UPDATE 3: High quality version of the E3 teaser added - look at the Featured Video box or click here.
UPDATE 2: Forum launched: http://forum.maniaplanet.com/
UPDATE: Official maniaplanet website launched: http://www.maniaplanet.com/
Forum will open at 10AM UTC (that's 12:00 GMT+1).

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Just some minutes ago Nadeo's new creative community platform 'maniaplanet' was unveiled during the Ubisoft press conference on the world's biggest gaming fair - the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

The best thing at the end - that's typical for Nadeo. After some impressive presentations of new Ubisoft titles like 'Assassins Creed Brotherhood', 'Ghost Recon Future Soldier' or 'Driver: San Francisco', at the end we could finally have a look at some small new scenes from TrackMania 2 (again with really amazing graphics) and we were introduced to Nadeo's new community system 'maniaplanet'.

But Nadeo wouldn't be Nadeo, if they revealed too much about it, so we only got some small details on it. Basically, 'maniaplanet' will most likely be a huge community system, combining all the creative heads from three communities: the already existing TrackMania-community, the ShootMania-community (officially called a shooter, probably first-person) and the QuestMania-community (officially called an adventure/role-playing game).
So it seems like those three new games will be combined and contain all the great features developed for TrackMania during the years. More infos on that will probably come during the next days... or months... you all know, the news from Nadeo always come all of a sudden ;)

Another interesting thing is, that Nadeo revealed the dates of the betas for those three new games.
It seems like the QuestMania beta will be the first one we can expect, as the date was just stated as "coming soon".
The next one will be the TrackMania 2 beta, starting in the 4th quater of 2010.
Last but not least, we can expect the ShootMania beta to start in the 1st quarter of 2011.

That's it with the news. I will try to add the maniaplanet E3 teaser on TM-Tube during the day, but I can't promise it, just stay tuned :)

The long-awaited documentary "Générations Digitales" (Digital Generations), made by Benjamin Tardif (better known as Benjisite) in 2009 is finally available for purchase on the official website. For a limited number of copies, the DVD is also available for 15000 Coppers via the ManiaLink generations-digitales. You can also buy the DVD via PayPal (no need for a PayPal account, but you should have your credit card or bank account information ready). The language of the 82-minute documentary is French with English or German subtitles. There is also a 5-minute interview with the director Benjamin Tardif on the DVD and a printed "Director Diary" in French (24 pages).
If you want to know more about the documentary, just watch the trailer (Featured Video for this week) or read the following summary:

Générations Digitales brings you to the heart of the gaming community of Trackmania. Real dive in one of the many communities of the internet, Générations Digitales tackles a variety of topics concerning: the use of the Internet, the creative aspect in the formation of sharing groups, the unifying factor, as well as the steady decline of the attraction of television at the hands of the interactive media Internet.
With more than 5 million players, Trackmania is certainly representative of the diversity of use generated by a video game in "connected" mode. From the simple entertaining tool for some, to tool box pushing to create for others; meet a gallery of over 40 people aged 12 to 55 years, all passionate gamers recounting their experiences and feelings.
See how many uses are made of the game Trackmania, from gamers’ meetings to the school bench!
Participative Web; will to invest the space, the creative potential of each; as many components that are completely changing the media landscape and pushes us to thinking about the uses of tomorrow.

UPDATE: Special article about the TEK9/AMD Minimovie Contest online!
UPDATE: Third article online: Movie-O-Matic #3: TEK9 contest & GSA On The Road 2 & KarjeN - Betten Than Good & Bugs On Fire
UPDATE: Second article online: Movie-O-Matic #2: Team WebOne - The Movie

With "Movie-O-Matic" RoB starts a new series of video related articles on the Swedish Trackmania community page Trackmania.se (article language is English). The articles contain information and a detailed review of certain featured videos and will be published every one or two weeks.
In the first issue, RoB reviews the current featured video "Nitrolicious 2" regarding soundtrack, quality and editing.
Just take a look at the first article here :)
For everyone, who can understand German language, the German Trackmania Blog "TManiacs" also features a new video related article series. Just switch to the German TM-Tube version, to read the news regarding that ;)

Good news everyone! After a month-long poll, we can now present you the official TM-Tube IRC channel. From now on you can meet each other in the channel #tm-tube @ Quakenet and talk about everything with the other TM-Tube users and the TM-Tube staff. If you don't have an IRC client, you may use out Webchat.
Additionally there is a bot in the channel, which announces new videos at TM-Tube, models/skins at Carpark and news of other TrackMania websites, so you are always informed, if you stay in the channel. In the next few weeks, we will add more features.

The much-anticipated ManiaCity track from the movie (see our current Featured Video) was released today on TMX and can be downloaded here. The track features lots of new 3d objects integrated in the scenery via skins/ghosts.
To play the track, you'll need the Mediapack, which you can grab either from TM-Tube or from TM-Creative.
We don't recommend you to play the track with very high graphic settings, cause it takes a lot of performance (you should have at least 2 GByte of RAM to play it).
If you want to use the 3d objects in your own track, you should pay attention to the Christmas Special: All 3d models can be downloaded for only 10 Coppers from the 23rd until the 25th of December 2009 at the Manialink ManiaCity.

Today, the new update 2.11.25 was released, featuring the new StarTrack solo campaign. This new campaign contains 147 player-made tracks, which were made for the StarTrack contest. The fix also includes the last hotfixes for TMUF.
Please note, that this update won't work with Trackmania Nations Forever, you'll need United Forever to play the new tracks!
The update will be downloaded automatically, when you start the TMUF Launcher, but if you want, you can download it directly from TM-Tube (maybe a bit faster in the next days):
http://www.tm-tube.com/downloads/TmUnitedForever_StarEdition_Update.exe