(In)visible improvements and addons

May 10, 2011, 12:00 pm

≫ Next: SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 RC1 has been released

So, what happens for the time being in the exciting world of SuperTuxKart? Well, we're on our way to a 0.7.2 release, and while we can't give any dates for when it will be released, things look good. The previous releases had a few nasty bugs, mainly related to memory usage, so if you've found yourself short on memory after playing for a while there's reasons for that. Those should hopefully be fixed for 0.7.2.

The porting of the Blender scripts to be compatible with the Blender 2.5 API has also been prioritized, as well as misc fixes such as a recent audio code cleanup and an improved GUI layout algorithm. So while there's been less visible changes to the game lately, activity has continued in other areas. One pet peeve of mine related to the "Random track" button has been fixed - before you could often get the same track twice in a row, whereas now you'll always get a different one. And icons in the GUI, such as the zipper icon, will appear much smoother across various resolutions in the next release.

While I stated that less visible changes has occurred, there hasn't been a complete abundance either. Check out this funky new flying saucer in Star Track:

And this new version of Snow Peak, courtesy of samuncle:

As far as I understand it, samuncle intends to do some more work on the new Snow Peak. Thanks a lot for your continued effort on refreshing our tracks, samuncle. :)
While this is a very good improvement for a number of reasons, I still like the old track, so I will be sad when the old one gets thrown out. But I don't despair, stkaddons is here! sj04736, or Stephen for short, and hiker has been working a lot to ensure a better experience for addon makers and consumers.

So, what is this stkaddons anyway? stkaddons.net will be the site where addon makers can upload their creations (or others, if the licensing is correct), making them available for install from inside the game itself. The integration between stkaddons and the game will hopefully make it easier for artists to show off their work, and users will be able to install additional content without any kind of manual interaction. The addons will be moderated and checked for content and licensing before they become available in-game, so you will be able to let your kids play STK without fear of nasty surprises in the form of explicit addons. There is still no guarantee that stkaddons will be 100% safe (for example from malware), but we will do our best to ensure a good experience.

Will stkaddons allow for any license whatsoever? No - since we get free hosting from the awesome TuxFamily network, and they only do this for free software projects, we require all addons (including every texture and object in an addon) to be under a free license. To stay on the safe side, we recommend to use DFSG-compliant licenses. You are still free to share your "he told me it was okay to use it" type of addons, but not on the addons site we're supporting, and thus it will not be available to install without leaving the game. So please, consider licensing before you start on an addon.

Does STK "phone home" to stkaddons? Not yet. We might introduce some additional features such as ratings of addons, requiring some data to be sent from your computer. This would however remain completely anonymous. And for the time being, this is not an issue since it hasn't been implemented.

Is the site ready for uploads yet? Technically yes, but we would like you to wait with that since it isn't 100% ready. It will most likely be ready for 0.7.2, so when that is out, please share your (properly licensed) creations there.

Lastly I will mention that the domain supertuxkart.net points to the supertuxkart.sourceforge.net domain, while stkblog.net points to this blog. Hopefully a bit easier to remember and more convenient. :)

↧

SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 RC1 has been released

June 13, 2011, 6:45 pm

≫ Next: Addondum

≪ Previous: (In)visible improvements and addons

SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 RC1, the first release candidate towards version 0.7.2, has been released.
This version features the following main improvements :

Added in-game addon manager ( see http://stkaddons.net/ )
Fixed major memory leaks (STK will no longer saturate your memory after half a dozen races)
New Snow Peak track by Samuncle
Improved star track UFO by Rudy
Show when you get a highscore
Improve gamepad configuration under Windows (add ability to tell gamepads apart)
Various other tweaks done and glitches fixed

You may found packages at https://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTuxKart/0.7.2/

Please test abundantly and report any problem you may have found :)

↧

Addondum

June 28, 2011, 10:54 am

≫ Next: SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 RC2 has been released

≪ Previous: SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 RC1 has been released

Let's see if I can survive even when using such a blatantly silly pun in the title. ;P

This month we saw the first release candidate of the upcoming 0.7.2 release, the main news being the integrated add-on manager. But unfortunately, there were a bug causing the game to fail in creating the necessary folders, creating some headaches and confusions as to what the problem were since not everyone had this problem. One could say that it's not good to release a version with a new feature when the new feature didn't work, but that's why it's called RC, right? We can probably expect a new RC in not too long, which will include the fix.

We've got a new kart in STK; meet Beastie, the mascot of FreeBSD. Thanks to funto for providing the kart and icon.

The big news, however, is the work on a new weapon for STK. That's right, we get even more fun gadgets to use on our opponents. The details and the model for the weapon is still a work in progress, and thus I'll only give a brief description. The hammer/swatter is a close-range weapon which you can mount on the kart by firing it. It will then stay for a set amount of time, or until it finds a target to hit. The target can either be a close-running kart, or a weapon on its way to hit you. If it's a kart, the hammer/swatter will hit it making the kart look squashed, and its top speed is halved for the amount of time it is squashed. If it's a weapon, it acts like a shield and defends against it ( but it only stops explosive weapons thus far). Hard to take a screenshot of how a weapon works, and the current model is only a placeholder, so I guess you'll just have to try it for yourself when the time comes.

There has been a lot of progress in the track and kart exporters for Blender 2.5x, such that most tracks and some karts have been converted to 2.5 in order to fix potential issues with the exporters and for setting up the .blend files to use the new integrated STK properties panel. This doesn't mean it's 100% safe for widespread use, but it's getting there.

Add in the usual bunch of misc fixes, and I think you get the picture: SuperTuxKart only gets better and better. ;)

↧

SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 RC2 has been released

July 6, 2011, 5:13 pm

≫ Next: SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 final released

≪ Previous: Addondum

Hi all,

we have just release a second release candidate for 0.7.2.  Compared to 
the first release candidate the following issues have been fixed or been 
improved:

* New beastie kart
* Crash on linux when using the addon manager.
* Fixed crash when stk couldn't save downloaded addons.
* Potential crash when removing addons.
* Properly detect system language on Windows.
* Incorrect rescue (e.g. on city track)
* End of race music was fixed.
* Updated translations, minor improvements to some models

You may found packages at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTuxKart/0.7.2/

Please test and provide feedback!

PS: For people still on 0.7.1, here the important changes in 0.7.2 again:
* Added in-game addon manager ( see http://stkaddons.net/ )
* Fixed major memory leaks (STK will no longer saturate your memory after half a dozen races)
* New Snow Peak track by Samuncle
* Improved star track UFO by Rudy
* Show when you get a highscore
* Improve gamepad configuration under Windows (add ability to tell gamepads apart)
* Various other tweaks done and glitches fixed

↧

SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 final released

July 15, 2011, 5:59 am

≫ Next: To arms!

≪ Previous: SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 RC2 has been released

Hi all,

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).

↧

To arms!

August 15, 2011, 5:29 am

≫ Next: Delays, delays, nothing but delays

≪ Previous: SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 final released

Good and easily understandable weapons for STK has always been hard to come up with. Some of them have been revised over the years, and we've gotten a few new and original ones as well, mainly the plunger and the item swap weapon which are quite unique to SuperTuxKart if I am not mistaken. With the change from 0.6 to 0.7, a lot of the core of the game was rewritten, and thus there were fewer major gameplay changes. Now that's mostly out of the way, including major bugs (right?), so more focus can be shifted towards refining the game and adding more elements to it.

Recently, we've gotten two new weapons to play with in the game. The first one I've touched upon in an earlier blogpost, but now that funto has more or less finalized it, it's time for a screenshot.

New swatter weapon

Earlier I said that it would swat incoming weapons as well as other karts. This is no longer the case, since defending as well as attacking would make it too powerful. So for now it's mostly an offensive weapon, with the added benefit that it will remove any parachutes or bombs on your back. It's a very nice weapon, so thank funto for that. :)

We're also getting a rubber ball weapon from hiker, which will eventually replace the anchor weapon. The rubber ball bounces along the track, aiming for the leading kart, with the added nasty of squashing karts along the way, which will slow them down temporarily. Hopefully it should be easier to understand than an anchor popping up from nowhere, as the rubber ball will bounce more rapidly as it's reaching its goal. We could use some nice sound effects, both for this weapon and the swatter, so contributions are welcome. ;) The appearance of the ball might still change, so I'm not posting a screenshot of it this time.

Speaking of sound effects, qubodup has started a "STK Sound Liberation" project, which aims to replace dubiously licensed sound effects with DFSG-compatible samples. Also, there are other sound effects that could be improved, though as far as software freedom goes, the dubious ones should ideally be replaced quickest. But SFX quality should be mostly up to par or better than the current effects, since we don't want to sacrifice quality unless it's really necessary. Anyone wishing to join this good effort can head over to these forum threads: STK Sound Effect (SFX) Liberation and Unhappy with Sound Effects?

Flames and motion blur when using a zipper. Doesn't that sound awesome? Well, we've got it now!

That Blur game can go home and cry;P

Apologies for the frame refresh spoiling the screenshot a bit, but you get the general idea. The motion blur is the work of funto, and the flame effect is by Auria. Combined the effect is really nice, and adds an extra sense of speed while you're zipping merrily along the track.

So that wraps up this... oh wait! There's one more thing!™
Isn't that...? Oh yes, it is. A new nice, juicy track by samuncle. Isn't it beautiful?

Zen Garden

It will most likely replace Secret Garden for the upcoming 0.7.3 release. The old garden will be put in addons, readily available to expand the track selection if you so wish.

0.7.3 will hopefully be the last version in the 0.7 series. It's been fun, but we need to move on to more great changes for the 0.8 milestone. :D
No, I do not know when 0.7.3 will be ready. But with all these changes, it can't be too far away. ;)

That wraps up this blogpost, and I'm getting myself outta here™ before I get hurt by the masses running to the site like real, dedicated fans. ;)

↧

Delays, delays, nothing but delays

October 8, 2011, 12:57 am

≫ Next: SuperTuxKart 0.7.3 Release Candidate 1 is now out!

≪ Previous: To arms!

No, I am absolutely not impatient. No siree. But I don't blame our dear developers even though 0.7.3 ain't ready yet. There are reasons for that, and the game continues improving anyway, but there aren't any good reasons for me to let a whole month and more pass by before writing any news here. So you can verbally slap me with trouts and other sea creatures as much as you like. But the less aquatic of you are probably impatiently waiting for the news, so let's get on with the showcase.

Subzeanne

Big content news: we've got a new kart, 'Suzanne', in the game. The female monkey from Blender replaces 'Gooey', and it was about time we got our modeling tool of choice represented in the game. Thanks a lot to Céa for a very good-looking kart. :)
Speaking about sea creatures: the above is a new track. A new spin on an old track, one might say, as it's aptly named 'Subsea'. However, it's completely made from scratch by Rudy, with several possible routes featuring ships, sea monsters and other things that makes your mouth water. The landsharks will be happy to know that you're inside tubes, so for the most part, you won't get your proverbial feet wet.

Thunderbird with traffic light(n)ing

Thunderbird debuts as a start referee, with the heavy burden of a traffic light (normally, he deals with mail, I believe). Remember, red means "Hold it", yellow means "Start the race already" and green means "Step on it!", no matter if it's pedals or your keyboard. Thunderbird plays the traffic warden with style, and gracefully rescues you as well in case of "accidents". Thanks to Kinsu for the model and animaton, and fraag for its texture.

Littering the paradise

The Three Strikes Battle mode got a new arena, 'Battle Island' by qubodup. It's his first track, and a good one too, so if you want to try modeling for STK, why not try making a battle arena? :)
You may wonder what the tires are there for. Well, they show your current amount of lives, and if you lose a life, you lose a tire. The last life is represented by your normal tires, so when you (or preferably your foe) are eliminated, you lose your 4 regular wheels! Awesome, innit? :D Thanks a lot to both Auria and new contributor khonkortisan for making this possible.

In item news, the bouncer should now work mostly as intended, but we're looking for another model for it which captures the idea of bouncing better. So if you want to give it a shot we'd be happy to hear your suggestions and see your work.
The bubble gum behaviour has changed a little, so instead of stopping in an instant, you get slowed down rapidly and leave a pink trail after you, while losing some control of your kart.
Also, the bomb gives now an audible tick-tock sound, so you can hear if someone with a bomb approaches from behind, and take the necessary steps to avoid it. But don't hit the bomb kart with a swatter, since that will trigger the bomb and both will explode.

Misc: A better rescue system is now in place, but so far it's been largely untested. It should be much better in some situations now, which will hopefully help remove some player frustration.
The physics has been tweaked to work better with tall karts, and it should be quite notable on certain karts (e.g. Adiumy).
You can now see how far you've progressed in a Grand Prix, thanks to new contributor Termina1.
Conflicts in keyboard configurations are now marked in blue thanks to new contributor redskull.
The exporters for Blender 2.59+ has gotten considerably faster and also better in terms of documentation in the STK Blender panels.

As you might have noticed, there are a few new contributors submitting patches for various parts of SuperTuxKart, and this is highly valued as such contributions often provide the extra little feel of professionalism to a game. If you're a budding programmer, why don't you take a look in our bug tracker and see if there's anything you can help out with? Any help on closing the dozens of bug reports that are in circulation is much welcomed. Or, if you want to work on something else, that's awesome as well, but please drop us a line and tell us what you're working on, in order to prevent duplication of efforts.

Oh, you probably want to know when 0.7.3 will be out. "Soon" is the best answer I can give. ;)

↧

SuperTuxKart 0.7.3 Release Candidate 1 is now out!

November 1, 2011, 6:55 pm

≫ Next: SuperTuxKart 0.7.3 released

≪ Previous: Delays, delays, nothing but delays

Hi everyone,

I you many of you were very impatient for 0.7.3 to come out, and it's true that it took longer than expected, but it's now here... or at least a release candidate :)

Compared to STK 0.7.2, this new version brings the following improvements :

New Zen Garden and Subsea tracks
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

Get your copy from https://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTuxKart/0.7.3-rc1/ . OSX, Windows and source packages will appear there in the coming minutes, and more may come.

Please test and report any problem you find! However please note that it is recommended to use the forum and not blog comments to report bugs.

↧

SuperTuxKart 0.7.3 released

November 13, 2011, 5:35 pm

≫ Next: Plans for milestone 0.8 and later

≪ Previous: SuperTuxKart 0.7.3 Release Candidate 1 is now out!

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!

Joerg and Auria

↧

Plans for milestone 0.8 and later

November 25, 2011, 6:32 am

≫ Next: Add and Conquer

≪ Previous: SuperTuxKart 0.7.3 released

Here's a list of planned features for SuperTuxKart version 0.8 and beyond (0.8.1, 0.8.2). This may not be a complete list (it's based on the milestones page), and plans might change later on, but these are some of the main goals:

Improve physics (skidding, pushing other karts aside)
Career mode and/or different difficulties for challenges
Eye candy (light effects, light maps, normal maps)
Game replay
Ghost races
Reverse tracks
Online highscore lists

Only some of this will be ready for 0.8, while others will come in subsequent "minor" releases. Also, a release might be done even if not all the features are met, while other times features might come in earlier than anticipated. So these are the main goals, but they are not 100% set in stone: other things might be added, or some of this might get postponed.

Some of this are already in the works. Improved physics is the most important feature for 0.8, and hiker has already started on it. Meanwhile, Auria has added normal map support, so for track makers this is a feature to consider.

We do not know when we will be ready for a release, but as a rough, unfounded guesstimate, maybe we'll see the 0.8 release 6-12 months from now on, give or take a few decades. ;)

What we do know, is that we'd love to see more people join in on this project in any area they are interested in. So if you want to help out with your skills, please get in touch and we'll try to get you started. :)

↧

Add and Conquer

December 30, 2011, 2:11 am

≫ Next: Challenging times

≪ Previous: Plans for milestone 0.8 and later

No, not divide and conquer. Because this post will deal with add-ons in particular. :)

Why are add-ons important? It lets you as a user decide what content you find good enough for the game. Every time the project leaders have to decide on what track or kart they should remove to make place for new ones, they know that they will get complaints. It's just how it is; you can't make everybody happy. But now we actually can, to some degree. Add-ons can be created or uploaded by anyone, so if something gets removed, users can quickly add it to the growing repository of additional content. The only requirements are regarding licensing, which should be one or more Free, preferably DFSG-approved licenses, and the content should not be offensive and suite people of all ages. In other words, content recently removed from the main game should slide right in. Quality or difficulty doesn't matter for an add-on; as long as it works and licensing etc. is okay, it gets approved by the moderators of the stkaddons website.

Stephen (nicknamed sj04736) has steadily improved the website, and it should now have most of the basic features. People can also vote on add-ons there as long as they have an activated account. Why not try some of the additional karts, tracks and arenas available to install from within the game (requires version 0.7.2 or higher)? Or check out the website itself. It's a great piece of work, and Stephen doesn't get as much praise as he deserves, so be sure to send some kind thoughts to him when it all works so smoothly (and when it doesn't, please don't berate him, but file a bug report). ;)

Two yummy pie charts:

As you can see, there's a definite interest in add-ons. If you manage to create a particularly good one, it may even go on to conquer the game! Or, in other words, become part of the default set of karts, tracks or arenas.

Finally, if you like what we are doing, and got some more money to spend this year, why not make a donation? We'd be happy to take some of it off your back in order to further the game. ;)
In addition (or instead), you might want to donate to the awesome TuxFamily site, which hosts all the add-ons plus many other Free projects for no monetary compensation. Ain't that worth a few dollars if you've got some to spare? :)

Will 2012 be the year of SuperTuxKart on the desktop? Let's wait and see. ;)

↧

Challenging times

January 31, 2012, 2:22 pm

≫ Next: External interviews

≪ Previous: Add and Conquer

Nope, it does not mean we are being sued by Nintendo, but it means it's time to bring some juicy updates about the recent development of SuperTuxKart. ;)

We are now progressing towards 0.8, and thus there are lots of radical new changes being made. Perhaps most notable is the new, improved challenge system, referred to as the overworld. Basically you drive around in a special large track from where you can launch challenges from certain places. But don't just take my word for it; have a few screenshots as well!

Village view

Here's a brief overview of most of the overworld. Big, innit? Outside the camera view there's a garage in which you will be able to change karts. In front you see a small mushroom village where some of the challenge start points are. To the right you can see a mountain area with three caves where the mountain-themed challenge start points resides, and further back to the right there's a small ocean with more challenges. Center left there's a small forest/plant area with some challenge orbs, and farthest from here is a technological area and Nolok's castle. To the left is a desert area with the hacienda, pyramid and Zen Garden hut. The overworld is very much a work in progress, and the screenshots does not convey the final result, but gives you an idea on what "the overworld" means.

Castle view

Here's the view from the opposite end of the overworld. Front center we see Nolok's castle with lava surrounding it. Further back we get a somewhat better view of the technological area, with a rocket made by new contributor ctdabomb, the UFO from Star Track with a challenge orb, and a few more objects plus a cave with another challenge orb. The other stuff I've already mentioned.

Ocean view

I know that usually ocean view means looking from land towards the ocean, but the other way around made more sense this time. :P
Here it's easier to see some new features in use. Most important is the texture splatting which makes texture transitions completely smooth. Also notice the brand new water shader which makes for better looking water. It's still not realistic, but it sure is better than just a plain moving texture.

Bubble shield

Not to worry; the blackness issue will be resolved when the move from multitexturing to shader texturing has been done. Also you can see yet another use of shader technology: the shields which protects challenge spots are semi-transparent, somewhat reflective spheres, resembling soap bubbles. Awesome!

The number stands for points needed to enter the area. If you don't have enough points, the shield will reject you (not a problem in this case though). You will later get points by finishing challenges, which can be driven at your difficulty of choice, giving you access to more. You would get more points by solving challenges at hard, and you could only finish the game with all points by driving at hard. You would not need to always get all points in order to progress in the overworld however, but those who finishes with all possible points may get some sort of small bonus.

There is also an intent to combine the overworld with a story line, but we're not there yet except for the brainstorming phase. How many challenges we will get in the end and many other details are left to be decided on as well, but there will eventually be more challenges than now and essentially more fun to be had. :)

The other major change being implemented is better physics. Karts are no longer as susceptible of locking together in a crash, and are pushed a bit from each other instead. Now there's also skidding implemented instead of sharp turn, like certain other arcade racing games have, with a bonus if you skid long enough. It's a bit hard to explain in words what the difference is, and it's still subject to change, so there's not much point in trying to write anything other than this: it'll be nice in the end. ;)

There's a lot more stuff in the works as well, but these are the features which the next release focuses on, and the other stuff will be very nice bonuses if they are ready in time for 0.8. I don't want to create any pressure, so I'll leave them for later when they are more ready and likely to be included by default.

That's all folks!

↧

External interviews

February 19, 2012, 8:18 am

≫ Next: Reverse trackology

≪ Previous: Challenging times

Here's a link to an interview community member KroArtem made to some of the other SuperTuxKart contributors. Answers came from project leaders hiker and Auria, 3D artist samuncle, and for some strange reason, KroArtem wanted my answers as well. The original post can be read at the FreeGamer blog, and it's formatted so well I don't think I can be bothered to redo it. ;P

Follow this link and you will see
the long interview prepared for thee.
(Actually it was mainly meant for people not too familiar with the project, but anything to get some poetry out. It enriches... uh... something.)

↧

Reverse trackology

March 22, 2012, 2:37 pm

≫ Next: [April's Fools Joke] New version numbering scheme

≪ Previous: External interviews

Hi and welcome to yet another belated blogpost. There's been quite a few improvements over the last few months, and if you're wondering what the headline of today's post means, keep reading...

New track

First off we have a new track in the game, made by samuncle. Yay! It's named Blackhill Mansion, and will most likely replace Crescent Crossing in the upcoming 0.8 release. The track makes use of the recent addition of lightmap support to the game, which gives it the dark atmosphere combined with "glowing" (not really, but faked) lamps and other decorative lighting. It makes for an eerily fun drive into the mansion and out to the graveyard nearby.

New main menu

Also adding to samuncle's impressive list of contributions, we have a new menu design for the main menu. It's been in the development version for a while, but as usual I wait for the dust to settle down a bit, and then forget to mention it once no major changes seem to be underway. Oh well. Hope you like it anyway.

Advanced graphics settings

Then there's another nice feature: advanced graphics settings, so you can turn on and off graphics options individually as you please. Or if you're unsure what those means, you can still use the slider (or do a web search and get more knowledgeable). This has been a much requested feature, so we hope people will enjoy the extra choice.

A couple other interesting things to mention: Ghost races, i.e. the ability to drive against a "replay" of yourself is under development, but since it's originally scheduled for 0.8.1 it might not be ready in time for 0.8. You can already do ghost races from the terminal, but the GUI and possibly more minor tweaks are still left to do. So whether it will be ready for regular players for 0.8 is still left to see.

The other interesting thing is the ability to drive tracks in reverse. Thanks to MCMic (and to Wardje for differentiating the highscores). Not all tracks are working well in reverse, but work is underway to get all standard tracks more reverse-compatible. The problematic tracks are listed here, and if you're a modeler and would like to help us fix the tracks we'd be much obliged. Some tracks have currently gotten the reverse option disabled because they are not possible at all to finish in reverse mode, so they should get highest priority. For add-ons all tracks will be assumed as reverse-compatible by default, unless otherwise specified in the track properties.

Oh, and we're still discussing and trying to find acceptable compromises when it comes to how the new skidding should behave, and other things related to driving physics. One thing is for sure, and that's some of you may find the changes a little disrupting to your current driving style. Certainly I am, and that's why we've been discussing things heavily as we all have our own ideas on how we want things to be. The driving physics hasn't changed much in years, so we're trying to change things around while still keeping the wacky arcade style of the game. And hopefully we'll end up with something much better than the 0.7.3 physics. Maybe this sounds more radical than it is; it's mostly kart-kart interactions and crashing towards the sides we're trying to improve, besides making skidding different from the current sharp turn approach. When we have an alpha or beta version ready we'll be very interested in user comments, but it might still be a while before release time. The stable 0.8 release will most likely not be ready before summer, so keep your patience and keep STK-ing. ;)

↧

[April's Fools Joke] New version numbering scheme

April 1, 2012, 7:35 am

≫ Next: Using Blender as a 3d map editor, rather than programming your own from scratch

≪ Previous: Reverse trackology

The SuperTuxKart development team has decided to change version numbering to keep up with the times and make it easier for people to know if they are using the latest version or not. So the upcoming 0.8 release will not be named 0.8. Inspired by Mozilla, we'll simply call it 8. But inspiration comes seldom alone, so since Ubuntu's version scheme makes it easy to know when the latest release got out, we'll adopt it as well and call it 8 followed by year and month. So for example 8.12.08. Then it dawned upon us: why not include revision number? Then there will be no doubt as to what version you're using, especially if we release a newer version in the same month. So the upcoming version will be named something like 8.12.08.13337. You get to choose what number you want to refer; either you say you're using version 8, 12.08 or 13337, or you might choose any combination of two or more of those.

We also like the idea of giving names to releases. So next version will be nicknamed SuperTuxKart Gutsy Gnu, or maybe Nasty Nolok or Silly Suzanne, we're not sure yet

We look forward to the release of version 8.12.something.something, and hope you'll find it easier to get the right version number when reporting bugs or otherwise talking about the game.

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Using Blender as a 3d map editor, rather than programming your own from scratch

April 26, 2012, 6:32 pm

≫ Next: The plot thickens

≪ Previous: [April's Fools Joke] New version numbering scheme

From Blender to the game: a significant step

One issue that needs to be solved during game development is how to get the art from the modeling tool into the game.
The answer might seem to be trivial: "Just export the model in a file format that can be read by the graphics engine!" Unfortunately this is not as simple, even when both the modeling software and your graphics engine support the same file format.

Content, content, metadata

Many non-graphical pieces of information (metadata) need to be provided. In our racing game SuperTuxKart (STK) for example, map models need further detail:

Kart starting positions.
Mesh of the driveway.
Position of items boxes (powerups) and bananas (traps).
Type of track (arena or racing).
Name of the map designer.
Can the map be driven in reverse?
What music should be played?
How to handle animated objects?
What graphical effects (particles, animated textures, snow) and what sounds should be used and where?
Optimizations like backface culling.

Re-inventing the wheel... not!

Usualy, the answer to these questions is to create a separate editor which allows 3D modeling and exports the additional data necessary to actually use a level or object (or kart) in the game.
Creating and maintaining such a piece of content pipleline requires resources and can slow down or even halt other development, depending on the team size. With the three free-time programmers on our team, we couldn't afford this investment.
A track editor has been developed by a community member years ago, but it was never even close to being able to design track of sufficient quality and eventually was abandoned. Instead of restarting such an effort, we chose a slightly different approach.

Extending the modelling tool

We extended the existing modeling tool commonly used for creating tracks: Blender (a tool used for example by the renowned indie game creators Wolfire), so that the necessary options can be set in Blender's GUI. Our scripts for exporting tracks and karts make these options available in game.
This method reduces development time and allowed a tool, that is already known to many artists out there and has tons of documentation available, to create content that is perfectly fit four our game. We only need to document our specific extensions.

SuperTuxKart map and extended panels in Blender

The magic behind the scene that makes it possible to take a map in Blender and run it in SuperTuxKart is made up by several Python plugins. The first plugin, which can be seen in the screenshot, is the “Panel” plugin. Once this plugin is added to Blender, a few game-specific panels appear in the properties view (one for object properties, one for scene properties, one for material properties).
With a few clicks in the properties panel, you can change the sky, make it snow or rain, add fog, make a water surface animated or specify that particles or sound effects are emitted from a point!

Models

There is first the track export script, which reads these properties and exports them to XML files for the game core to read (which includes support for moving/animated objects). The “B3D” script also exports the mesh to the B3D file format (which also supports skeletal animation, as well as vertex colors and multiple UV maps for lightmaps and normal maps).
None of this would have been possible had Blender not been so scriptable. Our panel script can serve as example documentation for anyone who wants to make a custom Blender panel. The scripts actually load the description of the contents of the panel from declarative XML files, making it easy to change the contents of the panel. Interested? All of our scripts are open-source and available for both private and commercial use under the GNU GPL license.

Materials

The materials panel automatically lists all textures in the blend file, and allows specifying several properties, for example:

Surface properties, when player is in contact with it:
- Is a particle or sound effect emitted?
- Does it slow down or speed up the player or have a non-standard tire grip?
- Do players pass right through it?
Viewable texture properties
- Transparency/opaque value
- Transparency effect (Alpha Testing, Alpha To Coverage or Alpha Blending)
- Shaders (for example normal maps, splatting, water reflections, lightmaps, sphere mapping)

Powerups and traps (goodies and baddies)

It's nice to have the static model, but after all this is a game so we need to give the player some goodies and baddies! Fortunately there is an easy way to add them : our plugins extend the global "Add" menu of blender with new object types specific to SuperTuxKart, like gift boxes, nitro or bananas.

Drivelines and checklines

Finally, how does the AI know where to drive, and how do we check that human players do not cheat? We chose to use a set of simple meshes, called drivelines, to indicate where players may drive.

Driveline mesh in Blender

These simple meshes are then processed by the exporter into something that is easy to import in the game and to follow by AIs. Checklines are added in addition to that to prevent cheating.
As a bonus, drivelines do not need to be linear, but may be exported as a graph, allowing for quite complex structures to be constructed directly inside Blender.

Conclusion

While the Python API documentation is not always optimal, and while a few API changes broke everything and made us swear loudly in the past, Blender's Python API is very flexible and powerful and a vital part of our game development workflow, which will hopefully inspire others to design their tools with it.

Always on the lookout for content creators

We are always looking for modellers to help us improve our older, less impressive worlds. :) If you have experience in modelling and you feel like helping, you will be warmly welcomed on our forum, mailing list and IRC channel!
Further details of our map-making process can be found in the Track Maker's Guide.
This post was written as a collaborative effort by Arthur, Auria, hiker and qubodup.

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The plot thickens

June 22, 2012, 10:34 am

≫ Next: STK Can Haz Community?

≪ Previous: Using Blender as a 3d map editor, rather than programming your own from scratch

It's been a while. Way too long actually. But instead of coming with my usual lame excuses on the silence, I'll just get on with it. There's been a heap of interesting stuff to watch, not the least a few which will need some more time to reach its full potential. So the 0.8 release is still a way off, though hopefully we will have a release out before the year is over.

New version of XR591

As usual, we'll start with the more visual changes. Behold the new version of XR591 by our regular track guru samuncle. If you think it looks pretty much the same, that's correct; it will mainly be less resource-hungry and with a few other changes here and there. It's still a work in progress, but it will hopefully be ready to roll out alongside the 0.8 release.

Other tracks have been updated to support driving them in reverse, thanks to various community members, and Wardje (Ward Muylaert) has added support for driving Grand Prix tournaments in reverse as well. He also added the option to give up a normal and Time Trial races, but still get an estimated time with penalty time added. You will always end up last, but at least get a result. And now penalty time is only given if you accelerate while "Set" is shown, so any accidental acceleration during "Ready" will not penalize you.

Intro animation for story mode

When it comes to the story mode, work has been started on animating the intro cutscene. Indeed, the plot thickens! There is still quite a lot more to be done when it comes to cutscenes, but to drum up excitement I thought I'd post this screenshot. If there are any animation experts out there willing to help, please contact us - this would free up a lot of time for Auria that would go into making the game better in other ways.

A cannon-like teleporter has been in the works as well, where the goal is that a track designer may place a special object in a track, and karts when they reach that point will fly to the end point without any user interaction. This is also a work in progress, and may or may not be ready in time for 0.8.
Speaking of teleportation, I thought I'd quickly mention that in the Overworld you can now click on the map and you'll get teleported nearby that challenge orb. That'll save some driving back and forth.

More WIP work: demo mode, where after a certain amount of idle time AI will start to race, like you often see for games in real arcade machines. When this will be ready to be used as a default is left to be seen.
Also, there's been quite a bit of AI work done lately, with efforts to both bring the AI up to speed when it comes to the new skidding behavior, and also to make it more intelligent and avoid bad things while collecting good things. The latter part has been started by a new contributor, JskiJ, which we hope will help us further with giving the AI a much needed intelligence boost.

In other news, SuperTuxKart now has a default resolution of 1024x768 unless your screen is too small. Then it will revert back to 800x600. This decision was made due to the increasing challenge of keeping the interface small enough to fit 800x600 pixels, and also since most computers have screens capable of at least 1024x768.
Meanwhile, the game now supports Arabic, which will hopefully make the game more accessible to many people.

There's been a few other miscellaneous changes as well, but unless I am mistaken I've listed the highlights since last regular development update. Take care and as always, we welcome contributions both on a one-off and on a regular basis. :)

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STK Can Haz Community?

June 27, 2012, 12:16 pm

≫ Next: You've got to be skidding

≪ Previous: The plot thickens

Hi y'all! Short time no see. I just thought it would be nice to bring attention to our forums and IRC channel, where a lot of the discussions about SuperTuxKart are going on. The forums now have over 10 000 posts spread across over 700 topics, which goes to show they are fairly active. The developers take an active part in discussions, so if you want to become involved or just come with constructive suggestions the forums are perfect for this. Recently one of our community members started a leaderboard topic where people can post their Time Trial times along with screenshot or video proof. So if you want to have some competition, that would be a nice way to do it while we wait for networking support to come within a few SuperTuxKart releases.

Okay, you may think, there are developers on that forum whom I don't identify with due to not being a programmer myself, and there are the other userswho probably just fool around with leaderboards (they can do so much more than that! True story).What if I don't care forhighscores, and I can't program or do 3D modeling and thus contribute to the game and by extension the community?Whatever should I join the forum for? I'm glad you asked.

There are actually quite a few things most people could give a shot and contribute to STK in a meaningful way. The new story mode will feature voice acting for its cutscenes, and possibly all standard karts in races may get some cheers and boo samples, depending on the amount of contributions. Now beware: voice acting is not as easy as some may believe, and is primarily about acting, so keep in mind that we want the end result to be good. Bad voice acting could potentially make the game seem less polished, and we don't want that and as such we can't accept everything. But this could be an interesting way for people to contribute, especially for actors, comedians, singers, or anybody with some degree of live performance experience. You don't have to have such experience or come with any sort of resume though; just try recording some lines/noises with the best available microphone you have at your disposal and upload it to the forum. Maybe this sounds intimidating, but just give it a try! Remember: even though you might not be the next Mel Blanc or June Foray, your contributions could very well be good enough for this game.

Maybe the above isn't your thing, but you still want to help out. The story mode will also feature an overworld where you can complete challenges in the difficulty of your choice. Perhaps one challenge is too hard for you, and you really don't want to spend too much time on it. Then you can just choose to drive that particular challenge with medium or easy difficulty, and otherwise settle for driving in 'Hard'. Previously, there was just one difficulty for the challenges. Either you made it, or you didn't. Now, with the new system, there is a high demand for people to playtest and tweak challenges on each difficulty level so we get reasonable results, allowing both new and experienced players to have fun with unlocking features. If you would be interested in this, please register on our forum and engage in discussions and upload suggestions for challenge requirements. This would be a huge help and possibly make version 0.8 both more polished and released more quickly.

Still don't find anything you fancy? Why not take a look at our forums, read through a few topics and see if you find anything you feel strongly enough about to register and poke fun at our bad suggestions, faulty logic and otherwise mesmerizing bad writing skills (which this blog post is a stellar example of)? Er, maybe you could skip that. As long as people keep things constructive, anyone can join in on the fun! :)

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You've got to be skidding

July 31, 2012, 2:15 pm

≫ Next: Nightlies, Videos, Robots oh my!

≪ Previous: STK Can Haz Community?

Well here we are again to look at some of the latest progress in SuperTuxKart development. Without further ado, let's get on with the news.

Nolok doing a Gnunapping

Some more work on the first story cutscene has been made, especially fixing problems related to the camera and adding Nolok's spaceship, abducting Gnu. Also added is the capacity to show subtitles in cutscenes, and animated sound effects and particle emissions. Still to be done is getting a couple vocal effects and tweaking a couple things related to the animation.

Stephen has done a few nice changes to stkaddons.net, most of which are not immediately obvious to users. But among other things: direct URLs to individual addons now looks nicer, and a management panel for moderators and admins has been added. Older revisions will now be automatically deleted after a while with the exception of the newest one (obviously), or if it is the last supported one for a specific STK version, so it will never delete critical revisions of an add-on.

Debug view of skidding AI

In other news, the AI (artificial intelligence, or otherwise known as "computer player" in some games) has been improved to determine if it can use skidding or if it needs to brake during a turn in order to follow the drivelines. Pretty nifty, and makes it look quite a bit smarter (with the exception of some tracks, where it has problems due to losing ground contact due to elevation). It still needs a few tweaks, and is therefore not enabled by default yet. So whenever the AI gets the ability to seek out nitro and item boxes by themselves, I predict people may have to get better at driving smart and use the new skidding bonus to keep up. Of course, AI will be AI and most likely will have a few weaknesses still, and will also depend on the difficulty chosen, so I doubt we'll get an AI which is nearly impossible for humans to follow. So any improvement to the AI is a good improvement, and this is most certainly a good start.

Another nice addition to the game is the ability for it to save the current window position, so if you restart the game and it's in windowed mode it will start where you left its window last. This sounds superfluous, but for multi-monitor setups this means you can have it always start in one screen while you have other stuff on the other screen, without having to move it there manually every time.

We also received a few patches from nathanm32292394 (phew) fixing a few memory leaks and improving support for graphics drivers that don't support non-square and/or texture sizes which aren't power-of-two.

I think that's about it; if you think I've missed anything just yell, and also if there's other things I could do in order to make the blog better. See you next time, and until then: goodnight out there, WHATever you are!

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Nightlies, Videos, Robots oh my!

September 1, 2012, 6:12 pm

≫ Next: Supervillain Superpowers : It's Hammertime!

≪ Previous: You've got to be skidding

Well here we are again, marvelling at the newest in SuperTuxKart development. And do we have anything exciting to show you? Oh yes!

Consider for a moment if you could download the newest version of SuperTuxKart, practically every day. Wouldn't that be cool? Well, sometimes life imitates art, or in this case the imagination. That's right, 3D artist extraordinaire samuncle has shown he has a technical side as well by creating an automatic build service which currently provides nightly builds of the development version for 32 and 64-bit Linux systems. Other operating systems are not available yet, but later the service may be expanded with some manually created builds for Windows.

Some caveats do apply to the nightly builds. They are in-development versions, and thus may have many unfinished features, bugs and other quirks. We do not provide support for the builds, but if you are reasonably sure you've found an unreported bug which is not related to your special mix of hardware and software (excepting STK of course), feel free to report it on our bug tracker. And, if you want to wait and not spoil any surprises it's probably best to leave it alone. But then what are you doing here? Shoo! Be gone!
Only (s)kidding. ;)

One useful feature that Auria created last time to help me with my blogging is the ability to take screen captures from within STK. Right Alt + Prt Screen will now save a screenshot in your system's temp folder, and from my experience it gives much less artifacts than using a general screenshot application. But now, we have just moved into the 2000's by embracing a new, exciting form of media: videos! (Worth to note is that this is not an option within the game; I am using external software to do this.) And to start off I'd like to show you a lap and a half of the new skidding AI driving on the Hacienda track.

Skidding AI in Hacienda

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfDrKjGT2h4

Remember, this is not me driving, but an AI, or robot, if you will. It may not look entirely human, but it's faster than we've ever seen the AI before and it's already quite hard to beat on some tracks. Next up is to get the AI to aim at items and nitro bottles, and avoid bananas. Some work has already started on this but it is not quite ready yet for showcasing.

Gnu in Nolok's dungeon

Gnu is sitting there all miserable and forever alone, when suddenly, he hears a sound! What may happen next? That's currently a secret, but maybe with some pressure from our readers I will get permission to release full videos of the various cutscenes in a later blog post. ;)

Well I think that about wraps it up for this time. Stay patient; we are probably still a couple months away from release, but hopefully this will ease the wait. :)

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