on weak CPU. At least a Core i5 / Xeon is necessary for a very good experience ... and it costs ...[/Off Topic]

The good point with shootmania it's best playing with maximum 16-20 players together and often max 10 players. It allows players for discovering more servers than the most popular.

And, for the moment, we are few. But if many players come it will be good for many Server Admin ^^

[Hylis]

Joader, it's an addition to the gameplay, that is hard to master and does not bring a big advantage. So, it's for experts only, but really interesting imo.

Others, about Title pack discussion that should not happen here, especially since abandonning it is clearly not an option. It's not because it's unfinished that it is not of great value. There are tons of reasons for it behind and I would like to avoid enter in them. Please wait for the update and see how it works before trying to make something strange in the place. A title pack is a ladder, custom data, a clouded profile, clouded data, local storage space better management, an upcoming updater system, a versioning system, a demo system, an economic system, dedicated communities, news, way to provide hosting without disclosing everything, simplified map types creation, plug-ins, custom menus, single file sharing and further improvement capacities such as teams, groups, settings, custom look etc. The Trackmania RPG is a great example of how the titles can become useful/cool.

It's more ambitious than servers and until we have done enough, it looks like a complication. But in the end, it's a way to handle the diversity of experience without limiting them. The question of having one big community with tons of smaller is a challenge. It's difficult for the number of players, but it's also a way to reach higher numbers when ready.

[Omnixor]

so what is your idea to make titlepacks popular? all you mentioned is cool for sure, but if nobody uses the titlepack, it's worthless.

[Cerovan]

like if you are about to join a server, you need "XYZ Objects pack" or when going to the editor right before the map editor shows up you are asked to "choose preferred titlepack" and "choose preferred mode"

It'll be a lot more complicated without the Title Pack, imagine you click on a server on Storm, you'll maybe have to download 2gb of data (imagine there is a lot of data in it), first it'll take some time to download them and then you could have issues with them (for example some object are named the same way in another gamemode but the object is different, how choose which one to display or if it'll erase the old one to put the new one).

It could be the same problem if the 10 first page of the serverbrowser shows gamemode which require data to download in order to work, it'll be quite annoying to download all the time data to be able to play if i want to do a quick game and that's all (because i'll never now if i'll have a 10min download to be able to play).

That's why at the end it's a lot easier for the player to download the title pack to access to the mode, there will not be name-issue, object issue and it'll be easier to maintain for the player (just delete the title pack if you don't want the data for this mod anymore) and the title pack creator (update it and release a new version with all the updated assets in it).

I see more pros than more cons personnaly.

[Mandark]

The ability to include objects in a track/map without a title pack will pretty much revolutionize in some way most of the maps. We will have more unique maps and hugely varied, but yeah, having to download files after every match is quite annoying.

[Joader]

Sounds promising wonder what it could be though... Hopefully not some kind of "minigame" for faster reload or some stamina regeneration thing.
well I guess I have to wait for that update P

Could you give a heads-up if there is anything planned for the competitive scene of the game?

[riolu]

Sounds promising indeed, I really hope you guys are trying to fix all the performance issues (random freezes or crashes) many people are complaining about. Looking forward to all the stuff, the multi-environment title for TM is definitely good news for every TM player around here :p

[Hylis]

the multi-env is only for one mode (a new simple one) for various reasons

we will move back to SS2 only, which should introduce performance gain but loss of compatibility in press forwards & a very low percentage of player (we may provide a non SS2, but non compatible for records version)

yes Joader, you will have to wait ^_^

omnixor: that's mainly the universal demo + store ranked by most popular that will get the title popular.

[Hylis]

By the way, some people are asking if we ban players. I would like to avoid to make too much report/detail/information about this. I have seen two players banned for cheating yesterday in the base (kor... & din...) on Shootmania and one player banned today on Trackmania. But there is less usually.

[Joader]

any information about possible tournaments like a return of go4 in the future?