bovineuniversity {l Wrote}:1. I've suspected that the computer controlled cars are a little faster. They always seem to recover and get back up to speed much faster (e.g. if we both get his with a cake) Is that true, or is it just that they have perfect reaction times? Do all of the cars have the same acceleration?
All karts should be completely identical, except their shape - which on the other hand can of course have an impact on the physics. We had some advantage for the AI in 0.5 (or so), before we fixed the steering (it didn't have that much slow down when skidding round a corner iirc), but that should all be gone. Though I better double check that

2. I was in a Grand Prix, and I started out at the front of the pack. I had a good start. And then zoooooom a computer cars goes right by me. There was no nitro, presents, or zippers. Is there the concept of "drafting"? I can't think of another way he could have zoomed past me. Unless maybe he got bumped from behind?
Yes, there is slip streaming. If you drive close behind another kart, you will after some time get a zipper-like bonus push (you can see that a kart is ready by a little bit of blue nitro being shown). You will see a graphical slip stream effect. Admittedly it's atm very hard (probably even too hard) to make much use of it, more balancing of this will be done at around 0.8*.
3. What determines how long you have the parachute? Sometimes it's very short, sometimes I seem to have it forever.
A banana parachute and the item (parachute to all players ahead of me) have a different time. Also, when you get the parachute it will be removed earlier if you lost 30% of the speed you had when you got it. So braking will remove the parachute very quickly (and this fact should be part of the tutorial, unfortunately it looks like the person who worked on the tutorial has abandoned it

).
4. I'm on the latest SVN version. I see some source files that are updated that are related to addons. Is this "hidden" functionality that is being worked on that can be "unlocked" or is is just under development. I don't see the addon manager anywhere in the app, but I know it's on the roadmap to be worked on.
I assume you are on linux? Use --with-addon in configure to enable it (and make sure that internet news is enabled). On windows, use the curl-debug configuration. But be warned, this is atm still experimental, see entries in trac

I think it's enabled by default on OSX(?)
Cheers,
Joerg