Maniaplanet Forum

hello,

I'm a fairly new player to trackmania but i've been enjoying it very much. Competitive at it's core and arcady enough to be fun for everyone, TM2 is just very unique. But it has some problems, mainly for casual gamers, for which i have small suggestions.

In what i think is the main part of the game, the multiplayer modus, almost every server i go on fills half the screen with statistics. While that may be appealing to the hardcore crowd, i believe casual/new users a very much overwhelmed by it. Don't get me wrong, i like statistics in games a lot, but to have them all on the screen all the time, I'm not sure.

I know that these stats are not part of your game but rather serverside plugins, but maybe you could add a way for clients to choose to hide them. In the options i found the key to hide all UI elements, which is cool, but then you don't get to see the important stuff like splittimes, time left etc.

my suggestion here would be to have a force default hud options, which overwrites server mods and players would get the normal nadeo hud on every server they go on.


My 2. suggestion comes from me playing without a hud:

I think it would be cool to have two a little bit different sounds when you drive through timing beams, one for when you're up in time and one for when you're down, so you get all the information you need without taking your eyes from the action.



my 3. point has nothing to to with the hud, but with the Gamepad accessibility. The new start/choose game screen with the favorite servers is great, but it does not work with gamepads at all. I hope you fix this, because I think TM could be very succesfull when gamers realize how nice it is to play on their TV screens.



Just so you got something to do in the next 10 years

DUdE2 wrote: my suggestion here would be to have a force default hud options, which overwrites server mods and players would get the normal nadeo hud on every server they go on.

100% agree on this! I think many server plugins even come with an option to turn panels off, but they never work for me...

I would agree also. I want to enjoy the graphics and the scenery but the HUD is in the way.
Also I noticed before loading into a server, the controls are shown but the image of a keyboard is missing.
Is that supposed to happen? It makes it seem empty.

For your first question.
On servers with the server controller MPAseco, try to press F7 (only works if there are not to many players on a server).
On servers which use FAST, write /ml or click the X in the top left corner.

DUdE2 wrote:My 2. suggestion comes from me playing without a hud:

I think it would be cool to have two a little bit different sounds when you drive through timing beams, one for when you're up in time and one for when you're down, so you get all the information you need without taking your eyes from the action.

This is awesome. I really love this idea. Would make playing so much easier, without the disturbing server plugins.

...but maybe you could add a way for clients to choose to hide them...

You can press ' * ' to hide the HUD, or if you play with gamepad, like i do, re-assign the key to your gamepad, personally i have the equivalent to ' O ' on the left analog-stick: pressing it hides opponents (well...it has three states in TM2 since a while ^ ^...full, ghost-like and hidden) and i can hide/show the HUD by pressing the right analog stick.

The fine-tuning possibilities of the server-controllers is another option which tcq explained very well :- )

The eyepiece used in XAseco can be also hidden,
F7 as a shortcut will hide the majortiy of the widgets, you can also use /eyepiece hide
Source : http://www.undef.name/XAseco2/Records-E ... p#Commands

If you are using eXpansion for ManiaLive just click on the title bar and the widget will hide also.

different sounds for checkpoints suggestion is simply genious and amazing.

If you just don't turn off the complete HUD, then the CP times are written in different colors in the center of the screen, so that's also not out of sight, but agreed, sometimes one does not really look to them during a difficult race.
Sound idea is cool, +: C5maj and -: G4min for example?

Checkpoints audio added to eXpansion, there is now little button at bottom of the screen to turn it on.

The checkpoints widget can show difference to top1 record or your own personal best.
In case you get better time and if audio is turned on, you will hear very high "ding!"-sound in addition to checkpoint sound.

if you want to test, come server named "> mixed styles <" at Finland