Author Archives: alinoa

Hello Planet #4

This is 2014, and this is the 4th edition of Hello Planet.

Someone at Ubisoft said that something is defined by its top priority, because when you make a decision, you do it with this priority in mind and must be ready to make some sacrifice for others things. I believe that our priority at Nadeo is about the amateur, for creation, sharing or competitions, and that our motivation comes from that we believe into them to be great at it.

And to reach the amateurs, we are soon going to release the universal demo. For them, it will mean to be able to release their own demo, for their own title, and this is why I believe that it is Nadeo most significant release ever.

The universal demo

It all starts when a player is positive about a game and invite someone else to play it. And our role is to empower them to make it as easy, comfortable and interesting as possible to invite them, thanks to 3 pillars: the accessibility, the diversity and quality.

Accessibility

With Maniaplanet 3, we had to make the distribution platform with some known features, like the Store, but with less known like the Content Delivery Network that save the bandwidth and improve the players quality experience when they want to get an amateur title, or to update the inside files to help manage new versions by creators and decrease download size for players.

Now, with the demo, players will be able to play for free, on any title, on the first 48h after the registration on Maniaplanet. After, it will be unlimited for titles with less than 100 concurrent players or one hour per day for the others. The access includes all multiplayer servers, all solo white maps of campaigns and all editors.

In addition, players will even have access directly to the titles you would like them to discover thanks to the universal setup to give a single download link for a setup that will suggest to create two shortcuts on the desktop: One will be for the Title you wish that will automatically install itself; The other is for Maniaplanet, where the 6 primary stations (Stadium, Canyon, Valley, Storm, Elite and Siege) and 3 empty stations for custom titles will welcome any new player.

And thanks to all this, we are finally reaching, after years of work, the goal to enable to have on Maniaplanet, the «do it yourself Nations»

Diversity

With Maniaplanet 3, we made mixmapping, advanced items support, atmospheric settings or simply more blocks in Storm to enhance the mapping diversity.

With the demo, diversity is taking the biggest step in the last decade, since items will directly be usable in any title, as long as they respect some constraints, such as using the title materials or size limit. And with this, we expect even more items for title pack creators to have even more choices of items to add to their packs. And when a custom pack will add more textures, more items can pop up using them directly, since we are working to enable the mods of the custom items.

In addition, as with the mediatracker, it will be possible to edit directly the items parameters and so the actions inside of it.

Quality

Quality depends of many things like the maps, modes, titles, settings, network conditions, moderation, anticheat, services, interfaces, gameplay etc. But all of these depends mainly on 3 things: the system, the server and the game.

The game operating system has deeply improved with Maniaplanet 3. You can now reach the station menu directly from the home button in the system bar, you can browse servers from the overlay of stations or the buddy system keep your messages received when offline etc. These are works that required a lot of our time. For the demo, it was easier to go toward a more welcoming interface like a simple welcome frame and a more homogeneous interface style

The server is key since it is about a host that look to select quality, and part of the challenge of Maniaplanet 3 was to make the hosting of matchmaking simpler. It was a key step also to enable future expansion of Maniaplanet around the world, where others players can host in their country, in their own language, with their own choice of maps, with their own rules, server manager etc. And until then, for the demo, we will have a specific attention to host first servers where there is a need of an entry level of quality to welcome the players.

For the quality of the games, I expect both Trackmania & Shootmania to make gap thanks to the demo. For Trackmania, it shall greatly benefit from the accessibility to the Trackmania 2 title in demo, as well as track diversities thanks to the embedded custom items in maps, as well as the various great titles made by the community. And for Shootmania, which is still younger, a next big step will be to carry out an operation named “Power Up!” in memory of the first major update for Trackmania made for it’s international release.

Next Big Steps

Shootmania Storm “Power Up!”

This operation will start this week, with some key components such as gameplay update, competitions abilities to provide ladder points and works on major modes. After, it will be based on regular updates and adjustments up to next year. The goal is to have an indisputable FPS champion to welcome the noobs, gamers and competitors from around the world.

Others

It’s still too early to talk. I can only say that the Nadeo team is bigger and stronger than ever to bring you these next steps and that being at Ubisoft helps us a lot to reach our vision. It is a great company, and thanks to it, the whole project is more ambitious than ever to go forward and toward progression of the games, us, you and all the others we expect to welcome one day into Maniaplanet.

Some of the current more popular games in the world originally comes from amateurs passion for innovation. These are are the ones that we all wish to see contribute since “amateur” comes from « love » and to love is just cool: end of story!

Hylis

ESL: Two cups on TM² Stadium next weekend: RPG Cup and Nascar Cup

RPG CUP 6

RPG Nightcup #6

ESL will be hosting a new RPG Cup on Saturday 15th Ferbruary at 20:00 CET. Signup open until 19:30 CET: http://www.esl.eu/eu/tm2_stadium/1on1/rpg/nc_6/signup/

In order to take part in this Nightcup, you have to install the Trackmania 2 RPG Title Pack! Type in the Maniaplanet browser: TrackManiaRPG and click on “download”.

Nascar1Stadium

Nascar Cup #1

The first edition of the Nascar championship is starting on Sunday 16th February at 30:30 CET. Registration is over but you can follow matches on ESL.

 

Maniaplanet Update #3: Information

 

Hylis, the Nadeo CEO, has given information about the Maniaplanet Update # 3 on the maniaplanet forums.

The schedule would be the following one:

  • In March, one update based on making the existing game & system more solid, quick fixes updates after and starting the beta for the Action maker.
  • In April, for the first anniversary of Shootmania, release the universal demo maniaplanet.

The update content should be the following one:

  • most popular titles listed & simply downloadable
  • a better navigation interface (quick overlays on all station & calling the stations menu from anywhere)
  • improved Maniaplanet UI (buddies, loading time, quit/minimize shortcuts)
  • mixmapping & new blocs for Shootmania
  • action maker & improved AI capacities
  • NetVision, a layer over the netcode to have maximum speed of vision of other players in Shootmania
  • a small innovation into Shootmania gameplay that can ask some more skill to master
  • a simple new mode for TM2, made for the only multi-environment title that will support Maniaplanet 3 atm.
  • more capacities for items (lights, checkpoints)
  • more capacities for scripting (playsound, minimaps, optimizations)
  • universal demo (basically play 1 hour of SM per day for free or 3×20 mn of TM2, but that may change over time)

The goal is really to empower the players and to open the access to Maniaplanet to increase the number of players.

You can read the full message of Hylis on the maniaplanet forums and share your feedbacks on the forums.