Let's make a track together

[samuncle]

Hello everyone !

It has been roughly one month since we released the beta.

Having a new engine requires some compromises. Sadly old addons won't be compatible with the the new SuperTuxKart. To help you make great tracks and karts we have started to make a series of tutorials. The track will be made as a community project. It will replace the old Shiny Suburbs with an Asian high tech metropol.

The video presenting the project http://youtu.be/GMxFUGtErbs
If you want more information about the project, go to our wiki. We are waiting to see your beautiful concepts. Don't just follow blindly this tutorial. Make your own concepts, use your own ideas.

Sam

[charlie]

Firstly that concept art is awesome. Did you do that? Might just be my next desktop background. 8)

Secondly... old add ons now incompatible... inevitable but! (A "but" ending a sentence?)

Yes... but! (Again! Stop abusing the English language, C!)

This is where 'versioning' becomes a big issue. From my understanding, the 0.8 release was compatible, right? And then 0.8.2 isn't?! What!?!?

Here's my suggestion, and do not take it lightly as I believe this is important.

A) Release the last version before the 'big break' as 1.0
B) New release becomes STK 2.0

This does 2 things. Firstly, it gives a clean break off point for the old tracks/karts. This will leave a clear continuation point for anybody who wants to maintain it, as well as an easy way for stkaddons.net to differentiate between old and new tracks e.g. X is a v1 track whereas Y is a v2 track.

[konstin]

FYI: http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Milestones

[Anon]

IIRC, all of the addons I made actually still work and it's just their materials and rendering that haven't carried over. So it shouldn't be too hard to port any popular addons to the new version.

To hopefully start off the concept art submissions, here's two "concept images" that I've prepared ahead of time.

Quiet nighttime

Crowds in dayttime

As you can see, my idea for this track is take some of the focus away from the metropolis, and add an Asian street market thing in a less developed area. Maybe using some of the architectural style found in this painting (which completely dwarfs my pictures in terms of skill and asthetics :P).

[charlie]

FYI: http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Milestones

Thanks.

Versioning done right:
- Major dot Minor dot fix
- Breaks-data dot Non/minor-breaking-changes dot bugfix

The versions where breaking occurs for STK seems to be almost pot luck - the numbers don't seem to mean anything other than indicating increment.

[samuncle]

@charlie

I totally agree with you and I'm glad you pointed this issue. The current version number means nothing and it looks like we are stuck into an alpha with 0.xxx (We should be proud and confident. We are already beyond the stage of an alpha).
One of the issue was we always promoted STK 0.9 as being the version that will have the network. But I don't think it's such a big deal to release this as 1.0 and explain properly network is for 2.0 and why we do that.

It's strange since we break the compatibility between 0.8.1 and 0.8.2 + there are major changes like a new engine and new philosophy.

We should promote this as version 1.0 and version 2.0 for networking and 3.0 for next stuff. I know we have a milestone wiki page but it's totally inconsistent and also trying to predict the future is difficult. It looks like this milestone pages as already everything planned even for version 0.9.1. We don't know yet what will happen nor what will be the contribution.

As you said charlie it's easier for people to understand + it's better for marketing (A clear and nice version numbering system).

So my proposal is:

Release STK 0.8.2 as Supertuxkart 1.0 (and explain why)
All major public release have a new number like (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc)
Minor updates 1.2, 1.3, 1.4
Patches bugfix (1.0.1)

It's not being crazy like firefox where we are now at the version 183989. But currently we are ridiculous with these 0.8.xxxxxx. I feel like we will get stuck for a long time in a 0.x pattern.

I'm not the project manager, I know many people in the dev team don't really care, but I support a proposal in this direction.

[deve]

I see two philosophies in versioning software...
1. Something like Wine or intel xorg driver, where it has numbers 2.21.x, 2.99.90x etc, and the goal is to release version 3.0 as the most stable and fully working version
2. Something line Gnome or Libreoffice where they release version 4.0 with a lot of bugs, and then in next months they release bug-fix versions 4.1, 4.2 or 4.1.1, 4.1.2 etc...

STK versioning is much more similar to the first case. Version 1.0 should be IMO full-featured version (with networking, battle AI etc.).

But I agree that version 0.8.2 doesn't have sense... There is too many changes since 0.8.1 and too many new bugs could be introduced. I suggest to release it as 0.9 version.

Though anyway it's just a number... Some applications are in versions ~git20140725 for years

[Tuxfan]

Hi!

I expect a part of the track being a chinese city with a skyline like Hongkong.
Would it be fun to drive through a place filled with skyscrapers providing multiple paths?
I tried to illustrate this in the sketch in the attachment.

[Tuxfan]

Here are some images I associate with china.
What I like about the Beijing skyline image is the differnt heights of the skycrapers, the chinese characters on top of the towers and the all the lights in the image. I assume that concerning the lights this image is photoshoped - but why shouldn't we do something similar?

[vlj]

AFAIK STK is one of the slowest open source project to reach 1.0. Wine did that after 10 years iirc.

[konstin]

I don't think 1.0 would be appropriate for the next release because there is still much polishing to do. Though, 0.9 would be a good choice because of the major changes done in this release. I don't really mind having a 0.x version number because other projects such as GParted, which is the best and most stable partitioning program I know, is only at version 0.21.0 and no one cares about it.

[deve]

@vlj Hedgewars are on 0.9.x version since 2007

[Anon]

I made my concept piece move this morning (click to enlarge)

[Arthur]

Amazing!

[0zone0ne]

When I read "Asian high tech metropol", the first thing I thought of was this (Neo Tokyo from Akira):



...But the tops of the taller buildings would be replaced with traditional Chinese architecture:



The track could be designed to cover more vertical space than horizontal, so it could go through the various layers of the city. For example, it could start in an underground tunnel system, go out of the ground into the slums, through a factory, and then scale the side of a building and weave around the tops of the skyscrapers.

(Again, Neo Tokyo:)

[GeekPenguinBR]

Hey guys!

When I read this phrase "It will replace the old Shiny Suburbs with an Asian high tech metropol.", the first images tha came to my mind are like these ones:

http://wall--art.com/wp-content/uploads ... -Night.jpg
http://wallpaperscraft.com/download/sin ... /2560x1440
http://files.cluster2.hostgator.co.in/h ... pore-1.jpg
http://www.phd-mba.nus.edu.sg/images/Si ... mage_1.jpg
https://intersticessg.files.wordpress.c ... ukicho.jpg
https://mltours.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... /Tokyo.jpg
http://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbnail ... mbnail.jpg

After reading "Don't just follow blindly this tutorial. Make your own concepts, use your own ideas.", I decided to make something in 3D, so I spent (probably, the most appropriate word is "wasted") my saturday modelling this:

I know I'm going in a totally different direction (this doesn't looks like a suburb, but like a financial center), BUT, I really would like "to drive" in a track placed on a modern district like this.

Note, I'm not trying to modify the current development of this project, but if (maybe) somebody have interest to make another track in the Southern Asia exploring the skyscrapers, curved bridges, and everything all, I have already some objects modelled.

[GeekPenguinBR]

LOL. Now I see that OzoneOne was posting something alike exactly while I was posting.

[0zone0ne]

I did this quick:

[hiker]

Hi!

I expect a part of the track being a chinese city with a skyline like Hongkong.
Would it be fun to drive through a place filled with skyscrapers providing multiple paths?
I tried to illustrate this in the sketch in the attachment.

The internal data structures have been developed with this kind of track in mind. Now the current exporter can not export this kind of track (or only to some degree), but we will figure something out if we have a track light that

I also thought of actually having a random path- whenever a kart gets close to a crossing, an arrow is displayed indicating in which direction the karts should be driving next (and instead of laps there would just be a finish line) - though that needs some additional programming obviously

Cheers,
Joerg

[samuncle]

Hi .

The second part of the experiment will begin soon. I want to know something. People who submited art, are you okay if we show them in the next video and discuss what's great and what should be improved ?

The idea is to move forward and to give feedback but some people don't like to be criticized so that's why we are asking.

The idea of a procedurally generated track could be fun ^^. At least for a district (like the central finacial district) where it's a new path every time you start the game.
That's not a priority and we will discuss this further. However with scripting something interesting might be done (like loading a part and not another).

Sam

[GeekPenguinBR]

As one of those who have submitted a concept art , I'm not only agree, but I would like if many people give opinions about my ideas. Mainly, about the giant ferris wheel, the curved bridge over the river and the Nolok's towers.

[Anon]

The second part of the experiment will begin soon. I want to know something. People who submited art, are you okay if we show them in the next video and discuss what's great and what should be improved ?

Sure, I would be fine with that

[samuncle]

@GeekPenguinBR yeah sure you are welcome as long as it's constructive for everyone . We are interested to see what people think and what are their idea.

This track is a blank caneva. I (and the core team) have some ideas. But we want to know what's your toughs

[GeekPenguinBR]

Sorry, I don't know how to delete a comment posted two times.

[GeekPenguinBR]

@GeekPenguinBR yeah sure you are welcome as long as it's constructive for everyone . We are interested to see what people think and what are their idea.

Thank you, Samuncle.

Actually, I have some other details to add.

Well, browsing Google looking for new images I found this: https://intersticessg.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/japan-tokyo-shinjuku-kabukicho.jpg

Look at the left side and see the character on the big display. Doesn't she look a lot like Sara? We could include a building with a big display showing Sara in the main avenue of the financial center.