Subject to conditioning (Mediatracker tutorial TM:F)

Written by Alcator, to whom I apologize for the delay of publishing this article.

Trackmania Forever enhanced the MediaTracker tutorial with a new option for Clips – the “Condition” option.

The option is by default set to “None”, and, what is perhaps quite important to notice, belongs to the CLIP, not its contents, which means the value is not exported if you export the clip, nor is it imported from an exported clip into a new one.

Other possible values of the Condition option are:

• RaceTime < x
• RaceTime > x
• Already Triggered x
• Speed < x
• Speed > x
• Not Already Triggered x

… with “x” being the parameter for the condition. x is ALWAYS numerical, but it can be decimal in RaceTime and Speed cases.

What this option does is it checks the condition specified whenever the clip might be triggered, and only if the condition is met does it actually trigger the clip.

Screenshot Collection

Alright, those screenshots have been put on hold for long enough now. So here you go, a brand new collection of screenshots that you guys have sent in!

Tech World

Can You Escape

I used WordPress’ fairly new image uploader for this, and their “gallery” feature. Hope it works

Oh, and as you can see, this isn’t the good old Screenshot of the Week. Most likely, that lovely little feature won’t appear again on this blog Sorry.

But still, if you have any screenshots you’d like to share, feel free to send them to jozii@pp.inet.fi. They’ll be published in the future, even if it isn’t a SotW post.

TM in 5-15 Words

Got an opinion, experience, general fact or anything else to share with us about TrackMania? Then do so in 5 to 15 words only! Simply drop a comment. Be as funny or serious as you can and like. Here are a few as a start:

• “I thought, I built, I played.”
• “Stunts: Hop, bounce, crash, restart. Hop, bounce, crash, finish.”
• “3, 2, 1, hit the dirt!”
• “A track is the layout of the authors mind.”
• “I had to turn several times before I managed to hit the pole.”
• “The sign said left, so I turned left. Unfortunately, it was my other left.”

Let’s see how many we can collect

TMX Back in Action!

TMX is back!

The Outdoors

Just got home from school or work? Or perhaps you’re at school or work right now? Or, maybe you’re up late surfing the net? Or something completely different… Whatever the case, you are in fact in front of the screen. That’s right, I can see you!

Odds are you’ve spent quite a lot of time in front of a computer today. And if you haven’t yet, it’s likely that you will during the day. Correct? Perhaps you’ve been playing TrackMania (or other game of choice) or surfing the net, and perhaps you plan to continue to do so for a while longer. Here’s a hint: don’t!

You’re a moderately health man/woman. You might be a bit overweight. You might be slim but, when it comes to it, not very physically balanced. Ask yourself how much time you’ve spent exercising during the past month or so. Have you been to the gym? Gone for regular walks? Or at least been outside for a few minutes every day? I’d assume most people can answer “yes” to the last one. But is that enough?

You know you should get out more. You are aware of it, but do you actually do something about it? No, you think to yourself “just one more task to complete” or “just one more website to visit”. “Let me just play one more track…”

Once you’ve read this, I want you to close the screen, save and quit all the tasks you’re working on, and just get out. Go for a walk. Do some gardening. Or even just sit on your balcony reading a good book. It’s at least better than staying here, in the chair you’re currently in. If you’re at work or school, don’t sit down in front of the computer once you get home. Get outside instead. Feel the fresh air.

In a few hours, or even just minutes if you prefer, when you’ve been outside for a while, you can come back here and leave a comment. But until then, GET OUT! You know it’s the right thing to do, for your own sake.

Discover TrackMania with the unofficial trailer!

Trailers are cool. Videos in general are cool. TrackMania is cool. What can possibly go wrong? Here’s an unofficial trailer by POBmaestro. I’ll let him do the talking himeslf:

In appreciation of Nadeo’s generous hard work in releasing the free upgrade Trackmania Forever, I have created an Unofficial Trackmania Trailer. This project took four weeks of many a late night while trying to balancing work and study. The trailer, released initially by Florent of Nadeo, is designed to appeal to new and veteran players alike, in that it traces TM back to its roots back with the original Trackmania, then through to the masterpiece that is TMF. In its first week of release, the trailer has already received a great deal of wonderful feedback, which has made all the efforts feel well worth it and then some more.

The usage of Ghosts in Forever (Tutorial – part 2)

Written by Alcator.

In the first part of the tutorial, I explained what Ghosts are and how to import them into a clip so that the player gets some virtual opponents for Solo play. The tutorial continues with more details… Note: To see the images correctly, use the right-click menu function “Show image” or “Display image”.

Re-skinning and renaming the ghosts

As soon as you start using multiple ghosts, you may notice that having them all use the same skin is not very appealing. Trackmania is a world-wide competition game, and it’s great to promote this using skins. TM Nations Forever contains skins for almost all countries, so the obvious choice is to pick several of them and skin each of your ghost instances differently. United comes with at least 7 skins for each environment, which should be enough for most tracks.

The usage of Ghosts in Forever (Tutorial – part 1)

Written by Alcator.

Trackmania Forever (both the Nations and United version) enhances the MediaTracker Editor with a powerful new feature: “Import Ghosts”. This tutorial will provide you with all the information you need to successfully use this feature in your tracks.

First of all: “What is the ghost?”

This is not as simple as it may seem. All of you are surely familiar with “Replays” – the recordings of your attempts on TM tracks. You upload Replays to TMX to register a World Record or Personal Best on particular tracks, but Replays are just one version of Ghosts. The feature I’ll be tutoring you about here can use both standard Replay- and non-Replay- Ghosts, so you need to understand both properly.

Tmx downtime, again sadly…

As you may have noticed, TMX is down for about 3 days now. Again because of hosting problems. As MrA states on the official TM forums:

Yep, the host wants TMX to pay for a dedicated bandwidth due to what they are calling a high level of ‘acculated traffic’ … In other words we are busy…
However, we are not anywhere near our month limit (or close to it) from our own measurements and so at the moment we dispute this…
I’m quite annoyed that they choose to suspend the site, I don’t think its correct behaviour from them, but we will not be bullied by that…

As MrA states in an additional post, they hope to get access today. When they do get it, the site needs to be taken offline.

We wish the TMX-staff good luck in getting tmx back online.

Read more here

Trackmania Forever Review – Day Two

A while ago, you got the “Day One” review. Now here’s the follow up: Day Two.

Written by Alcator.

This time, I’ll review the in-game track editor and MediaTracker editor.

The track editor has been enhanced with a second, “simple” version. This one is very similar to the “Puzzle” mode editor: You only have the tiles groups available at the bottom; no mediatracking, no nothing. It’s much easier for complete newbies to work with the editor now. A thing that should be stressed is that during the loading of the editor on your first day, a big graphical hint image about the usage of mouse is displayed, so new users quickly learn how to work with it.