December 17, 2014

Merry Christmas and a Beta :)

Merry Christmas to all of you who have been waiting for the new release!



So, better late than never, SuperTuxKart 0.8.2 beta has been released! This new version is the result of months of work from the SuperTuxKart team. Please note that this is a beta only, and we know that there are still some bugs around which we intend to fix before the 0.8.2 release (see our bug tracker for a list), but no major ones that would prevent you from enjoying the game. If you download the beta, we are mostly interested in any kind of feedback, particularly about the graphical side of thing. Please let us know if it works just fine, or if you had to disable certain features to make it look good. Report bugs in our tracks (URL see above, but please check that it has not been reported previously).

The main highlights include the first release of Antartica, the new graphical engine (more on that later). We have basically added a completely new, shader-based rendering engine - only things like loading meshes and textures are still done by the original Irrlicht. As a result of the new features which are provided by our engine, we have many tracks with significantly improved visuals. The main highlight on this front is two new massive tracks. First of all "Cocoa Temple" that replaces the old "Jungle" track:

And "Gran Paradiso Island" that replace the old "Island" track:

Thanks to samuncle for all the hard work!

Another new feature is the addition of online accounts, as a prelude to networked multiplayer. Just to make it very clear: networked racing itself is not ready yet, but will be our main focus once the release is done. Your account allows you to connect achievements, stay in touch with your friends, etc.

The new version includes many more new features - we still need to assemble the full list. But it includes different kart physics, based on this year's GSoC work, random Grand Prix, a Grand Prix editor and more.

The windows binary also includes a beta version of the track editor, developed this summer by one of our Google of Code Students (on other platforms, it can built from source). It's not fully polished yet, but you can also start playing with it

New engine

As has been mentioned above, SuperTuxKart 0.8.2 features Antartica, a totally new rendering engine, starting from the foundations of cand from GSOC 2013, and improved a lot by new team member vlj. The new engine features exciting new features like much improved rendering of lights and shadows (for more information, take a look at this page ).

An example of DoF (Depth of Field) in action with the snow falling



However, it is very important to note that this new engine uses at least OpenGL 3.1, whereas the previous STK version used very old OpenGL 1. This means that we are using many more advanced features of the opengl drivers, and as a result we have been suffering from various driver bugs already. During our development vlj did a marvelous job to work around most problems we have encountered so far. This is why your feedback is so important for us - we can't afford to get a set of different graphics cards to try to work around their specific problems. So we need as many people as possible to test this beta and provide feedback. We will provide some additional documentation about what you can try if this beta does not work as expected for you.

Also, using newer opengl features means that unfortunately, older computers may not be able to run the game correctly - we use the HD 3000 as a minimal supported GPU. Obviously you should make sure to update your drivers to the latest available version and, on linux, you may want to try the proprietary driver if the open source one does not work (a recent version of mesa may be required for some features).  That being said, don't panic! You can configure the graphical level in STK options, so if your computer cannot reach a good decent frame rate you can always reduce the graphical details, or the resolution.
 
An additional note: since this is a beta we have not yet updated the credits, nor declared a string freeze for translations either. We still expect some minor changes to the strings before our release candidate. We are also looking for help creating binary packages for other platforms - especially a static linux package would be great.

And in spite of all our testing, a first problem was already discovered :P the Christmas hats were switched on (that happens on the 17th of December), and some of the new karts now have the hats hovering ... around half a meter over their heads :)

Quick edit: users of Windows XP should be aware we no longer support it and the game will fail to install.

Giving Feedback

Please use the forum for feedback, as blog comments are inappropriate for support. You might also be especially interested in this post announcing the beta release. It includes details on how to unlock these new tracks, since initially they will be locked.

Getting the beta


French translation of this article available here

32 comments:

  1. Awesome, thanks for your work. When a have time I´ll installed and send feed back

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  3. Thanks for your hard work! This is starting to look really awesome! I wish multiplayer was closer to being finished, but seeing initial work towards that end goal is always welcome.

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  4. As a user of Debian stable, i can't test this beta because my mesa only supports OpenGL 3.0 … but Jessy will have 3.3, so testing is just delayed :).

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  5. Oi, thanks for your work and happy Xmas! Will try to give it a test ;-)

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. Now we have some new in SuperTuxKart and marry Christmas for all SuperTuxKart team

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  9. Great job! What a tremendous amount of work and love you guys have put into this game. I keep getting crashes from loading back to the story mode map from different tracks, but that isn't stopping me from restarting the game and playing some more. The game is fun! The visuals on the jungle track are great, but the performance on my win 7 system is pretty bad. I have 6600 gt nvidia and 8 gigs of ram.

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  10. Awesome! I'm building an AppImage of the latest git branch for PortableLinuxGames, so other Linux players out there can try it out without having to build the whole thing.

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  11. The new game is great, but I am missing funny subtitles on surprises.

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  12. Linux build availabe on sourceforge (32 and 64-bit):
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTuxKart/0.8.2-beta/supertuxkart-0.8.2-beta-linux.tar.bz2/download

    I tested it on most popular distributions, but let me know if some problems occurs.

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  13. Wonderful, Very Very Very..... GooD JoB ! Merry Christmas !

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  14. I really don't understand how to unlock maps :(

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  15. Updated linux build already uploaded to sourceforge in the same place:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTuxKart/0.8.2-beta/supertuxkart-0.8.2-beta-linux.tar.bz2/download

    I found a problem with curl library, which caused crashes. I compiled newer curl version which fixes this bug and now it should work fine. More info for example here:
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9191668/error-longjmp-causes-uninitialized-stack-frame

    BTW. We probably need curl library in version 7.32.0 or newer (older versions causes this crash). Maybe we should write it somewhere.

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  16. @Anonymous

    How to unlock maps:
    1. Download editor which supports UTF-16 (Notepad++, Geany, Gedit, ...)
    2. Find your config files:
    - on Linux they are in $HOME/.config/supertuxkart/0.8.2.
    - on Windows %APPDATA%\supertuxkart\0.8.2
    3. Open file players.xml in your UTF-16 editor
    4. Change all solved="none" to solved="hard"
    5. Save file

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  17. Sup,

    I have always been a fan of kart games, ever since I played Mario Kart on the SNES the very first time - the N64 version had me hooked to our TV for years. I have always had one of my three eyes on Supertuxkart, tried it out a few times in the past, but it was missing a bunch of features. Also, the graphics were kinda "meh"... it just never felt right to me.

    Boy, things have and continue to change around here.

    Congrats on all of the new updates - especially on the new engine. It's looking good, very sexy! I think the time has now come to start donating some cash around here. I really want to see this game go wild and with a bit of spit and hard work, it can become a huge Mario Kart competitor - open, free and accessible. A game for everyone.

    Keep it coming guys!

    Cheers,
    Alex

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  18. I try this version on Ubuntu 14.04 64 bits but I get Segmentation fault (core dumped):
    My hardware is a i7 and lspci show this information:
    00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 06)
    00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x16 Controller (rev 06)
    00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
    00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06)
    00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI (rev 05)
    00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
    00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 (rev 05)
    00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
    00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev d5)
    00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev d5)
    00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev d5)
    00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 (rev 05)
    00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation C220 Series Chipset Family H81 Express LPC Controller (rev 05)
    00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 05)
    00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
    01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF119 [GeForce GT 610] (rev a1)
    01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF119 HDMI Audio Controller (rev a1)
    03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)
    04:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)


    It shows these errors:
    ...
    [info ] GrandPrixManager: Loading Grand Prix files from data/grandprix/
    [info ] GrandPrixManager: Loading Grand Prix files from /home/bobu/.local/share/supertuxkart/grandprix/
    [error ] Kart_Model: Missing wheel information 'front-left' for model 'sara the racer.b3d'.
    [error ] Kart_Model: This can be ignored, but the wheels will not rotate.
    [error ] material: Cannot find texture 'motif.png'.
    [error ] material: Cannot find texture 'shoes_gloves.png'.

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  19. Two interesting data:

    - My Ubuntu is configured on Spanish, may be a problem with decimal separators? (we use commas not points)

    - This shows /var/log/kern.log:

    Dec 21 03:07:46 i7 kernel: [ 1284.295053] traps: supertuxkart[3604] general protection ip:5bc58d sp:7fffb988c3c0 error:0 in supertuxkart[400000+77a000]
    Dec 21 03:10:02 i7 kernel: [ 1419.739603] supertuxkart[3719]: segfault at 0 ip 00007fe16794be8e sp 00007fffa0c51fc0 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6[7fe16788b000+e8000]
    Dec 21 03:11:00 i7 kernel: [ 1478.443447] supertuxkart[3762]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f4455b64630 sp 00007fffb5379890 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6.0.19[7f4455aa9000+e6000]
    Dec 21 03:11:38 i7 kernel: [ 1516.520765] supertuxkart[3778]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f3f917d7630 sp 00007fff13ed5c50 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6.0.19[7f3f9171c000+e6000]
    Dec 21 03:16:49 i7 kernel: [ 1827.477825] supertuxkart[3881]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f1a3bd22e8e sp 00007fffd6840f00 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6[7f1a3bc62000+e8000]
    Dec 21 03:21:38 i7 kernel: [ 2116.996586] type=1400 audit(1419128498.972:68): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" profile="unconfined" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=4198 comm="apparmor_parser"
    Dec 21 03:21:38 i7 kernel: [ 2116.996591] type=1400 audit(1419128498.972:69): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" profile="unconfined" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=4198 comm="apparmor_parser"
    Dec 21 03:21:38 i7 kernel: [ 2116.996796] type=1400 audit(1419128498.972:70): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" profile="unconfined" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=4198 comm="apparmor_parser"
    Dec 21 03:35:43 i7 kernel: [ 2962.016847] supertuxkart[4419]: segfault at 0 ip 00007ff6dc157e8e sp 00007fff5479c970 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6[7ff6dc097000+e8000]
    Dec 21 03:36:33 i7 kernel: [ 3011.903424] supertuxkart[4475]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f7879da6e8e sp 00007fffb5126430 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6[7f7879ce6000+e8000]
    Dec 21 03:39:28 i7 kernel: [ 3186.829927] supertuxkart[4595]: segfault at 0 ip 00007fc3953f1e8e sp 00007fff74239810 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6[7fc395331000+e8000]
    Dec 21 03:48:54 i7 kernel: [ 3753.587633] supertuxkart[4714]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f70f9077e8e sp 00007fff1403a2c0 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6[7f70f8fb7000+e8000]
    Dec 21 03:50:24 i7 kernel: [ 3843.476480] supertuxkart[4771]: segfault at 0 ip 00007ff30f2ebe8e sp 00007fffc53c3180 error 4 in libstdc++.so.6[7ff30f22b000+e8000]

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  20. @MalagueƱos originales y libres

    Is this crash reproducible for you? If yes, how to reproduce it?

    Could you get log from gdb debugger and create a ticket in bug tracker?
    https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/issues

    If you don't have experience with gdb, here is some info. Run in terminal in superuxkart directory:

    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./lib-64
    gdb ./bin-64/supertuxkart

    and then to run game:

    r

    and after crash:

    bt full

    Backtrace in release mode doesn't have much info, but better than nothing.

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  21. Christmas is the Gift of God to Us Let us celebrate Christmas with Fun and Party.
    YOLO wishes Merry Christmas to You

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  22. I am not able to register me in the forum.
    has some problems in physical decline of karts.Na not gaining speed. When the karts collide completely lose steering control.
    place the options of separate graphics.
    Increase the brightness of the images of the tire karts had been better with the shadow effect.

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  23. Hi ! I would be very grateful is someone could test it with one of those NUC with integrated Intel HD 5000 GPUs :) Thanks a lot & congrats to the team !!!

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  24. I think some of the trunk builds of 0.8.2 are considered as Pre-RC (Release Candidiate) or RC-Escrows. When 0.8.2 RC is being released, the Pre-Final or Final-Escrow builds may be already exist.

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  25. I will give it a try and I just hope it works on my Ubuntu 14.10 installation. I also hope it doesn't take a lot of space as I only have 10-20 GBs left

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  26. Please let us know if it works just fine, or if you had to disable certain features to make it look good. custom banners Chicago

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  27. I had a little trouble understanding right away, but I think I know what meant now. Thanks!
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  28. um................ I have to install drivers so I will try it on 14.04

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