Bug Maps

Bug Maps (also shortened to BM) is a map style in the game TrackMania Nations Forever. Those maps are primarily focused around using the game's bugs to one's advantage to set unbelievably quick (or sometimes, slow) times. This map style is considered by many to be the "absolute worst" of TrackMania, as little to no skill is required to become a successful BM player. As such, the bug maps community is majorly disconnected from the rest of the TrackMania Nations Forever community, with the former having their own teams and idols, who are mostly unknown outside of it.

Early Maps
The first known bug map is considered to be Bug Track by a now-retired player Eagle, that was uploaded to TrackMania Exchange in December of 2004. Eagle was one of the first 14 visitors of the site back then. His contribution, however, was not validated properly, thus rendering the players unable to finish the map and upload their replays. Eagle only noticed his mistake after the upload, and, unfortunately, could not fix his error as TMX did not allow that at the time. Bug Track was the first map to showcase a game-breaking mechanic we now know and recognise as Glitching Through Walls (GTW).

Unluckily for Eagle, his map did not gain much traction, and was only played by 2 players, those being himself, and the player Gunnar, who would then go on to replicate Eagle's bug in a map of his own titled Downwards which was uploaded to TrackMania Exchange in October of 2005, nearly a year later. His map, albeit unoriginal, earnt 5 awards from TMX users, and though not considered a classic, it still left its impact on the bug maps style.

The first bug map built in the confines of the stadium is X-Bug by the legendary builder x-stream, who has also built many of the early classic maps. His map was uploaded in April of 2006, and once again, it was neglected by most people, played by just one person. X-Bug featured a new, recently introduced by the stadium environment, bug - the Randstein Bug (mistakenly (or purposefully) called the rammstein bug).

Community Division
Since then, bug maps have become mainstream, and began gaining attention beyond what Eagle could imagine back when coming up with the concept of the style. Despite the overall popularity, many technical and fullspeed players avoided these maps like the fire, dubbing them "skill-less tomfoolery not worthy of attention". This was the start of the community's division, never before seen in TrackMania. Tech and FS players known to hold records on bug maps were being removed from their teams due to "not being serious players", and therefore leaving them no choice but to create their own teams. One of such teams was the now-infamous TOB (Tribe of Bugs), which was the first shelter for people kicked out of their previous homes.

As time went on, the bug maps community continued to alienate further from the main TrackMania community. They had their own servers, where no other players wished to play to avoid potential bans. More and more teams began to introduce rules such as "joining a bug map server results in a ban". While bug map teams had no such rules, joining a tech, or sometimes even a lol map server would be frowned upon by other members. Additionally, as noticed by TOB members, joining any server other than their own would make everybody leave the said server within minutes, and sometimes even seconds, as competitive players did not want to be noticed playing around what was considered "unserious low-life individuals". Thus, the 2 communities were self-contained at all times, barely interacting with one another.

Modern Times
With the passage of time, the relations between the 2 communities did not get any better, although many newer teams nowadays allow players from both of them. To this day, bug maps tend to get no attention from the mostly competitive TMX users, with most of them only having replays by other members of the so-called "bug community" or new players who are not yet aware of the division. Nov, the current leader of TOB, has on multiple occasions attempted to improve the relations with the TMCommunity, but to no avail, as they still do not recognise the "bug community", even after all this time.

There is an abundance of bug maps, however, which are publicly accessible on the TrackMania Exchange website, and their quality has grown significantly since Eagle's early Bug Track. Newer maps tend to include multiple bugs for players to practice, sometimes including even rather obscure techniques not known outside of the "bug community".