RPG Titlepack 2.0

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New things to explore in the RPG Titlepack:

Half a year after initial release of the pack we are proud to present you the first big update of the RPG Titlepack. Here is a list of new features that might be interesting for you:


New custom blocks in the editor

You will notice alot of new stuff in the editor, some of them were ready for quite a while now(but we couldnt include them because of a bug in Maniaplanet 2.0) and some are brand new.

Basic shapes collection:

We added more texture variations of the existing basic shapes so you can customize the looks of your track even more.

Lights:

One of the biggest features for RPG are the new light blocks: Not only do they look cool, but they also emit light to their surroundings. To see the result you have to compute shadows, best use the "Fast" or "Default" option to get an idea how the track will look like with the lights.

Custom Checkpoints:

Another great feature added by Nadeo is the ability to create custom checkpoints. They can be any size, position and rotation, so integrating a CP into your route will be much easier in the future. Custom Start and Finish blocks are also possible, but they are not included in the pack yet and will follow in one of the future updates.

Terrain Blocks:

 More variations of terrain blocks were added, including grass, dirt and water.

Platform Driving Set:

Six folders in the platform driving set have been added, opening possibilities for more creative platform routes. 

"Bobsled" driving blocks:

The tube blocks have been sliced in half to make some new blocks that are similar to bobsled runways.

Vegetation additions:

New tree trunks, branches, 2D branches, bigger plants, bigger grass, bigger leaves and some bushes have been added.

An overview of some of the new blocks - bigger version

Lightmap fix for tubes:

The popular tubes had some bugs in the lightmap which resulted in strange shadows and lights. Those were fixed, old tracks might need to be recalculated to fix those shadows.

Windows with new behaviour:

The window collection got altered so that you can now drive on them without your car bouncing all over the place, the frame and the glass now have the same width.

Freedom in the editor:

When you create a new track you will notice some new option in the mood selection:
The top row are the default moods we've known for years, but at the bottom row it gets interesting:
A big stadium - without stadium! 64x64 of building space without the actual stadium in place, meaning you can now create much more authentic tracks. With this new option one other change is really important: The maximum size of the GBX file for online play was raised to 2MB, giving you the opportunity to build huge structures without hitting any limits.

The redesigned main menu:

To give the main menu easy access to all titlepack related content, we redesigned it to make it more user friendly. The menu buttons are now split into three different categories: Editors, Play and Info
Just hover over the corresponding symbol and the buttons will appear.

Another way to navigate through the titlepack is the new sidebar.
Just hover over the "Menu" button or touch the right side of your screen with the mouse and the sidebar will slide in giving you quick access to all pages.

The new main menu

The macroblock sharing page:

Since Maniaplanet 3.0 macroblocks are bugfree and offer a good way to share creations between trackauthors. Because of that we offer a ingame sharing platform for macroblocks that is easy to use for everybody. Just click "Blocks" in the Editors section or select the page from the sidebar. Once you're there you can browse all uploaded macroblocks and filter them by categories. If you wanna submit your own creation, just click on the three dots at the bottom to select a macroblock to upload, select a category for it on the left and write a small description - that's it! The page will automaticly show the thumbnail you selected white saving the macroblock, no need to upload pictures. In case you changed one of your macroblocks and want to update it or you wanna change the description, just upload the same macroblock again, it will automaticly update the database. Please note that the macroblock that were not created by yourself will be rejected.

The new MacroBlocks sharing page

The new update system:

Nadeo introduced incremental updates for titlepacks with MP3.0. That means that it will automaticly download new content when you enter the pack without downloading the files you already have. So in the future you can expect several smaller updates for the titlepack.

Your job:

Your job is to keep the community alive! Play online, create tracks and macroblocks, shoot videos or just spread the word! If you created tracks before it's recommended to recalculate the shadows and update the track on MX(this wont change the UID of the track, meaning the records wont be gone). If you're hosting a server, please update it to the latest dedicated and titlepack version.


The future:

The titlepack team will keep going, creating new content and keep everything up to date. We have lots of ideas, but remember that this is not our job, it's just a hobby afterall. If we can spare some time we will sure use it to offer you the best TM RPG experience possible.

So i wanna say a big THANKS to the community for sticking with us, to all the helpers and testers during development, and ofcourse to my development teammates Hawk and maxi!

ZiZa

The Alternative Race Tournament

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Written by:
Grimgor,Admin A.R.T.


Hello to everybody,

I come towards you to appeal to mappers. Indeed, the Team MDR organizes a tournament RPG: the Alternative Race Tournament
The A.R.T. is a competition RPG, using TitlePack, based on the principle of the tennis tournaments. It takes place in double (team of 2 players), in relay mode with victories in 2 rounds until quarter of final then in 3 rounds for the semi-finals and finale. 1 round being represented by one maps.
The tournament will take place on 3 maps in everything. A test server will be set up before the competition to allow the players registers to vote for the maps which they will wish to roll for the tournament.

We need maps to have a real choice during the votes.

Some rules(rulers) to be respected:

- Maps must be created with TitlePack
- Between 5 and 7 minutes
- middle level but without forgetting some RPG passage
- No password so that we can put back the times to zero after the phase of test
- Try to be attention on the cut

Maps is to be sent to this address: grimgor@tm-mur.fr

The deadline to send maps: May 04th, 2014

The site of the tournament is in conception, but i'll post here as soon as it will be on-line and then you can send me the maps directly on the website and have more information.
It is not excluded that there is rewards for the 3 maps, this will depend on received donations.

The 4th ESL Titlepack Cup

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Three Nightcups have been played in the RPG Title Pack already and now it´s time for the next one! This time it will be held on March the 15th (Saturday)! The map we play this time will be the newest map by Maxi031: [RPG]Sanctum Mire

We will stay to the mode we used in the last cup; we start with 30 minutes Time Attack and the best 50% will drive against each other in knockout! In the knockout the last 2 players will get kicked out each round until we reach TOP 4 or 5, there the last player will get knocked out each round.


This cup in short:
Date: Saturday, 15th March
Time: 20:00 CET
Sign-up till: 19:30 CET
3 Rounds: everyone (1) - best 50% (2) - TOP 4 (3)
Mode: Time Attack 30 minutes, Rounds Knockout last two players, Rounds Knockout
More information Sign-up! 


We hope to have as many participants as last time, so please sign up!

The 3rd ESL Titlepack Cup

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Since the reintroduction of RPG on ESL we played two Nnghtcups and now we're announcing the next one, which will be held on February the 15th (Saturday)! We will play a brand new map by Reahx: Assassins Creed 3: Boston.

The mode won´t be exactly as last time: we start with 30 minutes Time Attack and the best 50% will directly drive against each other in knockout! In the knockout the last 2 players will get kicked out each round until we reach TOP 4 or 5, there the last player will get knocked out each round.


This cup in short:
Date: Saturday, 15th February
Time: 20:00 CET
Sign-up till: 19:30 CET
3 Rounds: everyone (1) - best 50% (2) - TOP 4 (3)
Mode: Time Attack 30 minutes, Rounds Knockout last two players, Rounds Knockout
More information Sign-up! 


We hope to have as many participants as last time, so please sign up!

The 2nd ESL Titlepack Cup: 31.01.2014

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Last month the ESL team reintroduced Trackmania RPG on ESL with a Nightcup.
It was very successful and thus decided to host another one on January the 31th (Friday)!
This time we will play the new map by Basbaas: [RPG] Wounder !

The mode will be the same as last time; we start with 30 minutes Time Attack for all players, after that the best 50% can play the second round which is again Time Attack for 20 minutes. The best 8 players will drive against each other in a knockout until we have the winner!

This cup in short:
Date: Friday 31th January
Time: 20:00 CET
Sign-up till: 19:59 CET
3 Rounds: everyone (1) - best 50% (2) - Knockout 8-1 (3)
Mode: Time Attack 30 minutes, Time Attack 20 Minutes, Rounds Mode Knockout


More information


We hope to have as many participants as last time, so please sign up! :)
Written by: ESL TrackMania 2 Admin Team

(Re)introducing RPG on ESL: 12.12.2013

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Great news for all competitive RPG players: The first ESL RPG TitlePack cup!


With the release of the RPG titlepack the ESL adminteam has decided to give this new addition to ManiaPlanet a try and found it pretty enjoyable! Therefore they will be organizing a first Nightcup on the popular [RPG] Forum Hadriani map upcoming Thursday, December the 12th.

The cup will be "All vs. All" and will be driven in Time Attack with a timelimit of 30 minutes. Three rounds will be driven on the same map. On the first round all players can participate, on the second round the best 50% of the first round and on the last round the TOP8 (or TOP4, depending on the participants) of the second round will fight for the podiumplaces!


This cup in short:
Date: Thursday 12th December
Time: 20:00 CET
Sign-up till: 19:59 CET
3 Rounds: everyone (1) - best 50% (2) - TOP 4-8 (3)
Mode: Time Attack, 30 minutes
More information | Sign-up!


We hope to see many participants in this cup, so please do sign-up! :)

The 1st RPG TitlePack Trackbuilding Contest

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We are glad to announce the first RPG Titlepack trackbuilding contest!
Currently there is a prizepool of 350.000 planets!




The idea:

Since the titlepack is still very young, the most important thing is to motivate builders so we can fill up the servers with great tracks!


The tracks:

This is not about building tracks - it's about building adventures! We at the RPG Titlepack team always wanted to create something you can dive into, something exciting, something new! So we expect exactly these tracks for the contest.

We have no rules on difficulty, but please keep in mind that the Titlepack attracted many new players who are still learning the art of RPG, so dont build anything too trialish.

The length of the track is easy to tell: It has to be long enough to tell a story! If this needs 5 minutes or 30 minutes mostly depends of what you have in mind.



 The Judging:


The team will judge all accepted tracks with the following criteria

  • Scenery/Theme/Atmosphere 40%
    Building a path from A to B is rather easy, making it feel like you went somewhere is much much harder. So go and spend lots of time on the surroundings of your track!
  • Route 30%
    Noone wants to drive along a boring road, so go and use the massive amount of blocks and build something spectecular. Add some pathfinding, the RPG-community likes to get challenged!
  • Building style 20%
    The possibilities are almost endless with the custom blocks you can use - that's why it's more important than ever to place them in a clever way. Avoid flickerings, bugs and unsafe spots, you have 3000 objects to avoid these situations.
  • MT/Music/Pictures 10%
    A small intro, a custom camera, or just some soundeffects as you drive along the way. You can add alot of value to your track just by adding these tiny details. 



The prizes: 

There is a total of 200.000 planets to win!
The Titlepack team will test all the submitted tracks and sum up the score. Every track can then compete in the following two contests:


  • The Quality Contest:
    All tracks will be put in one of the following categories:
    • Masterpiece - Gold tag
    • Good track - Silver tag
    • Average track - Bronze tag
    • Poor track 
Note that the tracks won't compete with eachother in this category, this is only about their absolute score - so it could be that there are 10 Masterpiece tracks, but it could aswell be zero.


  • The Ranking Contest:
    In here the tracks get compared to eachother, where the 10 best tracks can win even more! Since we can't yet know how much we will give away in tags we can only tell you the percentages of the remaining prizepool: 
    • 1st - 25% 
    • 2nd - 20% 
    • 3rd - 15% 
    • 4th - 10% 
    • 5th to 10th - 5% 



 The Rules: 

As said earlier we are searching for proper RPG tracks here, a 1-minute collection of random blocks won't be judged. Since this is not connected to a racing competition, public testing is allowed and welcome. Mapping in team is also fine, the prize will just be divided then.The tracks must not be uploaded to MX as public until the final judging is done. Multiple tracks by a single author are also accepted.



 The Deadline: 

The tracks should be sent to the titlepack-team by 06.02.2014 latest!
 Send them to tm2rpg@gmail.com
The team will start judging the tracks after the 6th February. The scores and the winners get revealed at the end of the judging phase. Ofcourse the best track will get played online right after it.



 Are you ready for building? 

Please let us know if you want to participate in the contest so we can organize everything: just reply with your nickname/login in this forum thread: http://www.trackmania-rpg.com/rpg-titlepack/1256-the-first-rpg-titlepack-trackbuilding-contest/
If you need a server for public testing go and talk to Hawk or ZiZa.



 Have some more planets? 

You can of course donate some Planets for the competition to the account tmrpg or on the servers "ZiZa's Pub" and "RPG Unlimited", so the prizes will be even bigger