New video & welcome to newcomers!

In March 2024, I started trying to train an AI to learn the hardest technique in Trackmania: the “noseboost”. And almost a year later, I’m happy to say I’ve reached the end of this journey—the video is finally here!!

I’m sorry it took so long; this video really took a lot of work. And I’m very grateful to all of you who’ve supported this project on Patreon during this time: Thank you so much! And welcome to any newcomers who might be reading this after watching my latest video, and who might be interested in the future of this project. For everyone, I’d like to share some thoughts I have for my YouTube channel and this Patreon page.

The good news is that, while working on this video, I’ve also made progress on side projects that will be coming to my channel in the next few months. In particular, I’ve been working on a new Trackmania AI video where I plan to explore “Tool Assisted Speedruns” (TAS). TAS techniques are by far the strongest way to achieve fast times in Trackmania and push the game to its limits. In this upcoming video, I’d like to compare AI with TAS and see how I can combine some of their ideas. I've already got some interesting results to show, and I’m thinking about making the video a bit shorter than the last ones, so I can finish it more quickly. With that in mind, I think the next video should be ready in about 3-4 months.

As for this Patreon page, I want to be more active here this year. As I mentioned at the end of my last video, I’ve already prepared 5 bonus videos that I’ll be sharing here in the next weeks. These will include extra sections I cut from the main video to keep it shorter, details about the reinforcement learning methodology, and additional AI gameplay. After that, I’m planning to post at least twice a month here. Mostly short videos to share my progress, get your feedback, tease future projects, and showcase things that don’t fit on my main YouTube channel. Don't hesitate to use this space to exchange with me and share your suggestions!

Currently, I’m working full-time on this project, and Patreon is a valuable source of income for me for two reasons: it provides steady support that fluctuates less than YouTube income, And I've chosen not to include sponsored sections in my videos so far. So again, thanks a lot for you support! It really motivates me to keep pushing this project in the future. It’s been exhausting to spend so much time on a single video, but I’m super happy with the final result, and I can’t wait to share more with you. See you soon!

Yosh