This a new player card of a member that you should have seen in dedimania record or in the top10 of some competitions, and it's Hanni from GuM.

Surname - Name : Julien THIALON Nickname :  Hanni Short explication of your nickname : My nickname in secondary school  was Hannibal, but i’ll not tell you why  (i leave your imagination run).  Thus, I reduced it in a less horrific and more accessible way. I often change it in cartoon or manga characters names. Age : 21 ans

Occupation (school, work) : Middle Office manager in Asset management for a french bank that I’ll not name.

Which hobbies you got (except Trackmania) ? : Asia as a whole, and about everything that happens there. Music, cinema, dramas, literature as novels or mangas, cartoons and Asiatic culture as a whole. I collect katanas I am proof-checker in a fansub team (I correct spelling mistakes). Else, sport as a whole and I started bodybuilding seing my featherweight (If Dacoste from TEP reads me, I have put on weight!)

Computer configuration : Windows Seven 64 bits Ultimate, AMD Phenom (tm) II X4 940 Processor 3.01 Ghz, 4 Go de RAM, carte graphique ATI RADEON 4850. Thanx to Shu, the official GuM’s cheerleader who installed it at home.

Which steering device are you using? : Logitech Rumble Pad 2, unfortunately I must often change it because of my nervous breakdowns and its too frequent use (it’s my 5th pad nowadays)

When have you discovered Trackmania? : ? At the beginning of 2005, thanks to the Sunrise demo. A classmate told me this was an awesome game with flying cars. At the beginning, I didn’t understand, I never found the finish. I got a taste for it… After, I bought the complete game, then TMO, I played to TMN and bought TMU.

In which team are you at the moment? : GuM  with KAR as leader Yrp,Hézix and Vyrus     are there as right hand men and others, like me, are nothing more than those dictator’s items! More seriously, we are a very complementary team for the racing level as well as for the mapping, skinning, and so on. The most important is to entertain all together, it is very sane and we react very quickly when something is wrong.

Which clans did you leave? : I have been recruited by Alex, TEP team’s leader on the Sunrise demo, where I started to improve (hence the tag) for a bit more than 3 years on all the games. I had very pleasant times there, but I switched to another old team of Trackmania’s history, the GuM, where I had been really well received and hazed.

Which functions do you have in your team?(Which squad, which maps are you driving mostly)? : I play for our first squad and I am in the board of examiners for the GuM Mapping Contest. I can play all the environments. My track style is rather tech such as ET, tm-ligue and my favourite mappers’ ones that are now on  TMX.

Which are your strong points? : The environments of Sunrise, I’m getting used to my pad and I can easily learn new maps. I’m not very good but very consistent if well trained.

Which are your weak points? : Probably TMO because I need very much more determination to get good times there. Stadium is separated for me : I don’t play it much even if I like it (I probably too much played it in TMN period).

Who is the best player in your opinion? : I’ll not quote any pgm of nowadays, because the gameplay was harder at TMS/TMO time. I would say all the RG such as Rob,Vince or Algor, for his determination. Zooz has always been there, Blightster who was a former TEP but had lots of skill. BlackShark, Scorpius, Sadhik and many others are not truly pgm, but at the sight of their involvement in this game, they deserve to be quoted.

Which leagues have you driven in ? : About every ET league, I hope I tried all the gamers competitions on TMO and TMS environments. I considered sunrise-exchange as a real competition against myself in a former period. It’s thanks to its quality and diversity that I improved on all the environments.

Your favourite map(s)? : In the past, Nitryx’s ones on Sunrise, but i never found THE map which complied whith all my expectations, and I’m still searching. All the maps that are technical, fluent and made for the player, such as Kyo’s ones, are great maps in my opinion.

Are you also building maps? if yes, can you share a creation with us? : Here is my real weakness, the creation. No doubt that I discovered only 30% of the game itself. Many idea but no practice…

How much time are you training a map? : It depends on the opponent team, my motivation and most of all the quality of the map. Before, I could keep 8 to 10 hours on a map, without the collective training. I damped a bit, it is rather 2 to 3 hours offline on a map to reach my best time, then again 2 to 3 hours to train with ghosts. But we (GuM) already experienced to reach the map server without any knowledge of the maps!

When and where can we find you in TrackMania? : I play very often offline, and if I play online I join mates via the mates system, I come also on Scorpius’ XCS server or diverse league training servers. The last was the Jackpot Contest 2, where is got the second place after the unbeatable Kaka (TEP), and before Ramiro Junior (Sek).

Hated servers? : LOL-maps servers, I don’t understand how some people can spend hours on such maps, even beginners. Fullspeed, on the long run, is uninviting, like dirt that is a lot too much random in my opinion.

What do you like about trackmania? : The community, I got a lot of friends on this game, it’s like my second family and I don’t think I’m alone to think like this. I see again some very old friends from TMX (Loko!) come back (for information, this guy is very bad xD), I miss others that gone away. Else, 7 environments, 7 gaming styles, it is hard to leave and I still miss lots of things..

What do you think about TMN compared to TMU? : Track Money Nations vs TrackManiaques Unlimited.

A little advice for new players? : Open all the opportunities, watch the players replays, persist and do not anguish. It’s an advice I don’t apply because my hands ever tremble during matches.

A typical sentence during a match? : Good luck, have fun.

Movies you like : Fight Club, American history x, Baccano ! Mémoires d'une Geisha, Old boy, The classic, Il mare, Love Exposure, there are so much...

Do you play other games except Trackmania? : Guild Wars (near as much as Trackmania), Counter Strike, E-Univers (at work, it relaxes), I’m waiting for  ff14 online and gw2. I love to tease KAR, it’s so much pleasurable...

Any closing words? : It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.Fight Club.



TM-Actu would like to thanks you Hanni to answer to our questions and using your precious time.We wish you good luck to you and your team during next leagues.