TrackMania

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TrackMania

TrackMania is a series of racing games for Windows, which include stunting with cars, track-building, elements from puzzle games, as well as elements testing the players' dexterity. It was developed by the French team Nadeo for the PC. Instead of following the usual trend of choosing a set car and track for playing in the game, the TrackMania games allow the player to create their own tracks using a simple "Block" process in the spirit of the 1990 game Stunts.

In contrast with most other racing games, the TrackMania series lets the player race a track as many times as he wants, until the time runs out. He can choose to respawn at any time possible, due to an ending up upside down, or even just because the start didn't go optimally. Although in multiplayer games multiple cars race on the same track, they cannot actually collide, or influence each other in other ways.

There are currently three games in the series: TrackMania (or TrackMania Original), TrackMania Sunrise (or TrackMania Sunrise eXtreme), and the freeware TrackMania Nations. A fourth game, TrackMania United has been announced on June 30 2006. ^* There is also a small, promotional online game using Macromedia Flash, called Mini TrackMania.

Tracks

TrackMania includes some pre-made tracks the player can race on to unlock "Coppers", TrackMania's unique currency. The player can use these Coppers to buy different building blocks, simply called "Blocks", for his track, including: regular road, checkpoints, long bends, loop-de-loops, and jumps, which all snap to a grid automatically. Regular roads can be dragged to create straight sections as well as 90 degree corners. Most other Blocks are automatically connected by placing them next to each other. There are three themes, or environments to choose from: Rally, Alpine, and Speed. Each environment has a unique car for the player to race in.

Cars

TrackMania has three styles of cars: Rally superminis, Alpine 4x4s, and Speed muscle cars. Each has numerous skins making a total of 87 different cars. By using a bitmap graphics editor players can create their own skins, or modify the originals to suit their tastes.

Other features

TrackMania features a network option, which lets players compete via LAN or over the internet. Also, the game's website allows players to upload their created tracks or skins for others to download and use on their copy of the game.

The community-driven site TM Exchange contains a large number of tracks for both the original and sequel. Skins and 3D car models are also available from the community, TrackMania Carpark being the most prolific for car models and TM Skincenter for skins ranging from the original TrackMania Sunrise car models to the ones available from the TrackMania Carpark website.

TrackMania Sunrise

The second game in the series, TrackMania Sunrise, features three environments: Island, Bay, and Coast, again each with its unique car to fit the environment's characteristics. Island features very fast sports cars which can make very sharp turns on mostly wide roads. Bay features very bouncy cars with less traction, making accidental oversteering more prone to happen. Coast features relatively slow cars on small roads. Due to very little traction, Coast cars can be used for drifting through corners. The game was built on an overhauled engine for better visuals and internet connectivity. The tracks can now include panels with skinnable advertisement panels. The game also features two new gameplay modes:

Platform gives the player a start point, a finish point, and mandatory checkpoints / restart points between; the players task is to finish the race, restarting as few times as possible.

Crazy returns to the race course, but this time pits the player against a few ghosts.

TrackMania Sunrise has further additions over the original, some of which were later added in the Original edition of the original game. The player can import new car models and customize many more aspects of the game. The game features improved internet connectivity with a peer-to-peer system that allows players to share their car models, skins, and more. The new track editor uses the mouse primarily, as opposed to the keyboard-driven original, and makes special effects like displaying text and changing the camera possible using Media Tracker.

Recently an expansion pack called eXtreme was released. The game was also repackaged as TrackMania Sunrise eXtreme. The pack adds multiple pieces to enhance the speed and stuntiness of the game. A new mode, Stunt mode, has been added, where the player has to obtain points by doing stunts, such as spinning the car around in mid air and doing flips. After a set amount of time has expired, earned points are quickly drained, so the player should try to finish with the best score, and before time expires.

The demo can be downloaded from its website.

Mini TrackMania is a simple, online, Macromedia Flash game developed by Inbox Digital to promote TrackMania Sunrise. The game is played with a side on, 2D perspective, and only has one track. The track layout is limited, featuring only jumps and a nitrous boost on both sides of the road, and a backdrop of a few islands in the background. Only two buttons are used to play the game, the Left and Right buttons on the keyboard, which are assigned to Brake and Accelerate respectively.

The object of the game is for the player try score as many points as possible by jumping off a series of ramps without crashing the car on landing or failing to clear the gap. The key to successfully clear the ramps is to keep the car's speed within two points indicated on the car's speedometer. The two points change position and get closer to each other after every jump.

TrackMania Original

TrackMania Original is a new version of the TrackMania that runs on the Sunrise-engine. It features over 10 new blocks, from the PowerUp! and (unreleased) SpeedUp!-patches, and some functionalities from Sunrise, like ad-panels and Media Tracker effects. This version also allows the player to import 3D models for the cars, which can also be skinned. It was released free of charge for owners of TrackMania in the form of a patch/expansion pack, and will also be available to buy as a cheap collector's edition in stores with an extra present.

The demo can be downloaded from its website.

TrackMania Nations

Nadeo released TrackMania Nations partly as a promotion for the Electronic Sports World Cup, and also for TrackMania itself. This free, stand-alone game has one new environment, Stadium, and many features also in Sunrise, including the advertisement panels, which show ads from sponsors streamed from the internet. The game contains 100 single player tracks, the earlier ones relatively simple in both design and gameplay, but it is largely pitched as an online game. One of the main attractions is the leader board, in which people compete for the best times and points. The top 5 players can be seen on the homepage. Due to the extremely high popularity of Nations (there were almost 1 million registered online players within weeks of its launch), the leader board was taken down soon after launch, and improved to meet demand.

It was recently announced by the ESWC that TrackMania Nations now has over six million downloads, and is one of the most played online games today - on a par with games such as World of Warcraft.

The game can be downloaded from its website.

TrackMania United

On June 30 2006 TrackMania United was announced. The game is basically all TrackMania games built into one game, although it is currently not clear if the game will include all the content from the earlier games, or if it will act as some kind of shell for any games the player may already own, perhaps even future installments of the series. TrackMania United will feature a peer-to-peer system so players can more easily share custom content, and a unified ranking system. The engine has been updated to include a pre-lighting accelerated system for more realistic shadows on high end systems. The original Nations environment will have double the amount of blocks featured in the free version, including for instance muddy tracks.

Controversy

TrackMania uses a controversial copy protection / anti-reverse engineering system called StarForce, which silently installs with all TrackMania games including the free TrackMania Nations. Problems including CD-ROM drive slowness and computer crashes have been linked to StarForce, leading to vehement discussions, which also appear in the TrackMania community.

2003 computer and video games | Racing computer games | Puzzle computer and video games | Multiplayer online games | Windows games

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