FreeGameDev

Hi,

after some weeks of hectic bug fixing, we are now releasing a second beta of SuperTuxKart 0.8.2. We hope to have vastly improved the handling of different graphics cards, hopefully we detect better now if a driver needs updating, and which options to disable for certain cards and driver combinations. So a big thanks to all people who tested our first beta. Hopefully, our second beta will run much smoother on most platforms.

We also implemented a new register screen, which should make it easier to see if you are creating a new online account, use an existing account or want to play offline. And samuncle did more work on the "Gran Paradiso Island" track.

Binaries for windows, linux and osx are on our download page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/supert ... 8.2-beta2/

Just remember it is still a beta, so there are still some known bugs - one of which is that it crashes on osx when you have more than one kart when you exit a race, which we only discovered yesterday (but apparently our first beta already had that problem). As always, please report bugs here, or even better on out bug tracker at: https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/issues.

Cheers,
Joerg

Had massive problems with Beta1 on a AMD Radeon R9 285, couldn't even play with graphics level 3.

Beta2 works fine with everything maxed out/graphics level 5 EXCEPT Ambient Occlusion. It's the only option causing problems, and turning just this off makes the game playable.

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[info   ] IrrDriver: OpenGL version: 4.3
[info   ] IrrDriver: OpenGL vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
[info   ] IrrDriver: OpenGL renderer: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
[info   ] IrrDriver: OpenGL version string: 4.3.13283 Core Profile Context 14.501.1003.0
[info   ] GLDriver: AMD Vertex Shader Layer Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Buffer Storage Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Base Instance Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Draw Indirect Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Compute Shader Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Texture Storage Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Texture View Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Bindless Texture Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Image Load Store Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Shader Atomic Counters Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Shader Storage Buffer Object Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Multi Draw Indirect Present
[info   ] GLDriver: EXT Texture Compression S3TC Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Uniform Buffer Object Present
[info   ] GLDriver: ARB Geometry Shader 4 Present
[info   ] irr_driver: GLSL supported.

Screenshot with Ambient Occlusion: http://i.imgur.com/aJ4TsRc.jpg

Which Platform ?
I'm surprised as I develop on a R9 290X mostly on Windows with catalyst and (obviously) the game runs fine.
R9 285 is supposed to be similar, ISA is updated but the features are the same.

I'm pleased to say that the beta 2 works now on a Win7 machine with ATI Radeon graphics card... Albeit in the deepest fallback mode possible (and which can't be changed).

I'm looking at: No skybox, simple textures, no lights, no particles, (maybe no scripted objects?), etc. However, animation runs fine.

vlj {l Wrote}:Which Platform ?
I'm surprised as I develop on a R9 290X mostly on Windows with catalyst and (obviously) the game runs fine.
R9 285 is supposed to be similar, ISA is updated but the features are the same.

Windows 8, but I never once had any difference between Windows and Linux due to them using the exact same OpenGL driver. I'll test on Linux tomorrow or so, but I'd bet money on it that it will be the same.

My Windows laptops graphic driver (Win7 64bit, NV 310m, newest driver) still crashes the system, as soon as I activate dynamic lights.

Dynamic lights disabled, I get the bug as shown in the screenshot.

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:My Windows laptops graphic driver (Win7 64bit, NV 310m, newest driver) still crashes the system, as soon as I activate dynamic lights.

Dynamic lights disabled, I get the bug as shown in the screenshot.

I am unable to reproduce this issue, do other people experience this issue? This looks a lot like an issue we fixed not long ago so I'm surprised it would still happen

It's been a whiiiiile since I last came here I just tested beta 2 and wanted to say that you guys rock, the new tracks are beautiful, the new rendering engine rocks too
Physics on walls is great, graphics are beautiful (when they work...) and the game became quite demanding (even for my NVIDIA GPU)
Tested on Windows, I ran the 2 new tracks both on the Intel chipset and on the NVIDIA GPU. "Global illumination" effect breaks the rendering on the Intel chipset (it all became reddish...).
I love the motion blur
I'm happy the soccer mode became playable, with real rules
Still some bugs, like the slowdown when changing the current kart being chosen, the rendering of some karts became darker (like Beastie), Elephpant became really flashy (beurk),
Ah also, you can remove the 42MB .ilk file from the Windows installer, that's from Visual Studio's "Incremental linker" and is of no use, even for reporting bugs

And I loved the photo of Hiker in one of the tracks

Keep up the good work, STK rocks!

Hi All,

I'm sorry I didn't know that there is a beta of STK 0.8.2. But I saw, that another guy built a Linux static package. I tested it today and it works without any problems with an AMD Radeon HD 5870 PCI express 2.0 x16 graphics card on ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS x86-64. STK told me the driver is too old but I have a new AMD Catalyst driver 4.3.12798 installed.



I'm very impressed about your work. Well done! The graphics are fantastic. I love it.

FYI: We work with STK 0.8.1 in our company. We use it to test our new Linux PowerPC kernels. STK is really good to test new kernels and Mesa libs. I released a new Linux PowerPC kernel 3.19 RC6-2 for (X)(L)ubuntu (MATE) 15.04 today. Before the release, I tested the kernel with STK 0.8.1.



Thanks a lot for your work!

Rgds,

Christian

I tested STK 0.8.2 beta 2 with the open source Mesa graphics driver on my Linux x86-64 computer. There wasn't a message about an old graphics driver but at the begin the race, my system hanged and there wasn't any screen output. STK didn't respond to the keyboard. My system was froze and I couldn't reboot it.

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OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CYPRESS
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 10.1.3
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 10.1.3
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:


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I cannot get the game to run at a constant 60FPS if I'm on anything except the lowest settings. Here's some specs:

GTX 760 SC with latest drivers
Manjaro Linux w/ XFCE4
AMD Phenom II X4 955 (or 995, I forget)
1920x1080 screen resolution

It's because we release the binaries in debug mode, they are slower than the binaries we make for final.

vlj {l Wrote}:It's because we release the binaries in debug mode, they are slower than the binaries we make for final.

That's actually not correct, all our binaries are compiled with optimisations.

Cheers,
Joerg

Also, a GTX 760 should really be enough, don't you think? Or do people need to get a 970 to get good framerates with high settings?

maloonsoreo {l Wrote}:I cannot get the game to run at a constant 60FPS if I'm on anything except the lowest settings. Here's some specs:

GTX 760 SC with latest drivers
Manjaro Linux w/ XFCE4
AMD Phenom II X4 955 (or 995, I forget)
1920x1080 screen resolution

Can you run the profiler ?
You need to enable artist debug mode in config.xml, then in race right click > Profiler then "Toggle capture profiler report". Wait a little to gather sample, then reclick on "Toggle capture profiler report" and exit STK.
There should be a .csv file in the same folder as your config.xml, send it so we can understand what is slow.

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All new tracks don't work.

laol {l Wrote}:All new tracks don't work.

Please, tell us what exactly happens, on which system you're running SuperTuxKart and your Hardware specs. Is there an error? How about your graphic settings? Does it always crash on the new maps or maybe on other tracks too?

...What should the STK-Team do with such a post without informations?

Thanks
XGhost

Edit: And please avoid double posts! You're message will be read, there's no need to rush.

XGhost {l Wrote}:

laol {l Wrote}:All new tracks don't work.

Please, tell us what exactly happens, on which system you're running SuperTuxKart and your Hardware specs. Is there an error? How about your graphic settings? Does it always crash on the new maps or maybe on other tracks too?

...What should the STK-Team do with such a post without informations?

Thanks
XGhost

Edit: And please avoid double posts! You're message will be read, there's no need to rush.

Sorry.
1. Error while loading

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---------------------------
SuperTuxKart crashed :/
---------------------------
SuperTuxKart crashed!
Please hit Ctrl+C to copy to clipboard and signal the problem
to the developers on our forum: http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewforum.php?f=16

Call stack:

 wcslen
 <no symbol available>
 <no symbol available>
 <no symbol available>
 <no symbol available>
 <no symbol available>
 <no symbol available>
 asCreateLockableSharedBool
 BaseThreadInitThunk
 RtlInitializeExceptionChain
 RtlInitializeExceptionChain
---------------------------
ОК   
---------------------------


2. Graphics settings: main effects' check is ON, but all effects' checks are OFF. Animated players are OFF, texture filtering is bilinear, vertical sync is OFF.
3. My PC: Pentium G2030 @ 3 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics Family. Display is Full HD, but i use 1600x900 window.

Funto {l Wrote}:I loved the photo of Hiker in one of the tracks

Oh, Is that hiker on the Cocoa Temple Sign?

Some thoughts:

The graphics are...nice, but seem a bit glaring. Like the brightness was turned up just a smidge too high. Would be nice to tone it down, but only slightly. Just enough so I can take off my shades.

Gets a bit jerky, especially with lots of karts (I like packed races) or on modern tracks (Cocoa stands out).

Sometimes, I also get thin, horizontal lines (white & black). Haven't figure out which setting(s) cause this, yet. The settings I'm currently using seem to have gotten rid of the problem.

Would be nice if you brought back 1440x900 resolution. That worked beautifully for me in 0.8.1. (Still does, actually.) Right now, I have to either choose looking through a pidgeon hole (1024x640) or overtaxing my graphics card (at least until you get more bugs worked out) filling my screen (1680x1050).

There's some driving stuff, too, notably kart collisions with the track. This happens on a number of tracks. I noticed someone else has reported the issue in another thread, so I'll just let it go at that, for now.

Graphic settings I use:
Shadows disabled
All boxes checked
Animate human characters only
Anisotropic x4.

system specs:
Kubuntu 14.04 (32-bit version)
AMD FX 8350 (8-core)
GeForce GTX 650 Ti (nvidia drivers ver. 331.113)

Edit: Since I'm still the latest post....

Nitro isn't properly counting units. I've been modding the kart.xml files (I'll have a seperate post on that, later), and one of the things I'm doing is setting small nitro containers to 2 units, and then setting nitro consumption to between 1 and 5 for different karts. To test that it works, I then fill up the nitro, use nitro once, and then see how many containers it takes to fill back up. That means it should take 3 small container to refill a kart that requires 5 units per use, however I'm getting refilled with only 2 containers. Smaller consumption numbers (1 through 4) seem to work as expected.

Also, please bring back the spedometer. Showing your rank there is redundant, as you can see your position perfectly fine along the left with the rest of the karts.

Hi NowhereMan,

I am unsure what you mean about the speedometer and nitro meter; they all work fine here. There were some known bugs (now fixed) that could cause them to look distorted, though missing is unheard of. Unless you meant you wanted to see your speed as a number?

As for the resolution, available resolutions are given to us by your driver, so if your driver says it doesn't support a certain resolution it's safer not to offer it. However you can try manually editing it in the config file to anything you want

Auria {l Wrote}:Hi NowhereMan,

I am unsure what you mean about the speedometer and nitro meter; they all work fine here. There were some known bugs (now fixed) that could cause them to look distorted, though missing is unheard of. Unless you meant you wanted to see your speed as a number?

Correct. Just the colored bar doesn't give me enough information. I'd like the numbers, please.

As for the resolution, available resolutions are given to us by your driver, so if your driver says it doesn't support a certain resolution it's safer not to offer it. However you can try manually editing it in the config file to anything you want

Is there a reason the driver would support it in the older version but not the newer? It just seems an odd thing to do. Well, I'll try the manual edit and see what happens. Thanks!