Toward new heights

It's been over a month already since last blog post? How time flies! And you can too! Proof:


Remember, this is "strictly" (sure, sure Auria) for debugging purposes only, and as such it will not be possible in release mode. I will not say anything if you do other things with it though, but you will need to build SuperTuxKart in debug mode to get this feature. I will leave it to you to find the keys. ;)

There has been lots of other misc. changes, such as updated textures, new music, lots and lots of bugfixes, minor features for track and karts exporters, small track improvements, etc.
Steep slopes are now impossible to drive on due to a new "height-aware" threshold on friction.
Also, the speed values for difficulties have been tweaked slightly, so overall the gameplay should feel a bit faster now.
Furthermore, it's now possible to disable animated karts, and/or animated effects and scenery. This will ensure that 0.7 won't raise the hardware requirements over 0.6 (it will be enabled by default though).

But the big news is the new 'Scotland' track made by Canis Lupus. Thanks a lot for the effort. :)


Behold! :D

Track makers should be aware that you are currently strongly recommended to use the latest SVN versions of the tracks, b3d exporter and track exporter scripts when making changes or a new track. Same goes for kart makers, if you replace "track exporter" with "kart exporter". This is because the current SVN version is incompatible with alpha3 exporters.
asciimonster has made a new browser for track-wide properties and materials, which will probably be the best way to keep track (no pun intended) of all the different properties you can apply. You are welcome to test and give feedback in the relevant thread.

The Grands Prix and challenges have been reworked in order to comply better with STK's current state. We hope you will find them fun, and all constructive feedback is welcome. The developers plan to get a Release Candidate out "very soon", which you can test as if it was the final release, since it will be pretty close to that. So prepare for some quality time with your favorite FOSS racer. :)