FNG Logo created by Nick Serr

27 November 2013

NitroGuY drives "Flatland Yards" by Timae - TM Tube

When we were on the Team FNG TrackMania 10th LANniversary Celebra10n stream on 22 November, I had mentioned something about how my friend NitroGuY regularly puts me to shame with his mad keyboard skills.  If I remember correctly I referred to a video of him doing some freestyle with his keyboard and how incredible it was.

Now you can see what I'm talking about for yourself.  Watch as NitroGuY drives "Flatland Yards" by Timae on TM Tube.

EDIT: Apparently the video is sometimes having issues loading in Google Chrome (the latest Internet Explorer 11 and Firefox seem to be fine.)  If it doesn't load for you, click the link above to watch it on the TM Tube website.


Get hyped for the Official TrackMania 10th LANniversary Celebra10n on 14 December!


26 November 2013

Corrected TrackMania 10th LANniversary Celebra10n Scores Posted

Hey all!
I think I've got all the players with different logins combined together so the corrected results have been posted.  Please let me know if you notice any others that are still separated in the list and I will be happy to correct them.

There is a change in the winners:


  1. WLV.ES Minato
  2. NITROGUY
  3. WLV.ES Røbert
GNPaul was bumped to 4th place after combining WLV.ES Robert's two scores together; and will be awarded the prize for being in the top 3 instead of GNPaul.  

Check out the updated stats (those with dual logins are combined) and compare to the original stats (those with dual logins separated) to validate the results.

Thanks again to the nearly 50 players that participated in our tournament that spanned the entire decade of TrackMania!  Make sure you also participate in the many festivities that will happen on 14 December, the official celebration day of the 10th Anniversary of TrackMania.

GG!

24 November 2013

Team FNG TrackMania 10th LANniversary Celebra10n Stream



Hey TrackManiacs!

Thank you so much for an incredible night last night.  We had 16 Friday Night Gamers attend in-person and 1 from home.  We also had around 50 people participate in part or in full with our tournament that spanned every TrackMania environment across 3 servers.  It. Was. Epic.

EDIT: For those interested, check out the Tournament Results on the Friday Night Gamers website!  (Note that some participants have different logins between TrackMania and ManiaPlanet (TrackMania 2) so they will show up twice in the list until I have a chance to combine their scores and fix the list.  It's accurate enough to see who the top 3 were.

We really enjoyed playing with all of you and I will be posting a recap web page in the next week or so as time permits.

For now, I leave you with a link to the recorded stream hosted by SiREN of the Frag Dolls and Johkr, our new TrackMania Community Manager for North America.  We thank them for spending their Friday night with Team FNG and all of you as we celebrate the 10th anniversary of one of the greatest racing franchises ever made; and we thank them even more for spending an extra 30 minutes longer than scheduled to meet some of our crew and bring on some special guests into the stream, Nitroguy and Bush Monkey!

We missed the Friday Night Gamers that couldn't be with us... it was a blast and we hope to see you next time.  Make sure you catch the stream on the Illumniate channel of Twitch.tv (moved from the former Frag Dolls channel) to see what you missed (including my making a complete fool out of myself referring to Minato as a girl when he's not!)  Here's a massive shout out and "GG!" to him, especially for taking first place in our tournament!

A huge thanks to Nadeo, Ubisoft and the Frag Dolls for their support of our party.  I can't wait to see what other fun we have in store come 14 December when the official celebration happens.  Stay tuned in-game, on facebook, twitter and the ManiaPlanet blog to catch the other events surrounding the 10th anniversary celebration!

And one final thank you again to the many players around the world that shared in our celebration of TrackMania!  You are what keeps us coming back for more.  GG!

(more to come later!)

22 November 2013

That One Car - TrackMania 10th Anniversary

Add this...

to this...

and you get this!
Starting at 7:30pm Mountain on the Frag Dolls twitch.tv stream!


16 November 2013

Team FNG Celebrates TrackMania's 10th Anniversary


The Friday Night Gamers are proud to announce our TrackMania 10th LANniversary Celebra10n party!

Party Details (all times are in Mountain Time Zone)

Tournament Details

We will be racing one track from every environment (Stadium will be handled in TrackMania United Forever) and will begin in TrackMania United Forever, then TrackMania 2: Canyon, then TrackMania 2: Valley.

Special Considerations:

Friday Night Gamers will be taking 20+ slots on the server, but we will open our servers to 100 people (given bandwidth will allow -- if not, we will be required to restrict to 50.)  We will do our best to accommodate as many as possible, because we want to share in this celebration with you!
Please note that this is our first attempt at pulling off an online, multi-server tournament.  This means we will all be required to jump servers when it's time to play each of the TrackMania 2 games.  Since there are limited player slots on the servers, please be aware that there may not be an open slot when you try to switch servers.  We ask that those that end up joining us for the majority of the TrackMania United segment of the tournament be allowed to join the TM2 servers when that time comes, so they can complete the tournament with us.  We also ask that Friday Night Gamers take priority.  We will take a few minutes whilst switching servers to try to make sure as many as possible continue on with each segment, but to honor time constraints and the Twitch stream that is highlighting our tournament, we will begin the race as soon as all Friday Night Gamers are present and accounted for in the servers.

Also, you are under obligation to respect Ubisoft's terms and conditions while playing on our servers, including keeping your language clean and respectable, being courteous to other players, and refraining from using any vulgar, pornographic or otherwise offensive language, avatars or nicknames.  Team FNG reserves the right to kick or ban you from our servers to make room for players who are willing to comply with the terms and conditions.  Basically, be cool and have fun.


You will also be required to own all of the TrackMania titles found in the TrackMania Complete Package, which can be purchased right now for $29.99 (normally $79.80) from the ManiaPlanet store or from Steam; namely: TrackMania United Forever, TrackMania 2 Canyon, TrackMania 2 Valley.  (TrackMania 2 Stadium is not required, but you might as well have the newest one ... it's great!)  A TrackMania 2 complete package is also available for those that own United Forever already, and the individual games are discounted if you just need to fill in a 1-2 titles you don't yet have.  Be aware that these prices are for a limited time only, so snag them now while the getting is good!
Links to purchase can be found on our "Best. News. Ever." post.

You may also demo the TrackMania 2 titles before you buy, but I'm not aware of what restrictions are in place, so be aware that you may or may not be able to join us on 22 November with the demo versions.

Track Authors:

Tracks were selected from some Friday Night Gamer favorites, as well as a new one from Valley with a fun theme.  The selected tracks feature some legendary map authors, veterans of the TrackMania community, many of which are good friends of Team FNG, and includes: 
  • Eyebo
  • GanjaRider
  • hawk_ger
  • jumperjack
  • nitroguy
  • pfm
  • scottmc
  • sm0k3y
  • tmjonas

Tracks (order in the tournament may vary):

  • TrackMania United Forever
    • Alpine: Snow Park (tmjonas)
    • Bay: [GR] Poco Loco (GanjaRider)
    • Coast: FlowCoastUnited (nitroguy)
    • Desert: Scotts Bluff (scottmc)
    • Island: Etherlight (hawk_ger)
    • Rally: Celt!c Sp!r!t (smok3y)
    • Stadium: Artemis Arrow I (jumperjack)
  • TrackMania 2: Canyon
    • GEEX - Life Elevated (eyebo)
  • TrackMania 2: Valley
    • Bat Fight! (pfm)

Download the Official Track Pack:

Extract the pack to your "My Documents" folder, unless you have changed the location of your game's data from the default.  If you have you will manually need to extract the files using a zip utility application like 7-zip.

Once extracted, you may open TrackMania United Forever, TrackMania 2: Canyon and TrackMania 2: Valley and will notice a "TM 10th LANniversary" folder under your "Downloaded" folder when you browse for single maps/tracks in-game.

Corkscrew to Wallride
Track: "DealBreaker" by dill

Party with the Friday Night Gamers

We hope you will join us for this celebration of the best kept secret in America.  Whether you play with us on our servers or follow the party on the Twitch stream, come discover why TrackMania is one of the best racing game franchises ever!





History

TrackMania has been a Team FNG staple for 7 years, starting in 2006 when we discovered TrackMania Nations ESWC.

We dropped two other new games because we were enjoying TrackMania so much.  After learning TrackMania Nations had predecessors, some of us quickly purchased them and began to enjoy them too.  Soon after, we were blessed with news of TrackMania United, which coupled all of the old environments in one epic game, and added revamped lighting and dirt blocks to the Stadium environment.

In 2008, the Gamers and Electronics EXpo (GEEX) was announced; a new expo in Utah that would feature a TrackMania Nations tournament put on by Protocol42.  Four of us participated in the tournament, and DirtyD (then tsam314) and myself (ThatOneGuy) took 2nd and 3rd place; DirtyD beating me by 1 point.

DirtyD (tsam314), ThatOneGuy and Fallout
winners of the GEEX 2008 TrackMania Nations tournament

In 2010, GEEX approached me and requested that I volunteer to organize and run the TrackMania tournament.  I agreed if we could make it a TrackMania United tournament, not just Nations.  It was an enjoyable tournament with some of the tracks you'll see in our pack for the upcoming tournament.

GEEX 2011 was scheduled to happen right after the release of TrackMania 2: Canyon.  I saw this as a unique opportunity to really do something special to help introduce the USA to the world of TrackMania, since it had never really been marketed here.  Nadeo connected me with Ubisoft and they partnered with myself, GEEX and Intel to make an epic First Official USA LAN tournament for Canyon.  Many of the track authors listed above participated to make it extra special by creating a bunch of tracks specific for our GEEX tournament.

GEEX 2011
First official USA TrackMania 2 Canyon tournament


Check out this video on YouTube.
GanjaRider provided a lot of cool other links about GEEX there.

I have since kept in touch with Ubisoft and we have worked together on several projects, including the A&G 2012 Canyon tournament hosted by Macduffman, Ubi's ShootMania: Storm booth at PAX Prime 2012, an awesome ShootMania launch party on its release night and now our TrackMania 10th LANniversary Celebra10n.

nitroguy (far left) and ThatOneGuy (right next to nitroguy)
with Ubisoft and Nadeo
at PAX Prime 2012
Team FNG wishes to express our thanks for all the efforts Nadeo and Ubisoft make to stay connected and support the TrackMania community!  It is, by far the most friendly and fun gaming community I've had the pleasure of playing with, similar to the Motocross Madness community of days past.

We also wish to thank the great members of the community whom we have created wonderful memories with, and hope to continue to do so for another 10 years!



07 November 2013

Best. News. Ever.


If you don't own TrackMania, or only own part of the entire franchise, listen up!!!
Today, Nadeo/Ubisoft announced several items of awesome:

EDIT: I'm having a hard time finding where to buy the "Celebra10n TrackMania Complete Package" ($29.99) and I'm trying to see if the pack is available outside of Steam.  I will update when I know more.

EDIT 2: I finally found the Celebra10n TrackMania Complete Pack!!!  And what's better, it's being sold on the ManiaPlanet store, so you won't be forced to be tied to your Steam account (Steam lovers can still activate their player keys with Steam so you can have it in both places if you really want.)

EDIT 3: Found Steam link for "Celebra10n TrackMania Complete Pack"

Please don't miss out on this deal.  To get the entire TrackMania franchise for $29.99 is a STEAL!  There has never been a better offer than this, and I doubt we'll see another like it until a 20-year anniversary.  This is especially crucial for those who will be attending this year's Friday Night Gamer's "Turkey Bowl" -- which will be our TrackMania 10th LANniversary party!

We are unfortunately unable to host our party on 14 December like everyone else, so we have opted to host our celebration early.  It is going to be awesome, even better than our ShootMania launch party, including our annual for-fun TrackMania tournament to see which Friday Night Gamer will be this year's champion.

Our servers will be open for the night so TrackManiacs around the world can join us for some epic fun that night.  I will be releasing the official track pack soon, so stay tuned!  For now, go buy the Celebrat10n TrackMania Complete Package so you can play with us on 22 November!

A HUGE thanks to Nadeo and Ubisoft for creating such a great opportunity for everyone to easily and inexpensively discover why TrackMania has been a Friday Night Gamer favorite since 2006!  (Wish I could say 2004 but we can't help it, we didn't discover it until 2006.)

Thanks for 10 years of awesome, Nadeo!  Looking forward to the next 10!  TrackMania Forever!