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).