FreeGameDev

I just tried SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 and was impressed. I was using a keyboard.

However I feel there are 3 major issues that need to be addressed:

1. Turning is messed up. It seems to be that the turning circle is not weighted against your speed. So you barely turn when going slowly, and the kart veers out of control if you turn when going fast e.g. on nitro or (worst) after a speed boost. This makes crash recovery slow and tight corners pretty tough to make, whilst course correction after a speed up (e.g. trying to hit 2 consecutive boosters) very precarious.
   
   This is really easy to fix. Just add a turn-speed to drive-speed ratio. The faster you are going, the less the kart turns. If you slow right down, you should be able to turn on a coin.


2. Crashing is too unforgiving. When hitting other karts, often I got flipped around hard. When touching a wall, often stopped dead or the kart would turn into the wall. Momentum does not seem to feature in crash calculation.
   
   This compounds the fact that a single crash often eliminates any chance you have of victory on a few of the tracks (Shifting Sands being the worst).
   
   This is less easy to fix but probably the easiest solution is to interrupt the physics and stop it turning the kart when you hit something and bounce/bump the kart back a bit instead - this is how it works in MK.


3. The challenges are too hard and/or the unlocking is not balanced. I've completed a lot (including winning the penguin playground on expert) and I still only have access to a single grand prix. What's that about? Isn't this a game for kids?

There are lots of other little things to be improved. The weapon selection, AI etc but that will all come with time. Those 3 were the main frustration I had with 0.7.2 and using a keyboard. (I suspect the turning issue is a little easier to deal with using an analog input.)

Also the nitros are a bit hard to spot sometimes. They should probably glow and be a combination of bright yellow and red.

The presents look a little bland. The blue is almost a dirty colour. Again, a glow or some kind of brighter colour would look better.

I just don't like the banana models at all.

I'd probably replace the presents and banana with green and red spinning cubes with a star (weapon) and exclamation mark (weapon inflicted) inside of them. Perhaps a blue cube with a + for nitro. Or use spheres, or do away with the cube and have a circle on the ground with the star/!/+ above it. Perhaps somebody could do some concept artwork for this and come up with a few good ideas.

[*] green = present
[!] red = banana
[+] blue = nitro

Hi,

thanks for the feedback

you will find that the answer to almost all of your points is "yeah, planned for 0.8"

charlie {l Wrote}:I just tried SuperTuxKart 0.7.2 and was impressed. I was using a keyboard.

However I feel there are 3 major issues that need to be addressed:

1. Turning is messed up. It seems to be that the turning circle is not weighted against your speed. So you barely turn when going slowly, and the kart veers out of control if you turn when going fast e.g. on nitro or (worst) after a speed boost. This makes crash recovery slow and tight corners pretty tough to make, whilst course correction after a speed up (e.g. trying to hit 2 consecutive boosters) very precarious.
   
   This is really easy to fix. Just add a turn-speed to drive-speed ratio. The faster you are going, the less the kart turns. If you slow right down, you should be able to turn on a coin.

We already have a ticket : https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/super ... ticket/187

this is scheduled to be done for STK 0.8 along an update to the physics. I have added your comments to this issue, thanks

Crashing is too unforgiving. When hitting other karts, often I got flipped around hard. When touching a wall, often stopped dead or the kart would turn into the wall. Momentum does not seem to feature in crash calculation.

This compounds the fact that a single crash often eliminates any chance you have of victory on a few of the tracks (Shifting Sands being the worst).

This is less easy to fix but probably the easiest solution is to interrupt the physics and stop it turning the kart when you hit something and bounce/bump the kart back a bit instead - this is how it works in MK.

I absolutely agree, and this is one of the major goals of the physics refactor in 0.8.

To make sure that we don't forget I created a ticket : https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/super ... ticket/476

bouncing and bumping is something that is also planned to come with the physics upgrade

The challenges are too hard and/or the unlocking is not balanced. I've completed a lot (including winning the penguin playground on expert) and I still only have access to a single grand prix. What's that about? Isn't this a game for kids?

definitely agreed too, the current plan (which will get more discussion when we actually start doing it) is to completely overhaul the challenge system in 0.8 into a "career mode" or "story mode". One of the things I definitely want to introduce in this overhaul is to allow for several levels of difficulty, i.e. the challenges will be more balanced

Also the nitros are a bit hard to spot sometimes. They should probably glow and be a combination of bright yellow and red.

The presents look a little bland. The blue is almost a dirty colour. Again, a glow or some kind of brighter colour would look better.

I just don't like the banana models at all.

hmm you are the first person to comment about nitro and gifts. Maybe we could add a little glow around nitros, but unless more people give us the same feedback we don't currently plan any big change in this area.

And regarding bananas, this has been discussed to death but no consensus has ever been reached especially those who don't like the banana can't seem to agree on what should replace them

And I must say, sorry but I don't like your idea of using colored cubes

Yeah, perhaps the cubes are a bit too MK. I just think the current look is a bit dull and doesn't seem right to me.

Hi,

thanks for your feedback!

...

charlie {l Wrote}:[list=1][*]Turning is messed up. It seems to be that the turning circle is not weighted against your speed. So you barely turn when going slowly, and the kart veers out of control if you turn when going fast e.g. on nitro or (worst) after a speed boost. This makes crash recovery slow and tight corners pretty tough to make, whilst course correction after a speed up (e.g. trying to hit 2 consecutive boosters) very precarious.

This is really easy to fix. Just add a turn-speed to drive-speed ratio. The faster you are going, the less the kart turns. If you slow right down, you should be able to turn on a coin.[/*]

This is actually already implemented. You could try to tweak those values a bit, have a look at the file data/stk_config.xml, and search for:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

    <!-- min-speed-radius and max-speed-radius define the smallest turn
         radius at lowest speed (4.64 m at speed 0) and at high speed
         (13.5 m at speed 12 m/s). Maximum steering angles for speeds
         in between will be interpolated. This allows for tighter turns
         at lower speeds. The actual steering  angle is dependent on the
         wheel base of the kart: radius = wheel_base/sin(steering_angle)
         By specifying the radius the steering behaviour can be defined
         independent of the kart size.
...
    <turn min-speed-radius="0 3" max-speed-radius="10 15.0"
...


I just realise that apparently the values have already been changed, but not the comments. So atm it's 3m turn radius at 0 m/s; and 15 m turn radius at 10m/s or more. I'll check if there is a bug in stk, but it used to work in the past If you find values that improve the situation, please let us know!

My suspicion is more that the kart is just not touching the ground, and therefore you can not steer. Especially since you mention nitro/speed boosts. Karts (imho too) often lose contact with the ground, and using any kind of speed boost just makes this worse.

But as Auria has written, there is already a ticket for this, and I hopefully will improve the situation in 0.8.

[*]Crashing is too unforgiving. When hitting other karts, often I got flipped around hard. When touching a wall, often stopped dead or the kart would turn into the wall. Momentum does not seem to feature in crash calculation.

This compounds the fact that a single crash often eliminates any chance you have of victory on a few of the tracks (Shifting Sands being the worst).

This is less easy to fix but probably the easiest solution is to interrupt the physics and stop it turning the kart when you hit something and bounce/bump the kart back a bit instead - this is how it works in MK.[/*]

I think in MK Wii the slower kart ahead of you is actually pushed to the side if you hit it from behind (that might depend on weight of the involved karts of course). While this is of course totally unrealistic, it makes a lot of sense for game play: if you are behind a kart and are faster, the karts can't block you, you will push them aside so that you can overtake them. But collision handling is one of the main goals of 0.8 (the main issue I see is that in kart-kart collisions often you are 'glued' to the kart that you hit).


Cheers,
Joerg

Hi Joerg. I'm playing STK 0.7.2 and it is nothing to do with ground contact. Turning circle is wide whilst slow and no different when fast, thus when you turn at a slow speed it takes ages to turn around, yet when you turn at high speed you veer out of control.

charlie {l Wrote}:Hi Joerg. I'm playing STK 0.7.2 and it is nothing to do with ground contact. Turning circle is wide whilst slow and no different when fast, thus when you turn at a slow speed it takes ages to turn around, yet when you turn at high speed you veer out of control.

Tested - he's right on this

hiker {l Wrote}:I think in MK Wii the slower kart ahead of you is actually pushed to the side if you hit it from behind (that might depend on weight of the involved karts of course). While this is of course totally unrealistic, it makes a lot of sense for game play: if you are behind a kart and are faster, the karts can't block you, you will push them aside so that you can overtake them. But collision handling is one of the main goals of 0.8 (the main issue I see is that in kart-kart collisions often you are 'glued' to the kart that you hit).

Cheers,
Joerg

It does depend on weight; however, if you have two karts of equal weight, if they bumped each other side-by-side, they'd both be repelled to about the same distance (IF they are traveling at the same speed obviously).

A very big issue I have is that sometimes AI karts will bump you and turn the whole kart around

The physics of STK are ok but a little unrealistic for even real life.

Iridium {l Wrote}:

charlie {l Wrote}:Hi Joerg. I'm playing STK 0.7.2 and it is nothing to do with ground contact. Turning circle is wide whilst slow and no different when fast, thus when you turn at a slow speed it takes ages to turn around, yet when you turn at high speed you veer out of control.

Tested - he's right on this

I tested it, too - and I think I am right So I guess our testing methods must be different. Here is what I did: I used Nolok in the sand track. When I drive at slow speed (<50 in the speedometer), a circle is approximately half the width of the road. If I drive at high speed, the circle is about the full width of the road, and using Nitro results in the same (as expected atm).

But I am not really defending the current steering, I just want to make sure we are all seeing the same here. Note that we actually decreased the turn radius at higher speeds based on user feedback, since people complained that they basically had to use the sharp-turn button all the time. I guess you are more talking of the kart steering behaviour at very high speed (zipper, e.g. the one in 'Scotland')? I've created a quick plot:

Sorry, forgot the axis labels: X axis is speed in m/s; y axis is turn radius (i.e. more turn radius, less tight turns). Old is what we use atm, new is an example for what we could try, e.g. by using:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

max-speed-radius="35 25.0"


Note that 'normal' maximum speed is 15 (easy), 20 (medium), 23 (difficult). But powerups increase the speed of karts beyond this maximum obviously (e.g. zipper typically adds 15 m/s to the speed). This would give a higher radius (less turning) at higher speeds. On the other hand it means that at lower speeds (less than approximately 20 m/s) the karts would turn more. This is where we need help from people actually playing STK: just modify data/stk_config.xml, save the file, restart STK, and see how it plays. If it's not good, can you find better values? Please post feedback here!

We could make the settings of the turn radius more sophisticated, e.g. by adding a separate adjustment of the turn radius for very high speed, i.e. the speed you can only reach with powerups. Obviously if tuning the settings is good enough, we would prefer that

hiker {l Wrote}:I think in MK Wii the slower kart ahead of you is actually pushed to the side if you hit it from behind (that might depend on weight of the involved karts of course). While this is of course totally unrealistic, it makes a lot of sense for game play: if you are behind a kart and are faster, the karts can't block you, you will push them aside so that you can overtake them. But collision handling is one of the main goals of 0.8 (the main issue I see is that in kart-kart collisions often you are 'glued' to the kart that you hit).

Cheers,
Joerg

It does depend on weight; however, if you have two karts of equal weight, if they bumped each other side-by-side, they'd both be repelled to about the same distance (IF they are traveling at the same speed obviously).

Yes, side by side collisions push both karts a bit (which is kind of realistic), only collision from behind push the faster kart out of the way. Any feedback on what should be taken into account here would be great for our work in 0.8 (e.g. weight different, and/or speed difference). This is especially important once we modify the parameters of each kart to make them different, since we have to make sure that the karts are still balanced.

A very big issue I have is that sometimes AI karts will bump you and turn the whole kart around

Yes, we have a ticket for this. For now (i.e. before 0.8) I can only recommend to drive backwards when this happens, since reversing accelerates a lot more (for exactly that reason).

Thanks !
Joerg

...

hiker {l Wrote}: e.g. by using:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

max-speed-radius="35 25.0"


I've tried, and I didn't think it was any good at all. So it looks like we might need a second section where the turn radius is increased further. Though it would still be good if others could test.

Cheers,
Joerg

Yay! The steering is much better now, I won't loose control easily when the kart running at high speed

Great job hiker!

hikari.to.yami {l Wrote}:Yay! The steering is much better now, I won't loose control easily when the kart running at high speed

Great job hiker!

I hope you are not talking of the values above, but of current SVN (where I indeed modified the steering for higher speed)

Thanks!
Joerg

I hope you are not talking of the values above, but of current SVN (where I indeed modified the steering for higher speed)

Thanks!
Joerg

I am talking about the current SVN