Review after 11 years Trackmania

[McBain]

I think it was a good Idea from Nadeo to start this survey. I fear it might be influenced since only active trackmaniacs (and shoortmaniacs) will participate. In my opinion Nadeo should have only 1 priority only at the moment: get more players to this game. To me it feels like a lot of priority went into all these titlepack tools to help the creative community but the question here is: can the creative community increase the number of active players? In my opinion not in the current state of the game. Therefore I still fear the trend to less players will continue and the creative people will be disappointed and one after another quits contribution.
@Nadeo: if you are now really working on a next Shootmania Environment (im still not interested) then please think about a proper release and promote strategy and dont repeat such a release like Lagoon for Maniaplanet which is just dead/soloonly since launch.
I think the only thing that the community can do is agree about the real problems behind missing players and stop with pointless discussions about irrelevant details. The solutions have to come from Nadeo. Maniaplanet can be only a success with Nadeo and the community can't do more than try to support.

I agree with Kripke that if a new player would like to understand Maniaplanet he will be best first downloading TMNF and play this game 1 year and come later to Maniaplanet because only then he might understand the point of Trackmania and Shootmania at all.

@Miss: Sometimes your posts show a lack of experience with the history of TM in my opinion. You have not even seen the times when TM still had a bunch of players and was a living e-Sports Game. I also see that you joined the discussion because you agree that this game lacks players.The discussion if this is 1 game or 10 games is in my opinion pointless but it should be clarified if Multi-Environment should be supported. I think without Multi-Environment (and also Multi-TP) so much content will be never playable online and this game is to my understanding more interesting online than offline. Lagoon is in fact a solo environment (zero populated server) and Valley is close to (one populated server). Even the ones that own 3 of 4 Environments (and probably also TM Turbo) cannot play Multi-Environment because they need to buy the dead and uninteresting Lagoon. I can't play very nice TMPlus Maps anymore because the title has not been migrated to MP4 even if all maps can be migrated and played offline. So why is here the creativity of the past fully blocked? I dont get it. In fact with MP4 everything was done to destroy it and without Kripkes TP there would be no chance for Multi-Environment at all. It's also very sad that all the best controllers are broken with MP4 update and i basically still miss 90% of features of Xaseco because even Uaseco lacks them. This last section of my post is really only my personal opinion and maybe not supported by the community

[Miss]

There's a lot of stuff to unpack there in your post, not necessarily connected to the discussion we were having, but let's look at a few points:

First of all, you mention I don't have "much experience" in the past of TM? I'm not sure that's entirely true, since I've been playing since TMNF and Canyon beta (but then took a break until 2014) and even played in a bunch of ESL competitions myself. But besides that, I don't really understand why that's relevant to the discussion

Second, I understand the problem with TMAll not being available if you don't own all titlepacks, but I'm not sure there are any good solutions for this. I keep saying "what would you change" but nobody seems to have an idea in this area. (Which is fine, since Nadeo has to be the one making the decisions, and who knows, maybe they already have a solution in the back of their heads, but having a discussion about this in the community can still be encouraged.)

Also, didn't Nadeo make their TM2 titlepack available in MP4 (with all environments)? I thought MrSloppi/Kripke titlepack is just a big collection of maps from the community?

"90% of features from Xaseco" sounds like a lot. Which features are you missing exactly? Have you tried PyPlanet? Uaseco isn't very good, in my opinion, but as far as I know, it's a fork of Xaseco, so everything should be there.

[hackie]

"90% of features from Xaseco" sounds like a lot. Which features are you missing exactly? Have you tried PyPlanet? Uaseco isn't very good, in my opinion, but as far as I know, it's a fork of Xaseco, so everything should be there"




Xaseco has more plugins , so yes it looks like Uaseco is missing a lot.
But the people who wrote those plugins left TM or just not active.
Like Miss said : it's a fork of Xaseco, so everything should be there.

[Miss]

Aren't xaseco plugins compatible with uaseco? I'd imagine that's the whole reason you'd use Uaseco, anyway..

[MTKD]

No they aren't, Some of them have been ported to UASECO

I use UASECO because i have still a "DATABASE" from that i wanted to Keep the records, and our Team, they got used to uaseco

So all servers from our team uses "XASECO/UASECO"

[undef.de]

Offtopic answer

Aren't xaseco plugins compatible with uaseco? I'd imagine that's the whole reason you'd use Uaseco, anyway..

No they aren't because XAseco2 isn't OOP and UASECO is. But converting a XAseco2 plugin to UASECO is very simple (if you are a coder... much simpler then converting a plugin from an other controller (like eXp) to UASECO or vice versa).

[Demented]

Also, didn't Nadeo make their TM2 titlepack available in MP4 (with all environments)? I thought MrSloppi/Kripke titlepack is just a big collection of maps from the community?

TM2 title was in MP3. I haven't seen it in MP4 yet. Is it available?
I still (somehow) have the old TM2 Title installed and it actually works just fine other than user made items have no textures (except for Canyon) but MrSloppi's pack seems to have the same texture issue.
In fact in some ways the old TM2 title is better. You can still "select all" replays in a folder with one click (although playing multiple replays is broken after last update), play any environment without switching (even Lagoon works) and use the enviro-mixing feature to create tracks with any car in any env (with exception to Stadium). I'm not sure why there is a problem reinstating this Title in official capacity.
MrSloppi's Titlepack is cool but it is not the same nor quite as good as the old official TM2 Titlepack.

[riolu]

TM2 title was in MP3. I haven't seen it in MP4 yet. Is it available?

No it isn't. For whatever reason, the titlepack hasn't been updated after the MP4 update which is a big shame as it really hurts the online community in my eyes.

[kripkee]

Also, didn't Nadeo make their TM2 titlepack available in MP4 (with all environments)? I thought MrSloppi/Kripke titlepack is just a big collection of maps from the community?

TM2 title was in MP3. I haven't seen it in MP4 yet. Is it available?
I still (somehow) have the old TM2 Title installed and it actually works just fine other than user made items have no textures (except for Canyon) but MrSloppi's pack seems to have the same texture issue.

This issue has every multienv Titlepack btw. (as far as I know)

In fact in some ways the old TM2 title is better. You can still "select all" replays in a folder with one click (although playing multiple replays is broken after last update), play any environment without switching (even Lagoon works) and use the enviro-mixing feature to create tracks with any car in any env (with exception to Stadium).

nice propaganda : https://www.sloppi.de/pic/replays_sloppi.avi
I can "select all" replays in any folder. I can open multiple replays btw.
it has exactly the same functions like the old TM²Titlepack has right now.

I'm not sure why there is a problem reinstating this Title in official capacity.
MrSloppi's Titlepack is cool but it is not the same nor quite as good as the old official TM2 Titlepack.

I am using currently MP4, and as far as I see. I can't play online with the "official" TM²titlepack from Nadeo. So thats why "I" created primary this titlepack

[rat_in_car]

Hey guys! Let me know after another 2 or 3 years which of your suggestion have been implemented in game. :) I expect - none of them.

McBain has right that there is lack of players. For example - myself. I prefer to play TMUF Island servers with long, harder maps, along with players who like to play something more than lol or short crap. And now look at Canyon for example - the only servers visited by large number of players are servers with "easy and short" type maps. Any more difficult element in map? No. Any longer map? Maybe even 55 seconds? No, man, it's "too long". The same or similar boring maps played again and again every year. It's not Nadeo's fault but still - Nadeo can somehow promote serious servers with good community maps.

Now look at TM Turbo for example - lot of servers with Nadeo only maps, because it's easy to create that type of server. Huge number of boring servers that looks the same. Without players. And we have lagoon there - env that nobody plays, because players prefer to play the same Canyon maps forever. Add some bugs in Lagoon, some nonsense physics in sand/wood and result is known.

Lagoon in Maniaplanet? No, thank you - I don't want to pay for the same game twice, so I have only one Stadium (in TMUF) and one Lagoon (in TM Turbo). And as McBain said - it's not worth, because nobody plays it (thank you for info by the way).

IMO reason that there are no good and highly populated servers is that most of players don't even want to play serious maps. "Easy, short and very short" servers are the reason that community dies. Bunch of kids that wants only plays 15 second maps? It's not a community.

And maybe one more - everyone wants to have own server. It's nice sometimes, but with that small online community should be one global server with all kind of maps, without possibility to ask every map for restart (it's f***n boring!). Do you have your own gameserver? Do you know other people who have TM servers? Join these servers together! Join 10 of them and add nice maps - and serious online community will be started that way.