| Time passes. For everything and everyone. It is up... | 12 Jul, 2013 |
| FT»Osaka | (3 comments, 2482 views) |
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Today I released a track. All of this was done very close to a gargadontic post I wrote on Enai's "Canyon is dead" thread. It is also a track that is effectively a version of an older one.
On my author comments I talked about how time passes. It's basically this moment in time in which I became more aware of it: New TM² environment, new games to play, new tastes in music, gaming, and trackmania tracks... Everything happened really fast, and I somehow adapted to it and embraced it. Which is weird, I am NOT a person to embrace change. I usually stay ranting everywhere. I guess time has passed for me too. It all became even more brutal in the mentioned track: "dbs»Flowing Smoothly²". It's my first fullspeeder in more than 30 months, yet it is a version of the last one. Everything in the track is just an evolution of the first one: Music, game, scenery, layout, mood... In some ways, you can see the old one there, but it is not the same. One might wonder why I decided to write my second blog post about something so deep. It has to do with the legendary post. Some people don't understand that we will not have a second golden era of TM if we still hold on to the first one. Time goes by, games evolve, the community evolves. Hell, when I released that original map I didn't even exist on social networks, I don't remember having a youtube account and my Steam account had only one game. My desktop was still rocking hard and I refused to touch vocal electro with a 50m stick. More importantly, I still didn't have any plans of going to college, because "There will be a time when future me deals with that". All of that has been thoroughly demolished over the course of the last few years between Flowing Smoothly and Flowing Smoothly². It was nice coming across that Nu Disco song that I'm using as BGM for Flowing Smoothly² and, in some way, make me remember those old times. Note that I'm not saying "good old times", just old times. And it was different, because I kinda remembered it in third person. It's weird what a slight change in a sound pattern can do to your mental connections. What I saw was a hormone riddled teen that spent entirely too much time on the computer and caring too much about stuff that meant nothing. Don't get me wrong, I still do it, I'm stupid like that. But at least now I can notice it at some point. I didn't back then, and I was also way more pretentious than I am now, if that is even possible. I was not a nice guy to deal with sometimes. I read not too long ago that world wasn't better when we were children, we just knew less about it. And even if I'm only 19, I can't agree more with that. To a lesser extent, we need to understand that that has also happened to our dearly beloved game. And we need to understand that if we want to move on to a new heyday, which I suppose is what we all want. We have to understand that there is people that started playing Trackmania almost 10 years ago. That's half my life, and almost the entire life of younger trackmaniacs. Those people have seen a lot of changes, and some of them have left because their life kept them busy. We also have to understand that Nadeo aren't free to do as they please anymore, since they are part of Ubisoft now. And we also need to understand that we may have idealised those old times. Because we knew less about this game, we knew less about life, and we're tying our slightly-more-joyful mood back then with what we were doing. And that isn't necessarily what actually happened. It is now Friday 2013-07-12, 0:57 GMT. If there are two things I'm completely positive right now, they are 1.- 2008 isn't coming back and 2.- I should be heading bed right now. And while the second one doesn't apply to everyone who will read this post (Yeah, sure. =)) ), the first one does apply to everyone. You will never see TM again as you saw it when you first started, because it is no longer the day you saw TM for the first time and that day won't come back. You can either try to deny that fact and hopelessly try to find the same thrill when the next title drops (Spoiler alert: I'm almost 99% sure you won't) or accept it and enjoy TM with its flaws and its current community. I have chosen the second one. "It wasn't easy, but nothing is." (Song 2, Blur). Are you willing to join me and move ahead to a bright new future? |
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| FT»Joyeux writes ... | 20, Jul, 2013 |
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Hm..
Yes I agree. 
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| stevenamtaan writes ... | 15, Jul, 2013 |
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Totally agree with your post and especially the following part -
" You will never see TM again as you saw it when you first started, because it is no longer the day you saw TM for the first time and that day won't come back. You can either try to deny that fact and hopelessly try to find the same thrill when the next title drops or accept it and enjoy TM with its flaws and its current community." I can certainly remember when I first came across TM some 7 + years or so ago . Just thought this is the most amazing racing game i'd ever seen and then the gameplay .. WOW..  . And then as more envi's were released I adapted myself to also enjoy those aswell although my favorite was "desert" but had sooo many fun times on all of the other envi's also.
And so now we have TM2 and i've pretty much left TM1 as my passion for driving "Canyon" is equal to or better than the past envi's. Valley is also a new and excitng envi/challenge and i've once again even been having good fun times on TM2S. For those who want to live in the past there is no future. The world is a small , complex , diverse and ever changing place and so to are the people and products within. It's time to move on and explore new avenues for self happiness and well being.. 
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| comp writes ... | 12, Jul, 2013 |
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Very well said Osaka.
Remembering the past is only as productive as we're able to make it work to the advantage of the future. We all inherently cling to our most beautiful memories in life, and the climate and circumstances that make those memories so beautiful often cannot be replicated - it's virtually impossible in many cases. I'll never experience a fps in the same way I did with CS 1.3 again, for example. Multiplayer FPSs were just coming of age at that point, and no matter what I do, I'll never be 16 again living under the same conditions I was then with the same ideas of what I had considered "interesting" at the time and be able to witness the birth of a pioneering platform alongside the mutual excitement of all my buddies. No big surprise there, we can all say the same about any number of games - no matter what game or when. I've been pretty careful not to cling to the unusually 'good' times with anything in life. Remembering times like that is an awesome feeling that I simply wouldn't have if everything was so "awesome". This isn't to say that games are somehow limited from being great among other 'greats' of course. But it's important to look at what else it is about those beautiful memories that made them so great. The reason this is relevant for me is because for myself I've discovered that expectations can by default destroy any chance I may ever have had at connecting with something and creating new beautiful memories. In my case what I've repeatedly found is that typically I am the only thing preventing myself from enjoying anything in life - games or otherwise. Over time I began allowing myself to appreciate everything I decided to spend my time with - without the inhibitions of expectations and without pleading to myself to somehow recreate an untouchable experience from my past. We all live now and one of the best things I've done for myself in all areas in my life is putting as much energy as I can manage into enjoying every moment I possibly can. Life is too short to be your own worst enemy with anything. I spent many years clinging to the idea that I had seen, heard, felt, or had the best of everything and I lived a very cynical and self-redeeming life because of it. I closed many doors in my life in an attempt to try to define to myself who I was and where I'd been. It took me a long time to figure out what I was actually closing the doors on.. but it became pretty apparent to me I'd always been the only thing keeping me from enjoying anything the way I could have. |
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