There seems to be very little love for Trackmania in these parts, but I figured that it’s worth pointing out that Nadeo have released Trackmania Nations, part of the self styled “Electronic Sports World Cup”.
The release is free, so if you haven’t played a TM game before this is a good opportunity to have a go. My copy is still downloading so I can’t confirm, but indications from are that it’s very good (this from longtime TM fans, of course). These guys are building a very good reputation for looking after their fans, something other gaming companies could learn from.
Blurb from the site:
I’ll be registering, most likely as KrytenNZ if anyone wants to look me up :)
I’m a big fan of the series so I was on this the minute it came out. The formula one type cars are like a cross between the sports car and touring coupe from TMS in terms of handling/speed. The game comes with 90 tracks with the most advanced being brutally difficult. Visually its on par with TM Sunrise. Unfortunately the online aspect seems to be a bit wonky, lots of warping etc.
This company continues to amaze me at the level of community support and free content they release (there are 2 expansions plus Nations), especially in light of the fact that the two retail versions didn’t sell all that well.
It’s probably too deeply integrated into the engine already (especially if Starforce is as intrusive as rumoured) that they figured it’s not worth wasting their time disentangling it just for a free release.
It’s the same reason SF gets included with demos - no one wants to give the crackers a heads up on their code (that’s the theory, anyway).
I remember before TMS was released seeing a shakycam video taken a European LAN - the devs were playing footage of the then upcoming Trackmania Sunrise and to say that the crowd was “going off” is understating things somewhat. So yeah, it’s pretty popular. For further evidence, have a look at the free downloads of tracks, vehicles and replays from the TMX site.
True. And its not necessiarly a bad thing, it just makes me wonder about the physics engine. But looking at it more, it seems much more like an arcade racer then a driving sim, like the inclusion of ‘checkpoints.’ Oh well, looks cool, but not my bag of tea.
People who are disappointed to find the lack of real-world physics and collision detection seem to be missing the point of TM/TMS, it shouldnt be thought of as strictly a racer. It’s more of a hybrid puzzle, sandbox, platformer game.
On the same subject, has anyone checked out the Crashday demo yet?
On the same subject, has anyone checked out the Crashday demo yet?
The cars look really nice, but the other parts hint at the actual age of the game. After all, I got to play CD for the first time in 2003 - and meanwhile we’ve seen the release of no less than three TrackMania titles (if you count Nations). Also, the engine does seem to have some performance problems. In the wrecking mode there are some notable framerate drops. This also seems to be the general concensus regarding the latest preview builds that were shipped to the mags over here. I’m also not really fond of the driving model, wish it was more along the lines of FlatOut. Oh well, I still may or may not take a look at the final version when it ships next month.
This is insanely addictive online. Most servers are running a ‘time attack’ mode where each person runs individual timers and can restart at any time, with best times compared at the end, so you’re never waiting, mistakes aren’t fatal, and the other drivers don’t distract you quite as much.
Trackmania Sunrise had–and still has, from the current demo build at least–an extremely weird bug in that it simply refuses to recognize my model of Saitek keyboard. So you can’t actually enter a name when the game starts, which means, no game.
I won about five to eight Time Attack matches online today/tonight. It’s great fun. I got beat in close shaves a number of times too. This is a great kill a few minutes with they keyboard type of game.
