Roof

**Roof** (pronounced as **[roːf]**) is a TrackMania Nations Forever map style taking inspiration from early full speed maps and popularised by the legendary mapper FlyingDave in the early 2000s. Roof maps involve driving on top of the Stadium roof, mostly spiced up with obstacles of varying difficulty. The majority of roof maps are heavily skill-dependent and are heavily contested, with few selected maps having a tenth of a second of margin for the TOP 10.

## History

### Background

With the full speed style gaining more and more traction, it was destiny for other, newer map styles to show up. One of these styles was roof, taking high speeds of its predecessor and making use of them to climb the Stadium roof, which was never before conquered by the TrackMania community.

### Breakthrough and further success

Credit for the very first roof map goes to the player FlyingDave of team BoL, whose maps "Invisible Road" and "Crazy Roofy" were the very first to allow players to reach the Stadium roof. Those few early maps inspired a whole generation of roof builders, that all put their own twist onto the style.

As more and more maps were being built, Nadeo took it in their hands to organise the very first roof style cup titled the "International Roof Championship 2008". The tournament was, obviously, a huge success, with many players having discovered their new favourite map style. The second and third roof championships garnered more attention overall, providing TrackMania with an influx of new players excited to try out the tempting, carefully crafted challenges built by talented mappers.

### Eventual stagnation

After more than ten successful roof cups, players have already grown bored of the style. One of the reasons for this was Nadeo's will to milk the style out to the last drop, as mentioned by Hylis in a podcast: "it make player play. player get money. je ne peux pas tuer mon argent." [sic].

Notably, the player who dominated the roof scene at the time, Wormah, has on numerous occasions mentioned that he is, in fact, affiliated with Nadeo. Despite the conversations in question taking place in private, they were eventually leaked to the public, putting Nadeo in an unfortunate situation.

As players gained access to aforementioned facts, the outcry began. Many players quit the style altogether and adviced that others do so too. With the style losing popularity and with players shifting to fairer competitive environments (primarily tech, full speed and jump) very few kept making new maps and therefore progressing the roof map style.

### Modern times

The only players remaining in the scene after the outrage were the style's "father" FlyingDave, and a bunch of his close friends and fans, with the likes of players Definitium and Raver becoming the new backbone of the roof style. Although the style is considered dead by the majority of the TrackMania community, it still has a dedicated fanbase trying out new things in an attempt to revive it.

## References

1. ↑ This pronounciation was confirmed by the author of the very first roof style map, FlyingDave.
2. ↑ Due to their lack of English language knowledge, the cup was initially called the "Campioneship".
3. ↑ Most of the conversations took place in private ICQ chats.