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. :)