This game dead?

[Dany0]

bla bla ubisoft bla bla pod blah blah

okay maybe

I know exactly what I'm saying. Your presumptions about me are mistaken.

a little? So you're not an 11 year old that just learned the games are created by programming and people are actually getting paid for sitting on the computer all day. But one thing doesn't satisfy me. How can you call yourself such a professional in the field and thinking about making a game in XNA?

Saying it sucks over and over doesn't make it so. And saying I'm wrong/stupid simply for failing to agree with you doesn't really help. Can you be specific? What's so bad about XNA?

XNA is bad. It's another "metoomommy" by Microsoft. It's badly designed from ground-up. The API sucks: it's super restrictive and denies some basic programming habits and rules. It's extremely slow, unsuited for the already slow X360, and unable to create professional games. They may look like it, but they are unsuited for distribution, generally unstable when it comes to big projects, those big projects require big hacks and workarounds, so not only you're losing audience, you're actually losing time and money investing into this stupid piece of... junk!

There is one, one good API that I really love. It's Panda3D. It's just as fast, if not faster, to develop in then XNA, even though it doesn't have all the "cool tools", it has most of them, and they're just as awesome. It's enough low-level for people who like to create crazy games, and enough optimized to create fast games that work even on very old hardware. And did I forget to say it's much more powerful then XNA? And yes you can create nice graphics with it. It even includes a much better community, just as friendly and caring as this one.

And there are a few reasons I hate Unity, XNA, Torque, and all this other crap. When I was 11 years old, I wanted to develop cool games like those on the screenshots too. But my computer couldn't handle it. It could handle stuff like NFS:MW or TMN:ESWC, but couldn't handle a damn roll-a-ball race-a-car shoot-a-box, and the reason was how shitty slow, badly optimized, were all these stupid over commercialized engines. I just hate them no doubt. And hey it did handle Blender quite well, and that thing is called slow sometimes too! Times may have changed, Unity is quite good on mobile, tried it myself. But I won't forgive the rest.

Another thing that makes me doubt in you is...

All that time I would have spent trying to configure a server or make new tracks, is going into design and programming instead.

That sounds like the 11 year old that just learned the games are created by programming and people are actually getting paid for sitting on the computer all day. "Haha all those losers are spending money and time on games, I make my own game and they will spend time and money on me!"

I looked into several engines and did some work with irrlicht and ogre using C++ but found what I think will work best for me.

First question, why do you need an engine? Especially a commercial one? I myself know a few industry veterans and they picked Ogre right away, when they convinced themselves they needed an engine. Hell I know a dude who gets paid a relatively large sum of money, and in his free time he just took Fortran 2003 and made a DirectX and OGL engine, out of nothing, except just the win32 & graphics API, in a week he had 15 demos including a fur stress test on the GPU. And he's young, he graduated 2002. Actually where is he didn't see him around for a while, last time he was assigned to make an Android game, but I still didn't see any hyper cool game with a rotary genitalia BFG cannon by a Scandinavian.

First I'm updating/porting a game I published 10 years ago to get familiar with C# and XNA and the new stuff in DirectX since the last DirectX I used was 7. The cool part with using XNA is it should be relatively easy to port to Xbox too.

Okay, sounds legit, wait, not at all. A 10 years old game, okay, XNA, not.

No no no, don't do that, you will be very, very, very unsatisfied with the result. How long have you been missing out dude? Times have changed

----
You know what I'll be back on the TM2 topic, I'll make it into a whole topic rather.

[firstdriver]

Midnight GMT December 14th 2011 ... Checked WORLD servers ...

690 servers available, 34 servers in use, Total amount of players = 168

[isamu]

Midnight GMT December 14th 2011 ... Checked WORLD servers ...

690 servers available, 34 servers in use, Total amount of players = 168

That my friend, is what I call a damn shame

Out of curiosity, what are the online multiplayer numbers and stats like for TM Nations Forever like these days?

[FrostBeule]

Midnight GMT December 14th 2011 ... Checked WORLD servers ...

690 servers available, 34 servers in use, Total amount of players = 168

That my friend, is what I call a damn shame

Out of curiosity, what are the online multiplayer numbers and stats like for TM Nations Forever like these days?

the European peak of a typical day is 10k-11k people playing at the same time these days (it used to be up to 20k people steadily for a long time just 1 year ago before the freezone was introduced).

[Trackmaniack]

Midnight GMT December 14th 2011 ... Checked WORLD servers ...

690 servers available, 34 servers in use, Total amount of players = 168

That my friend, is what I call a damn shame

Out of curiosity, what are the online multiplayer numbers and stats like for TM Nations Forever like these days?

the European peak of a typical day is 10k-11k people playing at the same time these days (it used to be up to 20k people steadily for a long time just 1 year ago before the freezone was introduced).

Ya know, after all this time, I've never gotten a satisfactory concise explanation as to exactly what freezone is and why it's here?

[fng_thatoneguy]

I'm going to throw in some two cents here too.

My apologies for not having the time to read every line of every post in this thread (I've read a lot of it), but I have some theories as to why things seem grim for TM2 right now too...

1. Too much of a good thing?
This game seems insanely customizable, even more so than previous TM games. I've seen gamers starting to take off with trying to show off what ManiaLInk is capable of (Tetris and Doodle Jump, for examples) and that has taken some away from the game.

RPG maps have been popular with others, which move people off from the normal racing servers and off either playing them in Local Play -- making online numbers look worse.

Couple these with people out making tracks, others making videos, others programming mods, etc... and we spread ourselves pretty thin. As everyone has pointed out, it has been a slow launch, but I think that was in turn a lot to Ubisoft's decision not to market it hard (at least not here in the USA -- I'm still pushing for more marketing here...) - which brings me to my next point:

2. Where is the marketing?!
We can't expect this game to sell by word alone... No matter how excited we are about TM and how much we may evangelize it to our friends... if it's not a big known game in the industry, others are hesitant to try it. For this argument alone, I will agree with those that gripe about the game not being released on Steam. Now releasing on Steam isn't enough... it has to be MARKETED on Steam as well... advertised in gamers' faces with their popout specials and front-page news items.

(Sidenote: I get really frustrated when I hear people gripe about the game not being released on Steam and saying they'll only buy it if Nadeo does release it there. Do we not all realize that non-Steam games can have shortcuts placed in Steam, so for all intents and purposes, it still feels a part of Steam? I'd rather have a non-DRMed game outside of Steam... and everyone else should to, since that best respects everyone's liberty. If it's a matter of having your one-stop shop to launch your games, great... add TM2 to your Steam list of games... nothing else is gained by a release on Steam for an individual basis.)

... back on topic ...

For those of us that have gone off on different paths of having fun with the game, but not showing up online, we need to remember to spend some time online still too... so it does still look like people are playing it. I hope to have more time soon to do that myself.

3. Solo mode isn't as fun to as many -- yes I'm talking about the timer.
Even some that fought for the timer in the infamous thread discussing whether it should be there or not have changed their tune and agreed that it's not a good way to handle the mode for the entire TM community. I'm really happy for those that like it, but for those that got turned off by it, it was one less enjoyable mode available in the game, leaving online and one environment all they had to show for the game they love so well. Compared to 7 environments and several fun game modes in TMUF, it doesn't make TM2 look like it has much value to someone that can't get into the solo mode too. Speaking of the lack of other modes...

4. Lack of Platform, Puzzle, Stunts, etc.
The game would seem to have more value to those that purchased it if the modes from previous TMs were still available in Canyon. I've heard rumor that some (if not all) are coming later, but the fact that they aren't in there now can account for a lack of playtime for gamers right now. Will they come back when those modes are available? I hope so.

Having all that said, I personally still think the game kicks butt and I'm very happy with it (still hoping for more) and think I well got my money's worth (and then some.) I just hope some of the problems can be solved, especially the marketing one. The only good thing I saw from the Ubisoft acquisition was the potential for marketing dollars to be spent here in the USA getting more players in-the-know about the TrackMania universe by the time of TM2's release. I was sorely disappointed that the only real exposure was a short 30-seconds at E3 (less than all the other games had) and no major game magazine coverage, etc.

Ubisoft needs to get the gaming community here (and all over the world) in-the-know about TM so we can have more people get interested in it. I hope that they will and hope that Nadeo will continue to deliver more goodness with this even though ShootMania and QuestMania are next on the roadmap.

Now, time to get off here and go race some so there will be one more player in the online list.

GG...

[FrostBeule]

Ya know, after all this time, I've never gotten a satisfactory concise explanation as to exactly what freezone is and why it's here?

freezone is basically a limitation of the game for those who haven't got a united-key. you can read about it here: http://www.tm-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=27226

altho hylis says in the topic the reason for it, im pretty sure it's not the only reason. also the freezone in itself is imo kinda poorly made and could be improved alot or replaced with something else. but well, there's still alot more people playing the game over TM2, which SHOULD mean something, but i guess for Nadeo it doesn't for whatever reason.

[Trackmaniack]

But i guess for Nadeo it doesn't for whatever reason.

Ya know, that part of the quote was entirely unnecessary and turns what -could- have been a useful post into yet another of your childish snarks, Frost.

[FrostBeule]

But i guess for Nadeo it doesn't for whatever reason.

Ya know, that part of the quote was entirely unnecessary and turns what -could- have been a useful post into yet another of your childish snarks, Frost.

why?

[Trackmaniack]

But i guess for Nadeo it doesn't for whatever reason.

Ya know, that part of the quote was entirely unnecessary and turns what -could- have been a useful post into yet another of your childish snarks, Frost.

why?

If you're so shortsighted that you can't figure this out, no wonder all you play is Stadium. I'm sorry for you, I really am.