Nitronic Rush - Racing Survival Game from DigiPen Students

(borrowed from the Nitronic Rush homepage)

Hey Gamers!

Dragonfly (Duane) told me about this game today called Nitronic Rush.  It is a project developed at DigiPen; a technology/gaming school.

http://nitronic-rush.com/

PC Gamer referred to it as "the lovechild of Tron, TrackMania and Transformers"

Story mode - flight

It's pretty cool looking... Shawn (Ender) and I checked it out for a few minutes with the keyboard.  It's a little hard to control with a KB, but could be really fun with a gamepad.  I don't know that it has multiplayer, but it has leaderboards we could compete with each other on.

It appears to have a story mode and competitive mode.

Give it a test run and see what you think!  Fans of TrackMania will most likely find enjoyment in this title.  Kudos to the developers that created the game!

Takin' some air...

Best of Luck A&G 2012 TM2 Open Finalists!

Wish I could be there tomorrow to witness the awesomeness of the finalists competing in the A&G 2012 TrackMania 2 Canyon tournament.

I wish you all the best of luck... and have fun!
Can't wait to see the results.

GG

TrackMania 2 Canyon: USA Car Skin Unveiled

CORRECTION: I talked with my friend at Ubisoft and was informed that it's the TrackMania facebook page that needs 100k fans... not the photo itself!  And you'll be happy to know that the page itself has 70,000+ "likes" already, so we're almost there!


So click the link above, not the link below...


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Ubisoft today unveiled a new USA car skin that TrackMania creator NADEO created for the game.  They said if 100,000 people "like" the photo by 04 March 2012, they will release the car skin free in the game.

It already has 100 likes from those that keep up with the RSS feed... will it reach 100k in a week-and-a-half?  Time will tell.

If you like what you see... go hit the facebook page and click the Like button!

Dungeon Defenders - $2.99 on Amazon (digital download)

For those of you that experienced the fun of Dungeon Defenders, wait no longer.

The game is only $2.99 right now on Amazon.com; and there is some free-for-a-limited-time Valentines Day DLC released today called "Etherian Festival of Love."

Go forth, adventurer!

A&G '12 TM2 Open Semifinals Results Posted

"SmellOfTires" map: Synchronized Ski-Mode

See the A&G '12 TM2 Open Semifinals Results

"WHIPLASH" map: All Group 1 racers

Well, the semifinals were a blast; and thankfully went off smooth, unlike the prelims.  There was some close racing in both groups.  I wasn't much competition, but was happy taking 5th place, only 2 points between Dr.Rock and Anxiety who were tied for 3rd and 4th.  It was a pleasure and an honor racing alongside these pros and cool guys.

I was the outsider, pitted against six racers from team AMP (Amplified Gaming).  They were all very cool and we had a great time.

My TournaMania app performed well and successfully tracked both groups semifinal rounds.

Group 1 saw Laurens and Anxiety fighting neck-and-neck nearly the entire round, but Laurens clinched each map in the end, sweeping the scoreboard and securing his victory.

Laurens, Anxiety, Demko and Dr Rock from the AMP team are the finalists from Group 1.

Group 2 had equally exciting racing, with Iceman and FrostBeule duking it out for 1st place.  Supra gave some fierce compeition as well.

Iceman, FrostBeule, Supra and Besus are the finalists from Group 2.

See the full results at the link near the top of this article.

I would again like to thank Macduffman and Anxiety for organizing this tournament... the 2nd official TrackMania 2 Canyon tournament in the USA; and would also like to thank Ubisoft and Intel for their support.

I would also like to thank FNG_Thundr for his support spectating me while I played my semifinal round.  He provided the two fun screenshots in this article.  Hopefully Team FNG can run the A&G tracks in our own tournament at our next LAN party or sometime online.

I wish all of the finalists the best of luck.  Many of the finalists hail from other countries, so I also wish them success getting travel arranged to visit Ohio for the finals in March.  It is guaranteed to be an exciting set of races.

Maps are being custom built by top-notch TrackMania track authors from the TM community.  I'm excited to see them.  They will be released closer to finals time (a week or so before the event.)

GG all.  Let's do it again sometime!

A&G '12 TM2 Open Prelims Results Posted

Iceman tailgates Supra through the finish line
(Grand Canyon map)

We ran into some snags tonight with the tournament: stream fail, the tournament app choked on a double-quote symbol, some people got disconnected due to Windows automatic updates and other various things, and a few others... but we made it through and the results have been posted on the ManiaPlanet forums.

Thanks to MacDuffman for putting this together!  Despite the technical difficulties it was still a good time, and really fun to race against some of the best in the world.

When the tournament app choked, I went scurrying trying to find the cause, but by the time I found and fixed it, everyone wanted to just track it manually and save the app for next time.  Thus, I missed the first four races.  Once I got back in, I had a great time.

Thundr did pretty well too.  We being more casual TrackManiacs relative to the other competitors, I thought we did pretty well.  We had some good races with some good places, and we just had a ball racing with some really cool players.

It was an honor for us to host and despite everything else, it seemed most players' connections did well.  There were some complaints about checkpoint lag, but that comes with the territory when you have people competing from around the world.

Good luck to all that made it to the semifinals!  Hopefully they'll go smoother than the prelims!
GG!

The semifinals will be split into two separate tournaments, each being held on 04 February 2012 (two weeks from today) and the groups/race times will be posted later this week.  Watch the ManiaPlanet forums (link above) for details.

The semifinals track pack will be released one week prior to the event.  Stay tuned.

Watch the A&G 2012 TrackMania 2 Canyon Tournament

http://www.twitch.tv/aandgohio

If you would like more information about the event, you can get the most up-to-date information on the ManiaPlanet forums.

Prelims take place Saturday 21 January 2012 online, starting at 8pm Eastern.
Semifinals will take place 04 February 2012 online, time to be determined.
Finals will take place 10 March 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio at the A&G 2012 LAN Event; time to be determined.

Best of luck to all the competitors; we'll see you at the races!

Freestyle in TrackMania 2 Canyon a la NitroGuY

Thanks to my good friend eyebo for pointing out this excellent video he made of NitroGuY's December 2011 freestyle run on "Flatland Yards" by TimaE in TrackMania 2 Canyon.

Watch in HD

If only I could have that much control over my car. Mad skills, Nitro.  MAD skills!  And to rub salt in the wound of my newbness even more, Nitro plays with the keyboard!

And an extra shout-out for eyebo's excellent MediaTracker prowess.  Well done on a high-quality video.

Now, for the rest of you FNGers, we'll have to track down some of these freestyle maps and give them a go.  I know SpeedMonger and I both enjoyed stunts mode in United Forever, and the prospect of playing stunt mode without a timer makes me giddy.

We'll have to try it out soon after the A&G tournament.

Evochron Mercenary - The next evolution of Freelancer?

My Steam news feed informed me today about the release of an Indie space-based action-RPG called Evochron Mercenary.  I watched the trailer video and it looked like what I would imagine a Freelancer sequel would look like.

If the entire universe looks like this... count me in.

A few of the Friday Night Gamers started playing Freelancer back in the day for a couple of months and had a ball with it.  I would love to see how this one is.

Like Freelancer, you explore the universe, take on various kinds of missions (both with and without combat), do trading, etc. to enable you to upgrade your aircraft and equipment, letting you further explore new places.

From what I understand, it also allows you to integrate your solo play with multiplayer (using your same character in both.)

I can't afford it yet, but I've got my eye on it for when I can... I'd love to hear from those that already own and play it how much you enjoy it or not.  Please feel free to leave some comments and let us know if it would be a good game to add to the FNG arsenal.

Also, FNGers, please chime in and let me know if you'd like to see this as one of the games we play as a group.

A&G 2012 TrackMania 2 Tournament - New Dates, Prelims Track Pack and Practice Server

Here is a quick update on the A&G 2012 TM2 Open tournament, sponsored by Ubisoft and Intel:
Prelims' and Semifinals' dates have been moved to the following:

Prelims: 21 January 2012 at 8:00PM Eastern
Semifinals: 04 February 2012 at 8:00PM Eastern

The finals will be held on 10 March 2012, live at the Animation & Gaming Ohio expo.

Read the A&G Ohio's TrackMania 2 Tournament Rules and Regulations for full details, including any future updates.

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The prelims track pack has been released and is being hosted in the USA | Utah zone under the name:
A&G 2012 TM2 Open (practice)
The name may be changed to something similar -- we do that when we're testing mock tournaments there.

Click the link above to launch TrackMania and automatically join the server.
Mark this server in your favorites, as it will be the server we play the preliminaries on.

If you find the server is down for some reason, please contact me at trackmania@thatoneplace.net
so I can get it running again.

You may also download the prelims pack to practice on your own at home.

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Best of luck to everyone!
GG