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SuperTuxKart is now much more beautiful thanks to the hard work of the developers, and they have released a new major version.

They have a swanky new trailer too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FEwDH7XU9Q

Their new game engine dubbed "Antarctica" is based on another named "irrlicht", but updated for their needs with more modern OpenGL.

It also includes two new high quality courses, old courses have also been updated.

Release highlights
-Fully shader-based rendering engine
-New tracks Cocoa Temple and Gran Paradiso
-Graphical improvements to many other tracks
-New karts Amanda, Gavroche, Sara (as wizard and racer)
-Improved tux, adiumy, Suzanne and Xue.
-Online login which allows to:
--connect with friends and see when they are playing
--vote for addons
--collect online achievements
-Different kart physics
-In-game Grand Prix editor
-Random Grand Prix generation
-Achievement system

See their update blog post here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments

Segata Sanshiro Apr 22, 2015
I'm surprised how far along the engine is, the levels look really good. A bit more work and this will be retail quality I think.

One thing though, why would they put the OSs at the end of the trailer in the order "Windows, Mac and Linux"... Surely this is the chance to put Linux at the start of the list for once.
Avehicle7887 Apr 22, 2015
Yesterday I gave this new version a few rounds, the new engine is impressive. Performance was very good on my GTX 960, 60+ fps with full details. It's a very good contender to Mario Kart as it is now.
linux93 Apr 22, 2015
the new tux kart is multiplayer?
Smaloki Apr 22, 2015
@Linux93:
They plan on having online multiplayer eventually (it's actually highest priority now that the engine is updated), but it's not in the game yet (aside from local split-screen multiplayer, but that's not new).

They did, however, introduce online accounts which will be used for multiplayer later on. Right now, you can use them to collect achievements.
edo Apr 22, 2015
This is great, I hope that after an heavy work on optimizing this engine, they will add more features like multiplayer, and to save the game progress online. I would love if someone mod it to have the mario kart 64 maps on it :)
samuncle Apr 22, 2015
Hi :)
I'm one of the main developer of SuperTuxKart and we wanted to say thank you for your article.

One little thing that could be changed is the thumbnail to the article, it's one of the old track, why not showing screenshots from the modern version ? That would be very cool.

@Segata Sanshiro Yes if all tracks could be replaced by moderns one like Gran Paradiso or Cocoa temple the game would look a bit more consistent and similar in quality to a good indie game. The main issue right now is the amount of motivated and good artists. Making moderns track takes a lot of effort and dedicated work.
About the order of logos at the end of the trailer the choice was "random". In our download page the order is reversed (linux comes first, then mac and finally windows.

@Smaloki
About online multiplayer, a lot of the ground work as been done. Onlines account are a first step and one of the argument of releasing this release with them is to be sure everything is working and we can rely on that for the online game later. Be patient and don't forget if you are programmer/artist/etc you can always help us :). There is a lot of things to do

@edo
We support and encourage modding you can read the official documentation about how to make track for STK (http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Track_Maker%27s_Guide). However we aren't mario kart. All tracks are original and the content was created by our team. It would not be allowed to put mk tracks into stk. By Nintendo and by us. And to be honest what's the point. If you want to play to mk, you can just play to mk. We prefer to make our own racing tracks with our own design in our own universe.

@Solar why not putting windows ? We aren't doing a game only for Linux it would be a bit "silly", just like windows only games. One of the main dev in the stk team is using windows because some of the tools we use are only for that platform, and I personally use both all the time.

We are a kart racing game, our aim is to create a fun game :). Also keep in mind a lot of players are from Windows, It might be a door for them into the open source world.

Thanks for your support and have a nice race
sonic Apr 23, 2015
Amazaing game. I willl give them some money (or should I have until Steam release?). I know, it is free, but I want support them :)
samuncle Apr 24, 2015
Quoting: sonicAmazaing game. I willl give them some money (or should I have until Steam release?). I know, it is free, but I want support them :)
Yes sure you can support us :).

You can do a donation via Paypal on our donate page http://donate.supertuxkart.net/ You can choose the amount and you will get two cool additional tracks + some of the concepts art we made for the newer tracks.

Abyss (one of the track) will be included as a regular track in the next version we will release. So it's a direct contribution that will help us. :)

@Pit yep I perfectly understand that. As I said the choice was "random" and in other place it's in another order. Also don't forget our poster which has many open source mascot, tux and gnu included :).

@solar oh okay ^^. No problem, but sometime I'm a bit sad to see these operating system war.

Thumb up everyone for your support. It's really appreciated by the STK Dev Team.
jamesc359 Apr 27, 2015
Unfortunately it claims my drivers (AMD 14.12 Omega) are out of date. :-/

"Your driver version is too old. Please install the latest video drivers."
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