Hi,
thanks all of you for your feedback. I'll try to add some comments in one mega posting:
fmx wrote:Try adding some shadows in there if you can
Atm the performance of STK is not that good (partly due to kart animations, which can be disabled in the GUI; partly because of the tracks not being too optimised). That's why I mentioned that we would welcome some people more experienced with irrlicht etc. But we hope that after the 0.7 release we will be able to add some performance optimisations, and see how much more eye candy we can add.
Yoran wrote:
- sounds slows and speeds up
What frame rate do you get (press F12 in game will display this). Usually (since atm audio is not running in a separate thread) audio problems are most likely caused by the game being too slow. You can try to run with less karts, or perhaps the best option is to disable kart animations (in the options menu). Does this fix the audio problems?
Yoran wrote:
- the car turns really really slow -> turning circle of 20m
Are you aware of the sharp-turn key (see help menu). We hope to get better skidding in soonish.
Yoran wrote:
- you should not create files in roaming directory but local appdata
Now we kind of don't. We use $APPDATA, so this must include 'roaming' on your machine. Is there any other variable we can use (or test for) to find an appropriate location?
Looking at the picture I see some strange warning messages:
./data/gui/screen1610.png not found and
couldn't find current skin. That's a bit strange - do you have any idea what might be happening? Did you change your skin? Do you see icons in the video option screens?
For the release we have to disable a few more warnings which are normal, so that warnings like the ones above are more obvious.
hybrid wrote:I wasn't able to race so far, but I noticed that the program menu entry (i.e. windows one) does not have an icon.
Good point, I have to check what happened.
Moreover, some text was not fully rendered.
The GP names I assume? That slipped through, no one noticed that *blush*
Oh, and who did the German translation, this is pretty funny at some points.
Glad that I am not the only one thinking this (I've been away from Germany for 10+ years, so my German is a bit rusty). Well, the translations are on launchpad, so I can only hope that someone improves the translations.
Lonesome Ducky wrote:This is, in my opinion, the most professional and fun game I've seen on the forums. Thankfully I haven't experienced any of the problesm the others have
Thanks a lot for that comment (though I wouldn't agree ... yet. We hope to become really really good by the time we hit 1.0
). And I hope that we can solve the other issues as well.
CuteAlien wrote:Screenshots look great. I tried running it on Linux (with current svn 1.7 branch), but GUI causes still some troubles - it scrolled menues throughout, so it was hard to select something.
That's strange. Did you use the keyboard, or a gamepad? I would suspect that a gamepad kept on sending events, causing the GUI to keep on changing. If you have a gamepad plugged in, first try to pull it out, and/or disable the device in the gui settings. If this solves the problem, then it might be that the deadzone settings are too low. Could you try starting stk with ../supertuxkart --gamepad-debug? This will print the values received by stk. The default deadzone is set to 2000. So if you see many values larger than this, try changing the deadzone value: unfortunately (as I've just found out) this can't be done in a config file, so you would have to change DEADZONE_JOYSTICK in src/input/input.hpp and recompile.
I'll try to make this setting configurable for the 0.7 release.
fritzgryphon wrote:It does seem a little hard, though. You can't overtake the AI drivers unless they hit a hazard or weapon.
Yes, atm all karts are equal. But there are a few less obvious options: you can use slipstream (drive in slipstream with the slipstream effect showing), till some small nitro is shown. Then you will get a speed boost when you come out of slipstream. You can use nitro. Or a zipper on the track (e.g. in the math class look for some 'paper' on the floor
). Or my favourite: use a plunger (which will pull you forward, and the target kart backwards a bit).
We hope to make the karts all different in the future, so you can pick a kart that matches your driving style.
fritzgryphon wrote:If -you- hit a hazard, you pretty much lose automatically. Turning-heavy tracks, like the colorful indoor playroom track, seem to be the worst. I couldn't figure out how to turn tightly without slowing down (no power-slide), though the AI seems unaffected.
All karts should be equal, but I will certainly check that (for a while we had given the AI some advantages, since it was too bad). But we have improved the driving, and I think removed all 'cheating' for AI karts. ATM you have to use 'sharp turning' (see help menu), but yes, that will slow you down a bit. Or you can use a plunger - if you hit part of the track, you will be pulled towards it, that might help (though it's probably difficult). Better powersliding is hopefully to come in one of the next minor releases.
fritzgryphon wrote:Mario Kart slowed the AI cars down if the player was losing, and it keeps the race interesting.
Yes, we will try to add this, too. It's a bit difficult to tune (the original tuxkart did this, but not too good, so the best option to win was to stay behind till the last half of the last lap, and only then to overtake - otherwise the AI karts would get supersonic-mega-high speed shooting past you without any chance
).
fritzgryphon wrote:At the beginning of each race, I seem to be frozen on the spot for a few seconds, while everyone else races ahead. At first I thought it was like the Mariokart burnout mechanic, but it doesn't seem to matter when I press the gas, I always get frozen. This could be clarified.
You should see a 'Penalty-time' message if you press 'accelerate' too early. We have decided to implement a startup boost non-Mario-Kart-style: you have to press accel very quickly after the 'go' (but not before). We have to wait how people like this. I think it better represents the tension before a race (while the MK style of pressing accel while 'set' is there feels a bit ... dull), is a bit risky - but if players don't like it, we might have to switch.
fritzgryphon wrote:The purpose of the cupcake weapon is ambiguous until you use it (and then when you do it's pretty cool). The other weapons are pretty self-explanatory
It's just the equivalent of a shell. Oh, are you aware that you can use most weapons backwards (look backwards and fire)?
fritzgryphon wrote:It's unclear why running over a banana peel attaches dynamite to my car.
Something randomly bad happens to you. Note if you have the dynamite and drive into another kart, the dynamite is passed on (and it can be passed back to you directly either).
fritzgryphon wrote:
The characters and cars are visually appealing, though it's difficult to tell the performance characteristics of each car without trying it.
ATM all karts are equal. We will improve on this later, and then also display some kind of stats of all karts.
fritzgryphon wrote:Most of the confusing stuff is explained in the controls menu (sharp turns, nitro, etc). But as I did, most people will just jump into the game without reading the help first
That's is a good point, and I got this message generally from new players: it's easy to pick up, but you might miss a few things. We should add a small tutorial (perhaps as some small challenges) do explain all the small things that people might miss otherwise.
Again, thanks a lot to all your feeback - highly appreciated!
Cheers,
Joerg
I'll be sure to check out the demo once I have time, the screenshot looks very promising though.
