The SuperTuxKart team is happy to announce the release of version 1.2. Online play is still compatible with previous 1.x versions.
SuperTuxKart 1.2 official trailer
Downloads
Due to complaints about download speed on SourceForge, from this release onward we will also upload our binaries and source tarball on GitHub. This will be offered as a fallback in case of SourceForge downtime or slow download speed. The SourceForge download will still be here.
Here are more details for the 1.2 release:
What's new?
The release candidate blogpost explains some of the more important changes from 1.1. But here is an overview:
Much better gamepad support, by using SDL2 instead of Irrlicht for window creation
SuperTuxKart now support gamepad hotplugging
Most gamepad related bugs have been fixed as well
Easier remapping
New settings to customize the game's camera
On Android, all official tracks are now included in the release build
A new "Cartoon" theme (the "Modern" theme previously announced) featuring an alternative icon set
An improved online rating system. Online rankings have been reset to go along with it.
The game's window can now be resized in-game without going in the options
The minimap now shows basketballs
Haiku support
In Android, use a custom splash screen at launch and a better progress indicator during data extraction after download
Any addon kart can now be used online even if other players don't have it.
Three improved karts : a new Kiki kart and improved Pidgin and Puffy karts
Add support for IPv6 LAN servers
Improved server creation speed and performance
In-game creation of a racing server is now possible on iOS devices
An improved tutorial with free-flow racing
Support for SVG icons
New tips for soccer mode
Team chat for team games
And many many enhancements and fixes too small to be listed here, but that add up
What's next?
SuperTuxKart development efforts will continue in the 1.x series, with another release targeted in a few months. While not as catchy as brand new tracks, gameplay mechanics or graphics effects, the changes will once again improve player experience.
Beyond more polish, development on Vulkan support is planned to begin as well as general improvements in the rendering engine for more performance.
We have also sent another e-mail to
previous contributors for the dual-licensing of STK code, with a more
detailed background. Check here for information.
After this, our focus will switch to a 2.0 release that will deliver many new or overhauled tracks, gameplay changes, and much more. The work on improved tracks has already begun.
SuperTuxKart is a free open-source game that depends on community contributions. There is no shortage of things to work on for programmers and 3D artists alike.
How quickly the next releases will come and how much content they bring might also depend on you!
It has been a rather long time since our last official release - nearly one and a half year. But we have not been idle during this, actually more the opposite. The 0.9 release contains some significant changes - especially (though not only) visual changes:
Pictures weren't enough to show the progress done. So our lead artist Samuncle did a trailer to present the new version
Vlj significantly updated our rendering engine. While it is still based on irrlicht, it now uses a modern OpenGL shader based backend. But to avoid confusion with vanilla irrlicht we decided to give it its own name: Antarctica. A brief overview of the graphical features implemented are on the Antarctica pages. The usage of an improved rendering gave our artists significant opportunities to improve the looks of SuperTuxKart:
This release contains two completely new designed high-quality tracks
Grand Paradiso Island, a beautiful tropical island famous for it's sandy beaches and the Princess Sara TransContinental Airport with spectacular landings:
Royal Cupcake jetliner landing
Cocoa temple, a track in Val Verde, a south American country with ancient pyramids and massive jungles.
Mirarosas water lock
Many other tracks have been improved as well to make use of the new features, for example Northern Resort:
Sara racing with her snowmobile in the alpine village
Google Summer of Code
While Vlj has done significant work on the rendering backend, the original work on improving the looks was actually started by Cand during the 2013 Google Summer of Code (GSoC). We have participated twice in GSoC - in 2013 and 2014. If you don't know what GSoC is: it is an initiative by Google to support and extend Open Source development. Mentoring organisation, such as SuperTuxKart, mentor students for over two months full time, and google pays the students during this time. This is the first SuperTuxKart release to include the work done by students over the last two years. Besides Cand starting with a shader based rendering engine, this release also includes the work of Unitraxx (online features and voting for addons), Leyyin (improved admin interface and bug tracker for our addons web page), and Solistice (different kart physics). We also had Mcsab working on a stand alone track editor, which is included in the windows and linux binary package. Even though we decided not to participate in GSoC 2015, we have more exciting work from students in the pipeline for the next releases. While this is all very good news, the one thing we have not progressed enough with for a release is online racing. This release does include important base features necessary for online racing (like online account creation, friends, ...), but support for online racing will be added over the next release in the 0.9 series.
Gnu in the airport terminal of Gran Paradiso Island
Highlights of the 0.9 release:
Fully shader-based rendering engine
New tracks Cocoa Temple and Gran Paradiso
Graphical improvements to many other tracks
New karts Amanda, Gavroche, Sara (as wizard and racer)
Improved tux, adiumy, Suzanne and Xue.
Online login which allows to:
connect with friends and see when they are playing
vote for addons
collect online achievements
Different kart physics
In-game Grand Prix editor
Random Grand Prix generation
Achievement system
But as can be expected, the improved features will increase the minimum hardware specs necessary to run SuperTuxKart. We have spent a lot of time trying to iron out bugs (not only our own, but especially bugs in various OpenGL drivers), and to support lower end hardware. The graphics hardware must at least support OpenGL 3.1 (which is 6 years old). Based on our somewhat limited testing the following graphics adapters should be fast enough at low graphics settings (go into settings, video to increase or decrease the graphical details):
ATI/AMD Radeon HD 3650
Intel HD 3000
NVIDIA GeForce 8600
We also recommend your graphics adapter to have at least 1 GB VRAM available when playing. Note that these are estimates and weaker hardware may be able to run the game, but perhaps not at playable framerates. You should also have at least 600MB free hard drive space, 1GB free memory, and a 1.2 GHz processor.
Gift package for donations
We have one additional news items. Since we now support free online accounts for all players and we utilise our own servers, we do need donations to pay for the ongoing running and development costs (e.g. hardware). Many people have already donated in the past. We have decided to offer a thank-you package for all donators (new and in the past). Samuncle has worked on a new track, and the package will include a sneak peek of this track. It is fully playable, you can use it already in the Grand Prix editor, and play any race mode on it - welcome to Antediluvian Abyss:
This track will be included in the 0.9.1 release of SuperTuxKart, though additional work will be done. The package will also include some concepts art, and a special version of Cocoa Temple: "Carnival del Cocoa", the version used in our trailer. All work in the gift package is released under CC-BY-SA-NC 4.0. Any donation from our donation page of $1.00 or more (sorry, otherwise paypal's fees are too high, and we actually get nothing) will get a link to the download page for this package. For all previous donators: please send an email to supertuxkart.official at gmail dot com with the email address you used in your donation, and we will send you the link.
Oh, before we forget - the most important point: you can download binaries for Linux, Windows (Windows Vista and newer, though we provide an unsupported XP binary as well), OSX (10.9 or newer) on our download page.
We hope you enjoy this release of SuperTuxKart. As always, we welcome feedback (but please be aware that neither a blog nor twitter is the right place for bug reports or support requests, use either our forum or bug tracker for that).
4 months after SuperTuxKart 0.7.2, 128 tickets later and a truckload of changes, we are proud to present the latest and greatest version, SuperTuxKart 0.7.3. The big surprise is the very late-minute inclusion of the very beautiful Minigolf track by Mac, thanks for the contribution! (Don't let its childish look trick you however as it is a very challenging track :)
The biggest changes since 0.7.2 include :
New Minigolf track
New Zen Garden track
New Subsea track
New Island battle arena
New Suzanne kart
New graphical effects
New weapons 'Swatter' and 'Rubber Ball'
Added Thunderbird as race referee
3 Strikes Battles now displays lives as spare tires
Improved bubble gum
See progression during Grand Prix
Improve physics for tall karts (e.g. Adiumy)
Lots of bug fixes
Improved kart control at high speeds
Better placement of rescued karts
Transition track-making to blender 2.5/2.6
So now head to our downloads page, enjoy and give us a lot of feedback on the forum!
we have just released SuperTuxKart 0.7.2: New features: * Added in-game addon manager * Fixed major memory leaks * New Snow Peak track by Samuncle * Improved star track UFO by Rudy * New Beastie kart. * Show when you get a highscore * Improve gamepad configuration under Windows (add ability to tell gamepads apart) * Various other tweaks done and glitches fixed
The files can be downloaded from our download page.
We hope you will enjoy this release! Feedback as always is welcome (best in our forum).
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:
A hotfix for 0.6.2 named 0.6.2a has been released. This hotfix is for Windows Vista/7 only, and makes it unnecessary to run the game as administrator anymore. If you don't want to download everything once more, just replace the 'supertuxkart.exe' in your STK 0.6.2 folder with supertuxkart-0.6.2a-win-executable-only.exe, and then rename it to 'supertuxkart.exe'.
To repeat; if you're not using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you don't need to do anything at all. If you are, and have to run it as administrator every time, this little fix will do the trick.
Edit:
Note that you will lose your settings and highscores (on Windows). If you want to keep your 0.6.2 data: start the new binary and quit. Then copy the files supertuxkart.cfg (for settings and key bindings) and/or highscore.data to $APPDATA/supertuxkart.
SuperTuxKart version 0.6.2 has just been released. This is a bugfix release, meaning that there is no additional or removed content, only improved stability and quality. Download SuperTuxKart 0.6.2.
Bugfix: The game could crash in rare circumstances.
Bugfix: Restarting a GP (with the in-race menu ESC) would not subtract already allocated points.
Bugfix: A race could be finished with an invalid shortcut.
Bugfix: Playing a challenge after a splitscreen game would play the challenge in split screen.
Bugfix: Items explode over void.
Bugfix: Grass in castle arena slowed down the kart.
Bugfix: GP result showed kart identifier instead of name.
Improvement: there is now 1 sec. wait period for the race result screen, avoiding the problem that someone presses space/enter at the end of a race, immediately quitting the menu before it can be read.
Due to a bug related to groups in battle mode, new binaries under the name of SuperTuxKart 0.6.1a have been uploaded. For those who have 0.6.1 already installed, patches for Windows and MacOS are available, containing nothing but the bugfix. So, no need to download the whole game again if you have STK 0.6.1 installed.
SuperTuxKart version 0.6.1. fixes some minor bugs of the 0.6 release, adds a new kart, a new battle map, and better support for add-on packages. We also release a first add-on package, which contains 7 additional karts and 6 tracks. Some of the tracks and karts in this package are new, some are models that were removed from the main distribution. Note: you need SuperTuxKart 0.6.1 to use the add-on package. Both can be found on ourdownloadpage. More extensive changelog is below.
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