Maniaplanet Forum

... you do it because of a good reason. And quitting gaming must have a very deep reason behind this big decision. And this reason is to achieve one's personal dreams that you've kept for such a long time within your heart. This achievement (of fulfilling your own dreams) personally means much more for me than the plain joy of playing video games. I dont know if you feel the same but whenever I played video games, I was never fully satisfied. Gaming never blew the inner fire out... it was and is still there, the inner desire to achieve what you always dreamed of. I dont intend to say that gaming is bad in principle. It's everybody's own choice of what you want to do. I personally just feel that I want to do something else than gaming.

So, a few months ago I left the gaming world. One of my major dreams was about being a musician. Like 4-5 months ago, I took the initiative and started learning guitar. Successfully. Now I can play 2 songs that I always wanted to play on the guitar and it is such a great feeling. Trust me! And I will surely continue on learning new songs... it is an unbelievably nice experience.

Being a musician doesn't only mean to play songs, but it also involves to write and compose them. Back when I was still playing Maniaplanet, I had the idea of writing a series of songs. Each song is a little short-story which is part of the bigger story (aka the series). This story is purely related and dedicated to Maniaplanet, Nadeo and its community. I do so because Maniaplanet is a noticeable part of my life. I started my adventure with Nadeo when I was a kid by playing Trackmania Nations Forever and spent countless hours on beating the dedimania records on =RR= Dirt TA / Round servers. After a break with TM, I continued my adventure with Shootmania and also became a vivid Forum member. I do not intend to release a series of songs which purely consists of my gaming adventure within Maniaplanet. A clear no! That would be boring as ****. Instead, I'd like to create a story of the history of Maniaplanet itself and how the developers and the players experienced this history. From the great fortune to the deep pain we all experienced since the birth of Trackmania and Maniaplanet/Shootmania. I do so not only due to my affection to this franchise but also since gaming has become far more than only playing a video game. People play video games. People. You forge friendships that turns into clans/teams/little communities. And where people and friendships are, there are also emotions. I want to bundle all this what I mentioned in the last 3-5 sentences into 4-5 songs.

I already wrote the lyrics of the 1st (or 2nd) song of this series back when I was still an active member of this community. It's still on my hard disk and it is one of my personal most valueable files on my PC.

Why did I open this topic here?

It is one of my dreams to complete this series of songs. Not only in regards of pure words (song lyrics), but also in terms of music and a fitting music video. And I need other creative guys/girls of this community to help me accomplishing my goal. Maybe it is also in your interest in being part of a great story. Simply everybody can contribute. Someone who got skills with the Mediatracker, a video editor, a music composer and someone who just want to express his feelings and experience about Maniaplanet and its older brothers (the older TM games). Especially the opportunity of sharing me your opinion about the history of this franchise is very important to me! The experiences of the community and my personal experiences will be combined into the big story! So don't hesitate to tell it me
I am open for suggestions and I want this to be a community project. By the players, for the players. In the spirit of Maniaplanet.


Some last words

I did lot's of breaks with TM/SM. Partly because I was disappointed about how the game developed over the course of the years; Partly because I enjoyed other games more for a short while; Partly because I had enough gaming in general. But somehow, I always came back. I came back because I always reminded myself of this great community. And I reminded myself of the insane and beautiful possibilities when you wanted to create stuff - Creating maps was a blast of fun - despite of the fact that you always knew that not so many players would enjoy your creativity...
But I realized that you should never do breaks with your dreams!

So, I feel pretty determined to finish this project (unlike my previous ones) and I would be very grateful for any support!

You can either contact me here on this forum by a PM, a post on this topic or by e-mailing me: soprah@gmx.de

Thanks

Greetings,
Soprah

P.S.: I will never ever touch Maniaplanet anymore after I finished this project. This project will help me to finish my Nadeo adventure in a good and respecting way

I wish you a lot of luck with this song series. It just reminds me a lot of the German musician "Jan Hegenberg" who did a lot of gaming songs (mostly known about his legendary WoW song Die Horde rennt. If you want to get inspiration about the people behind the community, don't forget to have a look into the interview series by wormi. Also, don't forget the amazing coverage by frostbeule in his TM-news series.

Nobody is forced to play Trackmania / Maniaplanet forever (pun intended )

Everybody makes own choices, and there is a saying that one has to quit when it's best.
Perhaps the current Maniaplanet 4 update and modification struggles are not really a good example,
and this has probably led many players to quit.

At least it's nice you give your very personal reason and not just leave without saying anything.

I wish you good luck for your future projects and always fun with whatever you do.

Doing music is great btw.

Bye mate

@Tcq,

Thanks buddy. Ye, I remember this song. It's truly legendary. Even some of my friends who never played WoW knew it and sung it every minute when we used to play the game of thrones board game. Also thanks for your references, I will take a look at them

@Marc,

Thanks bro. I know this proverb very well and leaving something when you enjoy it at the most is probably one of the toughest challenges. But anyone can endure it. From what I've seen on YouTube and on the forum here, the Maniaplanet 4 stuff looks very promising. Simply everything. From the attempt of solving the Titlepack issue by implementing the so-called channels, to the new awesome creative features like the object modeler editor. Although Nadeo is literally trying everything to solve the player population issue, it wasnt successful. Well, shit happens. They and its remaining community can only look forward.
But I have to clarify your misunderstanding: I already left Maniaplanet in 2016, autumn. I just came back to leave it again when my project is done in order to finish my Maniaplanet adventure in a proper and respecting way. I just want to finish this project because its very important for me and then leave this franchise and finish this chapter. Maybe you misunderstood me or I misunderstood you ^^

And yes, music is very cool

@everyone,

I'd love if some people whould be interested supporting my project. While playing Shootmania, I spent so much time helping others. Either by testing their new secret scripted tools, maps, game modes.. simply anything. It would be cool if someone could help me now and help me finishing this project. You can contribute in lot's of ways. Composing music, creating the music video or just expressing your feelings about Trackmania/Shootmania/Nadeo.

Thanks everyone

Hey, best of luck on your journey!

If I may, from having had that experience myself on music projects, please copy the file either to any cloud software or to multiple USB keys
I lost 2 years of music projects to my disk drive suddenly dying and it did hurt my motivation a lot.

Aside from that, I hope you have a lot of fun doing it with the community. I'll see if I can tune in during off-work periods

Hey Soprah,

first of all, I want to say thank you for everything you've done for the community so far and good luck for everything you plan to do in the future.

If there is any way I could help you with your project it is presneting you my experiances I had with TrackMania / ShootMania:

I started to play tm in 2004 with my brothers. Geeting all the gold medals and building some crazy tracks was really fun back then. That's why we decided to buy another tm game later. So we bought tm sunrise extreme. Also here I hunted for the medals and played with my brothers in hot seat mode.

Years later (I think it was in Feburary 2013) I bought tm² Canyon. Again I played the solo mode but this time also online a bit. But it didn't took me long until a friend in school told me about ShootMania and from that day on I barely played tm again. I still hunt times in canyon solo mode from time to time and I am not even so bad (top 100) and sometimes I play the tm SmurfsCups but I am mainly focused on sm now for 4 years.

In sm I started with playing almost only Royal and sometimes Battle. I joined my first clan TLU (The last unicorns) and that lasted for quite a long time. At some point I started to play Siege more and slowly switch over to this gamemode. I joined diffrent clans, teams and communities until I finally (and way to late) ended up in the Smurfs community. Since a couple of years I'm playing almost every gamemode quite a lot (Siege, Royal, Speedball, Jailbreak, Battle, Battlepro, Elite, Combo, etc.) and also playing most of the cups by Paragon League. With playing almost every day for a few hours for 4 years without any bigger pauses, it woulnd't surprise me if I would be the player with the most playtime in ShootMania, which is hardly to guess considering my bad slill level.

Joining the Smurfs community was one of the best decisions in my life and I can't thank Haagse Smurf often enough for inviting me into this wonderful community! I am a smurf for almost 3 years now and coundn't be any happier anywhere else.

For the same time I am hosting the SmurfsCups Royal now already toghter with some other great Smurfs. Later I also offered my help to Paragon League, hosting their cups as well from time to time. Somehow I got involved into paragon league more and more and ended up being a member of pl Managment. As such I'm taking care of the cups, mappacks, admins and more in pl. Since March 2016 I also host the ShootMania discord server to bring the sm community toghter.

This all is just a very basic overview of my TrackMania / ShootMania history. If you want to know anything more detailed let me know.

Salut Qlex,

Thanks for wishing me luck on this journey. It really helps me.

Yes, my brother - who is composing music for over 10 years - had the same problem recently. All his work just vanished because he never saw the importance in creating a back-up. You might be thinking right now "Why is Soprah not asking his brother to create the music for his project". Well, someone from the outside doesnt know the feelings we all have about Maniaplanet and its games and developers. Music is about passion and emotions. And if my brother never played Trackmania or Shootmania, he will never truly feel what we feel and as a consequence, the music wouldn't reflect us. Therefore, only the community itself can create something like this.

It would be super cool if you would join us. Actually, you remind me of Nerpson who is also talented in composing music and is also part of Nadeo


Hallo Hype,

Wow, thanks for your detailed post. And thanks for appreciating my work as well

It's pretty amazing that you started your Nadeo adventure so long ago and yet, your love and passion for Maniaplanet is still there. You are an inspiration hype. It's nice to see that you found your "home" within Maniaplanet, aka the smurf community. When I was still active, I joined the smurfs discord a few times when we played the royal cup. That was definitely funny haha.

@Hype & Qlex,

I will write private messages to you both on how you can actually help me. I hope you are ready and as enthusiastic as me to get the project rolling

Greetings,
Soprah

Oh Soprah, you make me blush.
Thanks for the kind words. You know that a big part of the community is eaiser to reach on discord than here. Maybe you should think about rejoining it.
The link is in my description.

You should consider to contact Sen-Sai. He made the only ShootMania song I know:



His login and his forum name are both: chco

The best way to reach him would probally be to write him a pm on the forum.

I wish you (and really everyone) good luck with whatever you choose to do in your life.

I've always felt that it's important to keep a balance in life. Never get so involved in any one thing that the rest of the world disappears from your peripheral view. Enjoy life and enjoy it deeply. It is a gift of unlimited possibilities. Explore all of them that interest you.