April 20, 2019

SuperTuxKart 1.0 Release

Yes, if you have followed our development a bit, that might be a bit of a surprise. But we have been asked why we don't call this release 1.0, and the majority of us developers discussed this and decided that indeed this release is a major milestone that deserves the big 1.0 number.

 
SuperTuxKart 1.0 official trailer

Should you not have followed our development: this 1.0 release adds support for networking races to SuperTuxKart. You can play with your friends online, and it doesn't have to be split screen anymore - your gaming partners can be in a different city, country, or even continent - you can still meet for a race or two. Cross-continent may not work the best; you should try to have a reasonable ping - 100ms works fine, and we had some races with 300ms ping, though unavoidable sudden stuttering and karts jumping around is more frequent at higher latencies. Even more important than the ping (unless it's abnormally high) is that there isn't packet loss or packet slowdowns (jitter), so a stable connection is required, especially for the server hosts. The bandwidth use is minimal even for hosting 10 players, so as long as you don't use a metered connection it should be fine for anyone with 150 kilobytes (~1.2 megabit) per second upload speed to spare. If that's still too much, less bandwidth is used with fewer players.

With the new version you can play various game modes online: normal race, time trial, soccer mode, battle mode and the new Capture-The-Flag mode. While you can easily start your own server (just select 'create server' in the GUI), the community also provides a set of servers to be used by everyone. Certain servers provide online ranking (since we have to make sure that the servers are not modified to favor certain players), and you can find the current rankings here. You can use one of the servers provided by the community. We would request that you do not abuse the servers provided by the community - they are meant to be used by everyone. If you want to play only with a certain set of friends, let SuperTuxKart create a server for you, and do not grab a public server and kick everyone else who wants to join.

Ravenbridge Mansion

The networking implementation has been a very big and ambitious task, which took even longer than the port from PLIB (anyone remember that?) to Irrlicht in 2010, which took around 14 months. But it is done: more than 20,000 lines of network related code and 18 months later, we have reached our goal, and online play is a reality. Across the whole game, more than 2500 commits and 300 resolved issues separate the 1.0 release from 0.9.3. And it was a very concerted effort, so a big thanks to all contributors involved, For the people who don't know the team, here a short introduction:

First and foremost Benau, who originally told me he would only like to work on some of the GUI aspects of networking, but who then grew to meet the challenges the network implementation threw at us. Without his work networking support would nowhere close to being ready or as complete as it is.

Alayan, a relatively new main contributor started several months ago, with a keen interest in balancing game play. He is an experienced speed runner for SuperTuxKart, and one of the best players in our online ranking system. While he was also essential in testing online racing, he made significant contributions to balancing SuperTuxKart and overall improving the playing experience.

We are still reaping the benefits from Google's Summer of Code program: leyyin is still with us, and he is helping us with the server side implementation. E.g. anytime you are looking for servers, his code will be involved. Then let's not forget Hilnius, who back in 2013 started to design the protocol implementation on which our networking code is still based. A very successful result for our participation in the GSoC.

Then the older core team, and I'll be a bit briefer here: Deve as always makes sure that all is fine on the Linux front, do many bugfixes and small enhancements, and maintains and improves our Android port. Auria keeps everything else running - pull requests, bug reports, forum posts, ...  Samuncle, though busy with his private life, came through with the wonderful new "Ravenbridge Mansion" track. And Arthur keeping our social media feeds updated. Oh yes, there is also me (hiker) :)

For the record: is the 1.0 release 'perfect'? No, it is not. There are improvements to be done, features to be added, and gameplay to be improved. Still, it is probably the most significant step forward in SuperTuxKart's more than 12 years of history. We would like to invite all of you to join some online games by fetching the new 1.0 release from our Download page.


On behalf of the SuperTuxKart team: thank you for your continued support through the years, and enjoy the big 1.0!

37 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for your work! :D

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  2. This is very nice!

    I believe there was work on network code in TuxKart too. So we might say "for the whole time that STK exsists." :)

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  3. Great job guys. Can't wait to race with my friends!

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  4. Great job guys. Can't wait to race with my friends!

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  5. Nice release, and greetings from the FreeGamer blog :)

    I noticed that your blog doesn't support webmentions... for our blog on Blogger we are currently testing https://brid.gy/ for it.

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    1. Thanks! We're not too happy with Blogger in general, so not sure we care to do more work on it. Would be nice to move to something else, we're just not sure yet and also need the time and motivation to do so.

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  6. Congratulations! Fantastic job! This is the time to pop Formula1-size champagne bottles!

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  7. Love the work that's been done on improving graphics. Thank you for your keeping up the development on this amazing game!

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  8. Can you please update [the Itch page](https://supertuxkart.itch.io/supertuxkart)? Also, what happened to the Steam version?

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  9. Great job everyone.
    What are the requirements for a community server (bandwidth, processor, RAM)? If someone wants to go further than a private server for a few friends.

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  10. Just wow! I have not followed the development in recent years, but when I compare the trailer with my memories from years ago, I am impressed to see how much it improved.

    Congratulations!

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  11. I dream to see it on xBox One and PS4.
    Port it to xBox One could be easier.

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  12. Great News! But I am still waiting STK on the Steam

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  13. I notice that the Android version has the update on Google Play Store, but not yet on F-DROID. Any reason why the update is lagging on F-DROID?

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    Replies
    1. That is not under our control. Ask the F-Droid people.

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  14. Awesome! This game has made me smile so many times. Can't wait to try out the new networking feature. Thanks so much for keeping this alive and kicking <3

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  15. It looks good! There's a bug though. When you exit the game, it screws up the desktop resolution. All the text and icons look chunky and you have to reset the screen to fix it. I'm using MacBook Pro Retina with OSX 10.9.5.

    Previous versions of SuperTuxKart didn't do this.

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  16. If I try to skid, sometimes the button sticks on, nitro is used as soon as I get it, and I have to spam the fire button for several seconds before it does anything. All the buttons work fine in the menu though. Does anyone know how to fix this? If it helps, my wheel is a Logitech Driving Force GT.

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  17. Thanks for release! I'm trying it with my gf, and we found two major problems so far. For the 1st one I reported a bug, it's that it's impossible to add bots to LAN game, which kind of defeats the purpose.

    But I don't know what to do with the 2nd issue, do I have to report it on github too…? It's that, my gf is using Windows (I'm on GNU/Linux), and her installed game refuses to run with "Couldn't find MSVCP140.dll".

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    Replies
    1. During the install process, there is a choice to install or not the microsoft VC++ runtime libraries. However, these are absolutely required for the game to be able to run on Windows. See this issue : https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/issues/2545

      Re-do the install process and make sure of saying yes when asked for those libraries.

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  18. Congratulation !
    And online game is very nice too.

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  19. Very good my friends. But I have a county, put ranked servers in South America. I am brazilian and I have difficulty to find a server without lag. Thank you anyway!

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  20. Thanks for all your alls hard work to help people have fun! Mad love!

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  21. supertuxkart in steam? :( i need this game in steam and archivement D:

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  22. As a few already asked, what happened to the Steam release? Don't you already have an AppID assigned via Greenlight so you could at least upload the current binaries to it?

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  23. I love the online multiplayer! I remeber playing this 10 years ago! Sadly now I know how bad I am since the online players beat me all the time :(

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  24. Really appreciate it alot! Great game! Thanks for doing all this great work, it wasn't easy to keep it going. So big applause.
    I hope you are reading the comments.

    I do agree we need to release it to Steam to receive a bigger audience. I think its ready for that.

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  25. Look's Cool! I think this is A big Release for everyone. GG! ;-)

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  26. EPICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
    AM BIG FAN OF WILBER

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  27. Hello, really love the new Super Tux Kart! I can tell you improved the graphics in this version, but I don't see the changes listed. I was wondering what you have improved if you can tell me or point me to a relevant blog post. Thanks!

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    1. You can see the changelog for 1.0 in the changelog.md file in your SuperTuxKart directory or here : https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/blob/1f320662485cc36793e3979a4f43a36c6b8aac6d/CHANGELOG.md

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