TrackMania Thread

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Magicat

Magicat

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TrackMania is a franchise of racing games from 2003, developed by a French game developer company, Nadeo (founded 2000, now Ubisoft Nadeo). It rose to prominence with the release of their 100% free game TrackMania Nations Forever (TMNF) in 2008 - a complete Stadium-themed game for Microsoft Windows which had been previously (one day prior) been bundled with the paid version TrackMania United Forever (TMUF). TMUF was (and still is) a Goliath of a game, featuring seven unique game environments taken and improved upon from previous titles.

Sadly, Nadeo were unprofitable because of the developers' goodwill in keeping a fully functioning free-to-play offline campaign, a massive online multiplayer mode, powerful custom track creation tools, leaderboards, competitions and a gargantuan player base. Ubisoft acquired Nadeo in 2009 and has since kept the company afloat with small restrictions to the multiplayer mode for the free game, and a fairly cheap subscription-based service for the newest title, Trackmania (TM2020) which released in 2020 for Microsoft Windows (a small number of things are available for free).

TMUF trailer:


I started playing TMNF in 2008, taking a break from RuneScape and Warcraft 3, after my cousin introduced it to me. One of his friends worked for Nadeo at the time. I had a blast getting all the Author medals for the 65 Stadium tracks and went on to play people's creative maps from the fan-site TM Exchange (racetrack completion time determines medal: Bronze < Silver < Gold < Author. In some games Author's renamed to Firebrand (named after the company that developed TrackMania games for the Nintendo DS and Wii) or Trackmaster).

I tried a bit of TMUF but sucked at the different environments so I kinda drifted away from the game for a good few years. Not too long ago, TM2020 was ported over to consoles so I just had to check it out. It's pretty decent with new track parts and gimmicks, but the new graphics don't appeal to me. I found an older game from 2016 on PS4, TrackMania Turbo (not to be confused with a game of the same name for the Nintendo DS), which is pretty fun but really fucking challenging, so I've been slowly working on finishing that. It's got four different environments which has kinda made me want to revisit TMUF, as there's still tonnes of tracks I've yet to play there, and a thriving community and leaderboard (yeah, Nadeo haven't terminated online services for a game that's over 15 years old. Obligatory fuck Nintendo).


Share your TrackMania stories and community drama.
 
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Magicat said:
It rose to prominence with the release of their 100% free game TrackMania Nations Forever (TMNF) in 2008
Click to expand...
My nigga you were late to the party. Before Forever came out, old school TMN was the jam. Every slav computer in every household and every school classroom had TMN installed. I grew up playing this damn game, making my own tracks, playing many crazy cool RP tracks I downloaded from TMX (greets to Crusard the GOAT trackmaker) with missions, objectives, cutscenes, soundtracks, dialogue, minigames, new mechanics, plot... holy fuck man that was great shit and must've taken some considerable autism to make. He made a map once where each checkpoint was a "liquor store" and you had a beer bottle display as part of your HUD, and if you ran out of beer before getting to the next checkpoint you'd black out and have to start over. I member I would try to implement shit like that in my own tracks and wrack my head for hours about how the hell you're supposed to do it.

Some of the "Press forward" tracks were also really cool.

This was when I was still a kid so I wasn't good enough at actually driving to be able to finish most fullspeed maps or get good enough times to compete, but man it was so cool.


Edit: this just prompted me to go look up this intro video and it's so pure 2000s I nearly cried tears of joy.
 
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== Community Drama ==​

Background​

Many people were introduced to TrackMania through a YouTuber / Twitch Streamer known as Wirtual. He's published fairly decent documentaries on various TrackMania related content; speedrunning world records, notable tracks' histories, shortcutting, cheating scandals, bugs and much more. His most-critically acclaimed video exposes several high-level players of cheating world records back in 2021, and resulted in massive changes to the TrackMania community, such as having a mandatory anti-cheat patch for official tracks' community records, and a wave of bans across TrackMania games by Nadeo themselves. Wirtual's video focussed on his old friend, Riolu, a German player and one of the most skilled players in the scene. I'll spare the details. You can watch the video and read the investigation report at your leisure. Riolu disappeared from the scene and hasn't been heard from since.

Development​

Not long after, an unknown player by the name of 92BOB began climbing the leaderboards for TMUF at an alarming speed. He was destroying old records and quickly overtook some of the most skilled players in ranking with no sign of stopping. The community speculated it may be Riolu playing anonymously on an alt account as no one but him could be as skilled as to compete with the top players. Nadeo themselves checked and found the runs by 92BOB were all legit. The player himself has zero contact with anyone in the community.

If 92BOB really is Riolu he would still be permitted to play the game so long as he abides by the rules. Nadeo have a policy of 'ban the cheating account, but not the player', which gives former cheaters a chance at redemption. Many of the cheaters in the big scandal returned and competed legit, and the community welcomed them back. I'm sure there are examples of this in other games. 92BOB could be just a new guy who jumped onto TrackMania from another game for all everyone knows, which makes the next part just vile.

Phishing​

Recently, Wirtual uploaded a video in which he aggressively implies 92BOB is Riolu. He documents a player called blackq (idk the community but this could be a sock for someone to save face) who went out of his way to try to ruin 92BOB. In the video, Wirtual gleefully explains the methods blackq used, and how all of them failed (because 92BOB has good OPSEC and isn't a retard). The highlights include attempting a false account recovery and sending a literal phishing link to grab 92BOB's IP address. Wirtual describes this as 'clever and sneaky', which his fans have not recepted well to. His new video has tonnes of comments calling Wirtual out for condoning the phishing, false account recovery and scummy activities of blackq, while somehow holding a deeper grudge against Riolu, despite Riolu literally disappearing from the scene over 2 years ago.

I myself commented along the lines 'This video is scummy. Big L Wirtual.' last night, and lo and behold my comment got deleted by Wirtual or his mods. Wirtual had a pinned comment which he's since edited to clarify he doesn't condone blackq's behaviour, but for all I know blackq could have been Wirtual's sock given how obsessed he still is over Riolu, or how the massive success of his cheating scandal video back in 2021 got to his head. His behaviour aside, his new video lacks the documentary charm of his older ones, in my opinion.

How embarassing.

Video:

Wirtual edits his pinned comment:
193xiTC1k firefox.png

Comments on his video:
194xwftGK firefox.png195xrDkQr firefox.png196xVNvWt firefox.png

Comments on r/TrackMania in response to the video:
197xk5vgQ explorer.png

Local video archive:


Online archive
 
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every time i downloaded TMNF i had to make a new account because i never kept track of my accounts.

also i have to edit the config files because my graphic cards turn the game into a white screen.

also pro tip: if you want to play permanently for free just type /afk in the chat before the online race ends.
 
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Magicat said:
Recently, Wirtual uploaded a video in which he aggressively implies 92BOB is Riolu. He documents a player called blackq (idk the community but this could be a sock for someone to save face) who went out of his way to try to ruin 92BOB. In the video, Wirtual gleefully explains the methods blackq used, and how all of them failed (because 92BOB has good OPSEC and isn't a retard).
Click to expand...
If you've just started playing Trackmania because of Wirtual - move away from his YouTube content as fast as possible, mainly due to its misleading or overexaggerated nature. That video he released only really excaberated the problem at hand.

Support less known TM streamers/content creators like Spammiej, Scrapie98 (yes that is his name), Jnic, and whoever you find streaming TM honestly. L4Bomb4 also makes the 'press forward' maps that he showcases on YouTube, which those TikTok content farms steal to put in their Family Guy funny moments compilation.
 
I was watching one of GranaDy's videos where the conversation drifted into the Wirtual drama.

Starts at 22:20:

The short of it is that blackq's a known shady player who's infamous for having unashamedly cheated among many other sketchy activities, and he's an outlier so he doesn't represent the TrackMania community. This is a bit of a weak argument because there's a fair bit of divide in the community on the drama where a notable portion defend Wirtual's attitude, and a smaller yet portion openly advocate blackq's activities. The comments in GranaDy's chat were also divided. I think the community wants to avoid looking bad so they're just coping and saying the video's not that bad.

There was one thing people echoed that failed to resonate with me. They said the comments against Wirtual missed the point of the video, only taking one thing from it. Buddy, we watched the whole video. the blackq shebang happens around halfway into it and continues to the end. We didn't just skip the first half of the video where Wirtual flimsily covers other hypotheses about 92BOB. It was clear throughout the video and from the thumbnail that Riolu is the only thing on Wirtual's mind. Besides, half the comments aren't about blackq specifically, but telling Wirtual to leave 92BOB alone.

In the immortal words of Patrick Tomlinson, "Rent free, child".
 
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The Rally car is coming to TM2020 on 27 Feb:

Wirtual did stream on his main channel where he completely avoids the recent controversy. His coping diehard fans are attacking anyone that brought it up. He's coloured his nails which is disgustingly gay and queer. Troon arc this year?
 
I found this playlist by Spammiej where he went for STMs in TM Turbo for the third time. What a legend.

(STM = Super Trackmaster Medal. TM Turbo medals: Bronze < Silver < Gold < (Regular) Trackmaster (aka RTM) < Super Bronze < Super Silver < Super Gold < Super Trackmaster). Regular Gold is generally tougher than other TM games' author medals in my opinion.
 
the name made me think it was going to be some sort of running simulator from Konami
 
GranaDy played TM Turbo as part of his TM marathon. He didn't go for STMs. Not surprising really. I've been watching SpammieJ's STM run and theres so many stupid start tricks to learn.

 
Oh man, Trackmania... I remember owning a Russian CD reprint of the original game back in mid 00s and the game was a blast - I loved the variety in environments and cars. Was big into TMNF with a few friends in very early 10s for a while too. I did try the new TM2020, but some of the new gimmicks like the ice stuff felt borderline incomprehensible regarding control which turned me off as a casual enjoyer of the franchise. I still boot up Trackmania Valley from time to time - gotta love how it allows you to play the other TM games of that era (Canyon, Lagoon, Stadium) through a publicly promoted server which rotates through the games hosted.

 
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The entire Trackmania streaming community has been playing this Deep Dip 2 map for about 12hrs a day for over a week now. And the leader is slightly over halfway.

It's this giant fucking tower with hundreds of absurd jumps and stunts, with no checkpoints along the way. Make a single mistake and down to the floor you go. It's really fucking stupid. Deliberately setting yourself a difficult challenge to overcome is one thing, buty why anyone would willingly torture themselves playing an infuriating level for hours a day for what's looking like is going to go on for weeks is a total mystery.

Go apply that level of dedication to literally anything productive.
 
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So we've had the Snow and Rally cars, now there's also gonna be the Desert car... Makes me wonder if eventually they'll also start introducing other iconic cars, like the ones from TM Sunrise and whatnot.
 
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