As part of our continued Community Spotlight, we have today SadHik from ManiaPark!
For those of you who do not know, we have been highlighting some of the most dedicated community websites and members, all of which have been helping to promote ManiaPlanet and our players for years.
We started off our Community Spotlight series by interviewing ManiaActu for our first event, and we will be having more all month. Stay Tuned!
Can you briefly introduce yourself, SadHik?
Hey all, I’m 31 and have a 3 years old daughter. I’m a web developer in a Grenoble web marketing enterprise. I started to play TrackMania 10 years ago in January 2004, and I quickly joined the -Lr- team, one of the most creative in the beginnings of the game. Being interested by 2D & 3D design, when Nadeo announced the possibility to import 3D models in-game, I was part of the motivated guys to try. Back in these days (in 2005), this is http://www.trackmania-carpark.com/ that was launched by Tom and Silicum, year after year I imported models then I started to moderate and finally I took the code and became administrator with my mate wrc. But this is an old story for ManiaPlanet…
Can you give us an introduction to your website, ManiaPark?
When ManiaPlanet was announced, we knew that we have to make something new in order to be able to host more and more things. It’s during the TM² Canyon beta (summer 2011) that we launched ManiaPark (http://www.maniapark.com/index.php) “the ultimate source for ManiaPlanet”, xrayjay at the design and me for the code. The goal was to gather the maximum of players customization, Skins/Models/Mods/Gamemodes/Blocks, without forgetting the quality. We were and still are quality maniacs, the website should not be a catalog of things that anyone can do in 5 minutes. And we keep it right, even if moderators are not always well seen by newcomers, everybody understand fast that learning to make its best is better! Two years later, we host more than a thousand creations for the different ManiaPlanet games.
What are the services provided by ManiaPark?
The main service is the hosting of the creations and the free Locators (these tiny .txt file that allows you to redirect online players directly to the files on our server). This is also the server architecture (created by Guiche our System Admin) that allows to manage all the uploaded files straight to the online game that we provide to the community.
What do you like the most about ManiaPlanet?
I love the openness of the game when creating objects, sadly i don’t have as much time as some years ago to create some myself. But I can’t wait the moment when the community will release the first hit that would allow to recreate an environment from scratch.
What’s next for the future of Maniapark?
There are more and more things on the to-do list, I try to add features in hurry when the community really need something.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
A big thumb up to Nadeo and all this creative community which made me and still makes me dream as a kid.