FreeGameDev

Hi all,

after a burst of changes and fixes in the last few days we have finally released a first release candidate for 0.7:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/supertu ... xKart/0.7/

The changes compared to 0.6.2a are too numerous to list, main points would be:

• New graphics engine
• New GUI
• Kart and track animations
• New and improved tracks, karts, and items
• Shortcut/alternative way support for tracks

Compared to 0.7alpha3 challenges, unlocking etc. should all work now (though there is still a debug icon in the menu, which will be removed before the final release ).

The one thing missing are translations - since we added strings even in the last week, the translations are not up-to-date yet. If you want to help out with translations have a look at our wiki page: we are basically using launchpad, details are at http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Translating_STK.

Feedback as always is welcome - be it here, or bugs in our tracker (https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_ ... tid=981038)

Cheers,
Joerg

Congratulations!

BTW, when will the strings be fixed? And using launchpad for translation is a bit inconvenient IMHO, because Irrlicht doesn't work on Chinese word breaking so I must add space manually ... And test my translations on my computer ...

acme_pjz {l Wrote}:Congratulations!

Thanks - but let's wait till we finally do the release. Though atm I feel quite good, we had some really dedicated play tester finding heaps of bugs

BTW, when will the strings be fixed? And using launchpad for translation is a bit inconvenient IMHO, because Irrlicht doesn't work on Chinese word breaking so I must add space manually ... And test my translations on my computer ...

I think the strings on launchpad should be up-to-date (xapantu, auria - can you confirm?).

If launchpad is inconvenient for you, what would be the best way to work for you then?

Also, the Chinese fonts add about 10MB to the (compressed) package size So for now we plan to have a separate language pack. But I remember that you (?) wanted to write a tool that would only extract the characters necessary. Is there any chance of that, and any idea how much space that could save?

Cheers,
Joerg

We will try to no more touch the strings now; so hopefully from now the strings are frozen (unless bugs are found that require a change I guess)

Auria {l Wrote}:We will try to no more touch the strings now; so hopefully from now the strings are frozen (unless bugs are found that require a change I guess)

Than I guess that some bugs were early this morning, since a handful new strings appeared in launchpad.

Anyway, What is with the DEBUG text on the main menu? Shouldn't that be something like "Settings"?

asciimonster , atm there is a button in the main menu which is called 'DEBUG', it won't be in release version

Wow, the STK svn has come a long way quickly for 0.7! I really like all the challenges, since they're not setup to be next to impossible to complete like some driving games. I know its past the deadline for adding stuff to 0.7, but have you thought about making a type of career mode with ever increasing difficulty challenges? Maybe just showing a different trophy for different difficulties would be enough.

I really like the XR591, Secret Garden, and Mines tracks for their great backgrounds. The new tracks added, old ones converted, and recent animation additions like the moving planets and ships in Star Track, are great too. Some tracks have long straightaways or steep hills, but aren't too bad either.

The only problem I might have is that some tracks put out to much boost, and the AI has a hard time keeping up. Sometimes I get out so far ahead that I'm only offered bubble gum. Its still funny to make a row of bubble gum though!

Looks Great!

There seems to be some text clipping of the time display though:

I'm running OS X 10.6 at a resolution of 2560x1440. Less clipping seems to happen at a lower resolution.

Hi ProtoSphere,

thanks for the bug report, I created a ticket for this

downer: Career Mode (aka Story Mode) is too big to implement for 0.7, but this is something I would like to do for 0.8

Auria {l Wrote}:Hi ProtoSphere,

thanks for the bug report, I created a ticket for this

downer: Career Mode (aka Story Mode) is too big to implement for 0.7, but this is something I would like to do for 0.8

Or 0.7.1? Can always add features in smaller steps rather than pulling everything into 1 big release.

I guess it depends on compatibility really.

charlie {l Wrote}:

downer: Career Mode (aka Story Mode) is too big to implement for 0.7, but this is something I would like to do for 0.8

Or 0.7.1? Can always add features in smaller steps rather than pulling everything into 1 big release.

We certainly hope to do (much) more frequent releases now. Taking more than one year to move from plib to irrlicht was really way too long (though admittedly we did more than just port it, we added a lot of features, too).

My plans are to focus on the add-on manager for 0.7.1, physics improvements for 0.7.2, and then on the network mode (maybe ghost races first, which would allow us to do online highscores). Not sure what auria wants to focus on (except that's it's not GUI related ).But hopefully there might be more coders joining our team - with mostly only two people doing the coding things are moving rather slow. There are many stand-alone and easy to add features: career mode, ghost race, online highscores, a tutorial, more game modes, more weapons, 'design your own GP', ...

Cheers,
Joerg

hiker {l Wrote}:...

If launchpad is inconvenient for you, what would be the best way to work for you then?

I prefer to downloading old .po files, edit it and have a lot of tests, then upload it to the forum ... Anyway, working on launchpad is not bad ...

Also, the Chinese fonts add about 10MB to the (compressed) package size So for now we plan to have a separate language pack. But I remember that you (?) wanted to write a tool that would only extract the characters necessary. Is there any chance of that, and any idea how much space that could save?

Yes, I have almost forgot it I can write such a tool, but maybe next week or so ...

hiker {l Wrote}: ... But I remember that you (?) wanted to write a tool that would only extract the characters necessary. Is there any chance of that, and any idea how much space that could save?

I have finished the modified Irrlicht font tool (more or less) Currently it only works under Windows; I haven't modified the Linux implementation code. This tool can save a LOT of space ... originally we need 156 pictures, 10MB total, but now we only need 6 pictures, less than 400KB . Loading speed of STK also increased dramatically ...

Usage: First write down all the .po files' path in a text file, say list.txt, then run "FontTool.exe list.txt", if everything goes right you'll see "Loaded list file xxx ... Loaded xxx.po ..." in the console. There are two new check boxes in GUI, "Export used characters only" and "Exclude basic latin characters". Check these two options, set charset to "All avaliable", font size to 24pt (or any other you like ), Check "alpha" option, set max width and height to 512, file format to "png", then it's OK ...

I'm afraid that you can't recognize Wqy-MicroHei font, because FontTool's GUI doesn't display Chinese characters at all ... so I modified the default font to "Wqy-MicroHei" (if you have already installed this font in your computer) (BTW: What does Wqy-MicroHei displays on your computer, its English name or some Chinese characters?)

hello i'm a fan of supertuxkart game i'm french

i'm a newbie

Salut Henri

Very nice, a lot of improvement from 0.7 alpha 3

Thanks acme_pjz, haven't tested the tool ( I'm most of the time on OSX ) but looks like it will be very useful. Hopefully Joerg will be able to look at it soon

I've been working again on the cube (Array+Path modifiers are great! Makes the track look more wide without actually increasing in size! ) Could somebody answer me:
- Why are my IPO animated objects upside down? (y => -y)
- Is transparency broken?
- When I set a scene property "version=3" the exporter exports "version=2" instead which doesn't make the track visible until you edit the file manually. Is this a bug in the exporter?

acme_pjz {l Wrote}:I'm afraid that you can't recognize Wqy-MicroHei font, because FontTool's GUI doesn't display Chinese characters at all ... so I modified the default font to "Wqy-MicroHei" (if you have already installed this font in your computer) (BTW: What does Wqy-MicroHei displays on your computer, its English name or some Chinese characters?)

I have just used that tool (though wine ) to convert the so-called "Wqy-MicroHei" font. That font's real name is "WenQuanYi Micro Hei" or "文泉驿微米黑", depends on your locale.
It has all the characters in zh_CN.po, zh_TW.po and ko.po of 0.7rc1.
It's very small. (<600KiB)
It's no sense to have two files "StkChineseFont.xml" and "StkChineseFontHeader.xml". Here I'm just using one.

Of course, if the strings got updated, the font needs to be updated, too.

A nice film of STK 0.7 rc1: SuperTuxKart 0.7 rc1 first-look

asciimonster {l Wrote}:I've been working again on the cube (Array+Path modifiers are great! Makes the track look more wide without actually increasing in size! ) Could somebody answer me:
- Why are my IPO animated objects upside down? (y => -y)

Not really. But I am not entirely sure if array+path works in the exporter (I never tried). One thing: if possible apply all rotations etc to the meshes, sometimes things don't work yet if there is a constant rotation (or scaling) somewhere. To make sure: could you just post the blend file here?

- Is transparency broken?

Not that I am aware of. Transparency with vertex colors (i.e. not with uv mapped textures) doesn't work as expected atm.

- When I set a scene property "version=3" the exporter exports "version=2" instead which doesn't make the track visible until you edit the file manually. Is this a bug in the exporter?

The track version number if hardcoded in the exporter (iirc). You have to download the latest version, which atm is only available in SVN.

Cheers,
Joerg

Hi,

thanks for all the work on the fonts. I'll try to have a look at this on Monday (or Tuesday).

Cheers,
Joerg

wow, awesome! a lot of polish since the last versions...

i also would like to start doing some work on tracks again. but are you even interested in new tracks? there are so many nice ones now.
(during the transition to irrlicht i was always a little confused about the state of the exporters and file formats. so i didn't even seriously look into porting my old tracks.)

i also would be interested in coding but unfortunately c++ isn't really my language. i would prefer if the gameplay code was written in something like python or c#.

edit:
how can i change the language? it automatically detects my language but i would prefer english.

edit2:
some feedback... i don't really like the explosion particle effect for the cake and bowling ball. couldn't the cake particles be changed to look more like... uhm... cake. cream splashes or something? and the bowling ball... i don't know if much is needed there? maybe just some dust and/or sparks?

edit3:
on the canyon track the smoothing (hard/soft shaded edges) isn't quite correct at some places. looks like the one who exported it disabled the edge-split modifier by mistake or something like that?

Hi,

horace {l Wrote}:wow, awesome! a lot of polish since the last versions...

i also would like to start doing some work on tracks again. but are you even interested in new tracks? there are so many nice ones now.

Oh, there is always room for improvement, so yes making new tracks or improving existing ones is still very welcome

horace {l Wrote}:how can i change the language? it automatically detects my language but i would prefer english.

At this point there is no way to change language in the menus; but you should be able to run STK from terminal and do export LANGUAGE="en" first (on Unix, on Windows it's slightly different).

horace {l Wrote}:some feedback... i don't really like the explosion particle effect for the cake and bowling ball. couldn't the cake particles be changed to look more like... uhm... cake. cream splashes or something? and the bowling ball... i don't know if much is needed there? maybe just some dust and/or sparks?

Agreed, this could be improved. Maybe for 0.7.1? If someone can make the actual cream splashes particles we could look into it

horace {l Wrote}:on the canyon track the smoothing (hard/soft shaded edges) isn't quite correct at some places. looks like the one who exported it disabled the edge-split modifier by mistake or something like that?

I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, sorry :/ In which area precisely is it wrong?

i mean the vertex normals. the gouraud shading looks wrong. i made a lot of the geometry with hard edges (by using the split-edge modifier in blender) but now the vertices use averaged normals.

what's the key for making screenshots? then i can show it better.

...about my other two tracks. i think i will make a new track instead of the city track (maybe i will reuse some of the textures) since making the track wider and less steep would be a lot of work anyway and i don't like some stuff like the ugly buildings. it was my first track.

but couldn't the racetrack be included again? i think it was a fun track. there was a problem with too tight curves if i remember correctly but with the new physics and the sliding key this shouldn't be a problem anymore? and shortcuts could be prevented with more barriers and the tire stacks could be done with a lot less polygons.