Maniaplanet Forum

ionian wrote:I'm not sure that we have established what will be the fastest method of cornering yet, especially bearing in mind the fast tracks that we have seen at E3 and DreamHack. It may all depend on the exit speed of a corner - we will have to work out which blocks are better to drift with a slower exit speed, and which are better for the traditional (no-slide) slow in, fast out approach.

Has anyone had a chance to watch actual gameplay footage with sound, and work out what happens with gear changes? Is there a drop of speed, or a slowing of acceleration?

From what I saw the acceleration 'pauses' during gear change much like what happens in TMU. Not sure if the gear changing is slower during cornering like what happens on dirt in Stadium.

I'm also fairly sure I'm going to spend the first day of playing the game simply making stupid tracks and figuring out how everything works. That, ironically, is what I did for the first month when I got TMN (back then my laptop couldn't handle online play so I could only play in singleplayer -_-) I'll be sure to attempt a lot of different approaches to different setups of corners and see what works.

I'm sure everyone will be doing that though. o_o


Oh, and from what I've heard the Canyon car's engine sounds are terrible. xD

Speaking of gameplay, I really love Rounds Mode. Do you guys think there will more servers playing Rounds mode than was in TMUF/TMNF?

And am I the only one here that prefers Rounds mode over any other mode?

How cars drifts? It's like TMN where you have to brake, or it's "automatic"? Or there is a sort of "powerdrift block"?

Car sound reminds me the Coast one

isamu wrote:Speaking of gameplay, I really love Rounds Mode. Do you guys think there will more servers playing Rounds mode than was in TMUF/TMNF?

And am I the only one here that prefers Rounds mode over any other mode?

I love Rounds, too. I don't know how many Rounds servers there will be.

Funny, we talked about rounds and TM2 a few days ago on the french forum:
http://www.trackmania.com/fr/forum/view ... highlight=

At this point, i doubt this talk may be useful to Nadeo because the matter is probably more the community's organization than the design of the game.

Nevertheless, several issues have been highlighted and deserve - maybe - to be reported there :
- It is nowadays not an evidence to get fun on rounds server in TMUF, because most of them are ladderpoints servers, coast only, nascar, league training of stadium drift): there is a lack of "traditionnal" rounds servers.
- The news about TM2 argue a lot about "make the best times on crazy tracks", which seems time-attack sided.
- The type of ladder TM2 get (if any) could have significant consequences on the rounds servers.
- The decision to make time-attack or rounds server may come from the players rather than from Nadeo.
- Be consitent/efficient in rounds needs training, which makes rounds a more "elitist" mode, that suits competitors but not casual players => normal to see it only on competitions training servers.
- It may be funny to play in rounds whichout knowledge of the maps, provided that there isn't a guy who know the maps.
- The rounds servers are often fulfilled by league maps, which come harder with the years, they became too hard for beginners since some years, that would explain less and less players come on rounds servers.
- Some environments such as rally and coast are easier to play whithout training and may suit better to no-train rounds.

Some of these arguments seems in opposition but it reflects the diversity of thinkings.

This discussion may deserve to be deeper...

db89 wrote:How cars drifts? It's like TMN where you have to brake, or it's "automatic"? Or there is a sort of "powerdrift block"?

Car sound reminds me the Coast one

Yeah, gameplay could be better, but sounds nice, we can't really judge the game's gameplay without testing it.

Yeah, the difficulty of the maps in rounds servers on TMNF are what eventually put me off of playing for ladderpoints and rank.

I've been playing rounds servers - both casual and competitive - since I got Nations in 2006; it's transitioned for me from the [z]cars rounds server (arguably one of the most popular rounds servers in the Nations era) through to the mixed tech / dirt servers in TMNF and the tracks have changed a lot.

Originally the tracks were all player-built, designed not specifically for competition but designed to be fun ... yet were still challenging to get a fast time on and I reckon were far more difficult due to possessing greater diversity - [z]cars had tracks ranging from speedtech (reRun, by far my favourite map of all time) to fullspeed (there was one particular FS map in the server where I had the WR on it for three weeks... until they discovered a stupid cut v.v) and of course tracks which encorporated many different 'genres' of track in one (sections of tech, sections of fullspeed, sections of very tight, precise corners). Put simply, there was always something for everyone. They even had a few 'labyrinth' tracks, which were hillarious to drive around.

Last time I played a competitive server in TMNF, the tracks were all the same - tight, twisty tech maps built by league mappers for professional league tournaments, designed to have only one racing line and to punish mistakes with retirements. The alternatives were dirt-tech servers, which were really the same except they could technically be completed FS. Whilst I'm a huge fan of tech maps (and specifically speed-tech - I design speedtech tracks and a few of them have ended up online on some servers) .... put simply, those 'new' types of tech track completely bore me; there's no fun in driving them because they require too much precision and they put off the more casual driver due to basically being all the same.

Back in 2007, you could get speed-tech maps that had loops ... when's the last time you raced a tech track in a 70-90K server that had a loop in it? Probably never.


The thing is, I prefer rounds over time attack because it encourages consistency, and encourages you to find ways around mistakes and, to be fair, racing 200+ people around the track at once rather than everyone being scattered on different runs is far more exciting to me. The problem is, the only servers I can find that have fun tracks are now all time attack, which is a shame.

I hope TM2 can reverse this and bring back the whole rounds-server community; just because some people don't make 'professional' maps doesn't mean those maps can be challenging in their own right. I've sometimes played more difficult tracks in casual TA servers than I have in the 100K servers.

And sorry for the rant ^^; I was just giving my opinion on the server scene.

isamu wrote:Speaking of gameplay, I really love Rounds Mode. Do you guys think there will more servers playing Rounds mode than was in TMUF/TMNF?

And am I the only one here that prefers Rounds mode over any other mode?

Rounds, laps, I love those modes

Although I enjoy rounds, I've always prefered time attack. It's more social - you can stop to talk whenever you want, and it lets you play a wider range of map types. In fact I usually end up treating the tmu rounds servers like time attack anyway, going for dedis and top recs and not worrying about where I finish in the race.

However, for competitions, rounds is king - it is hard to beat that feeling of training all week and then driving a great race to help your team win. Rarely happens to me of course

time attack -> fun, talk, flame, training for competition..

rounds-> pro, no talk between races, competition, more adrenalin when you win a race, harder..


So I prefer to play time attack with friends ( when they are not at teamspeak) so I can chat with them and race when I want.

To play competition and to compete my skill with others I prefer rounds.

But don't worry, you can create your own race modes in Tm2 with the new tool, so I think there will be more weird stuff than just the normal timeattack or rounds^^