trackmania posts

After releasing a short and dark teaser trailer a few weeks ago, Ubisoft has finally released a full trailer for Trackmania 2 Canyon, the next game in developer Nadeo's racing game series. The trailer shows off a massive improvement in graphics for the game while still having the huge open air jumps, upside down loops and more that was a staple of the original Trackmania games.

Ubisoft has also issued a press release announcing that closed beta testing for Trackmania 2 Canyon will begin sometime in July. The game will include the map editor and other tools that will also be a part of the entire Maniaplanet service that was first announced last June at E3. The first person shooter game, Shootmania, will enter beta testing "in the coming months" while the RPG game Questmania will have its beta test "at a later date."

While the team at developer Nadeo and publisher Ubisoft has been pretty quiet about the progress of the long awaited Trackmania 2, it looks like the door to more info about the racing game sequel is slowly opening up. Today a teaser site for the game, now apparently titled Trackmania 2 Canyon for some reason, has launched.

Along with the site comes the first teaser trailer for Trackmania 2, shown above, that's ...well, it doesn't show a lot at all. However the site does state that more info on the game will be revealed in the next issues of PC Gamer and Edge print magazine which should be coming in mid-May.

Last June at E3, Ubisoft's press conference announced its plans for Maniaplanet, its PC exclusive platform from developer Nadeo that included the upcoming racing-puzzle sequel Trackmania 2. A beta test for Trackmania 2 was supposed to start in the fourth quarter of 2010 but as you can see that date has come and gone.

Now in a post on Maniaplanet's official forums a Nadeo rep gives a tiny news update, stating, "At the moment, the news can start in March and the latest it can start is April. I am trying to make everybody ready for the new adventure of maniaplanet, and it takes a lot of time." Apparently some of the delay can be attributed to the development team moving to new offices." Ubisoft's next financial report is due to be announced next week and perhaps the publisher will give more info on Maniaplanet's status.

While all of us are waiting to play Trackmania 2, developer Nadeo is still supporting the earlier titles in the racing game series. This week the developer announced some changes that it is making for people who play the free Trackmania Nations Forever in online multiplayer.

Simply put, Nadeo is now restricting direct access for online play of the game to the servers that the developer itself hosts. This is due to the previously announced shut down of Nadeo's in-game ad agency for the game Massive. However, folks who want to sign on to user-run third party multiplayer servers can still do so by adding those servers to the player's favorites list but that list is limited to just three servers per account. According to Nadeo's statement, "The goal of this operation is to better welcome the free players in a place that encourage them more to buy the paying game (TrackMania United Forever) while preserving the capacity for the most enthusiastic players to access to all servers."

[Via Blue's News]

Download the Trackmania Nations Forever game from Big Download

Last June at Ubisoft's E3 press conference, the publisher made an out-of-left-field announcement as it revealed plans for ManiaPlanet, a PC-specific platform that would allow gamers to make and share content for three genres. ManiaPlanet is an outgrowth of Ubisoft's 2009 purchase of Trackmania developer Nadeo.

The E3 press conference said that ManiaPlanet would begin in the fourth quarter of 2010 with beta testing of Trackmania 2, the first full sequel to Nadeo's popular racing game. Since the announcement there's been little word on the status of the game or of ManiaPlanet as a whole. In a recent forum post on the ManiaPlanet message board a Nadeo rep wrote, "the only news I can give is that we are moving forward and that maniaplanet is shaping well." The rep also seemed to hint that the Trackmania 2 beta will likely be pushed back, stating, "from the E3 video, the target is Q42010, and I think it would still be feasible in term of code but to be as efficient as possible on many topics, we will probably take more time before the betas."

A while back Ubisoft announced that it had purchased the French game developer Nadeo, the creators of the Trackmania racing game franchise. Today at their Ubisoft E3 2010 press conference it was announced that Nadeo is working on not just a game but a whole platform that will let people make their own games.

The concept is called Maniaplanet and Ubisoft says it will let people not only use development tools to make content for Trackmania titles but also first person shooters (Shootmania) and RPGs (Questmania). Maniaplanet will be the online social link for these games with players sharing their user-generated content. It will begin late this year with the beta test of Trackmania 2. Shootmania's beta starts in the first quarter of 2011. No date was revealed for Questmania's launch.

The month of October is over and in terms of news, the PC game industry was fairly quiet for the most part. Part of the reason is that we are right in the middle of the holiday season where new game announcements are few but releases are plenty.

Howevee there were some notable news events in the past month. It included the launch of Microsoft's latest OS, the surprise announcement of some PC game ports for two classic console titles and the purchase of a major developer by a major publisher. But which story was the biggest one in October 2009? That's what we are here to decide.

Click on the image above to continue reading The Top 10 PC Game News Stories For October 2009:

GameTap's latest update to their PC game subscription service is a timely one. It's Trackmania United Forever, the racing-puzzle game from French developer Nadeo.Now people who subscribe to GameTap's premium service can download and play the game as much as they want. The game also supports being run on 64-bit operating systems. GameTap recently revealed plans to add more support for 64-bit games in the coming weeks. Nadeo recently announced plans to release Trackmania 2 and a few days ago Ubisoft announced they would be acquiring Nadeo.

Also this week, the action title Total Overdose continues to be available in GameTap's free subscription service tier until October 22.

Nadeo's series of TrackMania games for the PC are highly popular around the world, both in their paid and free versions. The combo of racing game with track editing and puzzle elements makes it a very unique racing game franchise. Now it appears that Nadeo is ready to move Trackmania to the next level with the surprise reveal today of TrackMania 2.

The reveal was made at the Paris Games Festival with a presentation that included two videos. A person managed to stick his camera up to record the presentation (yes, it isn't that good in terms of visual quality) that first showed TrackMania 2's new easy-to-use track editor. Already you can tell that the graphics will be far better than the rather simplistic look of the first games in the series. The second video showed actual gameplay and . . . wow. It looks pretty spectacular to see a game that's on a par with the best looking racing games show cars doing huge jumps and tricks on the road. It sounds like Nadeo is looking at a 2010 release for the game.

[Via Blue's News]