I'm Dennis "Ozon" Keller, lead developer of ManiaExchange since 4 years. I am looking for Trackmania fans, players, organizers and content creators to help in kickstarting the new TMNews platform. Trackmania News is designed to be a versatile, fully functional hub for all things Trackmania.
The following content will later be found on TMNews:
- News Articles
- Competitions (with Events, Results, Coverage, Discussion, Info etc.)
- Events (past, present and upcoming) and their (LIVE) results
- Players (with their competition wins, prizemoney earnings etc.)
- Teams
- Transfers (Players <-> Teams)
In order to make it happen, here's some of the tools (next to the UI) I integrated into the page:
- Powerful Article editor
- Competition and Event creation
- Event standings & results creation (On the page OR via API endpoint e.g. for server controllers)
- Player Transfer creation
- Poll creation (see TMNews Awards)
I'll not be able to make TMNews a good site on my own. That's why I am reaching out to you. You can help in making this page the central hub for Trackmania the one our community deserves.
Listed in the following part of this blog are the main tasks that need to be done by engaged helpers.
Tasks
Collect and Enter previous Competitions and their Results
Trackmania has a rich history of community-organized, but also official events. TMNews needs all results from previous events. The accuracy of the statistics depends on it.
To answer some doubts: I'm aware of esportsearnings - while they already hold a very complete and valuable database of prizemoney-earning event results, TMNews is supposed to aim higher. We want to include ALL results, not only the ones with prizemoney.
Also, I'm aware that TM is a game franchise known for its defragmentation and that this circumstance makes the work more difficult. We need to preserve the history at some point - the TM community deserves it.
Your profile (one of those is enough):
- You are a (ex-) competition host or manager
- You are a developer for a competition
- You own or have access to specific competition results
- You are an engaged TM person ready to manually fill TMNews with content (=> Competitions)
Add additional infos to Competitions
A competition posted to TMNews can be added with a lot of info that's helpful for history preservation:
- Information and Rules texts
- VODs and streamers of each of the competitions' events
- More (TBD)
Your profile (one of those is enough):
- You are engaged in the TM community
- You know a lot of content creators
- You can use google / youtube search to find content
Write articles
TMNews brings in an aspect that is still quite underappreciated in the community: Trackmania journalism. We have only few dedicated TM journalists that are ready to use some of their time to write up stories about things. There is so much to write about, though!
An article can cover anything that's on your mind. You can report about an event that has happened, post an interview, showcase community content (tools, videos, maps,...) or even just speak your own opinion. TMNews has support for these things all built-in.
Your profile (one of those is enough):
- You consider yourself a TM Journalist
- You are a competition host or manager and like to write about the competitions you host / manage
- You often engage with content made by the community
- You'd love to share the things you see in the community with a broader audience
Give general feedback on the site
I (Ozon) am currently the only developer working on the site. I'm happy to continue alone, but the quality of my work results depend on your feedback. I need you to give me feedback about what you feel can be improved on the page and of course bug reports.
Your profile (one of those is enough):
- You are engaged in the TM community
- You are interested in trying out and using the tools on TMNews
- You can handle a sometimes grumpy developer (jk I'm generally nice (: )