Hey Guys,

finally I decided how to go on with the blog post: Every monday you will receive a bigger Blog-Post with different topics, and maybe from time to time a little surprise ;-)

Here a little overview about the topics today:

#Community Question – Talking about the future of Trackmania

#A new month started – Time for the MTC!

#Random Stuff - # Superduper stuntcompo for swags, YOLO-edition! New Nadeo-Recs

Community Question

Again I asked a lot of people one or two questions. How does Trackmania look like in 2018? It was a "What if"-Question, no one knows if there will be a active TM-Community or a new TM-Game in 2018. What about the environments? The graphics? There are still many open questions, so I hope you guys will discuss the future of this game in the comments!

Infi: I do hope the game developers learn and make the borders for creativity disappear, which means they make it possible to change block's length, height and width and add more blocks, moving blocks and the possibilty to create own ones and mix everything with everything. Apart from that the game is awesome as it is, thus there's nothing more to add in my opinion.

Will you buy it? Depending on the activity of good old TMUF/NF- exchange, i'll decide whether to buy it or not.

Pascow: It's still the good old stadium with some new features and much better graphics and fixed driving-bugs.

Will you buy it? If I still have fun playing tm then, I'll buy it for sure.

dan!el: It's the ultimate hybrid of TMF and TM2. The most innovative feature of it - custom car characteristics for every track you make, so driving experience from each race is unique. Another game features are astonishing graphics and ultra realistic sounds.

Will you buy it? For sure I'll buy it!

Cephid: I can't say anything to the look, as I also was suprised by the look of Canyon. Will I buy it? That depends on the price, but probably yes. I would probably buy.

Enryx: For me it should have 2 Envis from TMUF, 2 from TM² and 2 new ones. Same TM spirit: no collisions between vehicles, Timeattack and round online matches/servers. TMUF modes (race stunt platform puzzle) and not a Maniaplanet-like organization (4 example you buy the game and you have the 6 envs, not like buying the 2nd/3rd/... env in the future).

Will you buy it? Before, I would try to get access to the closed beta (as I did for TM2), to free try the game, understand my feeling about the new envs, etc.
When beta is over it depends if I liked it or not, I'll buy it or not. If the game would be like I guessed (with "old" envs) I'd probably buy it (at least I'd play more those old envis than the new ones^^). If it's all brand new, it depends on my impressions (example: I didnt buy TM2 after betatesting, not my drive-style, etc etc ;/)

Lapos: I didn't buy TM2 cos there is no island car, and i won't buy any future versions of TM if there is no island car.

MoaraShira: Of course I would buy it.

!nFernOxid: A good question. If Nadeo release some more Tm's, what I really think, I hope they will release a new stadium version. With a Trackmania in the year 2018 I think there will be much more- and less buggy blocks in the editor and so mapper can use even more blocks for creative tracks. But all in all I don't think many things will be changed especially in the online game, because Nadeo want to keep the game ''for guys with skill''. Maybe some new maps with new blocks for offline hunting, that’s it.

Will you buy it? I don't think I'll buy the game. It's not because the game isn't my taste or something like that it's because in 6 years I'm 21 so I think I won't have time to play such a game even if it's great. Nevertheless I think we should us get surprised by Nadeo in the following years.

Pi | agent: Mhmm...thats a damn hard question. Already couldnt imagine how the trackmania 2 will be But yea..I hope it has same Stadium part in it. For me its the best of all in trackmania. Furthermore I think there could be new environments. But what for new environments? Mhm..Driving on planets? Moreover it should have new different blocks for the editor, a bigger selection. Also it would be great if there is an extra programm to mix own blocks. Yea..thats how I think a future version could look like And if I will buy it? Mhm..it would be great if there would be a free version of it, ofc with some restriction. And if I like it than and still drive tm I will buy it for sure!

Kadzio: Nadeo made a few "TrackMania" series and then a "United" version. It won't be a big surprise to see something like this. Now they made "TrackMania 2 Canyon", I expect something like "TrackMania 2 Offroad" and after some versions "TrackMania 2 United".

What is the worst scenario that can happen? In my opinion the worst scenario is that: Nadeo still makes "ShootMania" and does with it something like with "TrackMania".

Zogger: The worst scenario would be that they change the spirit of TM too much like they did with TM2 which I personally totally disliked. It would be cool though to have some more blocks and to be able to create blocks yourself. Also a "realtime multiplayer editor" would rly rock, so you could build tracks together at the same time.

What is the best scenario that may happen?

Fabio_m: Well I don't believe technology will envolve so much in 6 years but in the best case scenario if technology really evolves then it would be cool to see a virtual reality experience in trackmania, thing about some VR goggles and you siting on an hidraulic chair that gives you the same feeling as you would feel if you drove those cars Something like the movie tron but with tm cars would be great too.

Quat: Well, I don´t need a completely new Trackmania. An update like from TMN ESWC to Nations Forever would be great. This means, lots of new blocks, but no new driving-physics, maybe some new road- and platformblocks and so on. Trackmania and the Stadium Environment belong together as nothing else. Furthermore, they should optimize the graphics. I don´t need a TM with Crysis-graphics, but it often feels like TM doesn´t support my ATI-GPU, which means I have bad looking shadows, totally unconstant framerates (if VSync is disabled) and some minor graphic-problems.
All in all; I don´t need a new TM, but an update would be nice (hopefully earlier than 2018).

DrKris: I think the handling and speed are same, but graphics have become better, its very realistic. It would have rain, mist, sunshine cloudy weather, you can choose it when you have choosed the mood for the track. It would have more blocks to build a map and MT you can make much cooler too. I would like it like TMNF2 and TMUF2, then you only need to buy the TMUF2 so TMNF2 is free.

I agree with many opinions here and I'm glad to see so many views here. What is the best scenario that may happen for you? Do you think there will be an update or even a new stadium-mode? Actually there are many possibilities to make a better TrackMania, but the question which no one of us is able to answer (at least I think so :-D) is, if Nadeo is going to do something like this. I'm curious to see more thoughts in the comment section!

MTC:

5x5-Area was the theme of the last months MTC on TMUF where tracks must be built in a 5x5 area. The only limit on height was the editor limit. A difficult theme for sure, maybe even harder for environments like coast to build a nice map here, but creativity in Trackmania makes everything possible, ask Joost :-D 27 authors were inspired by this theme and created great new tracks. Only the judging process isn't finished yet, which is absolutly understandable by this huge amount of maps!

On TMNF the authors challenge was to build a track for the theme Contrast and you had to use contrasting surface changes/transitions in your track. Five submitted tracks are the result and congratulations to the winners Pascow & Shox with their duo-fullspeeder "/2estricted II"! In contrast to the TMUF-Exchange the low amount of participants this time is obvious, but hopefully this will change in the next month and we see more than 25 participants in both exchanges!

The theme for the MTC September in the TMNF-Exchange is "Flip it". So gogo, build and see your car spinning through the air!

Random Stuff:

*Zogger and Sapphiron are hosting a competition on TMNF-X randomly with funny challenges and great scoringsheets. This time it was called # Superduper stuntcompo for swags, YOLO-edition! and your task was to build a you-only-live-once-swag-scumbag-track. Three guys participated but these hilarious ideas deserve more attention :) Zogger decided that there is no winner this time. Who needs winners when you have SWAG#?

*Some new Nadeo-Records were uploaded in the last days in both exchanges. In TMUF-X Jadis, Jason and Reija drove records on the maps Puzzle A5, TMN Bonus A-3 and TMN Race G-0. Reija also drove a new WR on A06 Obstacle in the TMNF-Exchange, but racehans got it back just a few days later. So he got his 12th WR on a Nadeo-Map in TMNF back! Sick job!

That's it for today, live your life, you only die once, have a nice day,

Sky

Heya TMX!

No time today, but an important question. You saw now some of the articles and my question is "What would you like to read in future here? Which articles did you enjoy? Which were somehow boring?"

Thanks a lot, guys,

Sky

Hey Guys!

It's saturday (E: Now sunday, damn, time is going fast) and you'll receive the news from friday since I was busy yesterday - sorry for that.

I planned to review some tracks of the last week and give you some tips for maps you maybe hadn't notice yet.

Ic: consciousness by IC: Vorobey < - TMUF-X

I think environment-mixing is always somehow impressive,especially in this track. Some known mixed are the Stadium-Car in the Island- or Coast-Environmen. But a track where you drive with the stadium-car in the Bay-Environment isn't seen that often. The most awarded combination can be found in the track Stratos by eyebo with 22 awards. And Ic: consciousness from this week should be able to beat this number of awards. The map os about 24 seconds long and is nicely huntable for everyone who likes easy fs-maps. It is a jumpy experience through the city-scenery and sometimes you wonder how well the drops and jumps are fitting for the stadium-car.

The author released only a few tracks until now, but he shows us with this track, that he has the potential to be a great builder, who deserves some more attention. Give it a try! :-)

Definitly also worth a try:

• SuperSmooth! 2 by .ivi' <3 - Well, surprise, surprise, it's supersmooth.
• Bound by winter - Paradise for Fullspeed-Pros with many Speedslides and tricks.
• Nothing to fear by iRoc - Scared of the hard driving-settings in the Coast-Envi? Then you have nothing to feat here, since it's a pretty easy coast-track for all those who like to hunt or try out coast-tracks. 
• >>Small islanD 6x6 by IC: Vorobey< - Again a track by him, again a nice mix. Snow-Car in Stadium-Envi - sometimes a bit buggy, but it works surprisingly well and the transitions are just awesome.

See you tomorrow (today) with the series from Saturday.

Sky

Hello ppl!

Just a quick information at first: I was working during the last hour at the article for today and I was going to present the article in a nice made picture, but hell no, Gimp crashed o.O

So I decided to present my project for today in a boring text, so you will be able to read this as soon as possible. This time I had a question to more than one person. I asked many people: "Why do you play Trackmania?" Obviously there are many games which were published after Trackmania and which were maybe worth to give them a try, but many of you still play TM since 2, 3, 5 or even more years.

My question to the Community was:

Why do you play Trackmania?

Sleepwalker: I actually play it, because of the fun while driving tracks, building - you can always create something new and unseen & the community (tm & tmx :>)

Basbaas: I am playing trackmania because it is extremely fun, especially when playing with friends. Not only the gameplay itself, but trackmania has one of the most amazing communities I have ever encountered online.

Didi: I play TM because it's a lot of fun and because of the possibility to drive and build maps it's not getting boring.

PapyChampy: The fact that you can build your own tracks seduced me immediately, and I never got off the hook ever since. There is so much to discover in TM : the incredible community, racing online, creating new content...

Rodeo: It makes me so happy when I play it!

Sriver: Well, I guess the main reason why I still enjoy playing TM is that it never gets boring. Every day, players build new tracks that others can compete on.
Also, the track editor offers so many possibilities that you can always try your hand at something new - a track style that you have never built before, another environment or car etc.

Wally: I'm playing TMNF for one and only reason: The awesome community and the fierce competition between the best players in the world.

DarkBringer: Probably there are many reasons playing tm for approximate 5 years. But I think the main reason for my long term motivation is that I am obsessed to become better and better.

iRoc: I'm playing Trackmania since Nations came out. Soon I discovered TM Original and Sunrise, and they were even better. I just love to build tracks, it's a bit like Lego for adults. There are always new possibilities to put the blocks together. My motivation to play TM after all this years is definitely the editor.

Chalwhen: I'm playing TM becuase it's very great to make your own creations, which you can upload on TMX and maybe you see them on a server. The seven envis are varied and the style how the car drives is from envi to envi different, that makes it very funny to play TM!

CarlJr.: I'm playing it cause first, its fun, 2, the community is really sick and because i like to compete against the best players.

Pascow: I play trackmania because, first of all it is hella fun for me, even after 3 years of playing, and because of the amazing community I learned to know better in the meantime.

Vorobey: I'm playing tm mostly 'cause this game needs great skill from you, it's not a bad-a** COD or other games. It also needs creativity in trackbuilding and screenmaking. Also lots of fun playing with friends) And of course i try to make good tracks, but very few users watch them...

Winter: I play TM because of the creative aspect. Or "cuz I can build shit" if you will.

Rafal: Because you never get bored of playing this game.

Deng: After a hard day at work, it´s a pleasure to drive trackmania. It makes me feel good again.

Sliver: I drive tm because everybody have the same chance to drive a track with same features... the bugs and somthing tricks are normallly but not even better... i like it when you cruse on a way and you hunt a thousandlls on a very good line^^ But tmx is so versatile, thats really nice to drive a lot of maps, anybody means its good for folk^^ I´ve fun on a lot of tracks, another track´s likes work... anybody likes shaekspear and the next likes blackbeer.

Mastermind: I play TM, because I've never seen so much free space for imagination, creativity and racing in a single game.

Dengel: The community, The uncountable maps and the challenge this game offers every time u play it to improve your times... that are my reasons.

Calum: I play trackmania because it's exciting, you can always do a better time and you get motivated to, also, it allows you to be creative and edit replays, tracks, skins, mods and such. But that wouldn't be enough to play forever. The big reason I still open tm sometimes is the community in general, and more specificly tmx. That's what's been keeping me on tm for the last year or so.

Lapos: The main reason for me is the fact that i can build or download tracks. Other racing games has specific tracks which cannot be changed.

Down: I'm playing TM because it's a great community and it's always fun to chat and joke around with other players, especially with my clanmates.

FrostBeule: I first and foremost play TrackMania Nations because of its competitive spirit as an eSport as I am a hardcore eSports fan. However I also enjoy the game because of its creative possibilities, be it through making maps, skins, videos, scripts or other things aswell. But what I enjoy the most about the game is when the competitivity and the creativity goes hand in hand and co-operate with each-other. I find this the main reason why I think TrackMania Nations got such potential as an eSport, and why I keep playing the game 6 years after I first started.

A big thank you to all the guys who answered so quickly, it was pretty interesting to see the different motivations of different players.

I hope you enjoyed this "interview"!

Regards,

Sky

Searching old and enjoyable maps is always a challenge, 344,955 + 183,087 tracks on both exchanges, I guess there are thousands of tracks which deserve more attention. Well, nevertheless I made a decision for one map. It's a SpeedTech or mainly Techtrack, published in July 2010. It's called Li(f)e and it's built by avarice who seems to be inactive now, but back in 2010 he created some well-hunted Techtracks like The Enrichment Center or Feeling a Moment. Two maps with more than twenty awards. Li(f)e got "only" six awards, but you may know that you can't always judge the quality of a map by its number of award.

A great spot in the name is the mixture of the words Lie and Life. I noticed this pretty lately, but it's actually a great name and probably you can discuss for hours about several parts of this name. And probably the writers of "The Truman Show" were inspired by this name :-D Well, probably not, but the name is still great.

Back to the track itself.

Information:

Length: 44 seconds

Style: Basic Tech, easy built, not many blocks used, some speedy parts.

WR: 43.89 by Avarice

Driving the track:

On your first try you won't be able to drive a good time at this track since you won't be able to find the fitting trackroute in the first 2-3 tries here probably. But once you got it this map is flowing as hell. The scenery isn't anything special, and you drive all the time on road blocks, but diversity isn't the point why you'll like this track. Obviously it's not a track to watch and enjoy a beautiful creation. It's just the fact that this is a great-driveable map and I wanna see a new WR on this map here this week, gogo :-D

Tomorrow you won't see anything new here, but don't worry. I'm back at thursday with a big interview :V

Regards,

Sky

Hey guys!

Where to start at a mixed monday? Maybe with two sick records in the nadeo and classic-leaderboard driven by two dignitas-guys. Guess what, one of them is Karjen :-D The other one is Carl Jr. who drove a new WR on the probably most-hunted ESL-Map. He managed to drive a 54.13 on ESL-Hockolicious so the Top 10 times here on TMX are now in a section of 0.10 seconds on a 54 second-long track. Moreover Karjen finally got a Nadeo-WR back on TMNF-X! He drove a 26.72 on C01-Race and took the WR from eSuba.tween who still have a 26.74. Check this recs out, they are worth watching it a near perfection ;-)

Send me your funniest TMX-story!

Something funny happened to you a long time ago or just recently? A great comment or awesome situations?

Send me this moment via PM so we can share it with everyone! :-)

Thanks for the tips concerning the environments, the good luck wishes and the support. It's great to see that the community supports the blog.

Good night :-)

Wazzup guys!

Just a short news today for you. It's about the first series for our "Series Saturday" in the next seven weeks and maybe I can need your help ;)

During the next seven weeks, you'll get a presentation of all Trackmania-environments here! I'll start with "Bay" next week. So make sure to send me all bugs, facts and tricks you know concerning this environment.

I'm out for today

Sky :-)

Welcome to my small update and information section this friday :)

Just to keep you up-to-date I'll post some plans for the future, some ideas and maybe some interesting stuff.

You can expect:

• An information about upcoming categories/episodes here in this blog.
• Question for ideas and tips.

First of all: On a regulary friday you will only find the first point of the list here: A summary about the new tracks of the week.

Now some Questions:

*2-3 (longer) articles every week or daily news?

*Do you have special categories/articles in mind which you really wanna read?

Categories:

• Every Saturday: A part of special series ;-)
• Mixed Monday: Different stuff, small categories like new Nadeo-WRs, esports, etc.
• Old Tuesday: Presentation of an old and great but unknown track.
• Wednesday: Part for Guest texts
• Talking thursday: Interviews
• New Friday: Presentation of a new track in detail and a list with new cool tracks from the week.
• Moreover: Authors in Focus, Classic Map-Updates, Community-News and more

I'm excited to hear your ideas! :-)

Greets,

Sky

Welcome, good evening and hello TMX!

Maybe some of you guys remember the "Author Showcase Project" by Natzke here some years ago. He and other kindful helpers presented some known and unknown authors in an interview-based article. For my taste this is more a interview with a presentation of a user of TMX, but the title sounds like a presentation of an author, a track-builder. So I'm changing the concept a bit and I'll set my focus also on the work the user did in trackbuilding. But don't worry! Normal interviews are going to follow soon ;-)

Episode 1: Alchemy

The first author I'm going to present is "Alchemy" who is active on TMUF-X and TMNF-X. He uploads his stadium-tracks in both exchanges and also publishes some snow or island-tracks, but his focus is set on stadium building.

Personal description

Name: Tom Steinfellner

Age: 15

First time he played TM: When he was 8 or 9 years old he discovered a version of ESWC on a disk from a TV-magazine at home. He directly installed the game and fell in love with it.

Clan: Alchemy is playing in the "Friends and Buddies"-Team (fab). Mainly they play fun tracks, which are built by their clanleader.

Environments: Mainly he is playing stadium ("what else"), but also snow and island sometimes.

Some words about TMX: You always get in contact with new people, who are all special on their own with their own characteristics. You try out tracks and give your feedback as much as it is possible. If you invest your time in playing a track and writing a feedback, you'll get your work back from other people who try out your tracks and tell you some tips for improvement and whether they like your track or not. Simply this awesome community <3

Inspiration: Not a special trackbuilder. "Mainly I'm getting my inspiration from simple tracks, as you can see on my own tracks^^"

Trackbuilding time: For the whole package (40 seconds long track, scenery, testing, little stuff and mt-work) he needs about 5 days to build a track, but this is different from track to track of course.

Focus on Trackbuilding:

Alchemy @ TMUF-X:

In comparison to the Nations Forever-Exchange Alchemys tracks on TMUF-X haven't got that much awards. His most successful track is the sweet little snow-track ''"Morning Hunter"''. But also some of his tracks here don't have any awards. So give them a try, they are definitly worth it.

Morning Hunter:

A track with hunting potential! The WR is 25.22 by Acid - actually a pretty nice time, but probably a improvement is possible (as always in Trackmania, that's why I love the game :D). So give it a try and hunt some nice times! The track is built in a easy way so the hunting potential is pretty hig. Only the start is maybe a bit unsmooth sometimes, which is caused by the interesting using of the pipe. As always you can expect some nice combined transitions by this talented builder here!

Scenery is gone...:

The second track which deserves a try is the island-pf-track "Scenery is gone" by him. I have to admit that it is built without a lot of inspiration in the end part, but the beginning, the first 20 seconds, are simply great. In this part he combines smoothness with nice pipe rides and loops.

Alchemy @ TMNF-X:

Most of his tracks are uploaded on both exchanges since he is building stadium fs-tracks in general. Besides many BOTW-tracks he was able to construct a track which reached a LB-Rating of 96,925! The hunting potential is higher than the Burj Al-Arab here :o He published 24 tracks until now and these tracks got 26 awards on average with a highest amount of 52 awards for his track ''"Revival"''. All these people who awarded his tracks can't be wrong: He is a great builder with a nice diversity in his tracks for sure.

nOw.:

A dream for all the people who love SDs and hunting at all. With a LB-Rating of 96.925 it is the second highest rated track at TMNF-X at the moment. Besides the SDs you'll also find an awesome smoothness in this track, so at all you can say that it is a composition and not only a track. Lovely!

The Speed Hunt-Series:

This series by him contains five easy huntable tracks on TMNF-X which are mainly ruled by »Rockz7ar<3 who got 3 WRs over there. Also these tracks are hunted a lot and every single track of these series got a very own touch with oldschool-elements and nice smooth jump.

This was the first episode of "Authors in Focus". I hope you like the concept, I'm looking forward to your feedback!

The 2nd March 2010.. well that's actually a long time ago.

It is the date of the last article here. It was an interview with Golo, a RPG-builder. In this time I wasn't active on TMX, and I was a bit sad as I saw that the blog was inactive when I discovered TMX. People like HawkGer, Velocity or ziem0n posted articles from march 2009 till march 2010. People which aren't that active or even inactive now. I thought to myself that it is time for a revival of the TM blog!

My name is Martin, at TMX and ingame I'm named "Sky" and it seems to me that maybe 2% of all Trackmaniacs are named "Sky". A bit annoying, but hey, who cares?

I'm from Germany, Hanover and since I'm working, the blog-posts will be published mainly in the evening or a bit later during the night - for those guys who are from europe. I like to write, to talk, pizza, the german city "Freiburg", trains and soccer/football. Actually I'm happy with my job and my life, since I'm able to work at the things I like (besides girls ). I'm playing tracks from TMX since a pretty long time mainly for fun, but I started in the beginnings of 2012 to be active in the community. Hopefully some of you around here now me. I'm neither a great builder nor a great driver, but fun is the most important thing in your free time and I have a lot of fun with Trackmania.

You can expect:

• Daily news - at least I hope so - only at sunday I won't write a new article.  Sometimes the articles are long, sometimes they are short.
• Interesting interviews, series and news.
• Updates about recently set Nadeo-Recs, the funniest TMX-moment of the week (requests would be great) and a lot of more informative and fun categories.

Well, as you can see my english isn't perfect and I have to write a lot on my own for the blog to make you guys happy. But it is great for me to do this, so don't worry. I just hope that you are as happy as me about the revival of the TMX blog. If you also wanna write an article for this blog just ask me, guest articles are always great!

Tomorrow I'm going to publish an author showcase, so stay interested, visit the TMX Blog, leave a comment and constructive feedback.

Greetings

Sky