Sarah Jessica Parker - rare footage

Tutorial Part One.. Adding Color To Your Name In Trackmania(all versions)

The amount of times we've explained this, is countless. So for all the new people starting out on TM, here it is....

Simple really, once you've booted up ur trackmania nations/united, go to profile, then nickname..
basicly,

To add a colour to your name simply put a $ followed by 3 numbers which represent red, green and blue. A small selection can be seen below.

$FFF

$CCC

$999

$666

$333

$000

$FC0

$F90

$F60

$F30

$9C0

$C90

$FC3

$FC6

$F96

$F63

$C30

$C03

$CF0

$CF3

$330

$660

$990

$CC0

$FF0

$CC0

$C63

$300

$600

$900

$C00

$F00

$F36

$F03

$9F0

$CF6

$9C3

$663

$993

$CC3

$FF3

$960

$930

$633

$933

$C33

$F33

$C36

$F69

$F06

$6F0

$9F6

$6C3

$690

$996

$CC6

$FF6

$963

$630

$966

$C66

$F66

$903

$C39

$F6C

$F09

$3F0

$6F3

$390

$6C0

$9F3

$CC9

$FF9

$C96

$C60

$C99

$F99

$F39

$C06

$906

$F3C

$F0C

$0C0

$3C0

$360

$693

$9C6

$CF9

$FFC

$FC9

$F93

$FCC

$F9C

$C69

$936

$603

$C09

$303

$3C3

$6C6

$0F0

$3F3

$6F6

$9F9

$CFC

$C9C

$969

$939

$909

$636

$606

$060

$363

$090

$393

$696

$9C9

$FCF

$F9F

$F6F

$F3F

$F0F

$C6C

$C3C

$030

$0C3

$063

$396

$6C9

$9FC

$CFF

$39F

$9CF

$CCF

$C9F

$96C

$639

$306

$90C

$C0C

$0F3

$3F6

$093

$0C6

$3F9

$9FF

$9CC

$06C

$69C

$99F

$99C

$93F

$60C

$609

$C3F

$C0F

$0F6

$6F9

$3C6

$096

$6FF

$6CC

$699

$036

$369

$66F

$66C

$669

$309

$93C

$C6F

$90F

$0F9

$6FC

$3C9

$3FF

$3CC

$399

$366

$069

$039

$33F

$33C

$339

$336

$63C

$96F

$60F

$0F0

$3FC

$0FF

$0CC

$099

$066

$033

$39C

$36C

$00F

$00C

$009

$006

$003

$63F

$30F

$0C9

$09C

$3CF

$6CF

$69F

$36F

$03C

$36C

$0CF

$09F

$06F

$03F

The colour codes are the 3 numbers after the $ and have 16 values 0 to f (0123456789abcdef) The colours are made from red green & blue values ($RGB)

And there you have it, i never remember the right codes for the right colours but i dont use it that often.. Enjoy----

Coming soon, Having your own custom car skin and how to let people be able to see it!

Mental Drifts, a beginner's nightmare

No sooner after i had finished the review for Battle Scars, the TMX team decided to replace it with a new track with the intriguing name "Mental Drifts". Built by CheZz, who is a relative newcomer to the track building community.
With the first couple of tries, this track had me literally tearing my hair out as i attempted to find the best line to do the drop near the start with as much as speed possible to get to the next corner successfully.
Certainly not a track for the newer players as it will be probably almost impossible for them to do that part i mentioned successfully not to mention you will get a rather slow lap time if you are not competent at drifting and getting the correct driving lines.

Here's a little screenshot of that bit which i have been talking about for the past few sentences, you have to get as much speed as possible approaching from the left road into the little bend ahead otherwise you will end up crashing into the edge of the road.
It is very important that you are patient with these kind of tracks as i have found that you tend to start to love the track more and more as you start practicing it more. It is a shame that some people does not have the patience to do so and never manage to complete the track to judge it fairly, that is why there are so many underrated tracks on the TMX website screaming out for awards but not getting any because people does not have the patience to finish these kind of tracks properly and award it.

Fair kudos to the TMX team for coming across this little gem of a track fairly quickly and putting it in its rightful place, the Showcase.

Personally, my favourite part of the whole track is the next 2 corners after the drop. You get an incredible amount of adrenaline flowing through your blood as you go so close to the kerb of the corner with a lot of speed then you come up to a little cute corner where you need to drift to avoid crashing into the wall.
After going through the checkpoint, you come up to a little downwards corner where you need to drift gently to maximise your speed landing on the grass.
It is crucial and determinable to how good a lap time you are going to get if you do the section mentioned in the above paragraph with as much speed as possible, as i found out due to the high variations of time i got going through the check point. It varied from as low as 18.3 to as high as 19.5 seconds.

Against all odds, the track builder still manages to keep the amazing flow of the track throughout and this section doesn't disappoint you either.
It can take a few attempts to time your racing line correctly on this party but it rewards you well when you do it right. After going on the road from the grass, you need to hug the corner as close to the wall as possible while gently drifting to avoid crashing into the wall head on then you need to do a good drift as you approach the downwards corner to the full speed corners to complete the jump without any problems.

After you've done the hair raising jump which gives you the illusion that you could crash into the wall. But thankfully you always land just before doing so and you need to drift to the right which takes you to a lovely little drop downwards to a road leading to the last section shown on the picture here.
This section is a tough cookie yet it still flows well as most of it is virtually full speed apart from the first and last corner of this section.
Possibly the only fault with this entire track which lies in this last section is the very sharp slalom drift corner leading to the finish line as it is slightly out of line with the rest of the track's brilliant flow. Nonetheless it is still a good corner to separate the great players from the rest as it could save you half a second if you take that corner well.

If i could sum up the track in one word, it would be "Breath-taking". Oh dear, is that two words?
Amazing how the track builder managed to keep the brilliant flow going throughout the track despite the few hard corners and that drop it has.

I have absolutely no qualms about awarding this track a great 9/10 and CheZz can be proud to receive an award from me. Congratulations!

Here is a video of my best attempt on the track, even though i was well off the pace it should give you an idea of how to drive this track well.

Battle Scars, enjoyable track or leaving you scarred for life?

Time for a review of the second track listed on the showcase at the TMX website this week, I introduce you to "Battle Scars" a speed tech track built by Tomdeos.

First of all i'll tell a little story; when i first started playing Trackmania Nations in 2006, i was only capable of posting good lap times on full speed tracks and i never was able to be successful at my attempts on tech tracks. It was only a few months ago or so that i started being capable of posting good times on speed tech tracks despite being at least a second or so off the pace of the pro times on a typical tech track with at least 45-60 secs of lap time.
I used to hate tech tracks, bloody hate them.

It all changed when i realised that only being expectational at full speed tracks wouldn't keep me in the UKR main team when we were starting to get quite a few good players coming through the ranks, so i started to seriously give practicing tech tracks a go and it turned out that they weren't so bad as i thought they would be.

Dear me i must stop waffling on about myself, when i should be reviewing this track. Lets get on with this then.
The first corners are quite difficult to judge for a beginner to get some speed going while navigating through this section and as you can see, this is a essentially a square U turn and it can be tough to judge this corner to maximise your speed going out of the corner exit to the next few full speed corners. Easy for everyone to go through this corner yet hard for the beginners to do it quickly.

The next 2 major corners are where you need to drift to achieve a good time, the great classic tech tracks always have a couple of drifting corners so the pro players gets a far more wider margin of time compared to the newer players so this ticks the box thus far.
The first corner is more lenient and you only really to let go of the accelerator a bit to take this corner nice and tight whereas the more advanced players should drift a bit here, then you go full speed up until to the point where you need to slow down for the sharper "L" left turn, drifting this corner well will truly ensure you get a good lap time.


The next few corners up until to the road after the ramp are virtually full speed, and the good players should be able to take this full speed.
Though it all depends on how well you exit from the previous sharp left corner to enable you to process through the tricky corner into the full speed corners with as much speed as possible.
The ramp jump is a very nice touch to the track and it seems so far that the track is pretty well marked with signs so it is easy for people on their first try to know where to go.


The last 2 corners of this track, and personally my favourite section of the whole lot.
After that ramp jump, you have to slow just a smidgen then enter the jump with as speed as much speed possible and you automatically enter into a drift mode depending how you landing.
Keep your turn as smooth as possible as you go through the finish line. For the beginners, they should let go of the accelerator a bit to avoid under steering the corner.

Time to conclude the review, in all this is an extremely well built speed tech track with the signs in the correct place and highly visible. Another plus in my book is how few scenery there are and low in copper usage, so it is easier on the graphic card to cope.
I cannot honestly find any faults with the track, excellent flow and cornering throughout.
I award the track a nice 9/10 and a spanking nice award on the TMX website to top it off.

Here is a video of one of my lap attempts on this track.

Oxymoron, moronic or genius track?

I finally decided to do the first track review for this blog site today, i downloaded the first track listed on the showcase at the TMX website.

My first impressions upon trying this track built by L3ky were to be honest, just another bog standard full speed track but as time went on and after 15 minutes of playing this track, it grew on me despite it having an abundance of faults.

I would like to point out some of the faults as demonstrated in the below screen shots with a little text describing each fault.

As you can see from this screen shot, to navigate through the track you would have to get past this loop and it isn't very pretty. The loop is 3 blocks wide so you would have to aim rather wide to the left to go through this loop properly. In my 2 years of track building experience, in that time i learnt that it is never a good idea to do loops of this style unless you are approaching the loop from an diagonal road as it disrupts the general flow of the track quite badly.

Frankly, the first wallride you navigate through after the initial loop is done rather badly.
As you can see from the screen shot, the exit of the wallride is not properly aligned with the half pipe section so you would have to aim higher at the wallride exit than you are normally accustomed to. If you don't, expect to bash the enter key in frustration after having your lap attempt ruined!

This section is rather a nice touch to the track, that is if you know exactly where you are going!
As you can see, you have to go through two half diagonal loop sections with a semi tunnel section and it is rather difficult to know where to go. But i'll excuse the track builder on this one since it is rather easy to do after a couple of tries and if you do this section smoothly then you shave a few hundred milliseconds off your lap time.

The last fault i would like to point out, as outlined in this screen shot is the pretty obvious mini cut. What i don't know is if the cut was intended or not but i must admit it is another nice touch to the track and it is quite hard to do the cut but if you can do it, prepare to see a large chunk of a second cut off your overall lap time.

In all, this track has quite a few faults but despite that it has some parts that are quite a breath of fresh of air and i won't be afraid to admit that the track grows on you as you practice it more.

To conclude this track review, i award it a generous 7/10, just below the criteria required for me to give this track an award on TMX as i am pretty strict on awarding tracks as i only give it out to those that i feel really deserves it.

Here's a video of my best lap attempt on this track, and oh you'll probably need the DivX codec to view this video.

Introduction to my blog

Let me start off by welcoming you visitors to my brand new blog site; admittedly i have been skeptical of starting a blog in the past since i usually feel that i am too lazy to maintain one but after a long consideration, i have decided that i am well within my capability of maintaining a blog and writing an entry once a day or probably more.

This little blog will introduce you to the game of Trackmania Nations which i play approximately ten to fifteen hours a week, mostly at the weekends.

This first entry will be a sort of review of the game, but i will eventually start writing guides on how to be a good driver and perform well on all types of track. I will also write reviews on tracks which are bestowed with the showcase on the Trackmania Nations Exchange website.

On a side note, i also happen to create tracks for this game. On a typical month i would say i probably make around two to three tracks and often i have periods where i turn out a high output of new tracks, sometimes four or even five tracks in a week.

Finally, i would like to welcome every visitor to this blog with open arms and i really hope that you will enjoy reading mine, Spendy and Bubb's entries on this blog site.

~Jazzy