Competition Title Pack - small overview

The Competition Title pack was released on 24th April 2015. The news went into details regarding every question about why we had made this step, so if you want to check it out, you can still do it now.

The statistics show that the Competition Title pack often played as the top 5 of all Maniaplanet games, which is a great thing. That means, that it is already above all other stadium titles (RPG included) and even Trackmania 2 Valley. At the major peaks, it is presumably placed over Canyon and Storm! We would like to see Competition Title pack reach even better statistics.

As a step towards this goal, during summer 2015, Electronic Tournaments started supporting the title pack with their Stadium Team Championship and Nations Cup. We consider this as a major step forward. We saw many creative tracks since the release, even if some people found some of those odd, while others sensational. But don't forget, every new feature has to find its place in the trackmania universe, including builders and drivers as well.

We believe that the future lives in this very thing! Thus we want to thank all guys who chose the Competition Title Pack as a basic game for their competitions.

And to not waste too many words before our magnificient news, we would like to give you further features and tools which will presumably unite all competitive racers into one place.

New features

Under this part of the news, you can find all the awesome features added to the existing title pack.

Update to?

The update means an update for your client version: servers do not have to be touched, only your game! Visit the ingame store - alternatively you will get the update automatically.

Signs

Having trouble with downloading and placing or storing the ESL signs? No problem, all of them are now included in the title pack itself.
Dynamic signs excluded! Those have to be placed via URL as usual.

New UI

The simple but useful ex-UI now changed to a brand new outlook, which is now more colourful and contains an ingame scene.
Profile menu has been added so you don't have to switch to basic Stadium to change your stuff.

Widgets

While in the first release we concentrated on the blocks, we focused now on the titlepack features that will offer you a great productivity. This idea has been embodied by widgets, which are the most important updates to the titlepack itself, containing a League Tracker, a ManiaCalendar, a News Ticker and some other useful tiles.

League Tracker widget
Lists all available ESL TM2 Stadium leagues, containing tournament tree/rankings, amount of contestants, and a checkin indicator, which reminds you (by changing outlook) to check in to the cup.
This tool is equipped with timezone detection, so people in another timezone will see the startdates in their own timezone!



ManiaCalendar widget
ManiaCalendar was definately a big step thanks to their caring owners. With being available to fetch data from their API, the ManiaCalendar widget will help you find all events which have been registered on the site. Thus we encourage admins to use the Calendar and its features!

Each event has its important links embedded in the widget, and the cups have distinctive colours shown after you clicked on a day.

In an example: purple dots indicate available events in the monthly overview. See styles separated (fullspeed as red), and in the second picture, events are marked with different colours after their styles. Events also give some information about themselves, as well as a direct link to the website of the organisation.



The ManiaCalendar widget also uses timezone detection, just like the ESL League Tracker.

News Ticker widget
The news ticker - guess what - shows news from ESL Trackmania page.

New blocks

Even though the main focus was on productivity, several new blocks have been added. This is how you will see the custom objects panel:



We can speak about three parts: one is the 'tunnelized' platform blocks made by xrayjay, which are already known - this time they have been added so you don't have to be mean with them anymore if you are in the mood of adding a lot.



The another one is made by Skyslide, and it is called Cakewallride. This object is a substitute block for the wide turnover turns (that used to be called sticky, owing to Ganjariders Sticky tarmac). This object is a curved, dome-like wallride, which can be used for tight and also for wide turnovers.

The following video explains it all:



Finally, we added some cosmethical features too, which is 'Stadium Lights' by xrayjay. With this you can give an extra light vision anywhere you like.

Credits

Credits go for Skyslide for his cakewallride, for xrayjay letting us embed his blocks and a huge KUDOS for Kem for programming and realizing all of the features above. Good work men!

What now?

As soon as your client has been updated, you can start exploring the new features. We encourage you to try breaking the ManiaCalendar widget: no bugs should appear in that tile.

Incase you have any feedback about the titlepack, let us know, and feel free to discuss in the Maniaplanet forum thread.

Maprequest

The first maprequest is just around the corner! Check back a bit later for the announcement for fullspeedmaps!

Stay informed!