"STK w/Irrlicht": Some news

Sorry for the lack of news lately; this was caused by several matters, including my own laziness. ;) But I got some news for you. While the developers have been busy fixing bugs and doing other, more important things not related to STK, there is some stuff I haven't presented yet.

Pause dialog

All the buttons works like intended, and it's possible to go back to this pause dialog after changing the options or looking through 'Help'.

After race menu

As you've probably figured by now, it's possible to complete a race and get the results. While the results for the computer controlled players isn't shown, everything else seems to work.

The SuperTuxKart forums is now located at http://ghoulsblade.schattenkind.net/freegamedev/forum/. The posts that were written before the forum crash is not recovered yet, but work is still going on as far as I know.

I mentioned a few blog posts earlier that we were looking for menu icons. We have someone who are dealing with that for the moment, so if you want to partake with that you'll have to be quick and join the developer's mailing-list and get in touch. There'll be an alpha release of STK ready later on for artists to test and improve on.

---------------

Note: As the "STK w/Irrlicht" branch is still in a very unstable state, the general public is recommended to use the latest stable version (0.6.2a) of SuperTuxKart.

Hotfix for 0.6.2 released

A hotfix for 0.6.2 named 0.6.2a has been released. This hotfix is for Windows Vista/7 only, and makes it unnecessary to run the game as administrator anymore. If you don't want to download everything once more, just replace the 'supertuxkart.exe' in your STK 0.6.2 folder with supertuxkart-0.6.2a-win-executable-only.exe, and then rename it to 'supertuxkart.exe'.

To repeat; if you're not using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you don't need to do anything at all. If you are, and have to run it as administrator every time, this little fix will do the trick.

Edit:

Note that you will lose your settings and highscores (on Windows). If you want to keep your 0.6.2 data: start the new binary and quit. Then copy the files supertuxkart.cfg (for settings and key bindings) and/or highscore.data to $APPDATA/supertuxkart.

"STK w/Irrlicht": Fancy stuff

SuperTuxKart has changed much the last few weeks; sorry for not supplying you with the news sooner. Anyway, here we go.

Ambient lighting test

This test changes the ambient color to light red, and furthermore, it is activated and deactivated by crossing driveline quads! This can be awesome for track designers wanting to spice up their tunnels with different lighting.

Character animation test

If you look closely, you'll see that the character on this screenshot leans towards left while turning left. Compare it to the screenshot above, and you'll see that it leans the other way when turning right. The road for simple animations on the characters, like this one, is clear. Thanks to Rudy85 for the animated model.

Animated cutscene test

Sorry for the somewhat fuzzy screenshot, but the refresh rate made the chest look uglier than it really is. This little animation shows a key for the "Feature Chest" being inserted. I guess it's not finished yet, but it shows what we can expect for STK 0.7. Furthermore, the background texture is also animated.

As you can see, there's more than enough to play with for artists of any kind: sound effect makers, 3D modelers, animators et cetera et cetera. We need your help in order to make 0.7 a milestone in the SuperTuxKart history.

In other news, the development version is mostly ported to work with the new version of Irrlicht (version 1.6).
Also, a SuperTuxKart 0.6.2 binary for Solaris and a binary for Linux-PPC has been made by xeno74. They can be found at the SourceForge download page.

The forum is down due to a hard disk crash, and it has been so for a week. The FreeGameDev staff are trying to save all the posts on the FGD board; take a look at the FreeGamer blog for details and news regarding this issue.

---------------

Note: As the "STK w/Irrlicht" branch is still in a very unstable state, the general public is recommended to use the latest stable version (0.6.2) of SuperTuxKart.

"STK w/Irrlicht": New icons!

Hi everyone! After the great new logo we got, we've just got a set of main menu icons. Many thanks to yekcim for making those. :)
They blend very nicely in with the new logo, don't you think?

There's still a lot more icons needed. If you are interested in helping with this, you can contact the STK crew beforehand to get some advice on what we're looking for, and avoid duplicating work. Eventually, if you're comfortable with it, you can get the latest SVN version of SuperTuxKart and find one/several icons you want to improve. Most icons, excluding the new main menu ones, are only placeholders until we get something better.
We are looking forward to your contribution; icons or otherwise. ;)

---------------

Note: As the "STK w/Irrlicht" branch is still in a very unstable state, the general public is recommended to use the latest stable version (0.6.2) of SuperTuxKart.

"STK w/Irrlicht": New logo!

Hi everyone, just a quick update: SuperTuxKart 0.7 will feature a brand new logo, designed by rastapax. Thank you very much for this. :)

In action


---------------

Note: As the "STK w/Irrlicht" branch is still in a very unstable state, the general public is recommended to use the latest stable version (0.6.2) of SuperTuxKart.

"STK w/Irrlicht": Track preview updated

As time goes, the GUI gets better and better.
I've posted a screenshot of the track preview before, but it didn't do it much justice. Now it looks quite good, except for some minor details that will be solved later.

Track preview


In other news, a static binary of 0.6.2 has been created for Linux by Stephen, and a package for OpenSUSE by Dominique. They can be found at our download page.
Edit: A binary for FreeBSD has been made by xeno74, and it can be found at the SourceForge download page.
Thank you all very much. :)

---------------

Note: As the "STK w/Irrlicht" branch is still in a very unstable state, the general public is recommended to use the latest stable version (0.6.2) of SuperTuxKart.

"STK w/Irrlicht": Player joining

Welcome to another development update.
A lot of changes has happened under the hood, and as this blog is mainly for the players, I won't go into detail on it. But I want to thank all you developers, and especially our newest crew members for doing such a great job. :)

This time around, I will show how several players can join a game locally.

Two players in the same screen

As the descriptive text at the top says, other players can join simply by pressing 'fire' on their device. In this example, Player 1 had the gamepad assigned, and Player 2 joined thereafter by pressing 'fire' (in this example, the Ctrl key on the keyboard).
The green square shows what kart Player 1 have selected, and the cyan square is for Player 2.
Neat, is it not?

Now, I joined myself, and I'm not that good at multi-tasking that I'll be able to drive two karts at the same time, but anyway we got to wait for the split-screen interface to be recreated.
In the meantime, have fun playing SuperTuxKart 0.6.2, and please report any bugs you might find.

---------------

Note: As the "STK w/Irrlicht" branch is still in a very unstable state, the general public is recommended to use the latest stable version (0.6.2) of SuperTuxKart.