October 31, 2012

SuperTuxKart 0.8 alpha released

We are pleased to announce the first pre-release version of the upcoming 0.8 release, namely SuperTuxKart 0.8 alpha.



Please note the following:

This is not the final version of 0.8 and thus contains more bugs, unfinished translations and is meant for testing and feedback. If you want a stable and polished SuperTuxKart experience, please download 0.7.3 from our website.
If you have installed SuperTuxKart previously, you will lose your previous highscores and challenge progress. Do not install this version in the same folder as any previous installations, and do not install a previous version in the same folder as this version.
When reporting bugs, please check if it has already been reported and remember to add the necessary details to your report (whether you can reproduce it, under what circumstances you can reproduce it, operating system and hardware details, whether you were sober or not, and so on and so forth).


The most important changes from 0.7.3 are:
  • Story mode and new challenge set
  • Improved AI
  • Skidding and better collision physics
  • Reverse mode
  • New Green Valley track and Blackhill Mansion track (thanks to their authors Wolf and samuncle)
  • Updated tracks XR591, Fort Magma and Amazonian Journey (thanks to Auria and samuncle)
  • Updated main menu

Besides general feedback we are especially interested in the following areas:

  • New skidding: Note that the skidding works completely different from the old 'sharp turn' key, and that it will take time to get used to it. Please try a while before you form your opinion, you might have to "unlearn" the sharp key handling! In certain curves it is now necessary to brake in order to take them. If you skid for a while you will get a boost when you stop skidding, so this has to be taken into account.
  • AI levels: The AI is significantly stronger now, so much that we actually had to make it easier, since we were struggling to beat the AI on Expert. We particularly have problems with judging the Novice and Intermediate AI, but are very interested in every level. Expert level is expected to be quite a challenge, whereas Intermediate should be challenging but not frustrating for the average player and Novice should be suitable for new and younger players.
  • Challenges: The challenges are now integrated in the story mode, and support three difficulties for each challenge. Again it's very difficult for us to see which challenges are adequate, and which aren't. So we are highly interested in people doing a complete play-through of all challenges at a certain level, and provide feedback on which ones you think are too difficult, too easy, or if they feel right.
We expect 0.8 to be final in 1 to 3 months, depending on how much bugfixing/tweaking is necessary. Meanwhile, you can help with testing (especially, feedback is welcome on challenges at all difficulty levels) and help complete translations. For feedback and discussion, please use our forum or mailing list (comments on the blog may be read but not necessarily answered).

Download SuperTuxKart 0.8 alpha for Windows (XP and newer), Linux, and MacOSX (10.5 and newer).
French translation available here

 
Happy testing! :)
Your STK team

36 comments:

  1. 1. This version (and the game) is great.
    2. Question: How can I enable artist debug mode on os x?
    3. Idea: In-Game-Update: download updates in the game to decrease download size!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "3. Idea: In-Game-Update: download updates in the game to decrease download size!" I always wanted this too. But you would need base platform to do it that would remain unchanged. A down-loader.

      Delete
  2. Just so everyone knows:
    If you get the alpha you won't be able to keep the same unlocked tracks due to the new unlocking system. Just be warned.

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  3. Bug: In OS X 10.8 Dock Background (!) is invisible, after I close STK, till I restart Dock.

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  4. Whooohooo!

    You are awesome!

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  5. "In-game downloads" Anonymous : this would be quite hard to do and would probably introduce many potential bugs. And on most systems now, STK does not run as administrator and thus just wouldn't have the permission to update things

    "OSX Dock" Anonymous: we do nothing in STK that can possibly warrant the dock being broken, so I'm afraid this sounds like a bug that should be reported to Apple

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  6. Holy shit. I have been playing the game from time to time since it was just TuxKart and basicly utter crap and I thought the project would eventually die out etc. and never did.

    This version is awesome. It actually is really fun, works well and I love some of the courses and music. With graphics maxed out and AA/AF enabled it doesn't look bad either. Amazing work!

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  7. There is major graphical corruption in the story mode / challenge and main menu graphics - on PowerMac G5, ATI X800. The icons in the main menu are missing, replaced with what looks like a text character list.

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  8. Presto Adagio, can you try disabling shaders in the options (reduce graphical options level) and try again? Apparently your GPU/driver seems to have trouble

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  9. I reduced graphical options to 1 and the corruption is still there. I took a few screenshots:
    http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/5923/ishot1f.png
    http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/6495/ishot8.png

    Aside from the main menu and story mode, the rest of the game has no problem, except for tracks "Blackhill Mansion", "Zen Garden" and "Snow Peak". The first two are playable, but corrupted. Snow Peak doesn't even display anything and usually has to be force quit. (didn't work on 0.73 either)

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  10. Is it possible to allow the user to choose "Skid Style" in the options? I prefer the old skidding. Tight corners on some tracks are too annoying now. It would be nice to give the user the option of how they like to skid. ;)

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  11. Presto Adagio: sorry, you are pretty much the only person with this issue. I can only assume that this is caused by bugs/limitations in your GPU and/or driver. SuperTuxKart 0.8 is somewhat more demanding graphically than previous versions, maybe your GPU can't handle it anymore :/

    And regarding skid style, I'm sorry, no :) making everything configurable is more work for us, and most people that have given feedback so far have gotten used to skidding at least somewhat after giving it a fair try

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  12. I decided I don't really care about the story mode/challenge and I'm starting to get used to the skidding. I just want to fix the main menu now. My graphics card might be old, but I think it should be able to handle some icons on a menu screen. ;)

    I've been looking in the main.stkgui, but I can't see what the problem is. The icons are in the gui folder and don't look corrupted - but in the game, they're missing and replaced with text. (looks like "LayneHansom0.png" from the fonts folder!)

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  13. The main menu icons are 180x180. If I scale them to 256x256 or 128x128 (or 2^n), they are visible in the menu - otherwise they're missing. Weird. I suppose that's an older graphics card limitation. (... so maybe my graphics card can't handle icons on a menu screen ;))

    Maybe you should make those icons 256x256 in case other people have this problem. :)

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  14. Presto Adagio, thanks for noticing this, I've opened a ticket for this so that it will be fixed before the final 0.8 release.

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  15. I have the same problem as Presto Adagio:

    http://imgload.biz/s-2b88c61f3fbf844a5ec4a518b9b941ce-jpg.php

    http://imgload.biz/s-942997a0ebffb3183808ef499fe91068-jpg.php

    System: Power Mac G5 2003, 2.0GHz, 4 GB RAM, ATi Radeon 9600 128 MB, Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard PowerPC

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Preso Adagio and Christian,

      we had a look and the issue must actually be with your drivers: they claim to support non-power-of-two textures, while apparently they don't. If they would state that they don't support those textures, irrlicht would resize them appropriately and it should work for you.

      There is nothing we can do about that, since we don't want to scale the images we have (since all other people would then get less clear images, and those icons are the largest one we use, so they must be as big as possible).

      Could you try updating your drivers?

      Also, if you can debug stk: set a breakpoint in COpenGLTexture.cpp, line 295 (where the call to getOptimialSize(...) is done). Single step into that call, and see if requirePowerOfTwo is set to true. I'd expect this to be false (which then means irrlicht does not resize the textures automatically). If not, please reopen ticket 749.

      Alternatively if someone could create icons with 256x256 we would gladly use them (note that those items are bigger than most other icons in the menu).

      Delete
    2. Hi Hiker,

      ATI/AMD do not provide drivers for OSX. As far as I know, the drivers are done by Apple and supplied with the OS. I have 10.5.8 - the latest version of OSX possible on PPC.

      The easiest thing would be to make 256x256 icons. It doesn't bother me if you don't because I already fixed mine (scaled the originals, then proportion="1"), but it would help you avoid annoying complaints in the future from the occasional weirdo old Mac user wondering why the icons are missing. ;)

      Delete
    3. I remember trying to get a Linux driver from ATI/AMD for a couple of (I think) years. They definitely had MacOSX drivers there. Maybe just not for your version though.

      Delete
  16. I have play STK 0.8 alpha a bit and liked it really much.

    But I wonder where my new tnt bomb texture has gone?
    http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2665

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  17. fraang: sorry I don't know what happened that's weird :/ I will add it back

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  19. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  20. I've been playing this version (on and off) for a while now, and it feels absolutely amazing. As time goes on, it has become less and less of a "kids' game". Which is really awesome, having grown up (to an extent) alongside it. The new AI is actually difficult (something it hasn't been, recently), and the skidding gives a more realistic feel to the turning - one now has to go the outside-inside-outside like one sees in major racing competitions.

    Now, let's see if I can do the Captcha (hint hint - it's a tad hard, don't you think?

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  21. i think the Blackhill Mansion challange is to hard, but i <3 this game

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  22. please make a design your own grand prix or every road is included grand prix

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You will unlock a Grand Prix called All Tracks which will contain... all tracks! But I'd like a design your own too.

      You can always go into the Supertuxkart data file and make your own Grand Prix.

      Delete
  23. This new version is really amazing !!, i hope you will make animations for characters with voices during races ! Then the new collision-system is really nice !

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  24. game bug in ubuntu
    [Irrlicht Warning] Could not open file of texture: /home/annopnod/.local/share/supertuxkart/addons/karts/x-moto/motoicon.png
    [IrrDriver] Texture '/home/annopnod/.local/share/supertuxkart/addons/karts/x-moto/motoicon.png' not found; Put a breakpoint at line /home/dailybuild/stkalpha/supertuxkart/src/graphics/irr_driver.cpp:1152 to debug!
    Segmentation fault (core dumped)

    ReplyDelete
  25. nod: could you please run STK in gdb to find where it crashes? If you need more help I suggest going on our forum, it's much more convenient than discussing in blogpost comments

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  26. Hey. I use the ubuntu 32bit version and it seems that I cannot turn right (I even set a different button for this purpose).I like the story mode though, it is awesome! :)

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  28. How can I unlock the Grand Prix? Someone please help!

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  29. Dear Auria (or anybody else who controls the Sourceforge),
    Could you put again SuperTuxKart 0.8 Alpha link on Sourceforge, because i want to download and play it? I tried 0.8 one, it's great, but I would like to try also the Alpha version (it's my big wish).
    Could you make it?

    P.S. If you can't put it again on Sourceforge, could you send it to my email?

    ReplyDelete