Map tool

Kacky is building its own tool for working with Trackmania map files: the map tool. Anything to do with the Gbx format runs through it.

Today it reads a map file and pulls out the useful bits: the name, author, author time, unique ID, and the embedded thumbnail. Those thumbnails get stored on Cloudflare so the site can show a map's preview instantly, without re-reading the whole file every time.

Reading is only the start, though. The reason for building it ourselves is to do the harder Gbx work too: pushing signs into maps, pulling ghosts out of replays, and whatever else the community needs. Anything the format allows, the map tool should be able to do.

None of that heavy lifting is written from scratch. It's built on GBX.NET, the open-source library that can read and write the Gbx format (its map explorer lives at explorer.gbx.tools). Kacky owes that library a lot: without it, none of this would be possible.

You don't use the map tool directly. It works in the background. Whenever a map preview appears on the site, or a mapper submits a map and its details fill themselves in, the map tool is the thing that read the file. See How Kacky reads maps for what it pulls out.