Feedback and issues

[Alcator]

Yes, and I like a lot this Tags idea. It's just that we have not yet integrated them enough. That's clearly something cool for me.

Hello, Hylis.

Are you aware that ManiaPlanet has serious, game breaking issues?

It's disheartening seeing you responding to "social network'ish" suggestions, but leaving game breaking problems unaddressed.

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There is an official part of Trackmania called PLATFORM. NADEO made it, NADEO promoted it with trailers and stuff.

It has a campaign, and right now, none of us can play that campaign (in such a way that our progress would actually register),
because ManiaPlanet 4 update broke the level geometry.

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Years ago, I reported that for some strange reason, Introductory cut scenes created by map makers in the in-game editor get cut off at around 20 second mark, even if they are longer. NADEO never fixed that problem.

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The game won't inform us that there are updates to it UNTIL we try playing a particular stations. Compare that with Steam, where if you launch Steam, it will detect which of your installed games have patches, and will immediately start working on getting them. This means (in Nadeo's case) that if a friend of mine tells me "Hey, how about we play a little multiplayer at noon?", I can't just launch ManiaPlanet at 11:30 and leave it running in the background; instead, I have to click on every single station that we might want to play to make sure the station will update.

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We still need to click multiple times to get into a station; recently, someone advised me that it's possible to use a command-line parameter to directly launch a particular station, but if I do that, I cannot get to the "main" menu with all the stations -- trying to go away from the station quits the game launched in such a way.

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BTW, the game lacks explanation. I don't know if that's because I had it installed for 5+ years now, or because you never added any context-sensitive tutorial, but things are being added to the game and explanation for them is done in the form of FORUM POSTS. Whatever happened to tooltips? Why can't I just hover over an element of the interface and get a useful balloon with explanation of what it does and how it works (if it's something more complex than "Click here to play")?

Example of question I'd like answered BY THE GAME ITSELF IS: What does the number "1" on a bronze background next to my Multiplayer Ranking mean?

The reason why I'm spending so much time writing about all these flaws is that I have recently sat my 10 year old son in front of ManiaPlanet, and just watched his confusion from all the "sexy" flashy nonsense added recently. "News", "Community", "Flash!", "Channels" ... Yeah, but HOW DOES A NEW PLAYER GET INTO THE GAME in 5 seconds? How do I quickly find a suitable server on which to play?

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At one time, you had the courage to release one version of the game completely for free, no strings attached, no background platform or third party accounts needed. Trackmania was amazing back then.
Now? You start the game and see "(red dot) LIVE", as if you accidentally launched Twitch.

[moledig]

Yeah! What he said! Fix all the bugs MP4 broke! I use a shortcut to bypass all that CRAP and go right into Trackmania!
Fix the issues with the GAMES and then you can play around with your FACEPLACE junk.

(stepping of soap box and handing out pamphlets)

Yes, and I like a lot this Tags idea. It's just that we have not yet integrated them enough. That's clearly something cool for me.

Hello, Hylis.

Are you aware that ManiaPlanet has serious, game breaking issues?

It's disheartening seeing you responding to "social network'ish" suggestions, but leaving game breaking problems unaddressed.

===========================

There is an official part of Trackmania called PLATFORM. NADEO made it, NADEO promoted it with trailers and stuff.

It has a campaign, and right now, none of us can play that campaign (in such a way that our progress would actually register),
because ManiaPlanet 4 update broke the level geometry.

===========================

Years ago, I reported that for some strange reason, Introductory cut scenes created by map makers in the in-game editor get cut off at around 20 second mark, even if they are longer. NADEO never fixed that problem.

===========================

The game won't inform us that there are updates to it UNTIL we try playing a particular stations. Compare that with Steam, where if you launch Steam, it will detect which of your installed games have patches, and will immediately start working on getting them. This means (in Nadeo's case) that if a friend of mine tells me "Hey, how about we play a little multiplayer at noon?", I can't just launch ManiaPlanet at 11:30 and leave it running in the background; instead, I have to click on every single station that we might want to play to make sure the station will update.

===========================

We still need to click multiple times to get into a station; recently, someone advised me that it's possible to use a command-line parameter to directly launch a particular station, but if I do that, I cannot get to the "main" menu with all the stations -- trying to go away from the station quits the game launched in such a way.

===========================

BTW, the game lacks explanation. I don't know if that's because I had it installed for 5+ years now, or because you never added any context-sensitive tutorial, but things are being added to the game and explanation for them is done in the form of FORUM POSTS. Whatever happened to tooltips? Why can't I just hover over an element of the interface and get a useful balloon with explanation of what it does and how it works (if it's something more complex than "Click here to play")?

Example of question I'd like answered BY THE GAME ITSELF IS: What does the number "1" on a bronze background next to my Multiplayer Ranking mean?

The reason why I'm spending so much time writing about all these flaws is that I have recently sat my 10 year old son in front of ManiaPlanet, and just watched his confusion from all the "sexy" flashy nonsense added recently. "News", "Community", "Flash!", "Channels" ... Yeah, but HOW DOES A NEW PLAYER GET INTO THE GAME in 5 seconds? How do I quickly find a suitable server on which to play?

===========================

At one time, you had the courage to release one version of the game completely for free, no strings attached, no background platform or third party accounts needed. Trackmania was amazing back then.
Now? You start the game and see "(red dot) LIVE", as if you accidentally launched Twitch.

[Alinoa]

Hi Alcator,

It's better to open another thread than posting in the thread "Questions and answers" when you have feedback and questions to raise up.

I can answer some questions:
-The plateform title is only available in MP3 for the moment and if you want to play it, you can install MP3: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41242
-For the longer of intro, I don't know if it's intended or not. I mean to not authorize a longer time of intro to keep having short intro.
-For having explanation or tips, there is a documentation available from maniaplanet itself:

CaptureLINK.PNG (140.51 KiB) Viewed 1523 times

And here is the website link as well: https://doc.maniaplanet.com/
-For your son, you can advise him to click on multiplayer in the homepage of a station to find servers. You can also invite him to play on channel programs where maps are accessible for all players.

The developers fix issues and released updates of Maniaplanet 4 since its launch and we are always happy to fix issues and to help players when it's possible.

Cheers

[Alcator]

Hi, Alinoa.

So, I went through the Documentation link, and still couldn't find the explanation for the strange symbol at the top right of the "STADIUM" station (for me, it looks like number 1 on a brown/bronze background, with what looks like some sort of hanging clips at the top corners of that graphics). It's in the same general section as "MULTIRANK: Europe", which for me lists the number 31182 and 55% - none of which have any sort of explanation provided.

I also noticed the removal of some very useful functionality from the past:

1. In the past, pressing DEL during MediaTracker introduction would immediately jump to the start; that doesn't seem to be working any longer; I also tried Escape or Enter, but neither of those resulted in the intro being interrupted.
2. If I'm not mistaken, during Track Validation, the best successful attempt SO FAR would be saved as a ghost and would actually be played during subsequent validation attempts; this way, the author could see whether they are improving or getting worse at particular sections. Now, no ghost is available during the validation, not even checkpoint notification (of time differences). As a map maker yourself, you HAVE TO see that this is a step back...

Have a nice day.

[Cerovan]

So, I went through the Documentation link, and still couldn't find the explanation for the strange symbol at the top right of the "STADIUM" station (for me, it looks like number 1 on a brown/bronze background, with what looks like some sort of hanging clips at the top corners of that graphics). It's in the same general section as "MULTIRANK: Europe", which for me lists the number 31182 and 55% - none of which have any sort of explanation provided.

Edit : I was checking the wrong thing. The number is your "Echelon" (or rank if you want to use a term used in others games), your level in the title. And the percentage indicated your progression in this echelon.