SuperTuxKart, one of the stalwarts of the open source gaming space has a fresh new release out with version 1.1.
This big update improves upon the online multiplayer feature, which itself is still quite new only being added in the big 1.0 release back in April. In this release the team said they've added support for IPv6 clients and servers, improved collisions handling, added a player reporting function, improved on some issues causing lag when playing online and they added "AI support to local networking servers".
Additionally there's some user interface improvements, the battle mode now has random spawn locations, a new Screen space reflection graphical effect was added, the Pumpkin Park arena is now available to everyone, there's enhancements to the mobile interface, complex text and emoji support plus a bunch of other improvements to the game as a whole.
On top of that they're also switching to a dual-license model, with both GPL and MPL being used which they say will allow them to expand to have a separated game engine and game, get onto Steam, the Apple store, game consoles and using libraries that aren't GPL compatible when needed. More on that can be found here.
You can see the full release announcement here.
I'm really glad SuperTuxKart not only exists, but continues to be developed. Still a little rough around the edges, but in the last couple years it's become quite a fantastic free racing game. Especially great for a younger audience, or to play with others and it can be a huge amount of fun.
Quoting: gojulSadly SuperTuxKart is far away from any commercial game like Super Mario Kart. One of the reasons is the number of weapons and their diversity, which clearly lags behind.
The graphic, I would say the whole graphic need a huge revamp.
if this arrives to steam I hope it will have workshop support
Quoting: adibuyonoDefinitely.Quoting: gojulSadly SuperTuxKart is far away from any commercial game like Super Mario Kart. One of the reasons is the number of weapons and their diversity, which clearly lags behind.
The graphic, I would say the whole graphic need a huge revamp.
Not talking about some AAA-upgrades, but what the game would need is a pass (or a couple of passes) by a real artist.
Just looking at the UI, you can see that almost every element is stylistically at odds with every other element. Which just makes it look unnecessarily cheap.
And the 3D art also has that problem somewhat. While levels themselves generally look like most things belong together, there is a contrast between levels and carts/characters, as well as effects.
Kind of shows that open-source projects generally only have coders and sometimes game designers working on them, only extremely rarely artists beyond contributing single assets.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 7 January 2020 at 9:20 am UTC
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