SuperTuxKart

It's that time again! No, not to adjust our watches, nor the brightness settings of our monitors (though both may be needed as well), but to look at what's been going on with SuperTuxKart development the past couple months. Truth to be told, things ... [More] have been a little slow lately due to winter break and also time going towards promoting the game for SourceForge's Project of the Month.Speaking of which, how did it go? Very well, thanks to all our voters and community members promoting it. Congrats to PostBooks ERP for winning the contest for March. But we were graciously awarded the prize of Project of the Month for April, due to our close race with PostBooks and promotional efforts going into it. Thanks again to everyone participating, even though Twitter membership was a requirement.We recently launched our own Twitter account, so if you want to get news snippets a bit more often than what we make for the blog, follow @supertuxkart. Naturally there will be quite some overlap in content, but it can be an additional avenue for those interested in the ongoing development. Please note, it is NOT a support channel and you should contact us via forums or e-mail for support and suggestions - otherwise it is likely to be overlooked and/or have high answer delay. Not to mention the fact that 140 characters isn't exactly a good limit for this sort of communication.Beginner's tutorial Auria made a short tutorial for beginners which learns how the basic gameplay works. It does not go through each weapon and their usage, but covers basics and should hopefully make the game easier to learn for new players. Soccer modeLong-time contributor funto has worked on a new game mode called soccer mode. In it, 2-4 players across two teams are competing in split-screen mode trying to score goals on each other like in English football/soccer. There are some things left to be done, mainly balancing physics better to make it easier to control the ball, so whether this game mode will be available in 0.8.1 is still left to see. Most likely it will have to wait until 0.8.2.Easter egg huntAlso, another game mode by hiker is in the works, so far known as Easter Egg Hunt, where your goal is to find all the hidden bunnies. This is intended to be a more family-friendly relaxed mode, where kids and adults alike can explore the tracks without the pressure of AI or other players. However, people will probably be able to choose to compete on time for this mode, similar to time trial races. It's also still a work in progress, but should hopefully be ready in time for the upcoming release.PlanetariumI'll end this post with a small teaser from samuncle, showing his work on a new version of Star Track, with stunningly beautiful surroundings - makes you want to land on that planet, doesn't it? :) [Less]

A bit less than 3 days to go in the race to become SoureForge's "Project of the Month". We were more than 30 votes ahead, then suddenly more than 50 votes behind, and now we are catching up. Only 10 votes missing to share the lead (and quite a few ... [More] more to put us securely in first place).We created a promotional video showing the upcoming wiimote support in SuperTuxKart - hopefully in 0.8.1. We couldn't help adding a call for votes - in English, German and Chinese by our little SuperTuxKart ambassador:So we need every vote we can get - please support us and go to http://vote.supertuxkart.net to cast your vote. We have been told that using twitter is not convenient for many of our fans, but we don't really have a choice.Any kind of advertising helps, too - best of all if you tweet about it (since your followers obviously have a twitter account), but also making a video about STK, posting appropriately in a forum, contacting your local radio or TV stations, ... Feel free to use the above video, since seeing the wiimote support is indeed a news-worthy item. [Less]

We have been nominated as SourceForge.net's Project of the Month for March! Please vote for us at vote.supertuxkart.net and spread the link. This would mean we get an interview and additional exposure on the SourceForge front page and in their monthly e-mail.

Just a few weeks after 0.8 and the subsequent winter break, 2013 started off with a bang. None other than Microsoft Research posted a video showing off their IllumiRoom projection... project, starring SuperTuxKart and FOSS shooter Red Eclipse. And ... [More] no, this is not an early April's Fools.  SuperTuxKart featured about 0:48-0:50So what does this mean? Well, we should not read too much into it. Most likely they just needed something as proof of concept, and STK's free and open source nature made it possible to do without asking us, paying us or anything of the sort. I just wish they could at least have the courtesy to spell SuperTuxKart correctly. Oh well, it's free publicity for us. :)We also made it onto Slashdot, a well known news site among the self-proclaimed geek crowd. Hopefully we will benefit from this exposure, as we are looking for coders and artists alike to continually improve SuperTuxKart. We also take monetary donations through SourceForge, and welcomes everyone who wants to get involved, whatever their skill set might be.The road ahead can be seen at the Milestones page. We will have 4 point releases before the big 0.9 release introducing WAN and LAN network support. But the more help we can get, the quicker we can get all the planned features, so please get in touch and get involved! :) [Less]

Hi all,over a year after the 0.7.3 release, we are proud and excited to announce the release of SuperTuxKart 0.8! We have closed over 230 tickets, and made some significant changes: You can now enjoy a story mode with challenges against a stronger ... [More] AI, and improved physics with better skidding and collisions. Tracks can be driven in reverse, and we have new music especially composed for SuperTuxKart.Many many more changes were done, the main ones are:    Story mode and new challenge set    Improved AI    Skidding and better collision physics    Reverse mode    New green valley track    New Blackhill Mansion track    Updated XR591 track    Updated Fort Magma track    Updated Jungle track    Updated Sand track    New music    Updated menus We hope you will enjoy this brand new version!Head over to http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Downloads to download the game now! Windows and OSX binaries are already available, and Linux binaries should appear in the coming days as packagers make binaries for various distributions.Finally, as always, don't forget that the forum and mailing list are more appropriate than blog comments for bug reports.A big thanks to all the people who have contributed to SuperTuxKart, without whom this release would not have been possible (full list in the credits of the game).And finally a few screenshots : French translation available here [Less]

Over a year after the 0.7.3 release, we are proud and excited to announce the release of the first release candidate towards SuperTuxKart 0.8!There have been several bugfixes since the alpha release, new music by Claude Werner (Bollen),tweaks to ... [More] challenges, and some modifications to tracks (most notably a new shifting sands track, thanks to ctdabomb and kalado).Please help us test this release to make SuperTuxKart 0.8 a great release! There is also still time to help complete translations.The main changes since version 0.7.3 are :Story mode and new challenge setImproved AISkidding and better collision physicsReverse modeNew green valley trackNew Blackhill Mansion trackUpdated XR591 trackUpdated Fort Magma trackUpdated jungle trackNew music Updated menus Windows and OSX binaries are already available, and Linux binaries should follow soon (tomorrow hopefully).>> Download here [Less]

Hi all,just to let all translators know that we have now frozen the strings for 0.8. We expect the first release candidate in a few days - depending how we go with the final known bugs and outstanding improvements.If everything goes well, we might ... [More] have a release tentatively hopefully in around 2 weeks time.Also, we want to thank everyone reporting bugs and giving feedback on the 0.8 alpha version - with your help we can release 0.8 with more confidence knowing things are working like they should (of course, we can't guarantee anything). Keep 'em coming. :) [Less]

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 ... [More] 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 setImproved AISkidding and better collision physicsReverse modeNew 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 menuBesides 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 [Less]

What would a cartoon game be without a villain? Not much! But fortunately we have Tux's nemesis, the evil Nolok, and the next version will feature an epic race against Nolok. He won't release the poor Gnu that easily, of course : you will need to ... [More] make him do so. And as any respectable bad guy, he gets his own powers. See for yourself : Nolok's special weaponsAvoiding taking a hit of that hammer on the head will save you some headaches for sure! And Nolok is too evil to use pink bubblegums, really : he prefers spiky green slime, it would seem.On other topics there has been work on improving the intro and end cutscenes, with many sound effects and now even some voice acting! The synchronisation of animations has also been improved. Don't worry though, the story is short and can be skipped.More work has gone on skidding. It is now easier to control than before. For people that have tried SVN versions or nightly builds, an important source of frustration is that the AI is now almost impossible to beat. Indeed there have been many improvements : not only does it skid quite well, it also now tries to avoid bananas and bubblegums, and collects gift boxes. Do not worry, while we are making the AI good first, the next step after that will be the tweaking to make it not so frustrating to fight against :)The overworld where story mode takes place and the challenge set have both been worked on and are starting to provide a complete set of challenges for story mode (including back Grand Prix challenges).  Suzanne approaching a challenge Thanks to OzoneOne for providing the music for the overworld and the work-in-progress BlackHill Mansion track that will replace Crescent Crossing, and also thanks to Bollen, another musician, who has work in progress songs for a few tracks.Meanwhile Samuncle has been continuing his work on the new XR591, as well as a better castle for Nolok in Fort Magma So, the next question is, when the 0.8 release? We are not quite ready yet, however we still hope to provide betas late October or (probably more likely) early- to mid-November. [Less]

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 ... [More] 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=cfDrKjGT2h4Remember, 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 dungeonGnu 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. :) [Less]