Cranked Up Feature Update: Out now!

It’s slowly getting cold! We have just released the Cranked Up feature update in the ManiaPlanet store!

We are proud to present you the work of several months, bundled in a single update for Alpine. As we announced earlier, the biggest changes are:
– A working skin selector
– A platform campaign consisting of 25 maps
– An entirely new user interface for Race & Platform maps
– Dozens of new blocks and variations
– A TMUF to TMOne map converter!

The online program has been updated as well, adding some new maps from TMUF.

New Platform campaign and UI.

So since we’ve introduced you to the main features of the update, it’s time to go into the substance and explain some of the changes we made to the Platform- and Race-mode.

You read right, we now have a Platform campaign, consisting of 25 high quality maps. We had an awesome collaboration between players and the developers once again after the initial release of Alpine – creating the new campaign.
It was hosted by shadokk and eyebo, who worked with around 20 players to give you back a bit of nostalgia in ManiaPlanet. Check out the credits screen to see who put a lot of time and effort into the maps!

Since you gave us your feedback about the Race Campaign, we tried hard to adapt our vision and create maps with a fair difficulty. Throughout the campaign, you will notice a smoothly increasing level of difficulty, which slowly prepares you for the banger, E05.
But let’s elaborate on our Platform concept.

We originally intended to keep the Platform experience as original as possible, but thanks to new innovative ideas from the team and also some technical restrictions, we were forced to get creative and work on our own imagination of the mode.

Platform deserves to be fun and competitive at the same time. Before, all that motivated you was the checkpoint respawn count, but eventually it doesn’t motivate you enough to continue playing, or it’s not a big challenge to achieve 0 respawns in order to get gold.

We’re introducing; The Platform Author Medal. Yeah, we’ve now got proper AT medals for the Platform mode as well as a proper ranking between players.
While each flag/difficulty has its own respawn counts in order to achieve a medal, the Author medal can now only be won by a) having zero respawns and b) beating the author time at the same time.

Don’t worry, the times aren’t too hard, even for new players. We still tried to keep the balance between fun and challenge. Thanks to GranaDy! we were able to realise this idea and have it working. The global leaderboard compares the best times, no matter how many respawns you have. Inside map, the ranking shows players with the least respawns first, even if they have a worse time sometimes.

The map unlocking of Platform is a bit more forgiving. You only need the bronze medal on previous maps in order to unlock the next map or flag. Everyone has equal chances, no matter which skill!

Along with the new Platform mode, we’ve also got a completely new UI for the Race gamemode. You are able to do the same things as before, just with more style.
We are also introducing the live CP leaderboard, which works both with medal ghosts and player record ghosts. In the top left, you will have a live ranking of all ghosts and a better visualization of your position in the current run.

The CONVERTER.

The probably most exciting feature of this update is the Map converter, created by Luk.

You are now able to convert TrackMania 1 (TMO, TMU, TMUF) maps to TrackMania One – Alpine. Right now, only Alpine is supported. The upcoming Speed (V2) will also be part of the converter, making Desert maps playable in ManiaPlanet as well.

How does it work? Simply head over to https://tmone.unbitn.com/converter/ and download the ZIP file. You can find all instructions to run the converter on the same page as well as technical requirements.

We wish you a lot of fun with this tool. More features, such as converting of MediaTracker as well as replays are planned for future updates.

Select your own skins!

Finally it’s there! The Skin Selector is now part of the Alpine titlepack. Simply head over to the settings menu (hover your Avatar in the main menu and click the icon) and then open the Skin selection menu.

You will find a bunch of exclusive Snow-Car skins, created by our talented skin creators (make sure to check the credits screen). Select the skin you want and simply apply it. Once you return to the campaign, you will automatically have your desired skin. Player ghosts will have random skins and the medal ghosts do have exclusive medal skins, created by Jak-Jak.

With a future update, we will also make skin selector along with the new UI working on local maps and not only the campaign.

Have a lot of fun!

There is surely more to show about the new “Cranked Up” features, but we don’t want to keep you from playing now!

Have fun while playing the new maps, trying out the new blocks or converting your favourite maps.
(You can find a very detailed changelog in the #updates channel on our discord server.)

We have much more cool stuff coming up soon, so stay tuned for new content in early 2020.

If you want to join our community or give feedback, make sure to join our discord server!

Cheers