Hiya! I'm Dzamie, a math nerd, hobbyist programmer, and amateur writer and artist - and admittedly a bit of a fledgeling software hipster. I usually stay in the replies of posts more than make my own (but I'm getting better).
Firmly resisting the urge to ramble about my OCs, I'll instead talk about Trackmania; specifically, TM2020, the most recent and most polished game. TM is kinda like playing with car toys as a child, where runs are less "ah, there's chicanes coming up, I'd better be smart about my brakes" and more "and then I went nyoom and was on the wall, then activated my rocket boosters to switch to the ceiling, and screeeeech sliding around the corner but I was going too fast into the wall - just kidding I did it on purpose to bam bounce off the wall, switch off the rockets, and flip into the finish line." It lets you drive on 6 different surface materials (arguably 10 but you generally wanna avoid those) reach with different grip physics, and the community has absolutely learned to abuse them all. In fact, there's even a mapping style called LOL that's basically "hey wanna see me do something funny with the physics" and one called Kacky which is basically "hey wanna see me do something absolutely bonkers with the physics."
One of my favorite physics tricks in the game (it's even showed up in a couple official maps!) is a bugslide, which is a wonderful quirk of the physics engine where, when you're holding both gas and brake to lose grip and drift, once your car turns about perpendicular, you suddenly get a ton of grip and turn extremely sharply. It's so stupid and it's always fun.
Oh and because of the reactor boost mechanic (certain map tiles can activate rocket nozzles on your wheels to make your car hover off the ground or stick to it harder), people can, and have, make podracing tracks. Like, from Star Wars.
#text #video-games #Trackmania
