Mini Contest - Coppers Donations

…just for the heck of it!

Playing around with coppers is always great fun. It’s not like anyone got anything better to do with them Thus, let’s play a little game with one very simple rule: donate as many or as few coppers to the blog as you wish (send to “Jozii” in-game, mark the message “Mini Contest”). Based on this, there will be two winners:

• The Largest Single Donation - The person who makes the largest donation wins 70% of all donations made through this contest. If the largest donation size is the same amoung two or more people, the second largest wins instead.
• The Smallest Single Donation - The person who makes the smallest donation wins 10% of all donations made through this contest. If the smallest donation size is the same among two or more people, the second smallest wins instead.
• The final 20% go to the blog.

All donations must be in whole 5’s. That is: 5, 10, 15, … 1450, 1455, etc.

New Year Style Contest/Poll

Last year we had a little Christmas contest. This year no contest was started on time, but instead a slightly innovative New Year event is hosted. But, it’s not necessarily a contest - it’s a poll in which, in order to vote, you have to make a track representing what you vote for. The best tracks may get awarded on the side…

Basically, the idea is to find out what people want to see more of when it comes to tracks in the TMU community in the coming year. Full speed tracks seem to dominate the field, but what do you think deserve more attention? It could be anything from simply a specific environment, mode or mood to several detailed aspects referring to styles (technical, off-road, etc.), certain innovative areas (innovative transitions, unique stunts, etc) or specific MT stuff - just to name a few.

The possibilities are endless, and while you can only enter one track, the track in question may represent several aspects. Just be specific!

So, make a track and enter it to make your vote. As always, things happen at TMX, so check out this thread for the details. Good luck and have fun

XSTC, Season 2

I’m running out of time to post something bigger today, so a few quick notes:

• The Extreme Mini Track Contest, now known as the Xtreme Short Track Contest, has started its second round today. The first round is still in the judging phase, but hopefully results will be out before the tracks in the second round are to be judged.
• I know I’ve fallen behind on updating the forum contests lately, but I hope to have this fixed in a day or two. Just be patient with me.
• The TMU Blog’s birthday is coming up this week (22nd of November). I’m preparing a few extra treats to celebrate this
• The TMU Blog, the EMTC and the XSTC website are all linked to from the main menu in-game, thanks to RicardoRix. Thanks to that, the second round of the contest could become quite popular
• It’s cold outside.

What do you do for the TM community? (Contest)

I know you’re not blind.

If you look carefully to the right of the screen, in the sidebar, you’ll notice a text box with a little minicontest. I’m 99% sure you’ve seen it before. But I’m also 99% sure that YOU haven’t participated yet. So I thought spelling it out for you would give you a kick start:

1. In 20 words or less, summarize how you contribute to the TM community. It doesn’t even have to be completely true…
2. Send your submission via the “Contact” page.

Also, try to be funny, ironic and/or clever in some way.

I know it isn’t that easy to be creative enough to make this one perfect, but even not-so-perfect submissions are welcome. Just write something!

The prize? 1000 coppers. The deadline? There isn’t any. Results are to be posted when the time is right

EMTC Pre-selection (Original)

Another update to the Extreme MiniTrack Contest: As judging all the tracks takes some time, I’ve decided to reveal the tracks that pass the pre-selection process a few at a time. As you may recall, there are three groups in the contest: Original, Sunrise and Nations. In each group about 15 tracks are selected for further, more detailed judging, and the remaining tracks in each group are eliminated.

The judges have already started working on 15 tracks from the Original group. These 15 tracks are the tracks that have passed the pre-selection process already. As there were 25 tracks in total from the three Original environments, that means 10 were eliminated.

If you’re curious to which of the tracks passed the first stage, you can see a full list here (the list on page 10).

The lucky tracks from the Sunrise and Nations group are to be revealed at a later time…

10 original things to try in TMU

Written by Alcator. 

This time, I’ve chosen to write a list of things that might be interesting to play/try if someone actually managed to prepare for them. To make things more interesting, there are coppers to win here!

The first person to post (into the discussion beneath) a link to a track that features a particular described feature wins:

• 100 coppers if the track wasn’t build by him/her
• 250 coppers if the track is his/her own creation.

Extreme MiniTrack Updates!

The Extreme MiniTrack Contest - where you were invited to build tracks of 15 seconds or less - is coming to an end today. The contest turned out a huge success, and I hope you all perticipated in it

If not, there’s still a chance to join the second round - ’cause yes, the contest will have a follow-up. In fact, it was even so successful (just check out the Best of the Week at TMX - nearly all tracks there are EMTC tracks) that I’ve created a website for this contest, where it will be hosted in rounds of two weeks each as long as interest is on.

I’ve announced this new website at TMX already, but here it is for you blog readers as well!

However, the second round doesn’t start quite yet, as the first round is still on. Even though today is the last day of submitting tracks, there’s still the judging process to be done - and that may take some time, as there are close to a hundred tracks to go through. (Add to this the fact that I’ll need to re-download and -install TrackMania before I can continue)

Anyway, the EMTC (renamed to XSTC - Xtreme Short Track Contest - on the new website) has been successful, and I hope it will continue to be so. Check out the new website and you’ll be informed when the second rounds starts 

Logo Contest, Results

Ok, finally the Logo Contest has come to an end, and guess what: we have a winner (well, duh)

After all the votes received at the post I just linked to the first two logos, both by Tonic_91, were the most popular. But only one logo gets to represent the TMU Blog, and that logo is the first one listed. Here it is:

Congrats (and thanks) to Tonic_91

So what happens now? Well, that’s partly up to you. I for one will use this wonderful little logo on every future blog creation. I suggest you use it too, on whatever you like, for example on screenshots sent in for our Screenshot of the Week contest

How and when you use the logo is up to you, but now it’s here and we can all go to bed happy tonight

Logo Contest, Part 2

As you may or may not remember, a while ago a logo contestwas started to find a suitable logo for the blog. There were some good entries, but now it’s up to you to vote for which one you think should represent the blog. I’ve selected three of my favorites:

#1 (by Tonic_91)

#2 (by Tonic_91)

#3 (by TimeBreaker)

We could do a sophisticated vote now, but let’s make it simple: State in the comments which of the above you think should be the official TMU Blog logo - #1, #2 or #3?

The logo with the most comments and/or best arguments for why that logo should be selected wins

Logo Contest

The idea of a logo contest came up in the comments of this weeks Screenshot of the Week, and I decided to follow up on it. TMU has a cool logo, and so does TMX, so it’s about time the TMU Blog got one as well.

So what this contest is all about is for you to make a cool, nice looking logo for the blog. I’m not talking about a banner, but a smaller logo to represent the blog. As talked about in the screenshot post, this logo could be put on screenshots, but of course it could also be put on TMU Blog creations distributed outside the actual blog (non-blog articles and projects, blog track screenshots, etc.)

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Create one or several logos for the TMU Blog. Make them cool and good looking!
2. Send your example(s) to Jozii@pp.inet.fi. Deadline: Friday, 2nd of November.

One winning logo will be selected, and the winner receives 1000 coppers.

There’s no limit to how many logos you can enter or how you design them.

Good luck