Feature request - Speed limit

[magnus]

Hello,

I play supertuxkart a lot with my 3 year old nephew. He absolutely loves the game, but due to the glaring difference in our driving skills it's not much of a challenge for me. I spend my time driving just hard enough to make it challenging for him, which is a bit boring for me.

What would be amazing would be to have some kind of speed limiting feature where I could reduce the maximum speed of my car, possibly as a percentage. This would allow me to slow myself down to a point where we are evenly matched and the game becomes as challenging and fun for me as it is for him. As he gets older and his driving improves I could increase my speed to match.

I'm sure there must be other players out there who have similar issues with mismatched skill levels who would also appreciate this feature. If someone could implement it I would be very grateful.

Thank you for your time,
Magnus.

[Knitter]

I think you can already customize some of the kart's settings in the XML files that define each kart. I don't know if it has all the settings you need but it could be starting point, maybe try to change some of the settings on the kart you drive in order to make it harder to drive, or the kart you're nephew uses to make it easier.

[magnus]

Ah, I wasn't aware that could be done. I'll do that.
Thanks Knitter.

[magnus]

I've had a look through the files in ~/.config/supertuxkart and there doesn't seem to be anything relating to individual karts.

I don't really want to modify the program files, because I'll be installing it on a multi user system and any changes I make will affect *all* users. However I had a look out of curiosity at supertuxkart/data/karts/gnu/kart.xml and I couldn't see any settings related to speed there either.

So it seems the only way to modify speeds for player balance would be for someone to modify the game code.

[ctdabomb]

might this be of some help? viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2806

[hiker]

Hi

I've had a look through the files in ~/.config/supertuxkart and there doesn't seem to be anything relating to individual karts.

Correct, that's only the settings for the user. Kart default data are specified in STK_ROOT/data/stk_config.xml. Everything inside the "general-kart-defaults" tags can be changed in the kart.xml file for each kart. Have a look at:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

    <!-- Speed and acceleration related values: power and max-speed (in m/s)
         have 3 values, one for low, medium, and hard.
         brake-factor: Value used when braking. max-speed-reverse-ratio is
         the percentage of max speed for reverse gear. -->
    <engine power="400 450 500"  max-speed="15 20 23" brake-factor="11.0"
            max-speed-reverse-ratio="0.3"/>


I don't really want to modify the program files, because I'll be installing it on a multi user system and any changes I make will affect *all* users. However I had a look out of curiosity at supertuxkart/data/karts/gnu/kart.xml and I couldn't see any settings related to speed there either.

That's because at this stage each kart uses only the default physics value Just add the above line to any kart, modify the max-speed settings, and you should be ready to go.

So it seems the only way to modify speeds for player balance would be for someone to modify the game code.

If you don't want to modify the data files, just copy one kart directory to the addons directory with a different name(!), e.g.

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

 cp STK_ROOT/data/karts/tux  ~/.local/share/supertuxkart/addons/karts/tux_slow


Then in the kart.xml file edit the name (name = "Tux-Slow"), and modify e.g. the maximum speed only:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

<engine max-speed="7 7 7 "/>


and you should be ready to crawl

Cheers,
Joerg