Nadeo's TrackMania Nations I-3 Track in 14.65 Seconds

Nadeo made some incredible tracks in the stock collection that came with TrackMania Nations ESWC.  Back in 2006, this game ripped me away from two other brand new ones a bunch of the Friday Night Gamers purchased shortly before we were introduced to it... "Age of Empires III" and "MX vs ATV Unleashed".

There were several different styles of tracks, including one of my favorites, named "Obstacle" in the game's successor, TrackMania United.  This particular track, I-3 has you take a quick left 90-degree turn into some turbos that launch you up a straight ramp which ends abruptly in another piece of track directly above it.

Nadeo wants you to go left or right as you launch into the air and continue making more similar jumps to escalate higher and higher until the final short transition jumps to where the finish line is.

Fallout, the GEEX 2010 TrackMania United champion, showed me a quicker way one day while we were playing on our Team FNG Stadium Time Attack server.  I decided to make a few attempts at it today and here's what happened:

I'm pretty stoked, and don't know if I could do it again, but there are actually others that have done it even faster.  Check out their replays at TMX.

Did I mention I love this game?!!?!

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!

Comcastic! Xfinity boosts speeds in parts of Utah

I got an email today from Comcast letting me know that speeds are now boosted in my area.  I was informed to power cycle my modem to have it take effect.

The reason for this is that the modem is signaled to download a firmware update.  Once the update is complete, the modem resets itself again and after it finishes initializing all the way, you should see the speeds your package is supposed to get.

My email told me I'd be getting up to 50Mbit down and 10Mbit up.  I'm happy to report I'm getting around 55Mbit on burst for downloads.  However, for some reason, my upload actually went down.  I used to see 6-8, but am seeing 3-4.5Mbit up now.

Boma power cycled his modem after I told him about the update and he is seeing the promised speeds.  I will wait a week and see if my upload goes up to the 10Mbit... if not, I'll have a Comcast tech come check out the situation at my home.

For everyone else in Utah between Salt Lake and Spanish Fork (maybe further south?) -- power cycle your DOCSYS 3.0 modem and see if you get to enjoy faster connections.  If you don't have a DOCSYS 3.0 modem, upgrade now.

Enjoy!

"Portal 2 in Real life" - funny fan video

The YouTube crew "PhysicallyShaken" does a pretty awesome job having some fun with Portal guns.  Enjoy!

Arrow and Warning Signs Now Working for TrackMania 2 Stadium

With many many thanks going out to BLiNNeMaNS, a well known TrackManiac veteran and track author, I come bearing great news for those that are loving playing TrackMania 2: Stadium!

When the game was first opened up to all to play as Open Beta, I ported a bunch of maps be recomputing their shadows using ManiaPlanet.

We ran into a couple of problems with those tracks, though.  The arrow and warning signs weren't appearing; replaced by TrackMania logo billboards.  This caused a lot of lost time on the server explaining to new players how to take the tracks or forcing them to spectate veterans to learn how to take some of the tracks.

I'm pleased to announce that BLiNNeMaNS figured out how to fix that problem by pointing out on the ManiaPlanet forums where server hosts could download the old signs and where to place them in order to have the signs show up for players on your server.

I had to make a slight adjustment in the placement of them for the English version and am happy to announce that they work like a champ.

You can get them in one of two ways:

• Jump on the Team FNG server and play an old track until you see them appear (it might take several times starting the track over while it downloads the content to your machine ... you should see them by the time you finish 1-2 old tracks.)
• Head over to the ManiaPlanet forums and see how to manually get them placed in your own ManiaPlanet client so you can see them immediately.

Once you have them, you should be able to see the warning and arrow signs on any server with tracks from the original TrackMania Nations/United (Forever).

Now if Nadeo can fix the camera triggers to work the same as the old game, we will be golden hosting old maps on the new game!

TrackMania 2: Stadium Goes Open Beta!

See the official announcement

Moments ago, Nadeo announced that TrackMania 2: Stadium has entered Open Beta.  I'm downloading as I write this.

You can get it in a couple of ways.  If you already own ManiaPlanet, launch the game and choose an empty station to pick a Title for.  You can choose the Stadium title and it will download in-game.  Otherwise, head to the ManiaPlanet site to download the install from there!

GOGOGO!

EDIT: Also... revealed in the Open Beta Trailer, ManiaPlanet is coming to Steam, and Stadium is only $9.99 ($8.99 today!) -- the cost is the same whether you purchase through Steam or through the ManiaPlanet website as a standalone.

Check out the trailer.

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

Eyebo's Random TrackMania Mashup 3

Eyebo is another of my favorite ManiaPlanet video authors (a favorite map author too!)

He's got a way of tugging my sentimental strings, and this is no exception.  For those that love TrackMania, enjoy this trip down nostalgia lane... for those that don't know about it, get hooked, because the TrackMania series is one of the most magical video game series ever created.

And for those of you that have forgotten... TrackMania United Forever is still MORE than playable; so let's jump in and make more good times.  :)

Enjoy!