SuperTuxKart

SuperTuxKart is a fun, addictive, feature rich, multiplatform and freely distributed game that simulates kart racing. As its name suggests, the main character of the game is Tux, the Linux mascot.

Features at a glance

Key features include support for multiplayer games using a split-screen setup, over 20 arenas and tracks to play on, as well as support for multiple gameplay modes, including Single Race, Grand Prix, Time Trial, 3-Strikes Battles and Follow-the-leader.

Additionally, the game features fun characters, such as Tux, supports up to 4 players playing simultaneously on the same computer. Whether you want to visit the Egyptian pyramids, drive through the sand, view the great lighthouse, race in space or underground, SuperTuxKart is the game you want to download.

When racing, you should be very careful at the things thrown by opponents, such as bubble gums, cakes, plungers or even bowling balls, which will destroy your kart and get you out of the game.

Getting started with SuperTuxKart

Installing SuperTuxKart on a GNU/Linux operating system is as easy task, as the game is distributed as pre-built binary files for 64-bit (x86_64) and 32-bit (x86) distributions. A source tarball is also available for download, along with the latest Git sources.

However, the best way to install SuperTuxKart on your Linux distro is to use the binary packages found in the main software repositories, which can be accessed using the graphical package manager of your distribution (e.g. Ubuntu Software Center in Ubuntu).

After installation, you can start the game from the Games section of the main menu of your desktop environment. The game will open in full screen mode and you can start your kart racing adventure.

Supported on Linux, Mac and Windows

Currently, SuperTuxKart is supported on all GNU/Linux distributions, as well as on the Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. More details can be found on the project’s website (see link below).

What is new in this release:

• Reduced RAM and VRAM usage, reducing load times by Auria and Benau
• New mesh format optimized for space and hardware skinning
• Code refactoring of both render pipeline by Benau and Elderme
• New kart Wilber and Hexley by Jymis
• New kart Kiki and updated Konqi by Benau
• New tracks Cornfield Crossing and Candela City by samuncle
• Physics improvements and various physics bugfixes by hiker
• Kart GFX improvements (exhaust and headlight)
• In-game screen recording powered by libopenglrecorder
• High quality mipmap generation by Stragus
• New smoother camera by Auria
• New grand prix win scene
• Gamepad configuration bugfixes
• 3 Strikes Battles : added spare tire karts
• Various improvements (wall driving fixes, parachutes, GP points, cannon fixes, colorization shader)

What is new in version 0.9.2:

• This release includes a lot of work from Benau, a new developer. Thanks to him, we are now supporting TTF fonts, which is a lot easier for us to maintain and should ensure that all characters from all main languages are now available. He also finished recording races and ghost replays (where you can try to beat a recorded race), which were started as Google Summer of Code projects, but never completely integrated. Additionally he finished and significantly improved work on computer opponents in battle mode, and even added the ability to play in teams with and against the computer in soccer mode.
• To celebrate the new AI support for soccer mode, we created a poster for "Copa Antarctica" Antarctica Cup, a set of 3 arenas. The first one made by Benau and Samuncle is a new soccer field called "Icy Soccer Field", which is included in the release.
• Similar to what we have done in the past, we are offering the remaining others as gift package for people donating to SuperTuxKart. This package includes a new arena and soccer stadium "Las Dunas", in a daytime version and a separate nighttime version for soccer competition.
• Additionally the gift package will also include the latest version of "Candela City", which was previously included in the gift package. The gift package can be downloaded after donating to SuperTuxKart. We use this money to pay for addon and web server for now, and will be using more for network development.
• But we have even more new tracks. Included is now also "Antediluvian Abyss" track by Samuncle, which replaces the old subsea track. An early-access version of this track was part of our previous gift package for donators, but as promised it is now released as part of the standard release.
• We also included a new track by first time contributor Ponzino - a new 'Volcan Isand" track.
• Ozone0ne and Krobonil have also contributed a new original song for the farm track; and Flakebi implemented a new kart characteristic system, which makes it much easier to modify the kart physics and have karts with different behaviour.
• As mentioned in the previous post, networked multiplayer is unfortunately not available yet as there is more work needed to make it work well. We have done some serious work, and a lot of improvements to show, but feel that it is not yet good enough for a special LAN-only mode. More work is needed to make LAN mode work good enough for an enjoyable game experience, and we decided to spent more time and have a good release instead of one that would potentially suffer from stuttering. But stay tuned for more news on networking, it is our top priority.

What is new in version 0.9.1 / 0.9.2 RC1:

• After countless hours of bug fixing, tweaking and improvements we are proud to announce the release of SuperTuxKart 0.9.1.
• The gift package for donators has also been updated: it contains the new Candela City track, which is heavily featured in our new trailer. It's the first next generation track in a city inspired by various real places.
• But the gift package contains more: Samuncle has updated Antediluvian Abyss, which was included as a sneak peak in the previous gift package. The underwater landscape has been improved and you can spot fishes swimming and underwater ruins.
• While these tracks will most likely receive some more tweaks and minor improvements, they are otherwise finished. Both tracks from the gift package will of course be released as part of the core game in a future version of SuperTuxKart.
• If you want to support SuperTuxKart, we encourage you to go to our donation page, where you will be able to donate some money to this project, after which you will get the URL for the gift package. If you have donated US$5 or more in the past, please contact us, and you will get this new package without a new donation.
• The track 'Carnaval del cacao' that was included in our previous gift package is now available for everyone as promised released under CC-BY 3.0 on our addons webpage.
• The core game wasn't forgotten either, and we are happy to show that the oldest track in SuperTuxKart - Oliver's Math Class - has finally received some love and attention.
• Other tracks were also updated to take advantage of the newer engine.
• But we also did work on the core game and fixed and improved several bugs and issues. We have now the ability to change the direction of arrows (indicating in which direction to drive) when a track is driven in reverse, and we already utilize this in STK Enterprise. Some tweaking of the physics has taken place, hopefully resulting in more stable beahviour of karts, and we significantly improved audio handling. A very important and time consuming change was the introduction of scripting: this will allow track designers to include little scripts which are executed by STK to make tracks more dynamic. This allowed us to remove the tutorial implementation in C++, which is now done in AngelScript instead, and as a first example Cocoa Temple now includes barrels that can be destroyed. Hopefully this will result in more interesting and dynamic tracks in the future: you want monkeys to throw coconuts when the karts are coming closer, now you can do this. Finally, many challenges were tweaked to be more balanced.
• As a quick look into the future: we are expecting to further improve the look of STK by replacing the current bitmap-based font system with a TTF renderer, which will hopefully make STK look better in various languages. More work on scripting is also planned, so if you are a 3d modeller and want to implement certain features in your track, let us know what functionality you need. And we have already started on the network implementation. And while this is nothing that will be finished in a month or two, we are working towards a release first with LAN-only support, followed by WAN support later.

What is new in version 0.9:

• 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

What is new in version 0.8.1 / 0.8.2 Beta 2:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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, prefer the proprietary driver to the open source one. 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.

What is new in version 0.8.1:

• New track 'STK Enterprise'
• Updated tracks 'Old Mine', 'Around the Lighthouse' and 'Zen Garden'
• New modes 'Soccer' and 'Egg Hunt'
• New karts 'Xue' and 'Sara'
• Updated 'Beastie' kart
• Wiimote support (for most Wiimotes; check supertuxkart.net/wiimote for instructions and compatibility)
• Added tutorial
• Added new 'SuperTux' difficulty
• New bubblegum shield defensive weapon
• New combined speedometer and nitro meter
• Added ability to filter add-ons
• Updated nitro models
• Added ability to save and resume Grand Prix
• Improved skid marks and particle effects

What is new in version 0.8.1 RC1:

• New track "STK Enterprise"
• Updated tracks "The Old Mines", "Lighthouse", "Zen Garden"
• New Soccer mode
• New Egg Hunt mode
• New karts Xue and Sara
• Updated Beastie kart
• Wiimote support
• Added tutorial
• Added new "SuperTux" difficulty
• New bubblegum shield weapon
• New speedometer and nitro meter
• Add ability to filter addons
• Updated nitro models
• Add ability to save and resume Grand Prix
• Improved skid marks and nitro effects

What is new in version 0.8:

• Story mode and new challenge set
• Improved AI
• Skidding and better collision physics
• Reverse mode
• New green valley track
• New Blackhill Mansion track
• Updated XR591 track
• Updated Fort Magma track
• Updated Jungle track
• Updated Sand track
• New music
• Updated menus

What is new in version 0.7.2 RC1:

• Added in-game addon manager ( see http://stkaddons.net/ )
• Fixed major memory leaks (STK will no longer saturate your memory after half a dozen races)
• New Snow Peak track by Samuncle
• Improved star track UFO by Rudy
• Show when you get a highscore
• Improve gamepad configuration under Windows (add ability to tell gamepads apart)
• Various other tweaks done and glitches fixed

What is new in version 0.7:

• This version is using irrlicht for graphics, and features animations for karts and tracks, a new GUI, many bugfixes, and new and improved tracks, karts, and items.

What is new in version 0.6.1a:

• Bugfix: battle mode would not display track groups.

What is new in version 0.6.1:

• This version fixes some minor bugs of the 0.6 release, adds a new kart, a new battle map, and better support for addon packages.
• We also release a first addon package, which contains 7 additional karts and 6 additional tracks. Both packages can be found on our download page.

What is new in version 0.6:

• New in version 0.6 of the fun kart racing game SuperTuxKart are
• improved physics and kart handling (including drifting and nitro speed boost), new
• powerups (plunger, bowling ball, cake, bubblegum), new and improved tracks (skyline,
• snow mountain, race track, space track, old mine, XR591), a new multi-player game
• mode (3-Strikes Battle with two special arenas), improved and new kart models with a
• better AI, fully positional audio with OpenAL, new music and sound effects (including
• engine, braking and skidding sounds) and much more.

What is new in version 0.6 RC1:

• Finally, just days before Christmas, we managed to bring a first release candidate for 0.6 online. The new version has (among a lot of new tracks and other improvements) improved physics with skidding, nitro, a better AI, and improved sound effects. Feedback is welcome!

Requirements:

• OpenAL
• Irrlicht Engine
• OpenGL