May 27, 2009

Another update on "STK w/Irrlicht"

Some days have passed, and it's about time to let you know we're still alive.
New, visible features are of course most exciting, so that's what I'll cover this time as well - sorry devs, we all know you have to do lots of boring work too, but it's not that easy to take screenshots of solved bugs. ;)

The kart selection screen

What "works":
Everything as far as I've seen. Some of the karts have been revamped, for example Nolok. It looks a lot better; he got a cooler looking kart more in style with his nature. :)

'About'/'Credits' screen

I was thinking of writing 'What "works:"' here as well when I realized there isn't much to do in here.
Nonetheless, you can lean back and enjoy a nice animation showing if not all, then most of the contributors to STK. The animation is simple but smooth; I've proposed adding an option to stop and/or change back and forth the different "pages". It's on an internal ToDo list, but obviously it's not top priority - if you want to help out with this or anything else, you are very welcome to do so. Just be sure to contact the developers first - preferrably via the mailing list - in order to avoid duplicating work and to get some coordination.

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Note: As the "STK w/Irrlicht" branch is still in a very unstable state, the general public is recommended to use the latest stable version (0.6.1a) of SuperTuxKart.

May 8, 2009

Quick update review on "STK w/Irrlicht" branch

Well, time for another review. Don't expect a world of a difference yet, since the devs have been really busy with other matters for a while. Fortunately, things are still improving, slowly but steady.
Okay, let's peek into a couple of screens.

The 'Options' screen

What "works":
Turning volume on/off, and up/down. Support for changing this with gamepad is lacking should work at the moment.
The video settings needs more work.

The 'Race Setup' screen

What "works":
Only normal race mode. As far as I know, changing the difficulty has the same impact on speed as in 0.6.1a, though it's not that easy to notice since there's no competing karts yet.
You wonder what's up with the font? Well, font handling is under development, and it's harder than expected, so for now it's rather messy. Don't worry, it won't stay like this forever. ;)

Different camera handling is being worked on as well, but exactly how it's going to behave in the end is not decided yet.
And, SDL is not in use anymore. It's no longer necessary, since Irrlicht and libOgg+libVorbis are going to take care of the SDL jobs for SuperTuxKart 0.7.

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To sum up, there's still much work to do, and to all possible contributors - come on, join in, we need you! ;)
Note: As the "STK w/Irrlicht" branch is still in a very unstable state, the general public is recommended to use the latest stable version (0.6.1a) of SuperTuxKart.