Seems noponyelse has had the opportunity to talk about this game yet so, I will get on with it! Trackmania is a series of games from developer NADEO who is currently owned by UBISoft (Rayman, Anno, etc) and has, from it's inception been a very fun and interesting property. To begin with, Tracks and other content found within the game are user generated! A comprehensive track editor has been available in all of the recent iterations of the game and while limited, can generate some pretty fun racing environments. In the most recent one, Trackmania 2: The Canyon, we get to see NADEO's community inspired design fully realized! Check out this link for a full trailer for the Games Release. Be advised, when it says 'in-game footage,' it's not lying. This is what the game looks like on my 2010 computer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77r-ghIOQso So, what's all that good for? Well, if you've got a fantasy racing streak but still need four tires scratching underneath you, Trackmania delivers! The canyon pieces all nest together to form a functional racing surface and everything has a collision mesh! I've even seen tracks where sections of it can only be completed if you can rail-grind your car along the pipe sections to continue the race. While this track design potential tends to derive tracks that depend upon a series of flawlessly executed miracles to arrive at the finish, most tracks will at least have a racing line and an intuitive path to the finish. Check out my favorite, Trigger Finger by Ganjarider: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnStiuqHnvk What you see is what you get! As you watch the video, you notice two runs here. One is a video of him running the track as the player. The second, the one after the plot, is a much more cinematic run of the race with fancy camera work. That video is possible because the recent 3 Trackmania games have all come with a custom camera and effects package to film your track runs and benchmark the video for further editing. It even exports in 1080p! Trackmania saves your races as ghost data which can be uploaded and "filmed" separately with camera controls and effects additions. Check out this video that has a helpful, though difficult to grasp tutorial on the 'Mediatracker' feature of TM2: The Canyon: http://youtu.be/gV2iq6cnLE4?hd=1 In addition to all of this, the canyon car, which you see being driven in all the video's I've posted, can be painted in the game as well. It's not as robust as I would like but if all you can do is work with a controller, my car was done up in the editor: You can barely see my cutie mark on the rear of the vehicle but displayed proudly is one of the custom stickers I made for Smooth Runnings' family business, 'Rolling Stock Freight.' It takes some doing but this game property is built to encourage us to be creative within the game. At the very least everyone playing will be able to make their own tracks, paint their cars, race on-line with racers around the world, upload and download custom tracks and skins and graduate their understanding and use of the game with their interactions with the community. Heck, even I've been working to do better with my track building after downloading so many myself: Curvalinear - Minus terrain: Curvalinear - Complete: Even a dummy like me can do it! I hope there are more ponies here that race on TM2: The Canyon! It's a scream!
