SuperTuxKart 0.7 released

After over a year of work, dozens upon dozens of new and fixed bugs, over 3000 commits, a lot of work from artists, restless testing from our faithful followers, and translations from contributors all over the world, we are thrilled to offer you SuperTuxKart 0.7 just in time for Christmas!

This release is using irrlicht for graphics, and features:

• new GUI
• kart and track animations
• new and improved tracks, karts, and items
• shortcut/alternative way support for tracks
• Asian fonts
• many many bugfixes.

Enjoy! Joerg and Auria

P.S: A gameplay video is in the making, and should hopefully be available soonish.

SuperTuxKart 0.7 release candidate 2 released

We have just uploaded a second release candidate. Major changes include :

• Asian fonts are now included in the package.
• Several memory leaks have been fixed (which had caused problems with music and sound effects)
• Some tracks were improved to disable unintentional shortcuts and incorrect rescues.
• Some minor bug fixes.

We also updated the translations, but not all translations are complete yet. We encourage all translators to complete their translations, as the strings are now frozen.

Testing and feedback welcome!

Cheers, Joerg and Auria

Well you know what to do: test it and comment on it like if it was the real deal - 0.7 is coming really soon now, possibly within the next week or so! And we need your help to find the odd little bits here and there that needs to be fixed. Please report your findings in STK´s bug tracker, and mark them as high priority if it´s a crash or similar show-stoppers. This way, our dear developers will ensure that it gets prioritized and hopefully fixed before 0.7. Keep in mind that they need as many details as possible, so please include in your report system info, where it happened, if it´s reproducible, and backtrace if you have one.

Let´s help make 0.7 rock solid! :)

SuperTuxKart 0.7 release candidate 1 released

As many of the most avid STK followers already know by now, SuperTuxKart RC1 has just been released:

After a burst of changes and fixes in the last few days we have finally released a first release candidate for 0.7: http://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTuxKart/0.7/

The changes compared to 0.6.2a are too numerous to list, main points would be:

• New graphics engine
• New GUI
• Kart and track animations
• New and improved tracks, karts, and items
• Shortcut/alternative way support for tracks

Compared to 0.7alpha3 challenges, unlocking etc. should all work now (though there is still a debug icon in the menu, which will be removed before the final release :oops: ).

The one thing missing are translations - since we added strings even in the last week, the translations are not up-to-date yet. If you want to help out with translations have a look at our wiki page: we are basically using launchpad, details are at http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Translating_STK.

Feedback as always is welcome - be it here, or bugs in our tracker

Cheers,

Joerg, December 1, 2010

So if you haven't already, grab it, test and leave your feedback. :)

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. :)

Shifting Tracks

[Insert clever and witty intro which lasts longer than it would have taken you to finish 99 laps in 'The Beach' track with 'mr. Iceblock']
Now that's out of the way, and we can concentrate on the changes since last time. ;)

New track

Interesting things are happening in the track department. Old 'Beach' has been thrown out in favour of a new track: 'Hacienda' by Jean-Manuel Clemencon (samuncle). Big thanks for making such a good track. :D

SuperTuxKart: it's all the rage

Fort Magma has been converted and has undergone some changes in the tunnel part - it should be much less of an eye sore, but it's harder to drive through without getting very badly disfigured (okay, not that bad). Hot lava is hot!

Oliver's Math Class has been converted by rudy85; thanks to you for that as well.
Secret Garden got some subtle, but important changes as well, including a larger bridge with added fence, and a widening of the track to make it easier to drive (still hard enough to be fun, don't you worry). These changes are courtesy of no other than conso, which we have dearly missed for many months now - welcome back! :D

The Island has been widened quite a lot, which means it is now a much easier track (I'm keeping the old one - narrow means battling for rank). Some other less significant changes has been made as well.
Some cosmetic changes for Shifting Sands also sneaked through the back door.

Regarding gameplay, times are a'changing here as well.
The bonus item handling has been changed so if you for example have a cake and then pick a bowling ball, you'll end up with the bowling ball and not keep the cake. Whereas if you have a cake and pick up a new one, you will of course get an extra as before. You can also get more than one item in a box now if you're lucky. That means you can pick one box, get 3 cakes, and get rid of three opponents at once! (Right now, this last feature doesn't work properly, but a patch should soon be underway.) The behaviour of these features can be changed in the configuration file if someone wants to play around.

'Follow the Leader' mode has now a formula which picks time interval between each elimination based on how many karts you choose, so if you choose e.g. 15 karts the first elimination will happen later than if you choose 5. Also configurable in the config file. Please help test to find good values if you are in the mood for it. :)

Adjustment of speed settings and reintroduction of terrain slowdown have caused some unwanted gameplay effects; whereas some are fixed the rest will hopefully be fixed soon. Help with tuning the values is welcome.
Race interface has been changed a little to use less space, which is important for splitscreen racing, but also to reduce clutter. No radical changes, but they help. :)

We have got several new kart animations by rudy85 too; thanks a heap for helping with this.
And now for the sad news.
'mr. Iceblock' has been booted from the game (by utilization of a winter shoe). Actually, we drove him into the lava in Fort Magma, just to be sure. Don't cry; there are more ice blocks in the sea.

The STK categories at freegamedev.net, have at time of writing 200 topics and 2300 posts combined. Yay for round numbers, and if you haven't contributed to those numbers, we would be glad to see you over there. ;)

I'll just finish off this post by saying that I know what you will say: tl;dr

SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha 3

In a bit of a rush, we finally managed to get a third alpha release of the upcoming 0.7 release out. You can download binary packages for Windows and Mac from the usual location at http://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/

f you are compiling stk yourself note that it is recommended to use the current "1.7 stable" irrlicht branch, see http://irrlicht.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/irrlicht/branches/releases/1.7 (which will become the next 1.7.2 release). While STK mostly still works with irrlicht 1.7.1, bugs in this irrlicht version can result in some texts not being displayed, and even in crashes (mostly in menus though).

This version shows very much work in progress, but we are getting closer to a release candidate. Hopefully this will motivate some artists to help us port/create a few more tracks, while we are busy fixing bugs and tuning some settings.

Particularly, behold the new track I (Auria) have been working on lately : the farm track

Known bugs or issues are:

• Many challenges and GPs will be unavailable due to not-yet-converted tracks.
• The 'networking' menu is used to test the win/lose GP and unlocking animations. There is no networking support in 0.7 alpha 3 (nor will there be any in 0.7).
• Not all tracks have collectibles.
• AI needs tweaks, it does too good a job with slipstreaming, and on the other hand doesn't handle multiple items good enough.
• Disabling or enabling sound effects may require to restart STK for the change to apply correctly.
• Switching to windowed mode from fullscreen may fail on linux.
• If you build with irrlicht 1.7.1, you may get an empty race paused screen and/or a broken "feature unlocked" screen.
• If you do not exactly cross the lap line your lap may not be counted.
• If you add too many AI karts, the race may not start properly.
• In the kart selection screen, large karts might get clipped on sides.
• Kart animations not complete.
• The game may not allow you to configure bindings for gamepads other than the first one.
• The "slipstream" (follow behind a kart for a while with the slipstream effect showing, and you will get a zipper-like boost) and quick-start feature (press start very quickly _after_ 'GO') need tweaks.

We are looking forward to feedback, bug reports (please check with our bug tracker at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=202302&atid=981038 first), suggestions (though we are pretty much feature frozen for 0.7), and some contributions :)

Enjoy!

Joerg and Auria

Zipping along

Well, better write before the backlog becomes too big; things have been moving fast lately. :D

First off is the new race results screen, which should be easier to follow and additionally has a nice animation when playing Grand Prix. First, it shows the usual race time table, just as after a quick race. But afterwards it switches to a new table where it shows how many GP points you have, plus how many points you just earned, and increases the GP points accordingly. Then it moves all GP participants to their new positions. And if you don't want to wait for the animations, you can press the fire key to continue. Apart from me forgetting to sync to VBlank, and some erroneus points, everything looks great.

Crescent Crossing, Skyline and The Island has been converted, but except for The Island they are without collectibles for now. Thanks to sj04736 for The Island conversion. :)

Also, some music has been removed, and some has been added/updated. I'm not going through that now, since things may change more later, but as for the updated song, Krobonil should get our thanks for his update on the music for 'Snow Mountain'.

EvilTux was simply too evil to include in STK, so in order to get a more child friendly game, he was thrown out, beak first. Only kidding! The real reason was that we got a better replacement, so while EvilTux himself was thrown out, another driver got his kart. Meet Konqi, the cheerful KDE dragon. :)

Yet another gameplay detail has been added recently, namely slipstreaming. When a kart drives behind another one for a while, and then moves out of the slipstream, it recieves a speed boost and can then overtake the kart in front.

Furthermore, we've got a new code contributor, jmimu, who made the kart rank icons on the left show attachments, and animate when a kart overtakes another, or when it explodes. Rank is also added as text, in case you use more karts and there isn't enough space to show all kart icons. Also, the human player icons got a nice rounded outline, similar to what the 0.6 branch had. But this one is animated!

Clipping of text, especially for some languages which might have used more space than the English counterpart, used to be an issue in the 'Help' screens. Well, no more! Take a look at this:

Essentially, the widget resizes when being in focus, while the rest of the widgets gets hidden under it. That's splendid when space is too small, and translators need the extra line in order to translate the widget text in a good way. As you probably have noticed by now, I'm using another theme instead of the default 'Glass' theme; this one is both lighter and easier on the eye, and I happen to like yellow/'Peach'. ;)

And, lots of bug fixes and general niceness increase has happened as well. One of the minor nice things I'd like to mention, is that STK now shows a loading screen as fast as possible when starting the game, before loading the rest of the game. So now you won't get angsty because the GUI doesn't show up in the first few seconds.

Well, that's about it for this time, if I haven't forgotten anything important. Remember: you too can get involved in the game and in the community. :)

Nifty details

So, after the usual excuses for not updating the blog, I get on to the actual news (me being late is not news), which makes some of this rather old news, but since you may not have heard it, I'll take the chance.

More tracks have been converted to be 0.7-compatible, one of them Snow Tux Peak, thanks to Varivar. It has been somewhat updated as well, with a cool sound effect when driving on the bridges somewhat before the finish line, which showcases a new feature for track designers: terrain spesific SFX. Also, XR591 is now compatible (not sure who I should credit), with a couple animations in as well. On a related note, the Hexley kart has been converted, and more kart animations have been added.

I should really turn on "Sync to VBlank" when I take screenshots to avoid these jagged texture-update edges. Will try to remember it for next time.

There are now intro, last lap and outro music jingles in the game, created by Dundersylt. Thanks!

A new track ending camera is now for testing in The Lighthouse track, where the camera no longer just follows the kart, but is at a fixed position from a distance and changes angle and position continuosly to follow the kart. Pretty neat!

Furthermore, another gameplay detail has been added. The first two karts to press the accelerate button after "Ready, Set, Go!" will get a little boost as a reward. Fear not; the computer controlled karts have been tuned in order to make this feasible for us mere humans as well. ;)

Throw in a good amount of code cleanup and bugfixes, and we should hopefully, according to the Grand Master Joerg, be a little closer to a beta/RC release. Expect that to take some weeks, though.

I'll try to bring more news in not too long, in particular about the addon manager the always awesome xapantu has had in the works for some time, and also a new race result screen the aforementioned GMJ is doing. So prepare yourself to be awe-struck. ;D

Contribute - it keeps getting easier

First of all: sorry for the lack of updates recently, but since development time has been scarce for the developers, and interesting news have been somewhat lacking I haven't had much to write about. Not to say there hasn't been things going on; it certainly has. But some of it might fit better later, and other things aren't significant enough, so I put several of those together in one post instead of making many small posts. Also, Auria has sometimes beat me to it - thanks for keeping the community informed that you and hiker are still working to improve this awesome game. :)

With this, and perhaps later postings, I hope to encourage those of you who might want to contribute to STK, but don't know what to help with, don't have any special skills, or just don't feel you got enough time to do so.

What needs to be done?
Simple answer: a lot. This thread at the FreeGameDev forums shows a small overview of things you can do, and some guidelines on how to do that.

It is no secret art is the most wanted contribution. Especially track improvements, and totally new tracks are very welcome. Better music is also a recurring discussion topic on the forums, and while sound effects and icons are mostly covered there's certainly room for improvements (better licensed sound effects in some cases).
This seems rather big and demanding by first glance, but in reality, there are lots of small things you might be able to improve on. Converting the rest of the remaining tracks is an important task, which the developers hopes the community will help with, thus reducing workload for them. While you're at it, why not replace a model or find a better texture/improve the texture tiling somewhere? It's the small things and annoyances that often count in the user experience.

I am not an artist, programmer or whatever. I can't contribute.
WRONG! There's plenty of things you can do nevertheless, if you keep looking for them. Translating STK is one of them. A rather new translation method introduced recently by xapantu is utilizing Launchpad to translate SuperTuxKart from English to whatever language(s) you are using. It's a simple process which almost anybody can do, how little or how much they want.
Providing feedback and/or ideas are also ways to contribute. The forums are a great place to do so; however, in the case of negative feedback, try to have a positive tone overall. Your post have better chances to be seen as the friendly advice it really is, and the developers will probably consider it more seriously. (In most cases, the reason for why things are as they are, is the lack of man- and womanpower.)

Another thing STK could have in the future, is a storyline with animated scenes. While creating a good storyline isn't easy, it should be possible with dedicated people teaming up and collaborating in order to make SuperTuxKart a more story-driven, coherent game. Other long-term ideas can be found at this wiki page. If you are up for leading a task, let the devs know, and they will certainly help to get something rolling. But be aware that they have other, more critical aspects of the game they want to spend their time on as well.

Last, but not least: let people know about STK, and let them know we want their contributions! ;D

Summer Penguin

Summer is drawing on, so what's going on with STK?
Not as much as we'd wish, I'm afraid; for one, I'm now working full-time for an internship; Joerg was on a trip so didn't have time to do much work. Still, work has continued! You can first and foremost see that new tracks have been converted to the 0.7 format :
(also notice the improved translucent speedometer and new character icons by yeKcim. Thanks yeKcim!)

An animation scene has been added for when a player loses a Grand Prix :

The GUI has been extended so that it is now possible to select a skin. As an example, here is the peach skin by Dakal. This way everyone will have a look to their liking :)


Furthermore, the key bindings screen has been substantially improved. It is now possible to define keys specifically for menu navigation, this means you no more have to use "accelerate" to go up and "brake" to go down!



And, finally, support for RTL languages like Hebrew has also been added through the use of fribidi (the linux and windows build systems are not yet updated for it, however).

SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha 2 released

Hi all,

we have just released a 2nd alpha release of SuperTuxKart 0.7. This version has a lot of improvements and bug fixes, more tracks, some new icons and animations. It is still pretty much work in progress, and we would love to get some feedback - e.g. does it work for you, performance, do you like the new icon style or prefer the old one, bug reports etc. Note that due to the missing tracks GPs and challenges will not work, and you will get a lot of warnings/error messages printed - so please don't report issues related to challenges or GP not working ;)

We would also hope that people could help us to port more tracks - it's not that much work, and would help us to get SuperTuxKart back to where it was, especially getting the challenges and GPs back. Also more icons would be nice - and of course always more tracks.

Enjoy!

Downloads can be found at sourceforge : https://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/

Applying bugfixes and makeup

Hi again folks; long time no see! Don't worry, neither I or the project are dead. In fact, I got myself a new computer, and SuperTuxKart marches on towards alpha 2. But as I guess you aren't here to read endless intros (and this post is a big one), I'll just get on with the good stuff. ;)

SuperTuxKart has passed the 5000th commit mark, and quite a lot of the ones after have been bugfixes. Auria joked that they broke everything and then fixed it again, and that's essentially much of what's been going on. This proves that refactoring and rewriting code is absolutely not trivial, so while we non-programmers might think 0.7 should have been out already, that is not reasonable with only 2 main programmers, which are already devoting quite a lot of their spare time to this project. You may see what I'm getting at: the STK team would like to have more members. Please have a look at this page on the STK wiki and see if you can help out with anything; we'd be happy to get you on board! :)

But there's more news than just bugfixes! Take a look at the new "makeup"!

Distance fog

Gloomy, isn't it? Tracks can now have skyboxes and fog with the appropriate color for each one.
Also, you have one example of some new in-game messages which indicates when a weapon has been used successfully. It's particularly useful for the new swapper weapon, so you don't miss out if you don't have sound effects enabled.

New parachute

Well, the title says it all really, except for the maker's nick: MiniBjorn. Thanks!

Cave preview

This screenshot is shown for four reasons. First of all, it shows that 3 Strikes Battle is added back in. Second reason is that karts now have power on all four wheels, so-called 4WD, as opposed to before when only the back wheels mattered. Besides allowing me to climb extreme heights, it helps stabilizing the kart with the physics, hopefully making the physics less troublesome in certain circumstances.
Third reason is that the cave has been retouched by MiniBjorn, adding some plants and shadows using a texture over the vertex.
Last reason is for telling that anisotropic and trilinear filtering have been added to STK. These are techniques to make textures look better at different angles, if I understood Wikipedia right. I don't know whether it matters in this screenshot or not, and I'm too lazy to disable it, drive up there again and take another one just for comparison. Go to Wikipedia if you're interested in that. :P

Talking about physics, it's been tweaked a bit to make driving (and jumping) better. The suspension has been hardened, so it should no longer feel like you are rocking around on a boat. Furthermore, flying in mid-air is better now as well; I won't go into detail as you aren't doing that much with the current tracks.

The coordinate system has been changed so y=up and z=forwards, and without getting technical about it, it means some tracks have to be re-exported. Hiker said the track exporter will most probably not change that dramatically again, so people wanting to export tracks should be good to go now. But make sure you are using the latest track exporter, and not the one shipped with STK 0.7 alpha 1 - it's terribly outdated. Having said that, you should keep an eye on this page if you're interested in helping out, and update it if you start to port/improve a track.

Last thing I'm going to mention (not that there hasn't been more changes, but if all details were covered the post would probably be a mile long) is the adding of a guest account, which will make occasional multiplaying a bit easier since you don't have to add a new player when you just want a quick race against a friend coming for a visit. Furthermore, the most used profile should be picked automatically when you are choosing a kart, so you don't have to be that careful getting the wrong profile.

Hopefully SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha 2 will be just around the corner - until then, take care and play some STK if you get the time.

Towards alpha 2

As you may have noticed, I'm not Magne (Arthur_D) ;) This is because he had hardware failure, and was thus unable to publish a blogpost in reasonable time, therefore I offered him to make one. So here we go!

I can now officially confirm it to everyone, we are planning to release an Alpha 2 of SuperTuxKart "soonish"! The main reason is that many bugs/limitations were found in the track format used in alpha 1; therefore, we will release Alpha 2 so that artists can keep up to date with the changes.

So what's new since last post?

First of all, support for Grand Prix is now back in STK 0.7.

This is not visible on this still, but the image shown for each grand prix is actually cycling images of the tracks within the grand prix.
When you click on one GP, you get a further description of it, just like for tracks :





EDIT: Oh, the screenshot above features a track name "Nolok's castle", but don't get too excited, it's a small test track I did to get familiar with the track exporter, I'm not much of a 3D artist myself ;)

Now, along with GP, I wanted a nicer ending than what we had in 0.6. Here is what it looks like now (not that it can't change) :




Apart from Grand Prix playback, the "3 Strikes" battle mode is also back, with a new battle arena by Thomas Oppl and Wayne Dennis (Pixel_2ACF3) : The Stadium



Furthermore, Joerg started adding support for end-race animations.


It is not yet sure what form this will take in the release; but for now, in the latest development version, you can see the elephant wave his arms and trunk in the as he wins the race

Finally, one minor thing, I added a 'loading' screen, so that the game does not seem unresponsive when loading a big track (which was especially annoying in GPs, when you clicked 'next' and it seemed like nothing happened)




To conclude, there were other misc changes :
* Fixed compilation issues caused by spaces in the font's name
* Conversion of files from LISP to XML format, including Grand Prix files and music files
* The track format has another change : removed support for 'description', added 'designer' instead
* Many fixes to Follow-the-Leader game mode
* Added back the infamous plunger-in-face attack from 0.6
* Added support for camera-far value to be exported. This was used in the mines track, to get a few more FPS by not rendering far away geometry
* Added back bullet debug view. Debug view can now be switch on and off during a race (ctl-F11). This debug mode will be useful to debug physics.
* irrlicht 1.7.1 was released, which fixed potential performance issues (though nothing huge was measured in STK so far)
* Many translations were updated
* And of course much code cleanup and bug fixes!

Feature chest, track exporter, new weapon ++

Okay, very much happening lately, so sorry if I forgot anything. I will try to summarize without leaving out important details - just notify me if you think I missed something.

New 'feature unlocked' animation

Looking for the treasure everywhere, even in the darkness of outer space, you finally got what you were looking for. The Beach track! :)

The track exporter has been updated again with most notably this feature (quoting the commit log message):

The lap counting line is now automatically taken from the first line of the main driveline.
This avoids problems of the kart order being inconsistent (if the driveline edge and
new lap line were not identical).

This means the current tracks probably got two lap counting lines now, and that would need to be fixed at least before the stable release.

The translation "mother-file" has been updated as well, to include a few strings that were missing. Furthermore, translations for Ukrainian and Simplified Chinese has been committed to SVN.

What's this?

Well, I can tell you. It's an improved version of the Lighthouse track, with actual light coming from the lighthouse! :D
But it's not only that. Presenting a new weapon (drum roll): the item swapper!
It works in this way: when using it, all good items (bonus boxes, nitro bottles) are turned into bananas, and all bananas are turned into bonus boxes for a limited amount of time. It makes the tracks more unpredictable, something I personally like. Use it before your opponents collects bonuses, and they will find themselves eating bananas like monkeys. But be careful: it affects you as well!

Last, but not least, Irrlicht 1.7 has been released. It fixes a couple of graphical issues present with STK + Irrlicht 1.6. Many thanks to the Irrlicht developers for always cooperating well with the STK developers.

Converted tracks, new fonts and translations

Surfing the wave of recent activity, I got to share some of the great news with you all. First off, I want to show you the new 'Old Mine' track. There are so many changes that it doesn't resemble much of the previous version, with the exception of environment.

The 'Old Mine'

This track, made by Varivar, includes a few animations as well, but I won't spoil it all for you. ;)
Another track, 'Snow Mountain' was converted by sj04736, with a few smaller changes, including animating the balloon. To all track converters: look at this wiki page and be sure to update it if you're working on converting/improving a track in the main package. Replicating work should be avoided. Also, the forums is a good place to gather information and ask questions.

Furthermore, we got ourselves a couple new fonts and a couple less (removed old ones), and new translations.

New Latin character font

Don't bother trying to read this, unless you're Norwegian or speak another similar language. ;)
The font had quite a few characters missing, so they were added afterwards, and hopefully they look okay for the ones using them (none of them in the screenshot). We also added another font which supports Russian, Greek and Simplified Chinese. If needed, more fonts can be added.

Regarding translations: we got all the mentioned languages covered (some is work-in-progress) already except for Greek. Feel free to ask any question you might have, about translating, track making/converting, or anything else at the forums. We look forward to further contributions and activity. :)

STK 0.6.2a vs. STK 0.7 alpha 1: a brief comparison

With the fresh release of SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha 1, and several people wanting a comparison with the current stable version (0.6.2a), I had no choice but just do that. :)
I'm using 0.6.2 without the 'a' at the end, since I'm not running in an environment affected by the bug in 0.6.2 that made the 0.6.2a release necessary.

SuperTuxKart 0.6.2

Karts (11): Tux, Wilber, Gnu, Elephpant, Eviltux, Gooey, Hexley, Mozilla, mr. iceblock, Nolok, Puffy.

Tracks (18): Amazonian Journey, Around the Lighthouse, The old mine, Oliver's Math Class, Racetrack, Shifting Sands, Skyline, Snow Mountain, SnowTux Peak, Star Track, Tux Tollway, XR591, On the Beach, Canyon, City, Crescent Crossing, Fort Magma, The Island.

Single Player game modes (6):
Single Race (3) \
--------------------{ Quick Race, Time Trial, Follow the Leader.
Grand Prix (3) /

Multiplayer game modes (7):
Splitscreen with 2-4 players; same modes as in Single Player, with the addition of 3 Strikes Battle under Single Race.

Dependencies:
PLIB, SDL, OpenAL, OpenGL, LibOgg, LibVorbis.


SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha 1

Karts (13): Tux, Wilber, Gnu, Elephpant, Eviltux, Gooey, Hexley, Mozilla (updated), mr. iceblock, Nolok (updated), Puffy, Adiumy (new), Pidgin (new).

Tracks (3): On the Beach, Around the Lighthouse (updated), Amazonian Journey.

Single Player game modes (3): Normal Race, Time Trial, Follow the Leader.

Multiplayer game modes (0): none.

Dependencies: Irrlicht, OpenAL, OpenGL, LibOgg, LibVorbis.

The above is of course subject to change, but this is basically what you get when you download the alpha version. Not quite exact though, as you get heaps of other improvements in the alpha. I will list a few of them here (sorry if I forgot something important):

• Completely rewritten GUI with support for user-made skins.
• Rewritten control system with support for several keyboard/gamepad configurations and easy "press 'fire' to join"-approach in kart selection menu.
• New driveline system using quads with support for multiple paths.
• Improved camera adjusting to kart speed.
• New kart and track format and exporter with support for animations (IPOs and skeletal animation).
• New visual goodies (see previous postings for screenshots and details).
• Changed driving behavior: "reversed" slipstreaming (follow another kart closely after gaining some speed, and then drive to one of the sides to get a speed boost); skidding penalty (you lose some engine power when skidding; AI don't get this at difficulties 'Intermediate' and 'Expert'), and karts turn more sharply without using the 'sharp turn' key.

Now, that wasn't so bad after all, was it? Regarding content isn't the alpha version appealing, but regarding possibilities is it a real beauty! That is why the alpha version isn't recommended for people wanting to have a fun time playing (well, besides the bugs and features missing); the content will come if we, the players, helps creating it! The old tracks also needs to get exported to the new format, and the STK team would really like some help in that regard as well. And while you're at it with opening the track in Blender - why don't you see if you can improve it a teeny bit? Let's make the 0.7 version of SuperTuxKart rock!

PS: Sorry for the excessive use of the '!' sign, but I got a little carried away. Who wouldn't? ;)

SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha 1 is out

SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha 1 released

After some long work porting SuperTuxKart to a new graphics engine, irrLicht, as a replacement for the old and outdated plib, we are proud to announce the first alpha release of the SuperTuxKart 0.7 development branch.

Important
This version of SuperTuxKart is an Alpha release, and as such is not stable nor complete, and is meant solely for artists to port tracks over to the new format. This binary can be used by the curious to take a look at where STK is headed, but is not meant to be used to play.

Bugs

Before reporting any bug, make sure to check the list of known TODOs at the following wiki page : [1]

For more information, take a look at the forum thread

--Auria 17:11, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha soon to be released

I'm using a slightly over-used citation now: "Good news everyone!", but it fits just too well!
SuperTuxKart 0.7 alpha will soon be released. We have no date, as always, but it should be really close; just a few days away hopefully.

Now, for the disclaimers and "terms of use". ;)
First off, the alpha version will be nowhere near completion. There is still much missing, and you should expect lots of "rough edges", so to speak. The release is meant for artists so they can be able to convert their and other's tracks into the new .b3d format, and start making use of the new features available for track designers; take a look at these two articles for details:
New drivelines and Track exporter.

But, you might not be an artist and you still want to try the new version. Go ahead; we won't stop you. Furthermore, you can help out with translating SuperTuxKart; we're happy for every language we can get.

Unfortunately, there are no support for 32-bit length characters used in many Asian languages. This is being worked on, but the alpha version will not include this feature.
The regular font includes many special characters used in other languages, but the orange header font does not have many of those, as it's a custom created font. Please use this forum thread for special character requests; they will be added gradually when Auria get the time for it.

If you want to give bug reports, you'll have to do it using the bug tracker. And before reporting any bug, check that it's not listed already in the bug tracker or in the ToDo. The alpha version will probably have quite some bugs, but many are known already and posting duplicates will just give the devs more to answer and less time focusing on getting them fixed. Also, please include as much details as possibly needed (OS, if it's reproducible etc).

Now, the alpha is not released yet, but I'm writing this as a preparation.
As you see I've skipped the usual "STK w/Irrlicht:" in the post title, since the STK w/ Irrlicht branch has been moved to trunk. There will be no possibility for confusions from now on.
So, what has happened in trunk lately?

Not much to look at, as translation and other matters are in focus at the time. But, one significant change has been made. We've got a changed version of 'The Lighthouse' track.

New version of 'The Lighthouse'

Exciting, isn't it? Many thanks to Stephen Dunn.
You'll also notice that the speedometer is now displayed properly, and while it's been in the SVN version for quite some time, I want to thank Yekcim for the new speedometer icon.

Well, I could probably go on and on about SuperTuxKart, but you'll soon see what I mean anyway. And remember; if you can help with anything - code, 2D art, 3D art, SFX, music, translating - don't hesitate, just do it! ;)