SuperTuxKart

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 GnunappingSome more work on the first story cutscene has been made, especially fixing problems ... [More] 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 AIIn 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! [Less]

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 ... [More] 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 users who probably just fool around with leaderboards (they can do so much more than that! True story). What if I don't care for highscores, 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! :) [Less]

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 ... [More] 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 XR591As 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 modeWhen 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. :) [Less]

One issue that needs to be solved during game development is how to get the art from the modeling tool into the game. It might seem to be a trivial question: just export the model in a file format that can be read by the graphics engine. ... [More] Unfortunately this is not that simple (even when ignoring the problem of finding a 3D file format that is supported by your favorite modeling software and your graphics engine). Many more details are needed, for example for SuperTuxKart:Where do karts start, where are they supposed to drive, and how do we avoid cheating?Where are the items boxes and bananas?Is the model an arena or racing track? Who is the designer? Can it be driven in reverse? What music should be played?How to handle animated objects? While the file format ideally takes care of skeletal animations (like the kart drivers steering left and right), changing the locations of an item (e.g. a bird flying around) must be handled by the game, since it needs to do correct collision detection etc.What special graphical effects should be used, for example particle effects, snow, moving sky, animated textures?Optimizations like backface culling (don't draw the back of a model if it cannot be seen), ignoring collisions with certain objects (like ghosts, or flowers), or level of details (use of less detailed models for objects that are far away).The ideal answer for this is usually a separate editor: this editor would allow to do the 3D modeling, and also export the additional data necessary to actually use a track (or kart) in SuperTuxKart. Unfortunately this is not really an option we have: the development team is way too small to be able to design a dedicated, easy to use track editor (technically a track editor was developed a few years ago, but it was never even close to be able to design track of sufficient quality). Instead we chose a slightly different approach: we extended the existing modeling tool Blender so that the necessary options can be set in Blender's GUI. Our track- and kart-export scripts can make them available in game. The advantage of this approach is reduced development time for us to create a tool that allows artists to create content for SuperTuxKart. And we can rely on an established and well known tool for tutorials and documentation - we only need to document our specific extensions.The magic behind the scene that makes it possible to take a world 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!ModelsThere 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 – and already our setup has drawn attention from other game programmers who consider using our scripts for their own game. Our panel script can also be a good example for anyone who wants to make a custom Blender panel (our 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? You can see the scripts at http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Installing_the_tools_2#Getting_the_scripts. All of these scripts are open-source and available under the GNU GPL license.MaterialsThe materials panel automatically lists all textures in the blend file, and allows specifying several properties, for instanceWhat happens when a player drives on this surface? Are particles emitted, is a sound effect played, is the player slowed down or rescued, do the tires have a good grip on this surface? Or does the kart go right through like it didn't exist? Or even does the player receive a speed boostIs this texture transparent or opaque? If transparency is used then there are a few ways to use it (all-or-nothing transparency provided by Alpha Testing or Alpha To Coverage, or Alpha Blending)Are shaders used on this surface? For instance shaders may include normal maps, splatting, water reflections, lightmaps, sphere mapping, ...Goodies and baddiesIt'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 checklinesFinally, 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.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 built simply, right from Blender.ConclusionThe details of our world-making process can be found at http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Track_Maker%27s_Guide_2.As a conclusion, while the Python API's documentation is not always optimal, and while a few API changes broke everything and made us swear, Blender's Python API is also very flexible and powerful and a vital part of our game development workflow, which will hopefully inspire others too. A call for helpFinally, 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 or IRC channel!  This post was written as a collaborative effort by Auria, hiker and Arthur [Less]

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 ... [More] 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 yetWe 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. [Less]

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 trackFirst off we have a new track in the game, made ... [More] 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 menuAlso 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 settingsThen 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. ;) [Less]

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 ... [More] 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. ;PFollow this link and you will seethe 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.) [Less]

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. ... [More] 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 viewHere'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 viewHere'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 viewI know that usually ocean view means looking from land towards the ocean, but the other way around made more sense this time. :PHere 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 shieldNot 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! [Less]

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 ... [More] 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. ;) [Less]

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 ... [More] (skidding, pushing other karts aside) Career mode and/or different difficulties for challenges Eye candy (light effects, light maps, normal maps)Game replayGhost racesReverse tracksOnline highscore listsOnly 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. :) [Less]