Evolving Candela City

Candela City – an overview

Candela City was first introduced in SuperTuxKart in version 0.9.3 in 2017, and remained essentially the same in subsequent versions.

For SuperTuxKart Evolution, it is receiving a very large set of changes to make it fresher, more fun, and more beautiful. In this blog post, we will discuss them in detail, as well as explore the motivation behind them. You can also watch our video below, which offers a complementary look at the new Candela.

 
Transforming Candela City into our best track

Let’s first discuss briefly what motivated us to improve Candela City.

Created by Samuncle, this track has a lot of qualities. The visual environment, mixing original elements with elements inspired by the city of Paris, as well as the cities of Venice, Lyon, and Amsterdam, is rich and feels coherent.

For someone curious to explore, there are many neat details, such as the restaurant with its menu and noises, the cinema with its movies, or the metro closed because of a strike.

A cinema reminiscent of Paris

Visible inspiration from Venice.

When it comes to gameplay, the main boulevard being a long straight divided in two sections with gift boxes available in the middle is an original concept with a lot going for it.

Candela's main avenue as it exists in SuperTuxKart 1.5, before our changes

Shortcomings of the old version

But I have long felt that Candela City was missing something to be truly great. As much as I liked some of its details, it was never my favorite to play, and many players felt the same : when looking at track pick rates in online multiplayer, it fell in the bottom third among standard tracks.

What were those shortcomings separating this track from greatness ?

Visually, users with low settings missed out on much of its beauty, and there was certainly room to make it more visually striking for other users, but some popular tracks like Hacienda were much worse in this respect.

During the course of the Evolution rework, visual improvements became an important part of our efforts, but as a game developer thinking a lot about gameplay and player experience, my mind focused first on those aspects.

The strong curve just after the start was too chaotic for online play, as it was not rare to be rammed off the road with little recourse. In the great straight, players went once from right to left and no more.

This difficult curve was located just after the start

After the very tricky start, the rest of the track was rather easy, and nitro could too often be denied to the kart behind trying to catch up. Combined with rather short laps (about 30s per lap at the highest level, with 3 laps by default), it gave little room for comebacks.

The park

The park road is the first concept I came up with. In a city track, it is possible to update the road layout by closing some roads and opening others while keeping the bulk of the environment in place.

The park with its great tree already existed, the secondary road that would link back to the main road was there too. When I discussed with Sven how to make Candela City worthy of SuperTuxKart Evolution, this new road was my top priority.

The new track layout through the park; the street at the top is where karts used to drive

Part of the old road was closed off, and the park received two entrances to connect it to city streets. Instead of one easy curve, players now have three curves to negotiate, including a tricky one, transforming what used to be a rather boring part of the track into a fun and exciting one.

Once Sven started working on this new section, the benefits for visuals quickly became apparent too.

The park section with its greenery offers a nice variation from the grey-blue-pink tones that are typical of Candela City.

We went through several iterations, with Sven making improvements and us then discussing what was left to do and various details that would make it feel right.

The park's ornate entrance gates

The inspiration behind the streetlights on top of the entrance

The entrance gates with their street lights, the texture of the park path, the height of the path compared to the grass, the greenery surrounding the path, the placement of barriers… Working together, all these things add up to make it beautiful and memorable.

If you are interested in seeing intermediate steps, our supporters on Patreon have access to an extra video showing the park’s transformation.

The arch roundabout

The second major change to the track was inspired by Boulevard Elysia’s namesake and by my desire to make the track longer.

While it’s always possible to increase the default lap number to ensure the duration of races is not too short, and this is a solution we adopt sometimes (in SuperTuxKart Evolution, the track Northern Resort will have 4 laps by default at higher difficulties), 3 laps is often the best compromise to provide visual and gameplay variety while not making the track too big and letting new players learn it quickly.

After the bridge, the old Candela City track continued directly to the right into the main straight.

But off to the left, beyond the barrier closing off the road, a small triumphal arch could be seen. And hence came the idea : have the road turn left and go drive around it !

The old arch left of the bridge

In early versions, the arch’s size was simply increased, but as it became a major visual landmark, an improvement to its model became a priority. PoketMarty worked on concept art and contributed the final model, while Sven handled the texturing and integration in the city.

Concept art for the new arch

The new arch features a stylized flame that has also found its way in other elements across the track, making it a symbol for the city. It is inspired by the city’s name, as candela comes from a Latin word meaning candlelight, and which has come to designate a unit of light intensity. When Sam first created the track, the name Candela was itself inspired by a nickname given to Paris, the “City of Light”.

The final 3D-model before texturing

The new boulevard section features an upward slope until the roundabout. This change, inspired by Paris’ Champs-Élysées, meant additional work for Sven, who had to reposition buildings.

But there was also a reason coming from experience playing SuperTuxKart : elevation changes are fun. Their small effect on acceleration is of little importance compared to the great feel of speed and action they give to players. On a track that was previously flat except for the small bridge, this variety is very pleasing.

This new section adds both to the track variety and to its length, helping to solve the shortcomings we had identified before we started the rework.

A new start line

The new section around the great arch also helped us to solve the issue outlined earlier regarding the start line.

Its new location, at the exit of the roundabout leading to the boulevard feels natural, and, with ample space to drive, the chaos that plagued starts in the old location is no more.

For the start line itself, we followed a technique that has proven itself: two indicators, one visible from afar, here a banner bearing the word “start”, and one on the ground visible from up close, here with checkered markings. A magical pink light also makes this piece of road a little more special.

The new start line

On the visual side, karts get either a view of Boulevard Elysia, or, in reverse, a direct view of the triumphal arch and of Candela’s opera house.

Yes, Candela’s opera house! Candela has always had some unique buildings, such as its movie theater, its restaurant, or its church. As we expanded the track to a wider area, we felt it was necessary to add more such buildings that give character to the city, and the new roundabout felt like an appropriate place for a grand building.

Boulevard Elysia’s great straight

In SuperTuxKart 1.5, Boulevard Elysia already featured one of the game’s longest straights, similar to Hacienda’s. With the new section leading up to the triumphal arch, a kart without speed boosts takes 3 seconds more than before to cover it, for a total of about 12 seconds.

In a game like SuperTuxKart, in which drifting is a core mechanic and in which top speed is easy to attain, making one of the game’s longest straights even longer is a bold move. How could this actually enhance gameplay?

We leaned in towards Boulevard Elysia’s uniqueness with the separators in the middle by giving players more reasons to switch between sides.

It is the only way to get a gift box in this part of the track, as they are located exclusively in the crossings, but it is also a good way to place some drifts and we added sets of nitro on both sides. The player enters and exits the boulevard on the left side, but there is more nitro available on the right side.

Some of the new nitro cans

This improved item placement makes it very natural to cross once and back, and the newly added portion of the straight contributes here by giving players more leeway for positioning. It even makes four crossings achievable if a player wants to collect as much as possible, although this is more challenging to pull off.

Finally, in some situations when benefitting from great speed boost items, it might be better to keep it simple and drive straight. Our changes are aimed at creating interesting choices for players, as it’s more exciting when there are several possible answers to the challenges the game offers.

Another element that we changed in this straight is the shape of the separators. By making them more pointy, karts that fail to cross in time will mostly rebound and lose much less time than with a frontal collision. We discussed this in more detail in a past Patreon post. It is part of our efforts to make SuperTuxKart less frustrating for new players.

Those improvements are how we transformed a long straight into a really fun part of Candela City.

Let there be light

The sun in the sky has been replaced by a full moon to be more consistent with the track’s distinctive night-time feel, and the position of the moon in the sky now matches the direction of the shadows cast on the road. Our game engine does not support shadows from point lights, so only one main light source is used for dynamic shadows.

Although shadows were the initial reason for the moon’s position in the sky, the way it aligns with and completes the perspective from the triumphal arch to the steel tower is very pleasing to the eye.

The moon seen through the triumphal arch

Another major change to lighting comes from street lights. They have been made brighter, giving a warmer tone to the main streets. Candela City is a night track, but it is set in a lively city.

Boulevard Elysia received additional street lights, in particular on the middle separators to ensure that the center of the boulevard is also well lit.

The streetlights warm the boulevard's appearance

This change is supported by new code for SuperTuxKart Evolution enabling the use of up to 128 point lights up from 32, and providing a smarter allocation of these limited slots.

Beautiful streets

Improvements to Candela City go beyond new sections and new buildings. Many smaller changes come together to bring it to a new level of quality and consistency.

The metallic barriers on the sidewalks as well as the wooden barriers blocking side streets that player karts are not intended to go in both received a massive visual upgrade, which we covered in more detail in one of our Patreon posts.

The old metallic barriers

The new metallic barriers

We have also adapted the wooden barriers so that, when driving in reverse mode, the arrows on the signs point to the correct direction. Reverse mode is often underappreciated, but it offers a different visual experience and gameplay experience compared to the standard direction, and the new Candela City is equally enjoyable in both directions.

The potted plants that decorate the center of Boulevard Elysia have received a new model, courtesy of Mish7913, with Sven taking care of the texturing. The improvement compared to the old flat plant is very obvious.

The new plant models can also be found in the city’s park.

The new flower model used in Candela

Another very significant change is a fix to the UV mapping of road textures. UV mapping is the process through which a 2D texture is projected on a 3D surface, making it very important for the final look of the textured surface, and poor UV maps led to visible tiling and inconsistencies.

The difference the fix makes is shown in another Patreon post, and Sven also took care of making the seams between different streets as unnoticeable as possible.

But a road texture isn’t just any texture.

It is one of the most visible, and therefore important, in the entire track. The cobblestone texture that was used in Candela City isn’t unique to it – the same texture can also be found in Cocoa Temple, where it comes from, and in Ravenbridge Mansion.

And more to the point, it didn’t match the quality of many new elements, so Sven and I agreed that a new texture would be a good idea. The final result, with two variants, one with a beautiful fan paving pattern and one with parallel rows, speaks for itself.

With the beautiful new streets, the sidewalk texture felt comparatively lacking. It is much less important visually, so when I initially mentioned it to Sven we thought it might be more reasonable to leave it for later.

But the strive for quality won out and Sven decided to also have a go at it, with an entirely new and much better paving brick texture.

A change that experienced players will particularly appreciate, but which everyone will benefit from, touches sidewalks. They have been made smoother in curves to look nicer, and more importantly the height of their borders has been increased so karts rebound instead of climbing on them when hit at high speeds. This usually makes the collision less punishing, especially around the gears roundabout where climbing on the sidewalk often caused a total stop.

We have also added crosswalks in many spots around the track. We want Candela City to feel more like a real place where people in the SuperTuxKart universe live their lives, and so we had to step back and think about the track’s design not only from the kart’s perspective, but also from the perspective of a pedestrian that would walk in the city.

Since we felt that zebra crossings with their white stripes would hurt the city’s esthetics, we instead opted for the old style of pedestrian crossings that existed before the white stripes, with broad nails marking where people should walk. While it is not as visible, and improving contrast with the pavement has been a challenge, it gives more character and personality to the track.

One of the new crosswalks in Candela

A real-world example of such crosswalks

The nailheads are fully three-dimensional, which improves their appearance near lights. It also means that there is a tiny bump when a kart drives over one of them, but it is essentially negligible from a gameplay perspective. Their size has also been exaggerated to improve their visibility.

Finally, few things break immersion more than seeing a kart rebound against nothing. Throughout the track, invisible walls have been removed and auto-rescue has been adjusted to replace them where strictly necessary, particularly to help karts that mess up a jump and fall outside the road. Extensive testing has been done around collisions to ensure everything works well in the new track sections.

Egg hunt

Another new element that will come to Candela City for Evolution is a set of egg hunts for players to explore the track.

We consider that for this game mode to be interesting, spots outside the main road that can be driven to are needed, as well as visual variety to enjoy in the process. That’s why egg hunt works so well in tracks like Black Forest or Cocoa Temple.

For Candela City, the new areas give us more spots to hide eggs, but we are also removing multiple barriers present in racing mode. These newly opened paths make the exploration feel special.

This philosophy of opening up the track and removing invisible walls and rescue planes to expand the available area for egg hunt is one we intend to apply for new and reworked tracks alike.

A side-street that is only open in egg hunt mode

Jump ramp and details

Finally, we have added a new optional jump ramp at the exit of the gears roundabout. It shortens the path slightly and gives access to a nitro and an item box, but it requires a zipper to take successfully, making it primarily an alternate path for good drivers to come back from bad positions.

A small SuperTuxKart banner hangs above the temporary jump structure (Candela City’s inhabitants don’t want their streets closed all the time for kart racing!), and Sven also decided to add some (destructible!) boxes at the ramp’s entrance.

By this point in the blog post, I think that the love and care that went into making something beautiful and fun is very apparent.

Even with how extensive this blog post is, I cannot go into every little small detail that was tweaked and improved. I’ll just mention a few more.

The fireworks near the steel tower used to cast shadows. While the shadows would be present only for a very short time, they were surprisingly big on the new arch and around it, so it was both visible and odd. Sven discovered that, in Blender, they were set to not cast shadows, but other properties were missing, silently preventing proper exporting. Now, the spurious shadows are no more.

Another issue that irked me happened when a kart fell outside at the gears roundabout. The kart would visibly fall through the giant spinning gear, which looked off. Rescue planes have been changed to prevent the issue.

One last example: we fixed typos present in some of the text present in the track, such as a street name or the strike warning near the metro entrance. Few players would have noticed the issue in the old version.

And so, that’s all for the changes discussed and shown in this article!

Conclusion

It is unusual for a blog post about a track to be written by a developer rather than an artist, but Sven and myself have cooperated closely on this project. From the planning stage to the finishing touches, we discussed what needed to be done, and after each new version shared by Sven I would test it carefully to seek ways to make it better.

The improvements we have done for Candela City are the most extensive that we have done so far for any track that SuperTuxKart Evolution will inherit from SuperTuxKart 1.5.

We think that the result, for visuals as well as gameplay, is an excellent showcase of what we want to achieve with SuperTuxKart Evolution, and we hope it will provide fun to millions of players.

Yet, we didn’t run out of ideas, and there are many small theming and visual details that we would enhance if we didn’t have 20 other tracks to take care of. The most enjoyable game is one that people can actually play, after all.

If you like what we are doing, you can support our work by making a donation. It really helps to make development more sustainable. Small articles showcasing the development of STK Evolution are also available to everyone on our Patreon.

SuperTuxKart’s libre and open-source nature also means that, if there is something you want to improve directly as an artist or a developer, you can do it. Just get in touch with us to maximize chances of your contributions becoming part of the main game.

Likewise, if you'd be interested in helping us with video scripts or video editing, let us know. The forum is a good place to make sure we don't miss your message.

I’ll conclude by saying thank you for reading this blog post to the end! We’d love to hear your thoughts about the new Candela, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

The Electro-Shield, a new powerup for SuperTuxKart Evolution

One of the great novelties that will come with SuperTuxKart Evolution is an expanded powerup set. With at least three new powerups available to players, we get greater variety within races, but also fill new niches, increasing the fun of new and experienced players alike.

Today, we are going to get a good look at the first of the new powerups: the electro-shield.

 
How we designed the electro-shield

The need for new powerups

The last time that SuperTuxKart saw the introduction of new powerups was in 2011 for STK 0.7.3, with the swatter and the rubber ball (that has since become the basketball).

Since then, there have been some adjustments to the behavior of some powerups and more significant changes to their distribution probabilities, but the same set of 9 powerups has been present in all versions up to the 1.x series. Some powerups are available in groups, for example it is possible to get 3 bowling balls from one gift box, but for the purpose of this discussion we are not considering it as a different powerup.

Three of the old powerups are so-called ‘global powerups’: the swapper, the parachute and the basketball. They don’t simply have an effect on the kart using them or on a nearby kart, they have an effect on all or most karts (for the swapper and the parachute) or specifically target the kart in first place (for the basketball, which can also flatten other karts on the way). As a result, they must remain fairly rare.

This leads us to a few key issues:

• Three of the remaining six powerups are attacking powerups, while only one gives a speed boost. Despite serious efforts to improve distribution for 1.0, there is only so much that can be done to limit the effect of karts in the middle of the pack slowing each other down and letting the karts in front get away.
• There is limited variety: karts in the back must get stronger powerups than those in the front, in order to give them some help in catching up. While karts in most positions can get all six normal powerups, some powerups come up much more often than others, such as bowling balls and plungers in first place or zippers and bubble gums in last place.

New powerups allow us to address both of these concerns for SuperTuxKart Evolution.

From nitro-gum to electro-shield

The electro-shield is perhaps the most important of the new powerups. Its story began in 2018 when I was considering ideas for a new powerup increasing speed.

The zipper, the existing speed-boosting powerup, gives a strong speed boost, and a triple zipper can do wonders to catch up. However, the kart also becomes much more difficult to control around corners at such speeds. For less experienced players, zippers help less to catch up than would be expected at first glance.

This observation led me to first propose the concept of a nitro-gum, combining the existing bubblegum shield with the speed and engine boosts from nitro. At the time, without the help of an artist to make something nice, it was also a way for me to make something that could easily be demonstrated and tested.

The nitro-gum used a blue bubblegum shield for graphics.

But this lack of distinctive theming, as well as concerns over major gameplay changes while networking support was still being worked on, led to the concept being rejected for SuperTuxkart 1.0.

It was arguably a missed opportunity for gameplay, but it also forced us to reconsider carefully all aspects of its design and to come up with original theming.

One concept that was explored at the time but ultimately abandoned was a powerup making karts grow in size for a few seconds.

The electro-shield idea, with electric arcs surrounding the kart protectively, was later considered, but for a few years it remained dormant.

When work towards a new major version began, the idea was revived and refined.

An original drawing showing a crude concept of the electro-shield. The colors were used to help understand how the top-view and the side-view matched with each other.

How it works

The electro-shield combines a speed-boosting effect with a shielding effect, and has been designed first and foremost to help less experienced players without being too strong in the hands of a good player.

The speed boost from the electro-shield is moderate but longer-lasting, making it easier to keep control of the kart.

To give some context with numbers, in SuperTuxKart Evolution nitro gives a speed boost of around 20% to the base max speed, a zipper gives up to 48% (over 60% in 1.5), while the electro-shield boost is only around 12%. On the other hand, the effect duration of 8 seconds significantly exceeds that of a zipper or of a typical nitro burst.

A visual comparison of the speed curves from using a zipper, an electro-shield and a big nitro can, without other sources of speed increase or decrease.

The speed boost is supplemented by a significant boost to kart acceleration. If no mistake is made, this matters little, but if the kart hits a wall, goes off-road, etc., the better acceleration saves significant time. This is a crucial part of its design to make it more forgiving for newer players.

The shielding effect also makes the powerup more forgiving. It is not a full immunity: after protecting from a threat, the shield is disrupted and dissipates, also ending the speed boost. This is a design choice, keeping a measure of skill in play: there is still an incentive for the player with the electro-shield to avoid danger, and for other players to try and attack.

Nonetheless, even without full immunity, avoiding the time loss from an explosion, a banana, or various other threats, still serves the powerup’s general purpose: helping players in bad positions to catch up.

Note that, unlike the bubblegum shield, the electro-shield doesn’t protect when driving on gums. The acceleration boost, however, helps to recover quicker.

To top it off, the electro-shield offers a 35% reduction to off-road penalties. In a few places this can allow players to gain a bit of time with an off-road shortcut, but it is mainly intended to reduce how much time is lost by newbies accidentally driving off the road.

Although the electro-shield gives less speed than nitro on normal roads, here in this off-road section it’s faster, as can be seen on the speedometers.

The electro-shield is distributed to karts in the back half of the race to give them a chance to come back. This also helps making the change in available powerups with kart position more tangible.

The electro-shield’s visual design

The electro-shield also brings a new level of attention to visual detail for a SuperTuxKart powerup.

Initial concepts with electrical arcs surrounding the kart were devised, but for what we envisioned, a simple mesh as used by existing attachments, such as the swatter, was insufficient.

An early version using only a basic mesh.

SuperTuxKart already had the concept of library nodes, a collection of related elements attached to a common parent, allowing them to move together, and to be made visible or hidden together, but they were deeply tied to tracks. Animated textures also assumed they would be used by a track.

Allowing the use of library nodes as kart attachments entailed significant code changes, and it was a challenge to make all the small details work properly.

As a result of this work, any existing library object can be made attachable if so desired. Attachable library nodes are loaded once, and copies are then made on demand when a kart needs it.

The parrot on Suzanne's kart is an attached library object.

The final version of the electro-shield takes full advantage of these capabilities, with a combination of several elements working together:

• Electric arcs surrounding the kart, using animated textures to move continuously,
• Metal coils floating around the kart anchoring the electric arcs,
• A small blueish light that shines on the kart and its immediate surroundings,
• Small electrical sparks,
• Occasional random electric arcs moving away from the shield itself.

Like the bubblegum shield, the electro-shield scales to adapt to the size of the kart it is protecting. Uniquely, height-scaling is separate from its length- and width-scaling, to better accommodate karts that are relatively tall for their length and width.

The electro-shield's shape adapts to the kart.

There are still some details we want to improve for the main release of SuperTuxKart Evolution, such as bespoke animations when the electro-shield is activated or disabled, a new icon, as well as custom sound effects.

Some other tiny visual details, such as the metal coils sometimes visibly going through obstacles, would be nice to address but are a lesser priority with our limited manpower. Although we prioritize quality over strict deadlines, we also want to make SuperTuxKart Evolution available to players as soon as we can, and therefore have to consider where our efforts will produce the greatest benefits.

Conclusion

With the electro-shield as an additional tool for players in the back to recover, SuperTuxKart Evolution makes races more dynamic.

It is a fine balancing act between making the game more approachable to new players, who often enjoy getting strong bonuses, and satisfying experienced players who want driving skills to play an important role.

Although the optimal point is subjective, a lot of care has been taken to significantly improve the enjoyment of all kinds of players.

In future blog posts, we will also take a look at the nitro-hack and the mini-wish, two other new Evolution powerups that further add variety and strategic choice to the mix.

SuperTuxKart now also has a Patreon where everyone can get access for free to small news about the development of STK Evolution, so check it out!

SuperTuxKart Evolution's new logo

A few words from Alayan: Vollstock is a new contributor to SuperTuxKart, who has created the new logo and written this blog post. A professional designer, he is helping us with Evolution's new user interface and with other visual elements associated with the project.

SuperTuxKart Evolution's new logo on a colored background

Last year the SuperTuxKart Team unveiled the roadmap for SuperTuxKart Evolution.

Since then they've shared progress on gameplay, polished classic tracks, and continued work on exciting new features and circuits.

Alongside that, I quietly began a much-needed refresh of our graphic identity. Branding touches many parts of the project — app icons, the user interface, our YouTube channel, and several websites (the blog, Patreon page, main site, and forum).

I can't update everything at once, so I'm developing a consistent visual identity that can roll out across projects over time.

This first glimpse focuses on an update to the iconic logotype.

What’s so super about TuxKart?

A redesign is a good opportunity to re-examine all existing design elements: colours, naming, and the visual conventions that make SuperTuxKart what it is.

That doesn't mean we should change everything. Rather, it's a chance to ask which elements define the project's character, and which are merely historical baggage.

As explained in the history article, SuperTuxKart grew out of the original TuxKart and picked up the "Super" prefix along the way.

Whether to keep that prefix for a future release — and therefore in the logo — was an interesting question. The name clearly nods to Super Mario Kart, but Nintendo only used "Super" for the SNES era, so why should we?

Well, we love it — and there are practical reasons too. Our domains, repositories, and many distribution entries are registered under the name SuperTuxKart, so changing it would be disruptive.

For the foreseeable future, "Super" will remain part of the name.

Step 1: Modernise what’s there

I started by carefully vectorising the hand-drawn, pixelated wordmark. While tracing it, I refined small details, aligned the letterforms more consistently, and corrected lighting discrepancies on the bevels.

These tweaks are subtle — you might not notice them at first glance — but when played side-by-side they make a significant difference to balance and harmony.

The new and old logo shapes compared

Step 2: Turn it into a new logo

Using the refined wordmark as a base, I explored different branding directions. Some ideas leaned into "evolution" as a theme, taking inspiration from nature and from technological progress.

Ultimately we decided that the game itself doesn't call for an overly bold brand identity. As a small volunteer project, the logo needs to be timeless and adaptable, so we kept the concept simple: a fresher, more grown-up look that still preserves the playfulness of the original.

The new logo on different backgrounds

Step 3: Have fun

With a clean wordmark in place, I also made a 3D version, and there are plenty of fun ways to use it — in 3D animations, title sequences, and short clips for development videos.

A 3D animation of the new logo (click it to play it)

What do you think? Do you like the new haircut for your favourite kart racing game? I'd love to hear your thoughts — tell me on the forum or drop a comment here on the blog.

The History of SuperTuxKart

On the 20th of April 2019, SuperTuxKart 1.0 was released. Today marks the 7th anniversary of this momentous event in the project’s history.

April is a special month for SuperTuxKart, as it was also when the first code for the original TuxKart was written, while SuperTuxKart 0.9, which brought the game’s modern graphics renderer, was released on the 21st of April 2015.

To celebrate this occasion, the SuperTuxKart team is happy to share the most comprehensive history of the project ever written, replete with links and illustrations.

From the early days of TuxKart to SuperTuxKart Evolution, exploring how the game changed but also who made it change and what events it went through: a new ‘History’ page is now available on our website.

Whether you discovered the game later on (many of today’s players were not yet born when SuperTuxKart first started!) or whether you followed it over the years, if you like SuperTuxkart you will find a treasure-trove of information showing how the game evolved to take its modern shape and what important events happened along the way.

As a history, it tells about people, their goals, their achievements, and some of the difficulties they faced on the way.

During the dozens of hours it took me to piece things together and write this history, it was a constant challenge to balance which details were too technical or specific and which should be included, which would add to the understanding of SuperTuxKart’s journey and which would be better confined to the game’s changelog.

Speaking of the changelog, which is linked among many sources in the history page’s additional references, it has also seen updates filling some gaps in older versions, notably when various karts were added or removed.

This is also why the history page is not a mere blog post: it is meant to be a reference for years to come, that can be updated with the story of SuperTuxKart Evolution, as well as, for the other sections, some of the interesting details that I inevitably missed when trying to summarize two decades of history in an accurate but engaging narrative.

Another reason is that SuperTuxKart’s history is so rich that it is simply too long for a typical blog post. You can read it at your own pace, focusing on whichever era itches your curiosity the most.

Website updates

The new page exploring SuperTuxKart’s history is not the only recent change to our website.

The projects page has been completely redone to include many more instances of SuperTuxKart being used in various projects, as well as illustrations for some of them. This also required some changes for our website to neatly display pictures on the side.

To this day, SuperTuxKart’s libre nature make it a favorite for technical demonstrations and research papers, with several new projects from 2024 and 2025 alone.

A Volkswagen ID.3 used as a SuperTuxKart gaming wheel

The gallery page also received a major update, including a better organization, thumbnail for the trailers, captions, and some new pictures.

New pages on performance testing and on track-making (performance optimization and gameplay fundamentals) have been added.

The history entry in the FAQ page has, of course, been revised, going from a dry list of version numbers and release dates mentioning a few key changes to a brief overview linking to the new history page. Finally, there have been some small changes elsewhere.

A note regarding translations: some of the website’s pages were translated as a bloc. This made it very difficult to update those pages, as any new paragraph would break the translation of everything that followed, requiring a lot of manual work to restore. It could also cause issues if the page’s formatting elements were mistakenly modified by a translator.

We’re currently moving away from this method, but in the short term this means some pages will lose their translations, until those are updated.

More to come

Looking back at SuperTuxKart’s journey to write its history was both humbling and inspiring.

I hope that reading through it will give you a deeper appreciation and understanding of STK!

Regarding the website, there is still much to do make it as good as we wish it to be. Work there has to be balanced with other tasks such as working on the game’s code and preparing the next updates on Evolution’s progress, but we aim to get there step by step.

If you are interested in helping to update our documentation, reach out on our forum.

To help make development more sustainable, we have also created a patreon page. Recurrent donations are not yet available, but you can already join as a member to receive notifications about future posts and updates!

Until next time!

Freytra Peaks making of

Hi, I'm Sven, lead artist of SuperTuxKart.

In this blog post, we'll look at the creation process behind the upcoming track "Freytra Peaks", which will be included in the main game with the release of STK Evolution. This new track will retire the venerable "Snow Peak" after many years of faithful service. You can get early access to Freytra Peaks now through our 1.5 donation package.

I started work on this track pretty early, not long after I began "Black Forest". At the time I was still exploring and experimenting with track creation. I've learned a ton since then, but honestly, that makes revisiting this project even more enlightening!

Carving out the Layout

Every track starts with a vision. For Freytra Peaks, I knew I wanted a winter track built around one signature moment: a massive jump that would give players that exhilarating rush of flying through mountain air.

I began by sketching the road layout spontaneously, letting the terrain and that central jump dictate the flow. This intuitive approach can produce natural-feeling tracks quickly, but it requires careful refinement. Early versions included a corkscrew turn near the end that I ultimately cut. It added track length without adding excitement. In kart racing, every second matters. Players should spend their time in memorable moments, not filler sections.

The first road sketch

The refined layout, closer to the final version

The challenge with organic track design is ensuring players get great views of what's coming. When you're racing at speed, sightlines are everything. For Freytra Peaks, the open mountain setting gave me flexibility. I could sculpt the landscape around the road to create eye-catching views and telegraph upcoming turns. A sprawling mountain range as your backdrop is forgiving that way.

Starting to build around the road

Today, my process has evolved. I now map out key visual landmarks first, then build the road to showcase them. But Freytra Peaks taught me those lessons, and the final result captures exactly what I was after: the feeling of racing through isolated mountains, with nothing but snow, stone, and sky around you.

Painting the landscape

With the road layout established, it was time to build the world around it. My goal was clear: create the atmosphere of a remote mountain refuge, isolated peaks, a tiny village clinging to the slopes, and vast stretches of untouched snow.

I started with placeholder assets, existing trees, houses, rocks, and background mountains from our library. This is a crucial step in track development. Placeholders let you evaluate composition, scale, and atmosphere quickly before committing to custom modeling. You can iterate on the overall feel without getting bogged down in details too early.

The terrain itself required careful sculpting to achieve those characteristic alpine forms, sharp ridges, sweeping bowls, and dramatic elevation changes. For the distant mountain ranges, I used Blender's A.N.T. Landscape addon to generate realistic terrain, then created height-based masks to blend snow and exposed rock textures naturally. Blender's texture baking feature let me convert these procedural materials into optimized textures that work seamlessly in Antarctica, our game engine.

Generating mountains

The background mountains don't need to be highly detailed, their job is to create depth and sell the scale of the environment. They do that job perfectly, framing the track in an expansive alpine wilderness.

One technique I'm particularly fond of: the snow layer. By duplicating the landscape geometry, raising it slightly, and tucking the edges under the road and rocks, I created a convincing blanket of snow that gives the environment real depth. It's a simple trick, but very effective.

Adding the snow layer

Driving into the snow

The Devil's in the Details

With the landscape established, I began populating the world with the details that would bring it to life. This phase is where tracks truly find their character and where the bulk of development time goes.

I created custom props for the track: signs, barriers, small structures, and environmental details. Most of these initial models served the track well, though I knew the main lodge building would need a complete overhaul eventually. Sometimes you need to see an asset in context before you know what it really needs to be.

Various objects created for Freytra Peaks

At this point, the track had its bones. I set it aside to work on other projects, knowing I'd return with fresh eyes later.

From Snow Peak to Freytra Peaks

When I returned to Freytra Peaks years later with STK Evolution on the horizon, I saw it with new eyes and new standards. The trees and buildings, in particular, needed to match the quality bar we're setting for Evolution.

A landscape from Snow Peak, the old track replaced by Freytra Peaks

A landscape from Freytra Peaks

The trees presented an interesting challenge. I adapted three tree models I'd created for another track, modifying their textures to carry snow. The trick was making snow look like it's actually resting on the branches, not just painted on. Pure white snow looked flat and unconvincing. The solution: blending the original green foliage with snow texture, letting some green peek through while the snow extends slightly beyond the branch geometry. It creates that heavy, winter-laden look that sells the environment. Given unlimited time, I'd love to add actual 3D snow clumps on the branches, but the current approach strikes a good balance between visual quality and performance.

The trees, with and without snow on their branches

For the village buildings, I crafted one detailed house, then created variants by modifying it. A practical approach that maintains visual consistency while populating the scene efficiently. Smart asset reuse is part of professional game development.

The village buildings

The track's signature jump created an interesting problem for reverse mode, players couldn't make it backwards. I considered building a reverse jump, but the terrain didn't support it elegantly. Instead, I carved three narrow paths through the forest that feel like mountain hiking trails. It's a solution that fits the environment naturally while solving the gameplay challenge.

Before releasing the track in the donation package, I rebuilt the main wooden lodge from scratch. I also refined countless smaller elements: icicles clinging to rocky overhangs, smoother texture transitions across the terrain, more detailed rock formations. These touches might seem minor individually, but collectively they create polish and immersion.

The new wooden lodge

What's Next for Freytra Peaks

Ask any artist when their work is truly finished, and an honest answer will often be: never. Given unlimited time, I could refine Freytra Peaks endlessly, tweaking textures, adjusting geometry, adding new details. It's the George Lucas problem: without discipline, you end up releasing Special Editions every few years with "enhanced" Jabba scenes nobody asked for.

Before STK Evolution's full release, I'm planning a final polish pass: more sculptural roadside rocks, a more dramatic start/finish area, improvements to the main jump, and enhanced tunnel atmosphere ; but for the most part, I'm calling Freytra Peaks done, focusing my attention on other tracks.

Indeed, beyond Freytra Peaks, I'm bringing this same quality standard across the entire game. "Candela City" and "Old Mine" are currently on the workbench, getting the Evolution treatment. Every classic track deserves to meet the bar we're setting.

Join the Journey

Inspired to create your own track? The SuperTuxKart community welcomes creators of all skill levels. Check out our track creation guide at supertuxkart.net/Making_Tracks to get started, maybe your creation will feature alongside Freytra Peaks someday!

I'd also like to thank Samuncle and Alayan for their help in drafting this blog post.