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[PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 20 Dec 2015, 15:52
by Tobbi
After more than a decade of slow, but hard development the SuperTux team is happy to announce the first stable release after 0.1.3 (which was released on 2005-07-09), 0.4.0.

Compared to 0.1.3, this release features:
  • a nearly completely rewritten game engine based on OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL2, ...
  • support for translations
  • in-game manager for downloadable add-ons and translations
  • Bonus Island III, a for now unfinished Forest Island and the development levels in Incubator Island
  • a final boss in Icy Island
  • new and improved soundtracks and sound effects
  • new badguys, bonuses and power-ups (air-, earth- and ice-flower)
  • a halloween tilemap
  • new graphic effects (glowing objects, particles, ...)
  • levels and worldmaps are scriptable using squirrel
  • much more game objects: trampolines, switches, portable stones, wind, moving platforms, ... - most of them have scripting APIs
  • improved statistics
  • many invisible changes, like unit tests, efficiency improvements and more bugfixes
  • much more...
And of course we updated the official levels to make use of all the new features.

Compared to the latest beta, 0.3.5a, this release features:
  • updated translations
  • reworked add-on manager to support downloadable and updatable localization packs
  • many bug-fixes
  • added iced-graphics to some more badguys
  • melting animation for some badguys
  • updated more levels (fix playability, ...)
  • updated build system, featuring unit tests, libraries as git sub-modules and improved Travis-CI builds to support nightly builds
  • more levels in Incubator Island
  • support for horizontal and vertical gradients that span the length / height of a sector. Add (direction "horizontal_sector / vertical_sector") to your gradient.
  • much more...
A big thanks also to our translators who worked very hard, even providing translations for strings changed after the announced string freeze. We'll try to not let that happen for the next release.

Note: Please remember that language packs are now managed via the add-on manager. This means that you need to install language packs if you previously used a localized interface. Moreover, you may want to regularly reinstall the language pack from the add-on manager to keep the localization up-to-date (an update system is planned for the 0.5.0 release: #270).


You can grab binary builds for the major operating systems from our GitHub releases page here: https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux/re ... tag/v0.4.0 once they are available (will take some more minutes).

The SuperTux project has gained quite some momentum compared to previous releases with many new people contributing to the project in many different ways. I want to thank all of you guys. Without you, this release would've never been possible.

Stay tuned for updates regarding future development of SuperTux. If you want to propose new features for SuperTux 3, go here: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=6687 or add an issue tracker entry to our github page here: https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux/issues

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 21 Dec 2015, 02:18
by andrewj
Congratulations on the new stable release! :)

I can imagine the huge amount of work that went into this, a new engine, and getting all the fundamentals in place.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 21 Dec 2015, 03:23
by charlie

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 21 Dec 2015, 04:11
by darkylighty
Now I just have to wait to the PPA to update to 0.4 as well.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 21 Dec 2015, 12:11
by Akien
Great news! Congrats for those 10 years of development and especially the renewed effort over the last couple of years \o/

I'll update Mageia's SuperTux package ASAP :)

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 21 Dec 2015, 14:53
by Andrettin
charlie {l Wrote}:Woohoo! Well done.

http://freegamer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12 ... one-2.html


"My own 15 year old son remembers SuperTux 0.1.3 fondly as, he says, the best game he played as a young child."

That's so endearing :)

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 22 Dec 2015, 18:15
by MCMic
Great job!

I don’t get it, once I’ve beaten the yeti, is there no more levels ? I was expected to see a new path leading to somewhere else but got nothing.
Also, the end screen of the yeti is really ugly, you should remove it (having the yeti dying and the end screen with the time is enough)
And on the main menu in french it’s written «Extention» instead of «Extension».

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 22 Dec 2015, 18:20
by Tobbi
Once you beat the Yeti, the main story line has finished.

But there are many many more contrib levels. What about the forest world next:

Go to Start game -> Forest World.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 22 Dec 2015, 18:57
by MCMic
Oh, ok thanks. Maybe this should be made more obvious.
And what is the blue point on the word map then? Is there no way to get there?

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 22 Dec 2015, 19:53
by onpon4
That's just a hidden path. You just need to go in a direction where there aren't any (visible) roads off of one of the levels (while that level is cleared, of course).

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 23 Dec 2015, 08:53
by MCMic
I applied on transifex to join the french team after noticing several errors (including a bad translation for penguin -_-)

[EDIT] I got accepted and was able to fix some mistakes :-) Is it possible to rename the resource? It’s named «menu principale» while it should be «menu principal».

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 23 Dec 2015, 16:53
by Andrettin
I have a question. If I beat a level on 0.4.0, will that be transferable to later releases?

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 26 Dec 2015, 18:38
by Tlaloc1
I'm no developer, but I think so. Most (Almost none of my Forest world data) of my data was transferred to 0.4.0 when I upgraded.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 28 Dec 2015, 01:28
by Lolkat
How can I get the new things like the smart iceblock into the editor?

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 29 Dec 2015, 04:27
by Wuzzy
Congratulations for reaching version 0.4.0 and milestone 2.
This is a massive step forwards for the whole project.

I really like the new add-on system, it makes getting new levels and stuff easy.
I have played a lot of the community level sets recently, so I might add some of my comments on those in another thread.
There are quite some cool and creative level sets out there, but some of them are a bit buggy. But I guess that's the nature of the system. :(
Currently there does not seem to be any indication whether a level set is still in progress/untested/in flux or if it is considered “ready for play”. This is bad, because unfinished, experimental and buggy stuff gets mixed with the finished and tested stuff. So the add-on system should be rethought a bit here. And unfinished levels should not be visible by default. Only those who explicitly want to be basically beta testers (one single y/n dialog/checkbox/whatever should suffice) should be able to access such levels.

But I foresee that SuperTux may get more and more and more non-official levels over time, including high-quality level sets which maybe could be part of the main game.
So I think the distinction between “official story line” and “everything else” seems to make less and less sense IMO.

Maybe SuperTux in general should be move away from the concept of a single main story line / level set which has been “blessed” with official status as this limits the core game to just a single stream of levels.
Instead, I think a model similar to that of Battle for Wesnoth might make more sense. In the strategy game Battle for Wesnoth, there are multiple campaigns that come with the game, all with independent story lines (but they play in the same fictional world of Wesnoth). None of the campaign is considered to be “more” official than the other one. Also, like in SuperTux, additional campaigns can be downloaded as well.
I think SuperTux could adopt a similar model. Provide a couple of well-tested high-quality level sets by default and strip the current default level set of its “blessed main story line” status and instead treat it as level set as anything else.
So what do you think about my concept-related thoughts?

Now concerning languages in SuperTux:
I am a bit confused by the way languages now work. Why would I need language packs, for instance? SuperTux seems to work without them, so what's the point in having seperate language packs?

And now a note to Andrettin: I had no problems with updating to version 0.4.0, all my game progress was kept. But Incubator Island got a bit larger. The progress of your old levels is still recorded but they are now on different places on the world map. But I guess that's the nature of Incubator Island.

By the way, probably there should be a note in the game saying that these levels from Incubator Island are more or less experimental or something.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 29 Dec 2015, 16:38
by Tobbi
Language packs contain "additional po files" for add-ons. Since there are always more add-ons, these langpacks need to be installed regardless of whether the main game is available in the translated language.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 30 Dec 2015, 04:51
by MCMic
Wuzzy {l Wrote}:But I foresee that SuperTux may get more and more and more non-official levels over time, including high-quality level sets which maybe could be part of the main game.
So I think the distinction between “official story line” and “everything else” seems to make less and less sense IMO.

Maybe SuperTux in general should be move away from the concept of a single main story line / level set which has been “blessed” with official status as this limits the core game to just a single stream of levels.
Instead, I think a model similar to that of Battle for Wesnoth might make more sense. In the strategy game Battle for Wesnoth, there are multiple campaigns that come with the game, all with independent story lines (but they play in the same fictional world of Wesnoth). None of the campaign is considered to be “more” official than the other one. Also, like in SuperTux, additional campaigns can be downloaded as well.
I think SuperTux could adopt a similar model. Provide a couple of well-tested high-quality level sets by default and strip the current default level set of its “blessed main story line” status and instead treat it as level set as anything else.
So what do you think about my concept-related thoughts?


I disagree with this, I think it’s good for the game to have an official story line, and it should simply be expanded with other finished worlds having a boss at the end.
Of course good levels from addon can be used in official worlds to come.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 30 Dec 2015, 20:05
by LMH
Wuzzy {l Wrote}:There are quite some cool and creative level sets out there, but some of them are a bit buggy. But I guess that's the nature of the system. :(


Yes, and no. Originally most of the addons were only made available once they were confirmed to be reasonably free of bugs. The problem is that the game itself has been in a constant state of flux, which has caused some of the addons to no longer play nice. Now that there is a solid release, addons have a common point in development that they can be held up to. Hopefully the bugs will get settled and they will be less frustrating.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Maybe SuperTux in general should be move away from the concept of a single main story line / level set which has been “blessed” with official status as this limits the core game to just a single stream of levels.


That's a fascinating idea. Would have been a good route for this last release as the addons have more new features than the main sequence. I think there would need to be more information given than the current addon system, specifically difficulty ratings as a minimum. It is nice to have a base set of levels however to familiarize new players to the game in a common way that is fun and enjoyable. I could see some people getting frustrated with a lot of the addons designed for more skilled players. I think story mode ensures that the first gameplay experience is enjoyable.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:By the way, probably there should be a note in the game saying that these levels from Incubator Island are more or less experimental or something.


You're right. I'm actually a little surprised that Incubator Island made it into the release. It is probably an oversight since it was meant more for beta testing of levels. I'm not sure why the worldmap would need to be changed it's not meant to be a real world but more of a convenient way to organize potential levels to be added to the game. Hopefully the change doesn't cause anyone to get "stuck" in a region of the worldmap without any paths.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 31 Dec 2015, 18:09
by Wuzzy
Okay, I agree that there should at the very least an easy beginner world to help the players getting started. Such a world should be clearly “advertised” as such, however. This could be the default island, but a seperate “tutorial island” could also be made. But I am not sure if it would be really needed.
And yes, a dificulty rating is a must.

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 10 Sep 2016, 11:46
by Tobbi
Venoosh {l Wrote}:
Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Okay, I agree that there should at the very least an easy beginner world to help the players getting started. Such a world should be clearly “advertised” as such, however. This could be the default island, but a seperate “tutorial island” could also be made. But I am not sure if it would be really needed.
And yes, a dificulty rating is a must.


Yeah newbies like me need a beginners world to get started. Just to do tutorials and stuff.



--> https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux/issues/550

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 10 Sep 2016, 12:36
by mteufel
Venoosh {l Wrote}:Yeah newbies like me need a beginners world to get started. Just to do tutorials and stuff.


Venoosh, it would be easier to design such a level when you posted constructive feedback here, which is always welcome. It's probably best if you create a new thread though. :)

However, note that we don't want to overdo it. There should be a basic introduction to some general features with respect to controls, but it should allow the players to interactively discover the game without help, too. You're also supposed to try out a bit what happens when you do stuff. :)

Re: [PARTY] SuperTux Milestone 2 (0.4.0) release!

PostPosted: 02 Feb 2019, 02:01
by ProTux
Im an intermediate at SuperTux.