
SuperTuxKart 1.0 Release - shimabukuro
http://blog.supertuxkart.net/2019/04/supertuxkart-10-release.html
======
jelv
Congratulations! Great to see it finally getting feature complete. I will be
playing SuperTuxKart a lot on local network.

I also cannot wait for openage, the Age of Empires II open source engine.
[https://openage.sft.mx/](https://openage.sft.mx/)

~~~
godzillabrennus
Thats neat but I dislike that you need the original media to play it.

[https://play0ad.com/](https://play0ad.com/) \- this is a completely open
source project being built.

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ByThyGrace
Looking at the list of characters in the game... and they all reference other
FOSS projects. It's both cute and cheesy. Fantastic!

[https://supertuxkart.net/Discover](https://supertuxkart.net/Discover)

~~~
cantcomplain
One of the first mascots I thought of was the lizard from Open Suse. I'm
surprised that's not in there. Any reason why?

~~~
Sylos
As aasasd pointed out, it exists, but isn't part of the core distribution.

The openSUSE folks include it (Geeko) in the version that you find in their
repositories, so that's why you might think that it is included by default.

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gmueckl
Wow, this has been in the making since forever. I truly admire the dedication
that went into this project for over a decade now. Congrats on that release!

~~~
aasasd
Seeing as it's one of most popular free software games, this is sorta like
Wine coming out of the alpha after eighteen years when it was actively used by
game publishers for ports to MacOS.

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ainar-g
Great news! Now if only we could get _FreeCol_ [1] 1.0.0. Or at least 0.12.0.
If you like free strategy games or loved the original _Sid Meier 's
Colonization,_ this is a must-play.

[1]: [http://www.freecol.org/](http://www.freecol.org/).

~~~
vanderZwan
> _FreeCol 0.11.6 released_

> _Saturday, 17 October 2015_

Ouch. You just made me wonder if Widelands (Settlers II clone) still exists,
since I hadn't looked at it in what feels like at least a decade. It seems
like it does, but development happens at a snail's pace:

[https://wl.widelands.org/news/](https://wl.widelands.org/news/)

~~~
ainar-g
Holy Hell, I love _Settlers II!_ Thanks for pointing me there!

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nsomaru
Looks amazing, gonna get some friends to install and test a network (internet)
game. We’ll probably jump a few continents to get us all connected so it will
be interesting to see how the netcode handles players with varying latency.

I wonder how’s difficult is it to create tracks for STK...

~~~
detaro
Seems like the typical way is modeling them using blender, with special
objects and properties to mark game details:
[https://supertuxkart.net/Making_Tracks](https://supertuxkart.net/Making_Tracks)

~~~
aasasd
One of the ideas lodged in the back of my mind since the time of Twisted Metal
2, is to stick a 3d map of my hometown in an arcade ‘sandbox’-style racing
game. Might be possible one day when we get cheap mainstream drones with laser
rangefinders.

And weirdly enough there's already a mod and a process to convert
OpenStreetMap data into a track:
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SuperTuxKart](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SuperTuxKart)

[https://www.moddb.com/mods/supertuxkart-openstreetmap-
mod](https://www.moddb.com/mods/supertuxkart-openstreetmap-mod)

~~~
mintar
With the recent advances in photogrammetry software, you can probably do it
with a normal camera drone. Have a look at Meshroom and OpenDroneMap!

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mruts
I remember seeing some TuxCart arcade machines in the Middle East last time I
visited. Really wasn’t expecting an open source game to be in an arcade! But
after thinking about it, it makes tons of sense: no royalties just the cost of
the cabinet and sticks.

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ilovetux
I remember playing this a while ago and I just introduced my 4 year old son to
this game (a couple of weeks ago).

Needless to say we are big fans and being able to play over the lan will be
awesome!

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kgwxd
Will the F-Droid package be updated to this version eventually?

~~~
Sylos
You'll have to nudge the F-Droid maintainers for that. They grab the source
code and compile it themselves. The app developer isn't really involved, they
just provide the source code and ideally ensure that it can be easily built by
others.

Though you may want to give them a week or two before you go nudge them. They
might build it on their own when they find time for it.

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hopler
STK highlights the need to grow the open-license art community.

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jammygit
I wish there was a way to release free software and also charge money for it.
This team deserves more than just congratulations and donations for all their
good work

~~~
isostatic
They could sell CDs with it on. They could sell T-shirts etc. They could sell
fancy graphics / avatars etc.

~~~
detaro
In todays market, selling it through Steam/GOG and co could work too. Enough
people might do that just for convenience sake, even if they could easily
download a binary release for free.

~~~
adisbladis
It's very similar to what OsmAnd (free software map application for Android is
doing).

The standard application from the Google Play store is limited in how many
maps you can download and you can purchase the OsmAnd+ app for unlimited maps.
Or... Get the same OsmAnd+ from f-droid :)

I quite like this model of charging users that are using the proprietary
ecosystems. It sure worked on me, I happily paid for OsmAnd+ =)

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maccard
This seems like a fun project, but it's not really anything special. Most
software has either viable or superior FOSS versions (MS vs LibreOffice as a
prime example), but games seem to be severely lacking in this space.

It looks and feels like a game from the mid 2000s. It doesn't perform
particularly well, and there isn't anything technically impressive about the
game, especially considering it's been on the go for almost 15 years.

~~~
naikrovek
It's very hard to get people to collaborate on a game in harmony without a
clear leader. OSS games (and a lot of open source software in general) will
always suffer from having "too many cooks in the kitchen."

~~~
maccard
I actually had GIMP in mind writing this comment - the tool itself is a victim
of too many cooks, but yet manages to be a solid piece of software, despite it
being clunky.

Another example is Blender, it's a bit hard to grok, but overall does the job
extremely well once you get over the warts.

Even in terms of fundamentals, this game is a little... lacking. Default
controls, graphics settings, UI, animations are all very early-noughties
(that's without commenting on the quality of the artwork, it's actually quite
a nice style and some of the assets are cool), things have evolved hugely
since then.

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truehacker
Awesome work! It's amazing how the community keeps on making the best things
out of it, I can't be any less excited by all the progress they are making.

I'm pretty sure that there will be another online version of supertuxkart.com
as part of their "supertuxkart", but I've never seen it mentioned on HN.

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mises
This looks great. I grew up playing supertux (pretty much the only computer
game I had), and this brings back a lot of memories. I credit it with a lot of
my interest in programming/open source; figuring out to mess with the game as
I got older was an excellent experience.

Thank you Super Tux devs!

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ilaksh
Supposedly started as TuxKart 19 years ago.

Go Irrlicht Engine! It says their improved version is called Antarctica. I
assume Antarctica is GPL-only? I could really use an enhanced Irrlicht for my
program but copyleft is incompatible.

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rietta
I tried unsuccessfully to get a usb Xbox controller to work with this game
recently on ubuntu. Never found a workaround to get it to be recognized as a
controller or keyboard. I do love this game though!

~~~
snazz
I highly recommend a Wiimote if you have one lying around. Super easy setup on
Linux (couldn’t figure it out for the life of me on Windows, but that probably
has more to do with me than the OS), the gyroscope works, vibration works, and
overall it’s quite a lot of fun. I think I got a maximum of four
simultaneously connected.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
I'm not sure about Linux, but on OS X there was a fantastic utility you could
use to do _really advanced_ stuff (AppleScript / Automator integration, for
two), but the really cool thing was that you could ise up to _eight_ WiiMotes
at once- the last four were the same indicators, but the lights were inverted.

Not sure if you can do it with the current set of utilities for Linux, but the
WiiMotes themselves support going up to at least eight.

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bitcoinmoney
Remembered this game back in the early days of Linux GUI.

~~~
filesystemdude
Huh? SuperTuxKart was initially released in 2007. I recall Linux distributions
adding a GUI in about 1994.

~~~
mwfunk
Might have been thinking of Tux Racer, which was 2000. Tux Racer was more like
a snowboarding game than a kart racer though. Still well into the GUI age
though.

2000 was a really weird time for Linux, in hindsight. KDE vs GNOME was getting
into full swing, ESR was making all these apocalyptic predictions about the
software industry and people listened to him, RMS was in peak "guh-new-slash-
linux" mode ([https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-
linux.html](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html)), and the dotcom
bubble hadn't burst yet. Linus gave the keynote at Comdex in 1999, and Comdex
was still a big deal.

It's good that that era led to lots of funding and popularity and further
development of FLOSS, but in hindsight (to me at least) it looks like so many
distractions and heated arguments over petty differences. I mean, it still is,
but it used to be too. :)

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leemailll
kudos to the developers. The trailer looks really cool.

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godzillabrennus
I hope they monetize this to continue building a great game.

The switch would be a great platform to sell a port on.

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0xDEEPFAC
Its really great! The graphics and menus look uncohesive though.

Does it run on Android?

~~~
paufernandez
Yes, I've been playing it a minute ago!

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k__
For people who are more into Wipeout I recommend Sanic Ballz

~~~
aasasd
I wonder if it would instead be feasible to have Wipeout-like mods just by
fiddling the physics and using a track more suitable for the speed.

Because, even to my ultra-cheapskate taste, the Sanic game still looks _too_
lo-fi.

Edit: well apparently it's quite possible to do something to that effect:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSsPDEnpFGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSsPDEnpFGo)

Though of course the handling, tracks, etc likely still need careful
tinkering.

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dethos
Very nice, will try it with a few friends soon.

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pcdoodle
This is so cool.

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SkyRocknRoll
We love playing this game.

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gxwmg
That's cool. Was it made with the engine of Quake 3?

~~~
aw3c2
Nope, Irrlicht

> which took even longer than the port from PLIB (anyone remember that?) to
> Irrlicht in 2010

~~~
reidrac
I played it when it was PLIB based. It is amazing how how it looks now
compared to how it looked back then.

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mrfusion
Devs, Can we get this on the Amazon App Store? I’d love to play it on my
kindle fire.

~~~
detaro
can't you just sideload the APK?

~~~
mrfusion
I’ll look it up.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
Basic steps, you'll need a bit Google for things specific to your device.

    
    
      1.  Enable developer mode
    
      2.  Enable sideloading apps
    
      3.  Download an APK of the app.
    
      4.  Your device should take it over from there.
    

I ~have~ had a Fire Phone, and it was fairly easy to install the Google Play
Store (only because that's where all the apps are, unfortunately,) and
installing Aptoide is also pretty easy, too.

~~~
mrfusion
Thanks. I can’t seem to find the apk for this game.

~~~
detaro
It's in the sourceforge folder:
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTux...](https://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTuxKart/1.0/)

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nkkollaw
SuperTuxKart is one of the best examples of how open source software can be on
par and even superior to commercial software.

As a Linux user I can confidently say that a lot of software for the platform
is rough around the edges, but SuperTuxKart is absolutely awesome.

~~~
eterm
I can't tell if you're being serious or not.

Just seeing the word "tux" reminds me of a lot of really sub-par quality games
and applications of ~2003 that people would talk about as if they were just as
good as the commercial offerings.

People would seriously talk of it being "the year of the linux desktop" and
"the year of linux gaming" while trying to claim that tux racer felt like a
AAA game.

If the best thing the platform has to offer is ports and rip-offs of other
games it's not a viable platform and it's insulting to people's intelligence
to try to claim otherwise.

I'm not knocking the effort maintainers put in and I'm sure they learn from it
and enjoy the process. That's not something to be dismissive of. But claiming
it's superior to commercial games insults the genuine quality in games out
there, and actually harms linux gaming because it reduces your credibility
when talking about gaming.

~~~
DanBC
If you're comparing STK to Mario Kart it's obviously going to lose.

But there are millions of kart racers out there, and many of them are pretty
poor. STK is better than most of them.

~~~
Retra
You're counting the wrong thing. They're not talking about the number of kart
racers out there, they are talking about the number of people who play better
kart racers.

Like the reason "the year of the Linux Desktop" hasn't happened is not
explained by pointing out that there are a lot of OSs and Linux is better than
most. It hasn't happened because everyone is using Windows and MacOs. If STK
isn't comparable to Mario Kart, then it isn't good. Everyone is playing Mario
Kart; that's the standard to beat.

