STK UNOFFICIAL preview build (updated 07/22/17)

STK UNOFFICIAL preview build (updated 07/22/17)

Postby QwertyChouskie » 30 Mar 2017, 03:04

So I decided to brave Windows (bum bum bummmmmmm) to compile the latest STK and post it here, so those interested can see what progress has been made in STK since 0.9.2. (And then spent a while this morning re-installing GRUB after Windows 8 overwrote it PURPOSEFULLY. Yes, PURPOSEFULLY. Selecting to boot from grubx64.efi in my BIOS/UEFI's boot menu just booted Windows. THEY MESSED WITH THE "ubuntu" FOLDER OF MY EFI PARTITION SO MY COMPUTER WOULD BOOT STRAIGHT INTO WINDOWS! :x :( I'm not happy with M$ right now, in case you didn't notice. ;) It's not even like Win8 works right, Firefox stopped being able to connect to the Internet after a while (maybe they were trying to get me to use IE? *shudders*)

EDIT: Now cross-compiling on Ubuntu. :D

Anyways, a tiny, very incomplete summary of what's new in STK since 0.9.2 (please note that many of these features are not finished yet, and might not be included in STK 0.9.3):

PERFORMANCE: Hugely reduced loading times, reduced RAM and Video RAM usage, improvements to the renderer such as Hardware Skinning and smaller tweaks, and more....

NEW TRACKS: "Cornfield Crossing" (done), "Ravenbridge Mansion" (close to done, hidden by default, enable "Artist Debug Mode" to try it), and "Ciudad Catalina" (Work-In-Progress)

NEW KARTS: Wilber and Hexly have much better karts now.

New cutscene: GPwin (https://jacobspctuneup.tk/gpwin.webm)

Renderer fixes: The non-advanced pipeline has had a lot of fixes (vegetation shows correctly, colors don't look so "bleached"), and the fallback OpenGL 2.1 pipeline has had a LOT of fixes to the point where it is usable, most notably transparency is fixed.

3-Strikes Battle now has "Spare Tire karts" on bigger arenas, running into these karts will give you an extra live.

The camera gitter bug has been eliminated, the camera run smoothly now even if framerates are inconsistent (this was a BIG issue for me until it was fixed)

Physics have been improved, hitting a wall while in a narrow corridor won't make you bounce back and forth uncontrollably between the walls anymore

Cannons now work properly, noticeable in Oliver's Math Class and Cornfield Crossing.

Karts now have exhaust and headlights

Resets onto the side track at the beginning of Cocoa Temple work now: This was SO ANNOYING, but is now fixed, as the walldriving branch was merged.

Screen recording: press CTL+PrntScr to start recording

More improvements and fixes than I can list or even remember:
1,568 commits! (https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/compare/0.9.2-branch...master minus the 66 commits that were committed separately on both the master and 0.9.2 branches)
265 bugs closed! (https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue%20closed%3A%3E2016-06-26%20)
53 PRs merged! (https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr%20merged%3A%3E2016-06-26%20)

In other words, so many fixes and improvements that 0.9.2 seems old, slow, bug-ridden, etc. Don't believe me? Try it yourself.

Downloads: (Updated 07/22/17)
Windows: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aj1l-ur_25hWgRK7cxhJgb0gwTRI (yes, I know, Microsoft = evil, privacy violations, etc., but I'm sharing it with the world anyways, so it's OK if they have it. Doing the grunt work of hosting the file is the least they can do after what they did to my computer. :)
macOS: If someone wants to give me a Mac, I'll happily compile STK on it. ;)
Linux: I didn't compile a build specifically for this post, but check out this script I made to always have the latest version: https://code.launchpad.net/~asdfghrbljzmkd/+archive/ubuntu/stk-test

Hope you enjoy!
Last edited by QwertyChouskie on 02 Sep 2017, 03:29, edited 13 times in total.
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby brmbrmcar » 30 Mar 2017, 08:32

I don't notice any performance or loading time boosts.
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby Ludsky » 30 Mar 2017, 12:17

It's very good,
For me, the loading is more fast :)

"Cornfield Crossing" is a very good track ^^ / "Ravenbridge Mansion" is so wonderful, best than actual "Mansion"

I don't like the new icon of "Suzanne"

Thanks you for this Unofficial pre-alpha ^^ For the moment, i stay with 0.9.2 and wait the official 0.9.3 ^^ Good job team of supertuxkart ! ;) :)
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby QwertyChouskie » 30 Mar 2017, 22:52

@brmrbmcar It is probably much less noticeable on stronger hardware. On my (weak) hardware and Linux, the first launch takes 23 seconds (with all caches cleared), but subsequent launches take 3-4 seconds (Linux caches a lot). Also, race loading should be faster, as STK doesn't load shared textures that are not needed by the race anymore.
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby QwertyChouskie » 30 Mar 2017, 22:55

One new feature I forgot (just added to top post):

Screen recording: press CTL+PrntScr to start recording.
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby samuncle » 31 Mar 2017, 00:04

Not sure if I like or dislike an unofficial release. I know it's unofficial but it could give a bad picture of the game because it's not ready yet.

Maybe you could use a little less catchy topic title like: Unofficial build of the last trunk version of SuperTuxKart. But please don't try to advertise features we don't know if they will remain or be removed or if something will change. It's very important for us to not speculate on what's coming and we are always careful about what we say to avoid disappointment.

I (personally) feel like you are taking the wind out of one's sails. We are working hard and we like to do the release when we feel it's ready to be done.

What I recommend:
1) Wait for our official polished release. Don't try to simply overtake us
2) You can of course build the game, but please avoid title like this one.
3) It could (I speculate of course) gives a bad image of supertuxkart because people might be tempted to try the game before it's ready. There is a reason if it's not released yet.

Thanks for your understanding :), and also thank you for the effort you put to do the binary.

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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby Auria » 31 Mar 2017, 01:04

Hi,

just to clarify, it's okay to make builds, but I would recommend to avoid naming it "0.9.3" to avoid any confusion. If you could just name it "unstable nightly build from <date>", without stating a version number, I would have no problems with that.

Thanks!
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby brmbrmcar » 31 Mar 2017, 08:25

Before I had a dedicated GPU, SuperTuxKart ran in under 5 seconds before caching, but now it takes much longer (but I have not measured it).
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby benau » 31 Mar 2017, 09:17

Actually the only cache in STK is compressed texture, try disable it if you want fast loading
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby GunChleoc » 31 Mar 2017, 13:25

How about adding a link to the AppVeyor page somewhere? Each build is creating an exe file as well, so that might help people to get nightlies for testing.
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Re: STK 0.9.3 UNOFFICIAL pre-alpha 1

Postby MTres19 » 31 Mar 2017, 13:49

brmbrmcar {l Wrote}:Before I had a dedicated GPU, SuperTuxKart ran in under 5 seconds before caching, but now it takes much longer (but I have not measured it).

STK is known to take a lot of PCIe bandwidth. On iGPUs, the memory is shared somehow so it might take less loading time but naturally iGPUs tend to perform poorly.
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby QwertyChouskie » 06 Apr 2017, 21:27

@samuncle I made some edits to the top post.

I will hopefully compile another build soon, as the "advanced_recording" (better recording) and "physics_tweaks" branches were merged.
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby brmbrmcar » 07 Apr 2017, 08:27

As for screen recording - it wasn't too slow, but was still slow and I'd like audio. And why store it in .cache?
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby benau » 07 Apr 2017, 09:06

Audio record is now possible in windows and linux, you can disable limit fps to 30 by changing config.xml (by saving to mjpeg may help too), and because it's hard to save video in a cross platform way
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby brmbrmcar » 07 Apr 2017, 16:06

Oh yes. The speed is amazing now. I'll have to get the update with sound (I do use simplescreenrecorder's OpenGL).

And you should at least put it in .local or something - many people delete their cache, even by a script. I appreciate it is hard for cross platform but you seem to be able to handle things like game saves easily enough, so why not just put it with them? Also, although I could be wrong here, but it looks like you can only record in one track or the overworld per file. It might be useful to be able to record throughout the whole game in one file, for whatever reason.

I don't want this to sound like a lot, but a useful thing might also be to record the player like is done in ghost replays, then encode the video (allowing for much higher framerates and better performance on playback).

But I really like the limit_fps thing. I feel this should be automatic throughout the game, as it makes it a lot smoother (so if it is going at 30 fps it limits to 30).
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby benau » 07 Apr 2017, 16:16

It will keep on recording until you press stop recording, the filename doesn't matter, beware of running out of memory if you are recording at 1920x1080 with vp8 codec, also the final encoding will take some times. you can get rid of this by using mjpeg in config.xml, though it requires lot of disk space

This library may be separated from STK soon, so improvement will come altogether
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby brmbrmcar » 07 Apr 2017, 17:37

This actually seems more advanced than I expected it to be. Will it be properly implemented?

Many keyboards don't have printscreen keys.
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby benau » 08 Apr 2017, 03:39

Sorry about that, but you can enable artist debug mode menu and click start / stop recording in the right-click menu
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby brmbrmcar » 08 Apr 2017, 10:40

OK that's useful. It doesn't affect me myself, but I thought it was worth pointing out. It is still a bit hard to use·
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby brmbrmcar » 14 Apr 2017, 16:33

Sound still isn't working for me, and is there a way to extend the size limit?
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby benau » 15 Apr 2017, 02:04

Did it save to an mkv / webm ? If it's an AVI, than you aren't using the latest git version.

Size limit only applies to AVI
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby brmbrmcar » 15 Apr 2017, 21:50

I was able to change the format before. The file remained as I updated.
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby benau » 16 Apr 2017, 03:12

That was a yes or no question, did the recording you save an .avi or .webm/.mkv?

I think you were using .avi file because you told me there is size limit, which is only true for avi.

The avi file is always no sound, because it's not the latest version (as in git) which lacks sound recording feature.

If the file is .webm/.mkv, check in your distro that you sound output is set to a correct one, for example if you are using a speaker, make sure it isn't configured to use hdmi output for example, it may have problem if you are using jack too.
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby brmbrmcar » 16 Apr 2017, 11:44

It was as a .avi. However, this is likely due to the file I had set the codec to, and not that I hadn't updated. But I'll see anyway, shall I?
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Re: STK UNOFFICIAL preview build

Postby brmbrmcar » 16 Apr 2017, 11:45

OK I'll update.
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