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!

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!)

That One Car - TrackMania 10th Anniversary

Add this...

to this...

and you get this!

See it tonight at the
Friday Night Gamers' TrackMania 10th Anniversary Celebra10n!

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

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)

• Friday 22 November 2013
• 6:00pm - 2:00am: Friday Night Gamers LAN Party
• 8:00pm - 9:00pm: FNG Annual Turkey Bowl tournament (for-fun - ALL are welcome, both LAN and Online - see details below) Download the Track Pack
• Join the Team FNG United Forever server
  (World | United States of America | Utah zone)
• Join the Team FNG - Canyon: Time Attack server
  (World | North America | United States of America | Utah zone)
• Join the Team FNG Valley Forge server
  (World | North America | United States of America | Utah zone)
• 7:30pm - 9:30pm (roughly) - Twitch.tv stream, hosted by the Frag Dolls own "SiREN" and Ubisoft's "Johkr", North America's new TrackMania Community Manager

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!

ShootMania Launch Party Recap

Team FNG
enjoying some ShootMania
while watching the Live Stream

The Friday Night Gamers had an epic mid-week LAN party on 10 April 2013 to celebrate the release of ShootMania: Storm!  But I'm not going to tell you all about it here.  The party was special enough it merited its own page on our Team FNG website!

Check out the teaser pics, then go check out the Friday Night Gamer's ShootMania Launch Party page on our official website.

SpeedMonger, Ender and BigBadMrT
intensely trying to be crowned
victor of the match.

And then there was cake...

Turkey Bowl 2012: Epic LAN Party

09 November 2012 marked one of the most epic LAN parties in FNG history.

In attendance were:

• Jeff Litster - ThatOneGuy
• Mandy Litster - RaInBOWDAsH
• Brennan Litster - d6Amefath3r
• Allen Michaelis - Michaelitos
• Shawn Holmstead - Ender
• Josh McDougall - Mad Man With A Box
• Ethan McDougall - Mad Boy With A Box
• Chance Allen - SpeedMonger
• Shawn Hartke - Shartke

Joining us online due to extenuating circumstances:

• Dan Wetzel - DirtyD
• Joe Hargadon - Boma
• Tyler Beuchert - beuchety

We missed those that couldn't make it!

We ate pizza, and pumpkin pie in honor of Boma's birthday; despite the fact that he wasn't physically present... (don't worry Joe, we ate extra for you!)

We then played our annual Turkey Bowl tournament in TrackMania 2: Canyon

Below are the tournament scores:

1st Place: ThatOneGuy (168 points)

2nd Place: SpeedMonger (142 points)

3rd Place: DirtyD (133 points)

(Full Results)

Check out the individual times per track.

The most awesome race of the night was the STING track by OLDA_X... ThatOneGuy was kicked down to 4th place by his two kids d6Amefath3r and RaInBOWDAsH, and Boma.  Check out how close the times are.  It was a very exciting race.

(It's so cool to see all the "Team FNG" logo avatars in the player list!)

Track times on
STING by OLDA_X

After the TrackMania tournament we played through all of our server's ShootMania maps.

Look at all the Friday Night Gamers!  It was a riot... and I lost my voice over the course of the ShootMania play.  :)

A ShootMania server full of FNG
on SpeedMonger's classic map:
JumpStart

After playing all the ShootMania maps, including a re-run of Jump Start, the 5 of us remaining at the party played a game of Dominion.  We used the base set cards along with the "Stash" promo card.  Those that played were:

• SpeedMonger
• Ender
• Michaelitos
• Mad Man With A Box (new to Dominion)
• ThatOneGuy

It was a close game and we had a lot of laughs; ThatOneGuy won with 28 points.

The party was a smashing success.  We all had a great time.  We laughed, we yelled, we screamed... I lost my voice and it's still gone the next day.  Good times.

Thanks to Nitroguy who joined us for some Pew Pew and participated via Mumble with the other FNGers that couldn't make the party.  We really enjoyed having you with us... Come to Utah next time so you can experience the real thing.  :)

Also, congrats to Jarin Blackham (Thundr), who couldn't make it to the party because he and his wife were welcoming into the world the newest in the next generation of Friday Night Gamers.  Both mom and baby are doing well, and we congratulate them on a healthy birth!

Here are some pictures of the party itself:

d6Amefath3r and Michaelitos
(ThatOneGuy and RaInBOWDAsH in the back)

Mad Man With A Box
and
Mad Boy With A Box

SpeedMonger and Shartke

Most of the crew...

Most of the crew again...

ThatOneGuy and RaInBOWDAsH

ThatOneGuy and Shartke
(I hope one day to have some cool
TrackMania and ShootMania posters
to hang up on the walls for these LAN parties!)
*HINT HINT/NUDGE NUDGE NADEO/Ubisoft!*

Team FNG thanks Ubisoft for supplying some sweet ShootMania: Storm T-Shirts for our crew!

2012 Turkey Bowl Track Pack Revealed

Announcing the 2012 Turkey Bowl Track Pack

that will be used for our casual tournament at the

LAN party in November...

http://wan-party.com/files/lanparties/2012-11_TurkeyBowl.exe

Download to:

[[My Documents]]\ManiaPlanet\Maps\Downloaded

... and run/extract to that path.

Once finished, launch the game and you will find when you browse to a map to play, there is the following folder structure:

"Downloaded/FNG/LAN Parties/2012-11 Turkey Bowl"

There are 7 tracks in the pack.

Grand Canyon (Mikealange): 

This map has a fun mix of skinny roads, fun transitions and wide-open drift turns (180-degrees).  The jump transition from the tunnel to the dirt-drift is awesome, but a nemesis at the same time.

Celcius (dip-low):

This track is for curve-huggers everywhere.  It is a SpeedTech map that begs the driver to get as close to the walls as possible to make the turn-to-chicane transitions.  It has a really nice flow and very enjoyable.

Constellation (eyebo): 

Eyebo has a gift for making tracks that force you to learn the intricacies of the TrackMania car's handling.  Constellation is no exception.  As an added bonus, it is a night map with some pretty visuals.

Head $hot (smok3y): 

smok3y never disappoints.  This track could very well be considered a spiritual successor to Tiger Blood by GanjaRider.  This track is a full-speeder, and should be exciting for close times for those that give it some practice.

STING (OLDA_X): 

If you enjoy Chillies, you should also enjoy this SpeedTech map.  OLDA_X has a unique style of track building and it shows in Sting.

A&G '12 - GRid (GanjaRider): 

This map, true to GanjaRider style, is a wicked fast full-speed map, with some scary intimidating turns that appear at first to not be no-slideable, but if you crank and commit, you'll take them and enjoy every second of it.

Let the Wookie win! (HansHolo): 

This map is a hoot.  Riddled with dirt sections, this map will test your drift/control capabilities.

---

This Friday's FNG will see our Team FNG: Time Attack server set to this track pack.  We will do a practice session and you can try to set local records to see where you might land in the competition on 09 November.

Download away, so you can practice before Friday if you have time.  Come back and comment on this post and let us know how you like the selection.  What is your favorite track?  Which one is your most challenging?

See you Friday!

LANMania - FNG Turkey Bowl Rematch Results - March 2010 LAN Party

I know the gamers that attended the LAN Party are dying to know the results of the TrackMania tournament we held, since my app stopped correctly keeping track after 9 of the 15 tracks were played; so I'll get to the Final Standings first, then I'll talk about how the LAN Party went.

Final Standings: FNG Turkey Bowl 2009 Rematch

26 March 2010 - FNG LAN Party

Gamer	Final Score
FNG_ThatOneGuy	300
bomajoe	228
FNG_d6Amefath3r	179
FNG_DirtyDan	148
FNG_Thundr	145
FNG_Josh	88
ricowan	54
FNG_beuchety	52
FNG_Mandi	38
MockObject	18

Here are some pics of the event (Names of players are left-to-right):

FNG_Thundr

FNG_Mandi

MockObject

FNG_Mandi

MockObject

FNG_DirtyDan

FNG_DirtyDan

FNG_KimPossible

FNG_ThatOneGuy

FNG_d6Amefath3r

FNG_d6Amefath3r

ricowan

FNG_d6Amefath3r

ricowan

FNG_beuchety

bomajoe and FNG_Josh couldn't make the party, so they joined our tournament online.

LAN Party Recap:
The party started at 6:30pm, with gamers trickling in for the next hour or so.  I was stoked as I'd been able to spend about 4 hours or so prepping an app that would communicate with the TrackMania dedicated server in hopes of having an automated way of tracking tournament stats.  I programmed the tracker app to report the current tournament stats back into the game (through the in-game chat) at the end of each race.  This would be our first test-run, to find bugs so I could work them out and perhaps use it at GEEX this year during their TrackMania tournament.

We ordered pizza at 8:00 and were chowing down at 8:30pm.  Many thanks to Papa Johns that night for some excellently fresh pizza; especially the pepperoni and jalapeno.  (They were probably thanking us as well, since we placed two orders with them that night!)

9:00pm hit and it was time for the Turkey Bowl 2009 rematch tournament.  We made sure we had bomajoe and FNG_Josh in the server with us... the next track loaded, I started the tracker app, and we were off-to-the-races.

There were many jeers and cheers as we all met with our successes and failures during each round.  There were also many laughs shared, especially when my son, FNG_d6Amefath3r stumbled on the pronunciation of bomajoe's name (bow-muh-joe)... he laughed and said, "What?!  It sounds like Barack Obama-Joe!!!"  I'm pretty sure my car slammed into a wall and flipped off the track at that moment.  It was a good thing we were in Time Attack mode instead of Rounds...  We laughed a long time, and I'm pretty sure Joe has a new nickname that will stick for a while.

More humor flew our way with our FNG LAN Party new-comer, MockObject.  He was certainly living up to his name when we'd hear groans about how bad he thought he sucked at the game, how "unpossible" it was to finish some of the tracks and how much fun it was to finally discover what the Finish gate looks like.

After the 9th track, my app got WAY behind on writing out the XML responses from the TrackMania server (my bad for not turning those off before launching the app... since we didn't really need them.)  It got so back-logged, that it took another 30 minutes after the tournament ended for the app to finally get everything written out so I could go copy the XML and later analyze it so I could find out the final scores.  Looks like I have some work to do on the tracker, yet... (Did I mention I only got 4 hours to invest in it before the party?!)  :)  Incidentally, the night before the party, I found a cool TrackMania Server Plugin System that I may be able to use to put an in-game UI piece in that will have the tourney stats constantly up... we're discussing ideas about that currently... we'll see how it goes.
A good time was had by all; with the potential exception of ricowan and MockObject who might have a permanent hatred for me for putting him through the ringer with our brutal choice of tracks. All I can say is that I tried to hook up with you both early enough to give you some time to practice before you came. ;)

Seriously though, I do hope everyone had a good time... I know I did.  It's always a great time to get good friends together for some LAN gaming.  I certainly hope the game developers out there don't seriously switch their models to this "always-connected" BS we keep hearing about in the latest games.  I want to keep LAN gaming around for a lot longer, without the fear of us all getting dumped out of our games when my internect connection decides to hiccup.

We finished the party off by playing some other potential GEEX tournament tracks, and then revisiting some old-school TrackMania Nations maps... some of the ones that made FNG fall in love with the game when we first discovered it.

This LAN party was good for helping me solidify ideas for the TrackMania tournament coming up at GEEX in July.  I hope to have the track pack compiled and available online in April, as well as the tournament rules and sign-up available on the GEEX site soon.  (I'm still looking for sponsors for prizes so we won't have to charge a tournament fee... so if you know of anyone, please get in touch with me!)

I hope to see you all at GEEX for the TrackMania tournament in July!

GG

PS: All that attended, please take some time to leave your thoughts about the party here on the blog!  Much appreciated.