FreeGameDev

TSS (Tux's Space Station)

Before i give a description about TSS let me summarize all of my previous arenas. Champions castle was a success. About the garage wasn't so good and i've lost interest in it so it's basically dead (got on the addon's and is staying put). Petrified certainly didn't amount to anything as it completely lacked a good idea, although i'm happy about it because it made C's C better.

This one i hope will be a better one. It has 2 things going for it, it's got a basic design, and it's a neat looking design. Inside that mass of metal and glass there's basically two circles, a ring going round them and bridges connecting all three levels. I don't know about other people but a thing that i love about this arena is that you are always so close to your opponent but it's a challenge to actually get him/them. When i was testing it we had fun just playing tag for ten minutes. Keep a good eye on your opponent and you'll get him with little difficuly. The best method for catching an evading person on middle level is to circle on the bottom level and when you can see exactly where he is up go to the middle one and cut him off.

Really really hope you all like it. One problem with it is that it's made of 58% glass, 2% volt texture, and 40% metal. Problem here, glass was easily made in photoshop but metal is harder. I only found one metal texture in the stk tracks and couldn't find any free ones online. So right now there's only one metal texture, in two different shades. I'd be glad if someone had some metal which would do. Let me know what you think of the arena, Cheesebrother

Check http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Lic ... find_files , you should be able to find something to your likings in this list of websites

Cool

Check http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Lic ... find_files , you should be able to find something to your likings in this list of websites

Thanks for the link, forgot about those. I should find something to my liking.

I had a quick glance on my netbook (it renders 3D very slowly, so not usable for playing really), and I must say I liked what I saw. I have to try it with my siblings in order to test it properly, but regarding visuals, they're quite good, but you could perhaps work a little more on adding some details here and there.
Perhaps a large flat-screen on the wall of one of the tunnels, some funky large computer another place etc. Just think of some small details to make places more unique (and therefore easier to navigate as you'll know where you are more easily). Oh, and the texture for the skybox of the universe (universe-box?) looks a bit stretched; maybe you can try to fix that.

That's my suggestions as of now; feel free to ignore them if you want to, and I must say I think it's a very good start.

Looks like fun! can't wait to play!

Just think of some small details to make places more unique

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, i'll try to put them in. As for that maybe the strongest connection could be would be to color the texture of the tunnels. I think that color would be the strongest connection and it would also be visible from outside the tunnel. I'll need to get working on getting more textures. I'll also try to think of unique things to do in different places.

the skybox of the universe (universe-box?) looks a bit stretched

Yeah, i guess you're right. They used it properly in the space track so i should be able to sort it out.

An update on the arena. The whole color coded tunnels thing doesn't really help for position at all but it looks quite nice. They’re like sci-fi electric thingymajig doors which you can drive through. I also found out how to show the alphablended glass all the time so now it doesn't disappear when you look at it through some other glass. I followed Arthur’s advice and put some objects of interest in it. 2 flat screens in the bottom, 1 flat screen in a tunnel, and 2 computerish things on the top level. These make the different places more unique. Right now i'm pretty happy with the way it is and am going to submit it to the addons as soon as I can.

Note to STK addons people: I don’t know why but I’m having a terrible time trying to upload my arenas to the addons. I’ve tried to upload the update to Champion’s Castle for two days now and everytime it fails. Yes, i do have a terrible 8k internet connection but i wouldn't think it'd effect this, just slow it down a lot. I’ll be able to get it eventually but is there something that could be done to fix this?

It's very Good
best than "petrified"

cheesebrother {l Wrote}:Note to STK addons people: I don’t know why but I’m having a terrible time trying to upload my arenas to the addons. I’ve tried to upload the update to Champion’s Castle for two days now and everytime it fails. Yes, i do have a terrible 8k internet connection but i wouldn't think it'd effect this, just slow it down a lot. I’ll be able to get it eventually but is there something that could be done to fix this?

Do you have any kind of error message to share?

Sorry i really don't have much for you to go on. I use google chrome. So i started uploading the file and in this case it was about 20% through a 1.5mb file when the chrome "Web Page is not Availabe" page came up. Another common thing with i used to get was from you "Internal sever error". I think that the error number was 505 - not sure. I know that my slow internet is bringing out the worst in your uploading process but it still ought to be able to do it. Really hope that you can help me, thanks for looking at this.

I tried to upload your TSS Arena.zip to my development machine, and the error message it gives is "A valid License.txt file was not found. Please add a License.txt file to your archive and re-submit it."

So your zip file needs to contain a file called "license.txt" with the rest of your arena, specifying licensing information for your track and all the other included files.

Not sure why there would have been internal server errors... Mind you, the TF servers seem to be a lot more fragile than my machine. I'll look into it.

[Edit] I was able to reproduce the same error on TF's servers. You must be using a different file than what you originally posted.

sj04736, thanks for looking into this. As for the error that you're talking about it is COMPLETELY irrelevant. That was a test, see how it's working file. Right now i've got the complete updated arena with a License.txt on my pc. I'm getting nothing at all from stkaddons, just a complete failure. As i said before i'm getting google chrome's "Web Page is not Availabe" error.

Can you upload the new file here, so I can try and figure it out on my dev machine?

Okay, i can upload the file for you but i think that i will work for you. Maybe an alternate solution to this problem would be for you to upload it to the addons for me. I know that you're online right now so i'm letting you know that i'll upload the file in a minute. Trying to upload it to the addons at the moment... will either succeed or fail.

Ok, it just uploaded all the way but then i got that internal server error. Here's the file so that you can see whether the problem is with it or not.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!!! I just succeeded! TSS is now in the addons and will appear as soon as is approved. Basically my point to you is that something is wrong so that it won't work sometimes. In this case the file wasn't the problem. I don't know how you could go about testing it as you don't have my internet condition but it probably isn't much of a problem as most people have an much better connection than i do.

It looks like you managed to upload it yourself. I'm guessing it was a server timeout, but that shouldn't cause a internal server error... I'll see what the timeout settings are, and I'll try to add in a useful error message.
[Edit] The server is configured to have a max-input-time of 3600s. That's an hour. Hopefully it doesn't take anyone that long to upload files. Max-execution-time is 600s or 10 minutes. Either one of those could be the issue.

Good. To start with let's just rule out the failing to load a problem with my internet. The real problem is when i can upload it but i get your internal server error. Anyway if you put more descriptive error messages then it would help a lot solve the problem.

I the max input time is an hour than that can't be the problem because even my connection can upload a 1.5mb file in that amount of time .

The "500 Internal Server Message" is a server message, not one that the stkaddons team can do much about. It is thrown if a process (such as uploading content in your case) exceeds certain limits. These limits are the ones Stephen posted above.

Regarding the track: it's really nice, I like it.
Haven't had the chance to play multiplayer on it yet, due to computer problems, but I am looking forward to doing so.

So, I was able to play this map in MP, and sadly I must say it did not really meet my assumptions. However, I'm not sure whether it's this map's fault or STK's.
The problem was that we always, always hang in the walls and could hardly move out. As the track is very narrow, it can easily happen that you crash into the wall (say, if you want to turn from one level to another), and then it's sometimes not possible to get away from it, resulting in being very vulnerable to any kind of attack. This somehow spoiled the fun for us.
The question now is whether you can do anything about it, or whether it's a problem in the engine itself.

This is something we do want to improve in STK but I'm not sure to what extent this will be possible in th physics engine; in general making the track wider can be a way to compensate