Manialinks are not only just obscure user sites today. Over the last decade, the whole system has evolved in tandem with Nadeo's in-house scripting language they named ManiaScript, which forms a good half of ManiaPlanet's menus, in-game HUD, and more. Moreover, almost the entirety of the Trackmania 2020 user interface (except the map editor) is using that technology.
I'm glad to find a comment from someone who knows what they are talking about. I was worried comments like this won't be here. Should be pinned, really.
As a TM player, I said this long ago, but have to say again: it would be great to have even a manialink or even better a website or even a document to list all manialinks. Since there is no browser or anything to list these ingame. The players interested in this should know what manialink pages are out there.
TrackMania was my childhood, loving that it's still getting attention in 2024 - nearly 20 years after I played a game in the series for the first time. Brings a tear to my eye. Funny, since I never even made a Manialink back then. I should have no attachment to the concept, but here we are
i've been playing this game since 2018 and this is probably the coolest thing anyone could have done with manialinks (aside from some extremely cursed tracks...). i guess i'll wishlist!
Because the devs of this are terrible at showcasing and marketing their own features. It's totally normal that you missed it, it was available to everyone but not made to be known because of their incompetence. It's not your fault.
Recently (about half a year ago) UA-camr "yikes" killed "Talkomatic" (the oldest online chat) by making people aware that it was still up, causing a bunch of not-so-nice stuff to happen there, forcing the people who kept it up until then to take it down for good. I just hope that that doesn't happen with ManiaLinks…
we made Trackmania, which is at the same time the most insanely cool and fun racing game out there, and at the same time the most poorly managed and ununderstandable game of all time
This is giga awesome! I'm actually kind of sad I didn't know about this as a kid, but on the other hand I'm really happy I won't die without ever having heard of it.
Yoooooo someone finally played the older Trackmanias!! Yeah the old manialinks are crazy, really happy they still exist these days after all those years 😅
This video underrated, way more ppls need to see this, and resurrect the "hidden internet". Altough i never played trackmania at all, the idea of this page seem goofy and interesting. We coulda have OG internet rn
as a long time trackmania player (who however did not know about mania stuff at all) and huge digital nostalgia and liminal spaces enthusiast, this video felt like a warm hug. absolutely fantastic stuff my guy ♥♥♥ we all shit on Nadeo as a joke, but the fact they created everything they do from scratch, you can get experiences in these games like nowhere else I feel.
I have over 7k hours in TM ever since I started playing in 2005. Somehow I have never known about Manialinks 😂 I guess I have been too focused on grinding.
A lot of really cool engine changes that would be so nice in TM2. It would be nice if they made something grand to let use play the tm2 environments with TM2020's new features
2:25 holy I remember that guy 4:50 YOOO LORE this is so cool finding guys I play with I have been playing Tm for ~4 years now but tm2 was my first and I still play it. This was so cool to watch. +++ (finally a place where people will get the reference to why I do +++ everywhere)
What a weird and wild subculture of the internet. Reminds me of BBS systems in a way. I hope one day people start doing weird and bizarre things like this in their games again. I know it doesn't make sense for most, but when it's a creative platform like this, built for modding; I think it could make a lot of sense. On a similar note, you ever wonder what it'd be like if games that have fake forms and websites inside them actually functioned with real users? It'd be cool to see a game where you were expected to actually roleplay in a way using these systems, and have some of the game's mechanics centered around this.
I thought it was weird that tm2020 had a video editor and 3d modelling workspace built in, but I had no Idea that maniaplanet had it's own internet. I appreciate when Nadeo tries to innovate, even though some things clearly work better than others
This is hilarious, but you'd probably be better off making an indie site on neocities or something in 2024. Or even better, host it yourself. This idea *is* coming back, just not contained within a 2008 racing game lol. Hopefully this sends you down a new rabbithole, cause it's really interesting
bro i remember a site that let you download some cool 3d car models and had "the doors & snoop dogg - riders on the storm" playin in the background. this was aura before it was invented
Manialinks were great, I always loved buying new skins on there as a kid. Kinda sad they're gone but I also understand why they'd not add them to TM2020.
ahh i had a manialink on TMNF back in the day... only shared it with my friends and i don't think i have the files anymore but always fun browsing through these. i remember downloading a model of tails in the tornado from sa1 that straight up just didnt work
If the cheap payment model lets them maintain their course indefinitely it seems like one of the rare cases of a subscription model being a good deal imo
That's correct. I saw Kripkes manialink being shut down due to server costs at some point, and I disliked the idea of even more old TM resources vanishing into the void (there is waaaaay too much stuff lost already over the past years), so I offered him to put his manialink onto our (Evo) infrastructure to preserve all the resources for the future. FYI, it is still in control by him, he has full access, the Evo infra is just the host now. My initial idea actually was to just get my hands on the data to preserve it, but I figured it would be cool to make it so he has full access.
The ManiaPlanet is a huuuge sandbox and you can do literally anything in it These manialinks can be used in gamemodes, menus, editors and other interfaces Heck, in ManiaPlanet you have the editors menu, where you can edit the editor of editors, but no one dared to do so, as far as I know xdd
If I can figure out where this R-Link is; I somewhat recently revived a manialink of mine that was previously dead since 2021. (When my old website was involuntarily shut down.)
Manialinks in TMUF for me as a kid were something magical. You always found weird and funny stuff. Here are new textures, there are new maps... and WHAT THERE ARE EVEN ENVIMIX MAPS which I as a kid disconnected kid from the internet speculated for years if this is even scientifically possible! My favorite manialink was sanx or sanxmars or something. Sadly I can not find it anymore. Anyone know this manialink?
That reminds me about a hacker browser game where you could hack others and create own homepages to either really sell copys of hacking software to others or share your viruses etc :'D i cant remember the name anymore
TM has the best community and Nadeo is one of the worst and most incompetent companies I've ever seen. A crazy combination Btw their initial plan was for Maniaplanet to consist out of TrackMania, Shootmania and RPGMania. RPGMania never got made and the other two got abandoned (gladly. You don't want these guys touching things). Maniaplanet is its own small happy bubble ever since
"They're busy charging 20 bucks a year for less content." This is what I've been saying! TM2020 has neat new stuff, but that monetization model puts me off.
It does make sense though, even if the player base growth stagnates a bit they won't lose any money by not getting enough purchases, which allows them to keep supporting the game for as long as the community is interested in it
@@Vexxter Nadeo didn't use to work this way. They were fine for one-time purchases in ManiaPlanet as it launched in 2011 and they supported it with this model until 2019, with a much smaller userbase than TM2020 has currently. + the master server for ManiaPlanet is still running (hopefully they gonna use TM2020 revenue to fund the old servers). + ManiaPlanet master server, even though in low priority, is still maintained by Nadeo. Common speculation is that this monetization model comes from higher positions at Ubisoft.
It's literally the only reason I don't play it and don't recommend it to anyone. I'd happily pay 60 bucks for the game and recommend it to tons of people, but the subscription model is a hard turn-off. Especially when you have to pay them to access the maps the community made, but they don't kick back some of that to the mapmakers themselves.
@@Vexxter It makes sense for the Club and Track of the Day stuff, I imagine that's rough on servers, but if you're not really going to use that functionality, a one-time buy makes more sense for the trickle of seasonal stuff that's equivalent to the regular updates of every other game, plus I'm not sure if your able to host a session locally?
This channel really scratches that niche itch that most sane ppl can’t fulfill
Feels terrific doesn't it friend
Same
You already know I think this video is great, but I'll comment for the engagement anyway. Maniaplanet is so, so wild
I so desperately want to see what would happen if CoD or some other giant franchise loaded their game up with all this wacko stuff
Manialinks are not only just obscure user sites today. Over the last decade, the whole system has evolved in tandem with Nadeo's in-house scripting language they named ManiaScript, which forms a good half of ManiaPlanet's menus, in-game HUD, and more. Moreover, almost the entirety of the Trackmania 2020 user interface (except the map editor) is using that technology.
I'm glad to find a comment from someone who knows what they are talking about. I was worried comments like this won't be here.
Should be pinned, really.
@@Mandarin9900shit, another reply by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about
6:50 that off-screen landing bug sound is icing on the cake
Got to admit when the title of the video said secret internet i thought people were using trackmania to bypass blocked content in places like china.
the idea of someone bypassing the great firewall via maniaplanet is funnier than any joke I could have written
I thought it was gonna be like drug selling or crimes
they do it in minecraft, so why not here?
@@oskark312 oh my god wait
@@oskark312 it was somewhat done back in the days but abandonned, some REAL og stuff
you miss one of the most current used maniaplanet manialink: leaderboards
still updated to this day
As a TM player, I said this long ago, but have to say again: it would be great to have even a manialink or even better a website or even a document to list all manialinks. Since there is no browser or anything to list these ingame. The players interested in this should know what manialink pages are out there.
"updated"
development is closed, but it works as long as nothing breaks xd
@@BigBang1112tm i could had word it better ya
@@BigBang1112tmThe leaderboards are updated every time someone posts a new time. The leaderboards *program* perhaps not.
As someone who was there for the prime years of United/TM2 this reminded me how awesome TM was back then.. and how old I am now lol
“Kinda better (than COD HQ)”
Well yeah. The bar is in hell after all.
TrackMania was my childhood, loving that it's still getting attention in 2024 - nearly 20 years after I played a game in the series for the first time.
Brings a tear to my eye. Funny, since I never even made a Manialink back then. I should have no attachment to the concept, but here we are
Not only is it getting attention, but world records and shortcuts on the old original tracks are still hunted like crazy.
I've encountered trackmania here and there in my gaming life but never did i think it would have it's own hypnospace esc internet thing.
This is the quality content I subscribed for.
Oh fuck you know what screw it I'm gonna go advertise my game on that. Thats just too funny
for those trying to do it CDkeys has trackmania valley for 99p
So many souvenirs came back with this video, thanks dude
I can't wait for this channel to blow up. How do you not have more views?
i've been playing this game since 2018 and this is probably the coolest thing anyone could have done with manialinks (aside from some extremely cursed tracks...). i guess i'll wishlist!
Maniaplanet was like a portal into 2d painting / 3d modelling, all from a niche racing game
I started by career as a designer because of Manialinks
I don't need to make one, my ManiaPage from 2007 still works.
Ive been playing the trackmania games for one and a half decades and had no idea this existed
Because the devs of this are terrible at showcasing and marketing their own features.
It's totally normal that you missed it, it was available to everyone but not made to be known because of their incompetence. It's not your fault.
Shoutout to Star Wars Metallica, my core memory discovering the wild wild west of Trackmania
i think i remember that ?
Hittin us with the Sega GT 2002 OST, hell yeah
Recently (about half a year ago) UA-camr "yikes" killed "Talkomatic" (the oldest online chat) by making people aware that it was still up, causing a bunch of not-so-nice stuff to happen there, forcing the people who kept it up until then to take it down for good.
I just hope that that doesn't happen with ManiaLinks…
to be fair, have the french ever made anything conventional?
we made Trackmania, which is at the same time the most insanely cool and fun racing game out there, and at the same time the most poorly managed and ununderstandable game of all time
@@cime62 you guys also made the Citroen Ami aka √Fiat Multipla
the guillotine
@@gantzgraf As NotKay just said, we made Guillotine too if you're not happy
Amazing video! This deserves more attention
This video was so much better than I expected when clicking on it
This is giga awesome! I'm actually kind of sad I didn't know about this as a kid, but on the other hand I'm really happy I won't die without ever having heard of it.
This is your first video I have seen. I have the right game so I might go ahead and make a page cause why not
Your hypnospace outlaw thumbnail caught me like a fly in a glue trap
Yoooooo someone finally played the older Trackmanias!! Yeah the old manialinks are crazy, really happy they still exist these days after all those years 😅
I have a few hundred hours on Trackmania. (Nations Forever and 2020, the most recent one.) and I never knew about this.
I've been playing trackmania for so long and never understood how manialinks work up until now! thanks for explanation haha
This video underrated, way more ppls need to see this, and resurrect the "hidden internet". Altough i never played trackmania at all, the idea of this page seem goofy and interesting. We coulda have OG internet rn
as a long time trackmania player (who however did not know about mania stuff at all) and huge digital nostalgia and liminal spaces enthusiast, this video felt like a warm hug. absolutely fantastic stuff my guy ♥♥♥ we all shit on Nadeo as a joke, but the fact they created everything they do from scratch, you can get experiences in these games like nowhere else I feel.
I have over 7k hours in TM ever since I started playing in 2005. Somehow I have never known about Manialinks 😂
I guess I have been too focused on grinding.
TM2 MENTIONED
ALSO FINALLY SOMEONE ACKNOWLEDGES THAT TM2020 HAS LESS CONTENT
A lot of really cool engine changes that would be so nice in TM2. It would be nice if they made something grand to let use play the tm2 environments with TM2020's new features
2:25 holy I remember that guy
4:50 YOOO LORE this is so cool finding guys I play with
I have been playing Tm for ~4 years now but tm2 was my first and I still play it. This was so cool to watch. +++ (finally a place where people will get the reference to why I do +++ everywhere)
I do own TM2 Canyon and SM Storm so this is kinda tempting, although I could never wrap my mind around ManiaPlanet and its general weirdness.
Man, I still have a United Forever on disk lying around somewhere, I gotta try to get that working again at some point. Great video! 👍
Thanks for making this.
Loved when game devs made something unique
Maniaplanet also comes with its own scripting language ManiaScript btw ^^
i actually hope tm2 gets a sudden explosion in popularity smday, i personally think tm2 is WAY better than tm2020.
I literally thought about making this exact video like 3 days ago. Kudos
You could still make one. The more content we have showcasing niche features, the better!
What a weird and wild subculture of the internet. Reminds me of BBS systems in a way. I hope one day people start doing weird and bizarre things like this in their games again. I know it doesn't make sense for most, but when it's a creative platform like this, built for modding; I think it could make a lot of sense.
On a similar note, you ever wonder what it'd be like if games that have fake forms and websites inside them actually functioned with real users? It'd be cool to see a game where you were expected to actually roleplay in a way using these systems, and have some of the game's mechanics centered around this.
I thought it was weird that tm2020 had a video editor and 3d modelling workspace built in, but I had no Idea that maniaplanet had it's own internet. I appreciate when Nadeo tries to innovate, even though some things clearly work better than others
looks like i'm learning xml this week
6:40
What do you mean. This is obviously the GOATed skin.
This is hilarious, but you'd probably be better off making an indie site on neocities or something in 2024. Or even better, host it yourself. This idea *is* coming back, just not contained within a 2008 racing game lol. Hopefully this sends you down a new rabbithole, cause it's really interesting
bro i remember a site that let you download some cool 3d car models and had "the doors & snoop dogg - riders on the storm" playin in the background. this was aura before it was invented
hypnospace is really really cool
Manialinks were great, I always loved buying new skins on there as a kid.
Kinda sad they're gone but I also understand why they'd not add them to TM2020.
Shootmania is my main game, made about 1800 maps there
This video has reached 10k views now, hoping to see those 20 new Manialinks!
cool.... what is this?
edit: i didnt expect geocities 2 on a god dam driving game . pretty random video.
Cool video !
this is incredible
This feels like an elborate April fools prank...
ahh i had a manialink on TMNF back in the day... only shared it with my friends and i don't think i have the files anymore but always fun browsing through these. i remember downloading a model of tails in the tornado from sa1 that straight up just didnt work
If the cheap payment model lets them maintain their course indefinitely it seems like one of the rare cases of a subscription model being a good deal imo
Ive been playing tm2020 tm2 stadium and tmnf for 4 years now and just now discovered what manialinks are
Fire video
6:25 if thats the maniink im thinking of, it used to be owned by the player kripke, hence the link "kr", but evo took control pretty recently
That's correct. I saw Kripkes manialink being shut down due to server costs at some point, and I disliked the idea of even more old TM resources vanishing into the void (there is waaaaay too much stuff lost already over the past years), so I offered him to put his manialink onto our (Evo) infrastructure to preserve all the resources for the future.
FYI, it is still in control by him, he has full access, the Evo infra is just the host now. My initial idea actually was to just get my hands on the data to preserve it, but I figured it would be cool to make it so he has full access.
the mental shock you gave me when showing the gambling page, you have no idea
please support me on trackmania patreon my family is destitute from my trackmania gambling addiction (in trackmania)
Welkom in europa, joonge
hell yea
very gud 👍
Love niche internets like this
i got around 3000 hours in TMUF and i never knew it was this spread out, ty and maybe ill learn xml to make something dumb
manialinks are just the teletext of trackmania
Nice video, ++
The ManiaPlanet is a huuuge sandbox and you can do literally anything in it
These manialinks can be used in gamemodes, menus, editors and other interfaces
Heck, in ManiaPlanet you have the editors menu, where you can edit the editor of editors, but no one dared to do so, as far as I know xdd
Unless you have access to the MP4 beta forums, where the only documentation of the editor creator is
I did not think trackmania would have its own neocities lol
I play trackmania so I think that’s why I got recommended this video
Why does this guy voice make me think of Scott the woz 😂
I might have to make a page, but shadow generations comes out tomorrow, so not now
If I can figure out where this R-Link is; I somewhat recently revived a manialink of mine that was previously dead since 2021.
(When my old website was involuntarily shut down.)
the manialink address is "r-link"
if you look straight up and press the horn bind your car song will still play in shootmania :^)
holy based manialink user
Manialinks in TMUF for me as a kid were something magical. You always found weird and funny stuff. Here are new textures, there are new maps... and WHAT THERE ARE EVEN ENVIMIX MAPS which I as a kid disconnected kid from the internet speculated for years if this is even scientifically possible!
My favorite manialink was sanx or sanxmars or something. Sadly I can not find it anymore. Anyone know this manialink?
I love trackmania
Nadeo is... yes.
this is the most compelled i've ever felt to buy trackmania
nice
That reminds me about a hacker browser game where you could hack others and create own homepages to either really sell copys of hacking software to others or share your viruses etc :'D i cant remember the name anymore
5:09 Enclavem cool word
And counterpoint
LIke music
I will release a feature film on Mania planet, mark my fuckin words
man i miss shootmania
I can't believe Nando made their own dark web
that's a sub
im literally playing trackmania 2020 rn
btw they often do sales for TMUF of about 60% off that last for almost a month for a few times each year, i guess you got unlucky XD
Scott The Woz 2
TM has the best community and Nadeo is one of the worst and most incompetent companies I've ever seen. A crazy combination
Btw their initial plan was for Maniaplanet to consist out of TrackMania, Shootmania and RPGMania. RPGMania never got made and the other two got abandoned (gladly. You don't want these guys touching things). Maniaplanet is its own small happy bubble ever since
QuestMania now thats a name I haven't heard in years
@@hyanehighoctane oh yea thanks for pointing that out, I think it was Questmania, not RPGMania!
It is very likely that Questmania is in works now but as a separate game (running on the same engine).
Quest Accepted bro
so what's your manialink
Sega GT 2002 music :D
loading up tm2 rn
++ video
maniaplanet is such a weird thing, im dont know how they work
I still have 192247 planets in my account 😎
SOMEONE SEND THIS TO Wirtual
I don't wanna buy united but I would do it
Is there documentation for TMF manialinks?
If I had to guess it's probably very similar ?
I mean usernames and chat formatting works the same so I don't think they changed it as much
It's similar, just the editors are community-made and the scale is 128:96 (4:3 as TMF is designed for this resolution)
"They're busy charging 20 bucks a year for less content." This is what I've been saying! TM2020 has neat new stuff, but that monetization model puts me off.
It does make sense though, even if the player base growth stagnates a bit they won't lose any money by not getting enough purchases, which allows them to keep supporting the game for as long as the community is interested in it
@@Vexxter Nadeo didn't use to work this way. They were fine for one-time purchases in ManiaPlanet as it launched in 2011 and they supported it with this model until 2019, with a much smaller userbase than TM2020 has currently. + the master server for ManiaPlanet is still running (hopefully they gonna use TM2020 revenue to fund the old servers). + ManiaPlanet master server, even though in low priority, is still maintained by Nadeo. Common speculation is that this monetization model comes from higher positions at Ubisoft.
It's literally the only reason I don't play it and don't recommend it to anyone. I'd happily pay 60 bucks for the game and recommend it to tons of people, but the subscription model is a hard turn-off. Especially when you have to pay them to access the maps the community made, but they don't kick back some of that to the mapmakers themselves.
@@Vexxter supporting? more like destroying tracks that are 3 months old. I'll never get over the physics changes ._.
@@Vexxter It makes sense for the Club and Track of the Day stuff, I imagine that's rough on servers, but if you're not really going to use that functionality, a one-time buy makes more sense for the trickle of seasonal stuff that's equivalent to the regular updates of every other game, plus I'm not sure if your able to host a session locally?