ShootMania Storm: Royal - The Return of Nukes in the Underground

I am happy to announce that with the help of eyebo and Smoke from ManiaPlanet, that I've been able to tweak our TeamFNG_Royal mode to officially still be like old school ShootMania Beta 2!

When a player steps onto an underground block, the mode will auto-switch the weapon to the Nucleus weapon again, and back to whatever the player had originally when entering the underground block after exiting.  It's a little different than before.  In the screenshot below, the weapon will switch before you're actually in the tunnel, because you're detected as underground before you actually make it into the tunnel... so it switches a little earlier on some blocks, but feels exactly the same on others.  Some above-ground tunnels don't switch still either, so it's not QUITE there, but it's very close.; and still super fun.

Look out snipers in "JumpStart"...
you are safe no more.

For those that love the way ShootMania was at its origins, come play with us "old school" in our server!

Team FNG TrackMania Servers Down for a Bit / ShootMania Server Still Live

Hey Friday Night Gamers and Friends!

The new ManiaPlanet 4 updates are pretty awesome, but extensive.  This means maps for our servers must be recomputed and I haven't had time to do so yet, with the exception of ShootMania.  I have 12 maps recomputed and working with our new TeamFNG_Royal script that works on the Royal title pack now.

We have officially moved the mode over to the Royal ladder/title pack and are still a 90k server.  The script needs a few kinks worked out (like getting our emblem back on the pole and spawn points) - and I still need to test to be sure the laser is one-hit eliminations.  We also need to figure out a way to get nukes auto-switched in the tunnels again (they disabled that in MP4).  I may forego fixing that depending on the feedback we get from the players on our server.

Our TrackMania servers will be down until I get a chance to start recomputing some maps -- since we keep a lot of nostalgia tracks, I'm certain I will be the one needing to recompute them.  I'll also pull more down from ManiaExchange AS we get the server spun back up.  It might be a couple of weeks to get the old ones going again.

I will also be spinning up a Lagoon server, and we will have the TM2 Title Pack server (which will host all 4 environments in one) after next week when Lagoon is released.

I'm excited to see if we can get some maps made for our Royal server that have TrackMania cars in them too.  If you make one, please let us know so we can share it on our server!

Stay tuned... more ManiaPlanet goodness to come...

Team FNG's ShootMania Royal server goes 90k

Fans of the Friday Night Gamer's "Royal (old school)" server on ShootMania will be pleased to hear that we have obtained permission from Nadeo (according to the rules for Royal dedicated servers) to bump our server up from a 60k to a 90k.

More points points with your pew pew

The reason I waited so long is because we run a special script that makes our server play by the pre-Beta 2 ruleset (where the storm comes in closer to the pole and lasers are a one-hit elimination.)  We enjoy those rules better than the rules post-Beta 2.  Also, we have classic maps that we don't ever want to get rid of (like JumpStart, CliffJumpers, etc.) that were built around the old rules, and break somewhat if played on servers with the new.

Be mindful that this will only affect your score on the Storm ladder, not the Royal title pack ladder.  Because we run a custom script, we are required to run on the Storm title pack.  This is another reason I held off on trying to go more than 60k on our server.  The rules are a little different when not doing Royal and I didn't think our server qualified.  I'm grateful today to say that we do qualify and have bumped the points limit on our server to 90k.

Enjoy!

Fond FragDolls Farwell

It's official.  Ubisoft has decided to retire the Frag Dolls team.  This video was put together by Daze and includes many, if not all of the Frag Dolls' alumni.  We're sorry to see them go, but know that they are doing awesome things: advancing their careers, education etc.

We are grateful for the time the Frag Dolls spent with the Friday Night Gamers, especially during the ShootMania Launch and TrackMania 10th LANniversary events!  ThatOneGuy is especially thankful for the opportunities he had to meet some of the Dolls in-person at PAX Prime 2012 Seattle, and during his recent trip to San Francisco.

We wish each Frag Doll continued success and happiness in the different endeavors you pursue.  Thanks for a fun ride!

(Oh, and we still expect you to play ShootMania and TrackMania with us in the future sometime.  You can't escape that easily!)   ^_^

Good Game Dolls!

ManiaPlanet Sale - 75% Off This Weekend!

ManiaPlanet is having a sale on TrackMania 2 Canyon and ShootMania this weekend for 75% off!!!

TrackMania 2 Stadium - $2.50!!! (3-pack = $6.25; 5-pack = $10.00)

ShootMania - $5.00 (3-pack = $12.50; 5-pack = $20.00)

It's insane awesome.  You can get 5 licenses for the price of 1.

Take advantage of this killer sale if you need to fill some gaps in your ManiaPlanet titles, or if you'd like to gift some to friends that aren't already playing with us!

(Technically the sale wasn't supposed to start until 04 Apr, but it looks like some of the titles are going up early.  I will update this post if the other titles also go on sale.)

GG!

Best Wishes to SiREN

Our Frag Doll friends are all moving on to the next steps in their careers.  We're so glad we had some fun times with them through the ShootMania launch, TrackMania 10th LANniversary and more.

SiREN hosted our epic TrackMania 10th LANniversary party in November 2013, which was hosted as a hype session precursor to the official 10th LANniversary party in December.  It was 2.5 hours of awesome, where we pulled off the first (that I know of) All TrackMania Environments worldwide LAN/WAN tournament across three servers.

It was an incredibly special night and we are grateful SiREN was a part of it.

On behalf of the Friday Night Gamers, I would like to wish you the best of luck, SiREN, in your new adventures with Twitch... and you'd better keep in touch!

A Nice Postcard from the Frag Dolls & Best Wishes for Pixxel and Sabre

My family and I received this nice postcard from the Frag Dolls today.  

As many of you know, I met some of the Frag Dolls at PAX Prime in 2012 and have been a part of a couple of fun projects with them since, including the ShootMania Launch Party (twitch stream [about 3 hours in]), the TrackMania 10th LANniversary (twitch stream [entire stream]) and a "Dolls n' Devs - ShootMania Storm - Interview with [my good friend] Edouard Beauchemin" [around 45 minutes in; but the best part happens at a timestamp that results in an error on twitch *sad face*].

We have really enjoyed out experiences with the Frag Dolls and wish them continued success in their endeavors.  We're thankful for your support in our events too, and we are still going to hold you to a ShootMania Royal match on our servers in the future!  Thanks for the postcard, Siren!!!

In other news... a couple of months after the sad announcement that our friend Pixxel was leaving the Frag Dolls, we learned this week that Sabre is also leaving the Frag Dolls and they both left touching videos for the fans.

Thanks for all the fun Pixxel!  Even though you handed it to me several times in ShootMania we still love ya.  ^_^  We will miss you and hope your new adventures rock!  We still want you a part of our Team FNG vs the Frag Dolls ShootMania Royal match in the future.

You are awesome Kim!  We hope your new adventures at Ubisoft as Associate Producer are epic and our best wishes go with you.  You're still on the hook to come play ShootMania Royal with the rest of the Frag Dolls with the Friday Night Gamers, don't think this change gets you out of it!  ;)

Good game to all of our Frag Dolls friends!  Lots of love from the Friday Night Gamers.

That One Early Christmas Surprise from Nadeo

Check out the surprise Nadeo sent me today! 

Back

I've had some amazing adventures with Nadeo and Ubisoft through TrackMania and ShootMania, from the GEEX 2010 TrackMania United Forever tournament, to the epic GEEX 2011 TrackMania 2 Canyon tournament just after the game's release, to PAX Prime 2012 where we showed off the ShootMania beta.

Front

You'll remember that when I was at PAX, I got to meet and work with several members of the Nadeo Live and Ubisoft teams.  The Nadeo crew were wearing these really great jerseys that have the ManiaPlanet logo on the front, then the player alias and player number on the back.

I loved those shirts!  And Nadeo was kind enough to make me a jersey and now I feel like an adopted member of the team.  It was a super awesome gift that I'm honored to have.

I wish Nadeo many more years of success with the ManiaPlanet franchise, and hope that we will see many more TrackMania environments for its next decade!

While we're on that subject, I should remind everyone that TrackMania 2 Stadium and ShootMania Storm are free-to-play until April 2015!  Check them out if you haven't already!

Thanks again Nadeo for showing the spirit of giving that makes Christmas so great.  I hope we can all remember to be as giving with our family, friends and neighbors during this Christmas season.

From our team to yours, may you find much joy this month and throughout next year!  Merry Christmas!

ManiaPlanet servers have been updated to 2014-10-16

I was able to successfully update the ManiaPlanet servers to the 2014-10-16 version.  Hunger Games server should now be up all the time (replacing the Card Melee server for now).

Please let me know if you run into issues on any of them.

A Note to Steam ManiaPlanet Players

Download the Standalone ManiaPlanet installer

I'm so glad we have seen a huge influx of player in the world of ManiaPlanet in the last 72 hours, thanks to an incredible Steam sale titled, "From Paris, With Games."

The sale found TrackMania 2: Stadium marked down to $2.49 USD.  Within 3 days, our Team FNG servers have seen over 2000 new players, many of which I had the pleasure of meeting and helping them learn about the epic awesome that is TrackMania.  Our ShootMania Royal server also found some new friends as its price dropped to $4.99 USD.

With the excitement building around TrackMania 2 Stadium, new Steam players have also been investigating and adding Canyon and Valley to their collections.  By now many have come to find a slight frustration with the Steam version of ManiaPlanet where they have to dump out to Steam to switch game titles.

Good news!  You can download a standalone ManiaPlanet installer and use your ManiaPlanet account in it to play all titles without leaving the application!  You also get access to the "Universal Demo" which allows you to play any ManiaPlanet game title, whether you own it or not.  If you don't own it, it will be unrestricted for 48 hours, then 1 hour/day (more if less than 100 players are in the title playing.)

I have confirmed with Nadeo that, due to limitations in the Steam version, the Universal Demo is only available in the standalone ManiaPlanet.

Please see the official Friday Night Gamers website for full details on why and how to get the standalone ManiaPlanet installer.

See you at the races!

FNG ManiaPlanet / TrackMania / ShootMania Servers Restored

We're happy to announce that we have successfully restored our ManiaPlanet servers; well most of them.
Our TrackMania Canyon, Stadium, Valley and TM2 (all environments) servers are back online (no controllers for records yet though, still working on that.)  Our ShootMania Royal server is back (also with no controller.)  The CardMelee server will be back later after I get a chance to download the new ManiaPlanet 3 compatible version of the Title Pack.

I'll have the records controllers back for our TrackMania servers back as soon as possible; then will work on the controller for Royal... After that I'll tackle CardMelee.

Thanks again for all your support.

FNG ManiaPlanet / TrackMania / ShootMania Servers Temporarily Down

We apologize, but our servers have been having some unknown issues over the past several days that we haven't been able to work out yet.  I hope to get time this week to get them solved and bring our servers back online.

Thank you to those that frequent our servers, and we're sorry for the inconvenience.  We'll get them back online as soon as we can, and hopefully be playing with you soon.

GG!

That One Collision with a BushMonkey

Watch as That One Guy (yellow) chases down BushMonkey in an epic game of Bumper Tag in the "Kill Death Match" map on ShootMania.  After a couple of bumps, we end up colliding and I send BushMonkey sailing off on a holey crusade.  Having it happen live, but seeing it this way was hilarious.  Enjoy!

Stay tuned!  Rumor has it that Nadeo will be releasing full demos of TrackMania and ShootMania in April, so everyone can try all available modes in limited timed sessions.  That will let Team FNG show others how fun the game is on our servers before they buy.

Ubisoft Brings ManiaPlanet to Salt Lake ComicCon / GEEX

Ubisoft will be at the Salt Lake ComicCon / GEEX with a booth of several game stations showing off TrackMania 2: Valley and ShootMania: Storm from the ManiaPlanet universe!

They will be holding some casual competitions with some fun TrackMania swag to give away!

Make sure to stop by their booth and see why the Friday Night Gamers have been long-time TrackManiacs and ShootManiacs!  You may even catch some of us at the booth.  DirtyD, ThatOneGuy, dGamefather, MinecraftManiac, KimPossible, Firecracker and PewDrew will be at the expo at various times on the various days, so make sure to say hi to us if you see us at the ComicCon!

If enough gamers stop by the booth, it might help us get a bigger and better Ubisoft booth at future GEEX/ComicCon expos, including the return of TrackMania tournaments with prizes like the TrackMania 2: Canyon tournament at GEEX 2011; the first official USA LAN tournament for Canyon!

Please make sure to show your support at the Ubisoft ManiaPlanet booth while you're at the event!

TrackMania 2: Canyon, Stadium; ShootMania: Storm 50% off this week!

Nadeo made a wonderful announcement yesterday that all but one of their ManiaPlanet titles are 50% off at Ubisoft's uPlay store and their own GamesPlanet store this week!

That means you can get the following:

• TrackMania 2: Canyon for $9.99 (normally $19.99)
• TrackMania 2: Stadium for $4.99 (normally $4.99)
• ShootMania: Storm for $9.99 (normally ($19.99)

If you're missing any titles, snag them now!  

Please note that the discount isn't being applied to the multi-packs on the GamesPlanet site as of this writing, but hopefully will be before the week is up.  If not, purchase each license individually so you can get TrackMania 2: Canyon/ShootMania: Storm at 3 for $30 or 5 for $50 instead of the normal 3 for $50 and 5 for $80; and TrackMania 2: Stadium at 3 for $15 or 5 for $25 instead of the normal 3 for $30 or 5 for $50.)

I will update this post if anything changes!

TrackMania 2 Canyon and ShootMania on Sale Today Only!

To celebrate E3, (even though we were incredibly disappointed to not have a TrackMania 2 Valley reveal), Nadeo and Ubisoft have marked down their TrackMania 2: Canyon and ShootMania: Storm titles.
(see the official article)

TrackMania 2 Canyon

Today only you can purchase them for:

• TrackMania 2: Canyon - $9.99 (normally $19.99)
• ShootMania: Storm - $11.99 (normally $19.99)

To purchase, hit the promo link below:

http://shop.ubi.com/promo/93207100

ShootMania Storm

If you don't already own them, Team FNG highly recommends them.  We enjoy them on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis... they have endless replay value thanks to simple enjoyable gameplay coupled with a never-ending supply of user-created content.

While you're at it, don't forget to get into the Open Beta of TrackMania 2: Stadium!

It costs nothing right now, but you can purchase it for $8.99 (will be $9.99 when released.)

TrackMania 2 Stadium

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...

Join Team FNG for a ShootMania4All Launch Party - 10 April 2013

10 April 2013

6:00pm-11:00pm Mountain Time

Join the Team FNG Royal Server

Official ShootMania4All website

The long anticipated release of Nadeo's epic multiplayer First Person Shooter, ShootMania is finally here!
ShootMania will release on 10 April 2013 and has an awesome night lined up.  Launch parties have been set up both locally and online throughout the world including a handful in the United States.

Ubisoft has invited the Friday Night Gamers to be a part of this special event, and we are happy to announce that we will be hosting a hybrid LAN/Online launch party from 6:00pm to 11:00pm Mountain Time!

Come join us for some old school Royal with the mode as you knew it from the Alpha and Beta tests (which we now call TeamFNG_Royal) until the new Royal title pack was created for launch.

We welcome all players, especially new players that we can teach the fundamentals of the Royal mode (since they are mostly the same as the Free-2-Play Royal title.)

"KillDeathMatch" Royal map
by TheSammon

Team FNG will be hosting a for-fun tournament (who knows, we might surprise you with some prizes -- we'll see!) at some point during the night; the time for which will be announced before the night of the party.

ThatOneGuy
at PAX Prime 2012 with
Valkyrie (left) and MissMagitek (right)
of the Frag Dolls

The Frag Dolls will be joining us at some point during the night, where we will be a part of their awesome night-long online stream celebrating the release of ShootMania.

 We look forward to ShootMania becoming HUGE in the United States and all of North America.  ManiaPlanet's ShootMania and TrackMania games have been a major part of the Friday Night Gaming line-up for over 7 years now and will continue to be for a very long time.

If you haven't tried ShootMania yet, go get it today and see what you've been missing.  We look forward to a fun night with you all on 10 April 2013!

Team FNG ShootMania: Storm Royal Server - Logo to Be Seen By All

Last December I told you about how Thundr figured out the way to get our Team FNG logo to appear on the poles and spawn points of ShootMania Storm (including Team Modes).

The problem was, we had to manually place the correct "Emblem" files in the ManiaPlanet file structure where user data is kept.  It worked like a champ, but there were two problems:

1. Only the players that manually went through this process could enjoy it.
2. The Emblem not only showed in our own Team FNG servers, but in every server we played in.

We wanted a way for everyone that joins our servers to see our Emblem, and only when on our servers.

I'm happy to report that with the help of a few friends (MrBob and community members on the ManiaPlanet forums) I was able to successfully make it so our server would show it for everyone when they play on our servers.  

DISCLAIMER: To be perfectly clear, I only know that this works for non-team based script modes.  I will have to experiment on some team mode scripts and see if it's possible there, but I wouldn't recommend it; because Nadeo is working on a cooler way to have team modes show clan specific logos when competitions between clans happen on those servers.

With that out of the way, let's discuss how it is done:

Steeffeen explains "Club Links" (which have to do with my disclaimer above), "NeutralEmblemUrl" and emblem requirements in response to my question on the ManiaPlanet Forums.

Our server uses a customized version of the Royal.Script.txt that was used in Storm before the Royal mode was moved to its own Title pack in prep for free-to-play availability at launch.

Because of that, the following from Steeffeen's response are important to our server:

• Emblem images are required to be 512 x 512 pixels
• Emblem images are required to be in the DDS format (with mipmaps)
• The NeutralEmblemUrl must point to a valid URL that will serve your Emblem image.

I started digging to try to find how I could change that and discovered a variable in a base script for all modes called:

NeutralEmblemUrl

So all I had to do (since we already had the DDS image ready and had been using it for months on our own systems) was add the following line to my custom Royal script:

NeutralEmblemUrl = "http://path.to.emblem.com";

So, for those of you that would like to do the same... here's what you have to do:

• Create an emblem image with the following requirements:
• 512 x 512 pixels
• DDS format with mipmaps
• Upload your Emblem to a valid URL you can point the game mode script to.
• Add the following line to your game mode script:
• NeutralEmblemUrl = "http://path.to.emblem.com";

I imagine that this will work in the Team Modes too while poles aren't captured.  Once a pole is captured it will reflect the proper Blue or Red team logos since the pole is no longer "neutral."

I hope this helps others who wish to customize their server a little more.

Also, please note again for team game modes... Club Links are being developed right now and will be a better way to customize how these show up in your team mode server.  Use this if it works until that is available (there may be Red and Blue EmblemUrl variables you can assign in your scripts too, but I don't know what they are or if they exist at the time of this writing.)

Good luck.  Have fun!

Is ManiaPlanet Coming to Steam?!

"Steam" engine with a
big ManiaPlanet logo

This pictures sure seems to suggest it.  An announcement video will be coming tomorrow.
Stay tuned.

This will be awesome news for the whiners who don't know how to add a non-steam game shortcut to Steam and will only buy it if sold through Steam.  I guess some still love DRM even when they can get a game without.  LOL

Seriously though, there have been big complaints that the ManiaPlanet games aren't available on Steam, so I hope (if it's true) that this will mean more sales for Nadeo, so we can continue to reap the rewards of future environments for TrackMania and ShootMania!

GG Nadeo; especially for the Steam pun. +1