By Alec Meer on April 16th, 2008 at 10:04 am.
The latest version of anything-goes arcade/puzzle racer Trackmania is out, and it’s free. Unfortunately the Trackmania Nations Forever website is currently taking more of a hammering than would, if I had a hammer, the morning, and the evening, all over this land. Having eventually had it working long enough to reach the download page, turns out it’s actually a forward to Filefront. The download is 504 of your Earth megabytes.
And, as I discovered after having previously downloaded 900 useless Megabytes from Gamershell, it’s all terribly confusing because Nadeo have also just released Trackmania United Forever, a free 900mb upgrade for the retail Trackmania United. Ugh. This naming system seems about as smart as someone giving birth to twins, and deciding to call one Jonathan and the other Jonathon.
Anyway, we’ll doubtless be sharing thoughts on the game later, once the right version has finally finished trickling down the RPS thinpipe.
That gamershell link goes to an add-on for TMU, not the new free game.
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So I also just discovered when the monster download finished. Sigh.
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To clarify, if you haven’t already bought Trackmania United, you want Trackmania Nations Forever, not Trackmania United Forever.
Maybe they should just start using numbers for their sequels, eh?
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You should all buy united anyway :P
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Yeah, I did. I still find myself playing stadium more than any other mode because I spent so much time on TMN, though
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Megabytes? Since when did we lose the Peggle? Recession’s coming, Megabytes are going to fall sharply.
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Anyone know what the update is to United?
Website not loading at work.
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I believe that the United update makes it compatible in multiplayer with Nations Forever, removes the last vestages of the Starforce protection and reworks some bits of the game.
At least, that’s what they claimed a couple of months ago. I won’t be able to try it out until this evening, though.
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There’s also some new community features, a mode for 3D glasses and a bunch of new building blocks for the oldest three environments (that also get a major graphical overhaul). And new tracks.
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Well everything else keeps changing, so I don’t see why my comment shouldn’t (4 edits and counting).
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Arrrgh! Just in case noone else has realised. This FREE game installs Starforce on your computer. I only noticed because vista popped up with a message saying the Starforce driver was incompatible with something.
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bizarre! The steam version (of united) doesn’t have starforce now I don’t think
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I’m now wondering if I’ve downloaded the right version, I think I may have got Trackmania Nations instead of Trackmania Nations Forever…
I’m so confused right now.
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You’ve probably downloaded Nations. It’s got StarForce. Nadeo have said there’s no StarForce in Nations Forever (or United Forever).
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Downloading /boogie
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I just updated my copy of United. They gave me an extra 500 in-game bucks to muck around with, so that’s nice. Maybe this time around I’ll figure out all those cool racing tricks I never bothered with the first time around!
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Is there a way to get rid of Starforce from the original 2 games (the first edition of Trackmania and TM Sunrise), though? I’m not exactly keen on buying the same game again just to drop the dodgy DRM scheme.
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It’s not exactly the same game. Despite the name, it’s actually got a whole load of new courses and added online options. It’s also not particularly expensive nowadays (my copy cost me all of £7.50).
Then again, I was given my copy of TM Sunrise by Digital Jesters back in the day, so I didn’t feel too bad about having to pay this time round…
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Steam appears to be trying to update my copy of TrackMania United Forever, I imagine this is the same update.
It’s going very slowly. Very. 29 minutes remaining seems a little optimistic when I dont have even one block filled in on the progress bar. It’s gonna be a long night, I’m putting the kettle on.
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“This naming system seems about as smart as someone giving birth to twins, and deciding to call one Jonathan and the other Jonathon.”
One of your best comments.
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There’s a torrent of TNF on piratebay, it’s probably faster to get it that way than 25k-a-sec filefront.
So, anyone got actual, definite, I-tried-it-myself confirmation that it’s starforce free?
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@Swashbuckler – I’ve confirmed it on my PC by removing the SF drivers that were needed for running TMS and TMU, (which subsequently did not launch, as expected), then installing the new TMUF (not TMNF, to be fair) content and it works perfectly sans Starforce drivers.
I had read a comment somewhere that Nadeo have moved to using the non-driver version of Starforce protection, so it’s embedded in the executable.
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Nations Forever is on Steam as well, which is where I’m downloading it from. So we’ll see how that goes. Seems to be 700megabites though. Or roughly 41 peggles.
As William Hague said in 2001, as far as I can remember: “We need to save the Peggle…”
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Cheers Kryten
I can confirm it – I checked using these instructions and am clean.
http://wiki.boycottstarforce.net/index.php/Starforce:_Detection
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