ShootMania:Storm is just in alpha 3, but there already are community-driven projects, which we can highlight in this article. Since the NDA was released last Friday afternoon, we can shed some light on what’s happening in the alpha of ShootMania:Storm.
The “by players, for players” articles are here to highlight the sites and projects made by the community for the community. In this first article, we’ll give you some insight in some community projects which are already online for the new ShootMania. (You can click on the images to view them in a bigger size)


ManiaExchange
As you might have heard, this new game in the “Mania-series” contains a pretty nice mapeditor. And when it comes to sharing maps, ManiaExchange is the place to be! On first sight, it looks the same as the exchange for TrackMania 2. But if you dig deeper, you can find some new features. For example the rating system has been changed: the awards system for TrackMania has been thrown out in this ShootMania site and is replaced with a “star rating system”, with a scale from one till five. The ShootMania part of ManiaExchange also brings us a new API, which is better accessiblethan the old one and features the complete ManiaExchange site (TrackMania 2 and ShootMania).


Jailbreak gamemode
The new ShootMania brings you the possibility to make gamemodes on your own (or just editing existing one). Akbalder is one of the first to release a new gamemode, which is called: Jailbreak. The idea of the mode is to eliminate your opponents, which sends them to jail. You can free your teammates who are currently in jail by “capturing the pole”. When you send all your opponents to jail in the given time, you receive one point. The first team that reaches the pointlimit wins!


ManiaLive Extending Plugin Pack
Every server needs to be managed, also ShootMania servers. NADEO has provided the community with a framework called ManiaLive. The developing team of MLEPP has decided to start again with making plugins for ManiaLive. This has given the community a possibility to maintain their servers. It contains plugins that give admins a lot of commands, you can add maps to your server, make karma-votes on maps you like or dislike and last but not least: Ranks. The Ranks plugin saves the points that people have scored over the time they are on the server, those points are displayed with a rank (getting more points wil give you a higher rank).