October 19, 2009

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.

October 12, 2009

"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.

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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.