SuperTuxKart 0.9.2-RC1 released

[Auria]

http://supertuxkart.blogspot.ca/2016/06 ... eased.html

It's already been several months since the last release of SuperTuxKart, but we have not been idle! The next release, 0.9.2 is coming soon and we are today releasing the first release candidate. Please help us test this new release to make sure that everything works correctly!

This release includes work from Benau, a developer who recently started contributing to SuperTuxKart. Thanks to him, STK now supports recording races and ghost replays (where you can try to beat a recorded race) as well as an AI for the 3 strikes battle and soccer modes, enabling them to be played in single player for the first time (or in multiplayer with more karts). He also rewrote our font handling system to now use TTF fonts, which is a lot easier to maintain for us and should ensure that all characters from all main languages are now available. We thank him for his dedication!

This new release also marks the introduction of a few new tracks :
* New "Antediluvian Abyss" track by samuncle
* New "Volcan Island" track by Ponzino
* New icy soccer field by samuncle and Benau


0zone0ne and Krobonil have also contributed a new original song for the farm track.

Now for the disappointing bit: our most popular feature request is for networked multiplayer, unfortunately this is not ready yet. We have already invested a significant amount of time on this feature, and made some good progress on the LAN implementation:
we can already connect LAN clients without requiring an online account
we can create a server from the GUI
we even can compile a no-graphics standalone server
We have actually already played some LAN games (and even tried a WAN game once) - admittedly with some restricted features (no items), but the overall result was that the simplified approach for LAN does not work good enough. In some environments we had a satisfactory playing experience (typically using wired connections), but in others (especially when using wireless networking) the game just stuttered and shook too much to be fun. So we decided to not publish a LAN-only version as originally planned, but still go ahead with a release now, since Benau has added a lot of nice features to the game which we think our players will appreciate to have.

We expect LAN will work much better in less ideal environments (and that includes using wifi) with the upcoming WAN code (for the more technical inclined: using client-side prediction and rollback to hide latency). We are aware that this is a disappointing for the majority of our fans out there, but we really did not want to publish an overall rather disappointing networked multiplayer version.

The release candidate can be downloaded here : https://sourceforge.net/projects/supert ... art/0.9.2/

[ChemBroTron]

I tested Volcan Island and tried to steer my kart, but had trouble to do so, if I used the nitro (N on the keyboard, did not test with a gamepad atm). The kart, while using nitro (even if there is no nitro left) either did not steer or it did it, but really slow. Also I had the feeling, that the chewing gum item did not let me steer as "good" as without the item.

Unfortunately I can't test thoroughly until the end of next week.

[MTres19]

Unfortunately, steering while using nitro is a known problem. Basically it boils down to your keyboard not being able to register that many key presses all at once. A gamepad should be able to handle it though.

I can't speak with certainty about the gum, but I've never noticed it interfering with steering.

[ChemBroTron]

Well, if my keyboard is the problem... why does it work without problem in other games like the indie game "Distance"? I need to constantly press forward, nitro and obviously have to steer, but there is no such problem with not being able to register that many key presses at once. It is the same situation. Not only that, Distance has more options to steer your car and therefor needs to register more key presses than SuperTuxKart, but there is never an issue with steering the car. So why is this a problem with my keyboard only on SuperTuxKart and not with other games?

[MTres19]

Oh... That is interesting. Well, you might want to check out these bug reports:

https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/issues/2410

https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/issues/2185

https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/issues/2421

[PauloBrazil]

Puts online Ghost Race for players who are registered.
Now showing nicks and time will be cool.Compete with other players who makes the best time.


Why not put the online ghost race?

just a suggestion...

[benau]

But it will require some more works like updating addon server, sorting out invalid (possibly cheating) replays...

[Akien]

Awesome work! Downloading the source right now...

[Funto]

Congratulations to the team for the RC!

[WillemS]

Very nice! Congratulations with the RC

I downloaded and tested it, and I think especially the ghost replays are a very nice feature. I already had lots of fun beating the XR591 ghost on hard difficulty - and after that my own ghost, that I recorded

Since I couldn't find any bugs, here are some minor remarks:

• I don't really like the new cheering sound that plays after the race when you win. It sounds very compressed.
• For the ghost replays, I think the UI would be more logical if you first select the track, and only then the replay file you want to race against.
• When you are going to play against a ghost, it asks you whether you want to save your own ghost replay file. I think it would make sense to have that option checked by default. (Why wouldn't you want to save your own ghost?)

But seriously, those are minor comments only; thanks for the nice game

[benau]

Actually the sound is a placeholder, originally there is a new win/lose music by ozoneone, but not yet finish

[0zone0ne]

...Which might not be done before the stable release because I'm super busy