Bugs

TrackMania Nations Forever is notorious for featuring various bugs that players managed to master over the years. The bugs in question range from really small (e.g. the bugfin), to truly gamebreaking (e.g. the landingbug). Numerous bugs (e.g. the superbug) are known to be extremely complex, these bugs are still being analysed by the intelligence from the TAS community and featuring assistance of other experienced players (mainly the Brain team).

Big part of playing TrackMania is getting hold of all of the bugs and using them for your advantage. Moreover, there are separate map styles that concentrate on utilising these bugs and use them more as a feature. As the famous content creator [https://www.youtube.com/@Jixaw. Jigsaw] once said - "Skill is when luck appear usually" [sic].

Below is a list of all currently known bugs in TrackMania Nations Forever.

BugFin
TBA

LandingBug
The landingbug is the most infuriating and problematic bug in TrackMania Nations Forever. It occurs on pretty much any map that has any sort of landing. This bug was discovered on the first day after the game's release by Trabadia on A01-Race. As he said in his own words: "what?? bug..". In a later interview he mentioned that he was completely disoriented and shocked.

The way the landingbug works is that once you land on any surface, there is a 54.68498% (55% rounded up) chance that your car will lose 60% of its speed. Additionaly, the car may suddenly turn in any direction including backwards.

Players have built maps that utilise this bug in this exact way in order to get the fastest time possible. Contrary to this, however, there are also maps that you cannot finish if you obtain a landingbug; for example  [PF Ph/\ntom Fake ].

Trivia
For some reason, Nadeo thought that the landingbug was a nice feature, - worth showcasing to people. Hence why they built E03-Endurance - just to show the potential of this anomaly. Many players criticised them for the map, dumbfounded by the gruesome bug. However, Nadeo also found a large group of fans and supporters that liked it, which led to the first major division of the game's community in the early days.

EdgeBug
TBA

NoseBug
TBA

RandsteinBug
TBA

Grass Slide
The grass slide (shortened to GS, sometimes also called the bugslide) is one of the most famous, popular, and beloved bugs in TrackMania. It is also one of the earliest found bugs in the game, with its discovery dating back all the way to 2006. It is not known which player slid on the grass first, but their legacy lives on nonetheless.

The exact reasons why does the grass slide work are unknown, but it is believed that this bug is very much intentional, since Nadeo never patched it out despite its destructive nature. That is also proved by its usage in official campaign maps of TrackMania Nations Forever and later titles in the franchise.

Performing a grass slide is a relatively simple task involving several steps of varying difficulty:

1. Buy a mechanical keyboard for €150+

2. Launch the game with the keyboard connected

3. Press the forwards key, the backwards key and one or both of the direction keys

4. Congratulations! The car should've performed the bug. If it didn't, make sure to retrace your steps to see if you missed something.

It is currently unknown whether the grass slide is doable on controller, as members of the Brain team are still busy investigating this possibility.

SuperBug
The superbug is the newest and the most unexplainable bug in TrackMania Nations Forever. It was first discovered in 2022 by the Portuguese player Pablo760 on a LoL server and is still to be replicated. The superbug makes the car go completely crazy, allowing the player to reach great speed in a fraction of time. Players were not able to find out more information about the bug due to its rarity.

Luckily, there is footage of the bug occurring - thanks to the server admin who shared his Server Run Recording (.srr) file on the TrackMania Discord server. The quality of the clip is admittedly poor due to the recording plugin on the server which operates on the single threaded XASECO controller.

UberBug
The uberbug is one of the biggest and most spectacular bugs in TrackMania Nations Forever. It was discovered relatively late after the game release - around 2010, although the person who discovered it first is unknown.

To perform a uberbug, or as some call it - a "megabug", a player has to: If these conditions are met, after performing the grass slide during landing and then holding it until crashing into a wall (or another obstacle), there is a chance that a uberbug will occur. It will launch the player with gargantuan speed into the air in the direction the car was pointing to upon crashing.
 * Have speed greater than 243 speed units
 * Land on a road with the car front pointing down (approximately -10 to -30 degrees)
 * Have the car angled enough to also perform the grass slide towards a wall (or some other obstacle)

Formulae
Thanks to the players from the Brain team, the formulae that game uses to compute the uberbug is now known. Previously it was believed that the game performs some form of a miscalculation/division by 0 or simply runs out of floating point operations memory. That myth recently got debunked and the formulae are described below:

If U(x) = S(x)/D(x), where S is a speed function and D(x) = $$d_0 * \Bigl(1-s_1\chi\Bigr)*...*\Bigl(1-s_l\chi\Bigr)$$''and numbers p1. . . pl are disjoint sets, then if S(x) is a polynomial of degree less than l, there occurs a formula:''

$$[x^n]U(x) = a_1\rho_1^n +. . . + a_l\rho_l^n,$$ for $$a_k=\frac{-\rho_k*S(1/\rho_k)}{D'(1/\rho_k)} = \frac {S(1/\rho_k)}{\rho_0\Pi j\neq k (1-\rho_j/\rho_k)}.$$

The uberbug allowed players to not only cut old maps using the bug, but also gave birth to new teams.

TomBug
TBA

CheckPointBug
TBA

SpiderBug
TBA

Glitching through walls
TBA

AudioBug
TBA

Colour Booster Bug
TBA

AutoBug
TBA

CarBug
The carbug is one of the most terrifying bugs in TrackMania Nations Forever. It was not found until very recently, and is considered a creepy story all by itself.

In essence, the carbug is when a car does a bug due to a flaw in the game's engine. That mistake by the developers causes the player's vehicle to become a terrible abomination.

After encountering the carbug, many players were reportedly sent to mental institutions, as they slowly began to go insane after witnessing the distorted car. It is still unknown whether this bug is actually a feature, and was left in the code intentionally.