Warning: My investigations are no proofed science. It is very hard to analyze this game. So keep that in mind. Probabilities or explanations might be wrong or not complete. This guide just shows my current level of knowledge and expertise. If you want to share something that pushes this guide to a more complete one, please share it in the speedrun Discord. Thanks.
StadiumA1
Basic strat:
Best known times are a 15"65 (by Nérédav, 31st dec 2009, and TMshock, 28th march 2020) Link (Tmshock, video): Link ( Nérédav, picture proof): https://www.video-games-records.com/#/en/trackmania-ds-game-g756/race-stadium-group-g2661/stadium-a1-chart-c46096/index
Estimated strat potential: 15“63, maybe „62
This is the basic strat that you all know. You drive over the booster, drop down, cross your fingers, try to manage the half-circle-corner, jump to the right, land, cross your fingers and drive through the finish. If you are riolu you also hope that you not fall through the ground before you finish your run :)
Since the author medal is a 16“17 here, a bit over half a second behind the best time (with this strat) you can even allow yourself to make a bad landing. And this is the key point of the track: The landings. There are TWO of them. One at the start and one at the end. When I played this track last year I got a perfect landing once around every 10th attempt. Sometimes once every 5th attempt. So let's say the probability for a perfect landing is 10-20%. But what is a perfect landing exactly? You'll know it when you have one and approach the half-circle-corner with speed that is way more than you have experienced before, and you think: „Hol up.“ Your car loses around 10-15 speed and then accelerates again.
10-20% … that ain't too bad. That is better than nothing. BUT … there is a second landing and it requires the same luck and approach. You land from a nose dive. A raw landing that mostly ends like a real car dropping from a house trying to land like a cat. You can calculate for yourself. It's bad. But if you are aiming for the author medal it's okay. You will have a solid run eventually. I think you can even have a bad landing at the end and still finish before the author medal.
But, you might want to go further than that. I have listed the rest of the strats right below. Enjoy!
PS: If you want to have it a bit easier tho, you might want to look at the booster strat since it is very easy to perform.
Booster strat:
Best known times are a 15“58 (by DivisionX, 21st august 2020, and Tmshock, 5th april 2020) Link (Tmshock, video): Link (DivisionX, video):
You may have noticed that there are two boosters on this track. One is right at the start, the other one comes right after before the drop. I noticed on a self-made-track that when you take a booster in a diagonal line you accumulate more speed. I am not sure why that is, maybe it's the car weight, maybe the fact that the booster works from both sides, I don't know. But it is faster. The problem with Trackmania DS is that it is very hard to compare runs, so it is even hard to tell how diagonal or at what angle you should approach the booster or if it even makes sense to take the second booster the same way. What I can say is that the first booster-take defenitely makes you faster and it is easy to do. Where as you had below 300 speed with the basic strat you will now have slightly more than 300 speed with the basic strat when you enter the drop. DivisionX, in his run, took the second booster to accumulate more speed (the same way) although I am not sure if it is better. The reason why is because he takes a longer way and the speed you have gained is only benefiting you until you have to release for the half-circle-corner, so, only for the short road-piece. But maybe you gain 0.01, who knows :D I also saw that he lost One last thing for this strat: Since you have more speed from the booster you also jump further from the edge. This can result in different chances for a perfect landing, better or worse I'm not sure. If you want to have a better chance for a perfect landing though, you might want to try the next strat.
Flow trick strat:
Best known time is a 15“55, current WR (by TMshock, 9th september 2020) Link:
Estimated strat potential including the previous booster strat: Sub 15“50
Hmmm, the flow trick, right? This famous stylish trick which many of us know from Trackmania Nations Forever and that we don't always know about why it is faster … Better alignment with the following road, weight transfer, earlier landing, etc. … What we know, though, is that it makes you faster and is easy to perform. You do a movement consisting of a left-right or right-left steering change, often minimalisticaly, and et voila: your car tilts down-forward. For Trackmania DS … let's say it works a little bit different. In Trackmania DS there are TWO differences I need to point out:
- You can't airbrake.
- Your car can move during air time. Only once though.
Probably, if the car had the ability to airbrake you would have it a lot easier because I feel like the blocks in this game are so terribly modelled that the down-falling of your car never alignes with the road-piece unless you get very lucky (perfect landing). To prevent that I tried multiple ways to land different, to somehow get your car in a position that fits more to the road piece. And I found something: Since you can move „once“ midair you can steer a bit to the left before you drop off so that the nose of your car shows 45° to the left while you fall. Moving to the right now during your time midair let's you perform a „countersteer“ which just means that you steer into the opposite direction: to the right. Your car will now land more towards the two left tires and a still a bit forward. I experienced that this position alignes more with the following road-block, even though it doesn't work 100% every time. Sometimes it works 50% of the time, sometimes 30% but sometimes I also get it 5 times in a row althought it's rare. So there must be something behind the position of your car in correlation with the shape of the block that you use to land. The chance to get a good landing is way higher know. There is no way of arguing around this fact.
At last (I will come to the second flow-trick in a minute) and this is not certain, you might lose less speed with the flow-trick. Although the TAS loses as much speed as I do during the landing, DivisionX in his run loses around 10 speed more. This is probably due to the alignement and TAS being perfect but I still wanted to point this out. The second flow-trick works the same, just the other way around (right-left instead of left-right) and it is a bit more blind a narrow, so a lot more difficult. But again, I am losing 10 speed less than DivisionX finishing with around 39X (X=0-9) speed and myself finishing with around 40X (X=0-9) speed. Even the TAS that is using an incredible landing on the black wall at the end doesn't have more speed than I have with the flow trick. We both finish with almost 410 speed.
TAS strat (drifting?):
Best known time is a 15“48 (TAS by taechuK, 28th july 2020) Link (time stamp 0:20):
I don't know. Everytime I see a drift I think about Axatar's Dorifto-videos on YouTube. Drifting isn't actually so common in Trackmania DS since you have very a limited movement and angle. It also takes a bit of time to stop a drift manually. A drift, though, is performed like in any other Trackmania game (that I know xD). You lean into a corner and tap the brake button. The advantage of drifting is that you keep a more constant speed. Where as my speed goes rather up from the 280's into the 310's the TAS keeps his speed at around 300 the whole way through. It goes into the corner with around 336-337 speed, the drift slows it down to 319 and then keeps a constant 300 until it can accelerate again. I feel like this drifting is absolutely faster and I defenitely need to try this strat somewhere in the future.
Last thing to the bonk that the TAS performes at the end by landing onto the black wall. With the flow-trick-landing I go from around 355 to high 29X speed until I accelerate. The TAS bonks with a speed of around 363 (due to more speed from the drifting) and slows down to 299 speed before accelerating. You can argue that I lost a little bit less speed and that the wall-hit is incredibly lucky and difficult to perform, so for humans not worth going for.
Estimated strat potential: 15“4x low, maybe '3x high? This TAS was done in one afternoon and as I watched it in 0.25 speed I can see room for improvement. Maybe a mix of TAS and flow-trick will be the optimal-human-strat? Who knows.
Defenitely big shout out to taechuK for doing this TAS and pushing the game, even for one afternoon. This track has potential and now my WR of 15“55 doesn't feel so fast anymore D:
