TrackMania
From TM Wiki
TrackMania is a serie of a car driving game series made by the french studio Nadeo and published in the various countries by Focus, Deep Silver, Enlight or Digital Jesters. TrackMania games are arcade with no ambition to be driving simulations.
Contents |
Concept
A TrackMania game is composed of very different environments. Each environment features its own car model, so all players have the same gameplay. The only key for victory is their driving skill.
The concept comes from toy circuits from childhood, including the building phase of the play. The main goal of the game is to reach the finish line after validating all the checkpoints in a minimum timespan. There are also different modes with different goals.
TrackMania is a precision game, and many portions of circuits are hard to pass. Considering this extra difficulty the game doesn't detect collisions with the others player's car, only with the landscape and the roads sliders. Cars can go through others without crashing themselves, so nobody can fail another player's ride. Even when you drive in team mode, only your own drinving skills determines your victory : TrackMania is a perfect-driving game.
The versions
- TrackMania Original (November, 2003)
- TrackMania Sunrise (April, 2005)
- TrackMania Nations ESWC (January, 2006)
- TrackMania United (November, 2006)
- TrackMania Nations Forever (April, 2008)
- TrackMania United Forever (April, 2008)
Game and creation
Since the beginning, Nadeo wanted to make TrackMania into a performant creating tool easily usable by any player. Thus, the game can be deeply extended thanks to the track editor that allows everyone to build its own map using the many available blocks for each environment.
Blocks are varied enough in order to let the builders make many different kind of tracks. You dislike one track, you'll surely like another one. As a track is contained in a very small file, you can simply exchange them with your friends or any players in the community.
There are many other creativity ways than tracks. Also, you can paint or import car skins to make your orignal car, but this will not change the gameplay. There are also graphic mods, race replays, race movies, that you can create or use existing ones.
Solo
TrackMania features a full one-player game, generally splitted into official and community campaigns. There is no AI in the game, but only ghosts recorded by the track creator that you can use for reference to get a medal. There are four kinds of medal: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Nadeo/Author. When you get the last of these, it means, in the official campaigns, that you won against the game designers !
Campaigns are themselves made of different game modes:
- Race : You drive the fastest you can till you reach the finish line to beat medal times.
- Puzzle : Reflexion game that makes you lay missing blocks of a track to link all the checkpoints, then drive to the finish line. (not in TrackMania Nations ESWC)
- Platform : You try to finish the track respawning the less you can (not in TrackMania Nations ESWC)
- Crazy : The goal is to beat all the adversaries successively. (TrackMania Sunrise only)
- Stunt : You make stunts which gives you points according to their difficulty. (not in TrackMania Nations ESWC)
- Survival : You must finish 1st or 2nd of your 3 opponents on a tracks serie. If you lose one round, you lose everything. Seems like Sunrise's Crazy mode. (TrackMania Original only)
Hot seat
Hot Seat mode allows several people to play in turn on the same computer, and the goal is to make the best time. When a player beats the others, the one that made the worst time must try to beat the best one till his allowed time or amount of tries is totally spent. The game ends when only one player stays in competition.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer is what makes TrackMania one of the most entertaining game ever made. In order to play against other trackmaniacs from all around the world, you must join or create a server.
The network mode is designed to allow you creating a server on a local network (LAN). You need one computer for each player, but only one CD is mandatory as it's only used for the Starforce genuine test at game startup.
Internet mode is the better way to join the huge TrackMania community. You can drive online against players of various skill, on a serious competitive server or on another funny one where chatting is the main activity.
These two modes features the same game types:
- Time Attack : to make the better time on one round.
- Round : like Formula 1 competitions: totalise more points than your opponents.
- Lap : make the more laps you can before the allowed time is spent.
- Team : round mode where the players are divided in two teams.
- Stunt : get the maximum amount of points making acrobatic stunts.
