Hello... I'm living in the past

Tom · Joined: 18 Aug 2007 Posts: 44 Location: Milton Keynes, UK

Hi all! It's been a long while since I played Trackmania... I hope everyone is doing well! My last post here was in 2010, and even then that was about 3 years after I stopped playing regularly. It's nice to see these forums are still around even if the server isn't.

A few irl mates of mine have been getting together online every saturday night during lockdown for a drinking/gaming session. We've been rotating between games and generally sticking to older games as some of them are on rather poor laptops for running modern games (UT2004 and Worms Armageddon are favourites)

So last week I suggested Trackmania (as nations is free on steam) and unsurprisingly my friends are enjoying it.

Since I have a web server anyway, I launched a trackmania server with a bunch of the old Mad Laps and Servalot tracks that I could find on TM Exchange. (Setting up the server was a lot more difficult than the other servers I'm running, thanks Nadeo!)

I'm posting here for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I've just left the server running. It's called "Mad Laps Unofficial Revival" (I'll change this if you don't want me using the name) so anyone can join if you want. Currently it's running in time attack mode for lap records as my friends complained that in laps mode they didn't have a chance to learn the tracks.

Secondly, I couldn't work out how to quite get it running like old Mad Laps. In laps/rounds mode can't seem to get it so you can restart or start the race late. Once I press backspace it retires me... I'm pretty sure mad laps didn't do this.

I also can't get the records system to work in the same way. Mad Laps had a race record, sector records and lap records. Using the default xaseco install I only get lap records regardless of game mode.

Does anyone (mad, probably!) have any pointers in getting the server set up in a similar way?

Also, track suggestions would be nice. Currently I'm just running all of CJ's, Galt's, MMMBat's and spanky's tracks I could find on tm-exchange. Somehow I still remember several of the tracks despite not having raced them for about 13 years....

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well!

Galahad · Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Posts: 95

I got a text from Galt that he downloaded and checked it out.

Galahad · Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Posts: 95

What is this UT 2k4 you speak of?

Spanky_McCoy · Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2020 3:18 pm Post subject:

I did tracks!

I bet they are crap.
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Dale Earnhardt · Joined: 12 Aug 2007 Posts: 189 Location: Belchertown, MA

By the sounds of it, you're running the server in the original TM Nations and not TM Nations Forever, correct? If so, Nations didn't let you respawn during laps/rounds races, that feature was added in Forever.

If you ARE running TMNF though then I too am confused as they definitely added that feature (I specifically remember us having a discussion about GPs becoming "easier" as a result of it, because you no longer had to worry about driving risky and retiring).

mad · Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:31 am Post subject:

tom email me.. mad@shoreforums.co.uk I think I have backups of the tracks we used and we used a custom controller that I wrote to provide the extra stats. There were other controllers that had most of the same functions but they had a bigger screen presence at the time and I didn't like them. I'm not sure I could get that running again but I can have a look. most of our tracks never hit tm-exchange....