Win a Copy of TrackMania United Forever!

Last night I had the opportunity of making an appearance on the GEEX podcast, to talk about the upcoming TrackMania United Forever tournament.

We decided to give away two copies of the game.

To get yours, see the GEEX news entry, go watch some videos, and leave your impressions about the game on the site.

So don't delay... go enter for your chance to win, then register for the GEEX LAN Party and TrackMania tournament!

GG

Company of Heroes Soundtracks - Free on Steam Today!

Go to the Company of Heroes - Complete Pack page on Steam to download the following Soundtracks free:

• Company of Heroes: All Heroes Rise
• Company of Heroes: Songs from the Front

Thanks Steam and THQ for making these available!

While you're at it (and only today) -- get the complete pack for $24.99 (normally $49.99)

GEEX 2010 TrackMania Tournament App Test a Success!

Last night was a huge success. I had to shut the server down and change my max players to 16, which we filled for a good portion of the night. I wonder if I could have kicked it up to 20 or 24, but I think my crappy upload speed would've finally been worked over with that and TeamSpeak going with 8 people in it. :)

Regardless, it was a good stress test for the app and I learned a lot and fixed a lot with it.

Here's what I fixed:

• Typing /rank in the chat at any point will give you your tournament standing (place and points) along with the person ahead of you (if applicable) and the person behind you (if applicable)
• The podium screen now only shows the top 3 standings to everyone; then shows your current standing (same as typing /rank) if you're below third place.
• My "debug" chatter that shows up in the app's UI was getting taxed again with 16 people in it... started getting behind after about 10 races or so, to the point it didn't report the scores one track.
  
  I've disabled the chatter and only have the app reporting error messages, which should make it handle many more people (we'll have to see about hooking up to another popular server out there that can host 50 people or more.)

Things I still need to fix before GEEX:

• Showing nicknames instead of login names on the Standings and Rank reporting.
• Any other stress-related issues we might encounter in future testing.

I had a ball last night and I hope the rest of you did to. We had people from all over the world join, including some from Austria and some from France... and the one from Austria we asked if he had connection issues. He reported a smooth connection, and there was much rejoicing.  A few of the racers were very high-ranked, including my old friend Scrappy who is in the Top 2500 in the world, and a couple others that were in the Top 25,000 in the world... which meant the times we were fortunate enough to beat them in a race, we earned some sweet multiplayer ladder points.  Good challenge.  Good times.

I'm hoping I can sneak some time before next Friday to run more tests, so you FNGers may be getting more invites to help. I appreciate all your support and hope this will help make the TrackMania tournament at GEEX more fun.

My apologies if any of you jumped in to find me in-game last night... I didn't actually log in to the game and start playing until way late... the first part of the night I was solely working on the app and the dedicated server... chatting with those in the server via ServerMania.  If I missed you, I'm sorry.  Catch us next time!

GG!

GEEX LAN Party and Tournament Registration is Live

GEEX Registration is live!

To participate in the TrackMania United Forever Tournament, you will need to register for both the LAN Party and the TrackMania Tournament (separate registrations.)

1. Register for the LAN Party
2. Register for the TrackMania Tournament
3. Get the Track Pack and start practicing!

If you have any questions let me know... most details can be gleaned from the Tournament details page and my blog entry.

I'm looking forward to seeing you all there. Please help spread the word about GEEX!

Official GEEX 2010 TrackMania United Forever Tournament Track Pack Announced

Well, I finally got the track pack compiled... and just in time to give everyone a month of practice before the TrackMania United Forever tournament at GEEX 2010.

Download the track pack now! (~34MB)

It is a self-extracting executable that needs to be extracted to the base TrackMania folder under the Windows user folder.

Examples (replace "username" with your own user's name):
Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\TrackMania

Vista and Windows 7:
C:\Users\username\Documents\TrackMania

The pack will extract itself to all the appropriate places, and includes most mods/images/sounds/etc required to play the included tracks. Some images are missing but will be downloaded quickly from locators the first time you play the track. Players are encouraged to practice before the tournament to ensure all required data is on your computer prior to the competition.

The tracks are comprised of (but will not necessarily be raced in this order at GEEX):
PRELIMS:
AntiBoost (Bay)
Aretmis' Arrow I (Stadium)
Celt!c Sp!r!t (Rally)
Coastal Trip (Coast)
Dream Coast (Coast)
Dutch Delight (Stadium)
Eye in the Sky (Desert)
[GR] Poco Loco (Bay)
[GR] Night Hawk (Stadium)
Kingdom of Tricks v.1.00 (Rally)
Mad w0rLd (Island)
Remember Off Road? (Stadium)
Scotts Bluff (Desert)
Snow Park (Snow)
Stuntman Mountains (Snow)
Zen Island (Island)

FINALS:
[ATP]Community Track II (Snow)
Baysilisk (Bay)
Creative (Desert)
Deal Breaker (Stadium)
Etherlight (Island)
FlowCoastUnited (Coast)
Lunacy (Rally)

Details about the tournament and registration for the GEEX 2010 LAN Party and TrackMania Tournament will be available soon.

This is a bold experiment for TrackMania tournaments.  I decided I wanted to make a tournament that represents all types of tracks the community creates; testing all TrackMania skills, not just tech.

I even included a multi-path track that purposely set shortcuts... I figure the game has its own tracking mechanism for a successful lap: make it through all checkpoints and cross the finish line.  How you accomplish those goals is up to you... if you find a shortcut and can successfully exploit it, more power to you!

That said, spectating is also allowed, for those competitors that may not have found the shortcuts themselves, but notice that another player has a significantly better time.  This, of course, jeopardizes their own time to finish the track with a similar time, but if they can discover the shortcut and still execute it in time, the player will still have a shot at taking the podium.

Like I said, bold experiment.  But most I've spoken with about it when asking their opinions have liked the ideas, so we'll see how it goes.  I'm really excited for this tournament and hope it will be enjoyable for all.

Team FNG will be putting up a GEEX practice server some of the time over the weeks leading up to GEEX, but know that it will be in "experimental" mode, as I'm still developing the app that will track the tournament stats from the dedicated server at the event... and thus it needs a testing ground.  Feel free to join this server when you see it up and help me test the app when I'm around to work on it.

Please feel free to leave comments both before and after GEEX and let us know how you liked the event; especially the TrackMania United Forever tournament!

GG

EVGA YouTube Video Shows Off PhysX Capabilities

This cool video, presented by evga.com shows off some really cool effects PhysX offers; in a lot of popular games like Mirror's Edge, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Cryostatis.

Enjoy.

Download Portal FREE! (Until 24 May 2010)

(Thanks Bomajoe for this fantastic find...)

You heard right, gamers... Portal is FREE until 24 May 2010.  If you haven't played it yet, you have no excuse anymore.  Quit reading and download immediately. Time is running out.

Kudos to Valve for this incredible game; and more kudos for offering it free for a limited time.

Can't wait for Portal 2!

Freakin' Awesome Motocross Madness 2 Video

Remember when games used to ROCK?!  Remember when they allowed LAN play and didn't require an always on connection?  Remember when they were full of magic and wonder?

Well, check out this nostalgic video of my favorite game of all time... Motocross Madness 2.  Fun music and killer use of the in-game camera.

I thought I had some mad stunt skills, but the riders in this put me to shame.  FNGers will love seeing our staple 360's in here too.  Good times!!!

Watch the MCM2 video at YouTube

Please, please, PLEASE, Rainbow... give us the source code so we can make it work for everyone in Windows Vista and 7!!!  We want to keep playing...

Click the image above to see full-size

Thanks for all the good times for the past 10 years, Rainbow Studios, and the entire Motocross Madness community.

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.

C&C 4 DRM gets to EA blogger Jeff Green

As I was browsing the tech sites tonight, I came across an article on MaximumPC, and found that Ars Technica had also caught the story. On March 20th, EA blogger Jeff Green posted to Twitter blog Greenspeak of his frustrations with C&C's DRM and his attempts to play single player with his DSL connection.

"Booted twice--and progress lost--on my single-player C&C4 game because my DSL connection blinked. DRM fail. We need new solutions.

Yeah, Steam's ability to have off-line play is the clear, better model when talking about SP games.

However, C&C4 experiments w/what a "single-player game" is--given it's constantly uploading progress/stats for unlocks. It's complicated.

I think if we think of C&C4 as an "online-only" game--which it basically is--then maybe we'd adjust our expectations accordingly.

Welp. I've tried to be open-minded. But my 'net connection is finicky--and the constant disruption of my C&C4 SP game makes this unplayable.

The story is fun, the gameplay is interesting and different at least--but if you suffer from shaky/unreliable DSL--you've been warned."

I figured I'd also include his next couple posts, as they are relevant to the DRM bloat as well.

"LOL-wow. My frustration w/C&C4's online scheme led me to Dawn of War 2. With THIS game, I'm forced to log into GFW Live just to play SP.

F' all this noise. I'm going back to Civ 4. A singleplayer strategy game that--zounds!--I can actually play offline."

While I will join in with Nathan Grayson (MaximumPC) in thanking an EA employee for some honesty and not hiding the problems from the public, isn't it sad when EA's own employees realize that the DRM scheme doesn't work?

I know several people have tried to say that EA's "solution" is not DRM, it's just a way of experience for single and multiplayer to build up together. I'm sorry, but it is DRM. It requires a constant connection, rather than just updating at the completion of a mission or saving the experience locally on the PC (even if it is saved locally for later update when you connect to a multiplayer game). If it tells a person when or how they can play the game, it is DRM.

So, thank you Jeff Green for your honesty! Hopefully EA doesn't come down on you for it. And please, EA, Ubisoft, and any other publisher thinking of requiring persistent internet connections for SINGLE player games, stop it!