SuperTuxKart 1.2 Brings Better Gamepad Support, Other Features

[uid313]

Like hookers and blackjack?

It's an office suite.

Haha, no but a UI that feels fresh and modern with beautiful, modern icons and subtle, sleek animations. LibreOffice is rather boring, compared to Microsoft Office which is much more fun and pleasant to use. I haven't used Apple iWork but I can imagine it being more fun than LibreOffice too.

[programmerjake]

The video looks really blurry and full of artifacts, or is that the game? If the former, they probably should clean that up.

that's probably because youtube defaults to a really low resolution (360p for me). it probably looks better at 1080p.

[QwertyChouskie]

SuperTuxKart contributor here, ready to answer y'alls questions!

Now if we could only get a Vulkan backend, and some carts driven by cute anime characters...

I definitely feel Kiki qualifies as a cute anime character, especially with 1.2's revamp. (Also there's Konqi)
Benau has repeatedly talked about a Vulkan backend, so we should definitely see one eventually.

...and yet the UX is still atrocious. If I had time, I'd try to contribute to fix it, but I don't.

Examples:

• The default Xbox 360 gamepad bindings (which, judging by their crowing about using SDL now, are probably just as bad for every gamepad) are the most counter-intuitive nonsense I've ever seen. For example, they put "look behind" on A!

I was actually the one to contribute the default mapping, my decision of how to map the A/B/X/Y keys was done this way to allow easily firing both ahead of you (B) and behind you (B+A) while not having to take your finger off Accel (Y). I experimented with using a trigger for accel but it didn't feel right to me. That being said, defaults are easily changed (With SDL2, buttons even show up as e.g. A/B/X/Y in the config menu instead of e.g. Button 7, making checking and changing configs much easier than before)

• If you press Up or Down too many times in the input device configurator, it pops you to the next tab in the options view, leaving you wondering what the hell just happened. (You should have to explicitly go up a level by pressing Left or hitting some kind of OK/Cancel button.)

Menu navigation code is hard It was revamped a few releases ago but there's still bugs here and there. Pull requests welcome!

• D-Pad does nothing by default and no ability (that I could see when looking in what I saw as the obvious place) to bind both the D-Pad and the analog stick to menu navigation at the same time. (Ideally, the whole game should have the ability to treat the D-Pad as equivalent to the first analog stick in case you happen to prefer that for some reason with your particular gamepad.)

That sounds pretty logical, I'll ping Benau, maybe it can be put in the next release.

• In the story mode overworld, you have to press Fire to enter a challenge, but then press Accelerate to confirm the selected difficulty level. (Pressing Fire a second time does nothing. The AVGN ranted about exactly this kind of inconsistency in a Beavis & Butthead a year or so ago.)

Yep, definitely an oversight. Sounds like the perfect first PR for a new contributor, should be pretty quick to code too

• The difficulty selector puts OK on the left and Back on the right, even though it uses a leftward-pointing arrow for Back and controllers like the X-Box 360 pads put Back on the left and Start on the right.

Yep, also definitely an oversight. Also sounds like the perfect first/second PR for a new contributor

• The Difficulty selector behaves like keyboard navigation in an old DOS TUI, where you have to press Up to move the highlight to the row of difficulty icons, or Down to move it to the row of buttons, rather than just having Left/Right always select Difficulty and mapping A/X or A/B or Start/Back to Confirm/Back like any sane kart racing game does when using a gamepad.

That might be a little bit harder to implement, but I'll mention it to Benau.

The video looks really blurry and full of artifacts, or is that the game? If the former, they probably should clean that up.

Looks like whoever recorded the video segments did so at a low bitrate (likely they had underpowered hardware).

Haha, no but a UI that feels fresh and modern with beautiful, modern icons and subtle, sleek animations. LibreOffice is rather boring, compared to Microsoft Office which is much more fun and pleasant to use. I haven't used Apple iWork but I can imagine it being more fun than LibreOffice too.

Have you tried the new Cartoon skin in STK 1.2? LCP and I worked hard on it, should definitely feel nicer. (Also LibreOffice is an office suite, I'm pretty sure they're meant to be boring lol.)

[DanL]

Haha, no but a UI that feels fresh and modern with beautiful, modern icons and subtle, sleek animations. LibreOffice is rather boring, compared to Microsoft Office which is much more fun and pleasant to use.

So you want LO devs to give you a dancing, anthropomorphic paper clip? Good luck with that.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

SuperTuxKart contributor here, ready to answer y'alls questions!



I definitely feel Kiki qualifies as a cute anime character, especially with 1.2's revamp. (Also there's Konqi)
Benau has repeatedly talked about a Vulkan backend, so we should definitely see one eventually.


I was actually the one to contribute the default mapping, my decision of how to map the A/B/X/Y keys was done this way to allow easily firing both ahead of you (B) and behind you (B+A) while not having to take your finger off Accel (Y). I experimented with using a trigger for accel but it didn't feel right to me. That being said, defaults are easily changed (With SDL2, buttons even show up as e.g. A/B/X/Y in the config menu instead of e.g. Button 7, making checking and changing configs much easier than before)

Menu navigation code is hard It was revamped a few releases ago but there's still bugs here and there. Pull requests welcome!

That sounds pretty logical, I'll ping Benau, maybe it can be put in the next release.

Yep, definitely an oversight. Sounds like the perfect first PR for a new contributor, should be pretty quick to code too

Yep, also definitely an oversight. Also sounds like the perfect first/second PR for a new contributor

That might be a little bit harder to implement, but I'll mention it to Benau.



Looks like whoever recorded the video segments did so at a low bitrate (likely they had underpowered hardware).



Have you tried the new Cartoon skin in STK 1.2? LCP and I worked hard on it, should definitely feel nicer. (Also LibreOffice is an office suite, I'm pretty sure they're meant to be boring lol.)

Could you add a eastern green mamba as the micro$tinks mascot ?

[uid313]

Have you tried the new Cartoon skin in STK 1.2? LCP and I worked hard on it, should definitely feel nicer. (Also LibreOffice is an office suite, I'm pretty sure they're meant to be boring lol.)

No, not yet, but I'll try it.

Yeah, you can say that office suites are meant to be boring, and its true, but I've used LibreOffice at home, and Microsoft Office at work, and its just so much more pleasant and less dreadful to use Microsoft Office. I appreciate the pretty icons, the subtle animations when opening/closing tools, and the default color palette and document templates.

So you want LO devs to give you a dancing, anthropomorphic paper clip? Good luck with that.

No, but a harmonic, well thought out color palette, beautiful document templates, some clear, semantic icons, and subtle animations when sidebars, menus, toolboxes, showing/hiding, toggling visibility, etc.

[ssokolow]

I was actually the one to contribute the default mapping, my decision of how to map the A/B/X/Y keys was done this way to allow easily firing both ahead of you (B) and behind you (B+A) while not having to take your finger off Accel (Y). I experimented with using a trigger for accel but it didn't feel right to me. That being said, defaults are easily changed (With SDL2, buttons even show up as e.g. A/B/X/Y in the config menu instead of e.g. Button 7, making checking and changing configs much easier than before)

Yes but, if you're using the SDL Gamepad API, then the expectation is that you will cooperate with the API's ability to normalize button mappings by providing defaults that are as intuitive as possible... and there are conventions for how to map the buttons for a kart racing game.

Here's a quick survey I did of all the racing games I had on hand and ready to quickly check (either with manual handy or ready to turn on for a quick button test), with the button names normalized to what the X-Box 360 calls buttons in those positions and the actions color-coded for easy comparison:

Game	System	A	B	X	Y	LB	RB	LT	RT	Notes
Crash Team Racing	PSX	Accelerate	Use Item	Brake	Toggle Map	Hop/Skid Turn	Hop/Skid Turn	Change Camera	Rear View	Down: Reverse
Diddy Kong Racing	N64	Accelerate	N/A	Brake		Use Item	Skid Turn	N/A	N/A	LB is Z here
F-Zero	SNES	Accelerate	Nitro	Brake	Brake	Skid Turn	Skid Turn	N/A	N/A
F-Zero GX	GC	Accelerate	Side Attack	Brake	Nitro	N/A	Spin Attack	Skid Turn	Skid Turn
Jak X: Combat Racing	PS2	Accelerate	Handbrake/Skid Turn	Brake/Reverse	Rear View	Weapon A	Weapon B	Jump Jets	Nitro
LEGO Racers	N64	Accelerate	N/A	Brake	Rear View	Use Item	Skid Turn	N/A	N/A	LB is Z and Y is Down C
Mario Kart 64	N64	Accelerate	N/A	Brake	Use Item	Use Item	Skid Turn	N/A	N/A	LB is Z and Y is Down C
Mario Kart: Double Dash	GC	Accelerate	Use Item	Brake/Reverse	Use Item	N/A	Swap Characters	Skid Turn	Skid Turn
Mario Kart: Super Circuit	GBA	Accelerate	N/A	Brake	N/A	Use Item	Skid Turn	N/A	N/A
Speed Punks	PSX	Accelerate	Unused	Brake	Change Camera	Skid Turn	Skid Turn	Use Item	Nitro
Stunt Race FX	SNES	Accelerate	Brake/Reverse	Nitro	Hydraulics/Tiptoes	Skid Turn	Skid Turn	N/A	N/A
Super Mario Kart	SNES	Accelerate	Use Item	Brake	Rear View	Skid Turn	Skid Turn	N/A	N/A

Here are the conventions which should be the defaults for any game using the SDL Gamepad API:

• A is Accelerate (this is universal in the kart racers I have access to)
• X is Brake (aside from Stunt Race FX, which isn't quite a kart racer, this is universal in the games I tested)
• Left and right shoulder buttons of some sort (LB/RB or LT/RT) are skid turn. (The only major exceptions are on the Nintendo 64 where the trigger under the left hand (Z) is Use Item and the Gameboy Advance where a button shortage forces the same thing.)
• If you want a "Rear View" binding by default, it should be on either Y or one of the unused shoulder buttons.
• While it doesn't show up strongly in the data I gave, it's preferrable to put Use Item and Nitro in the face buttons rather than the shoulder buttons since, intuitively, they're primary actions and are expected to be on "primary buttons". (Because it's the only proper trigger on the entire controller, the Z trigger on a Nintendo 64 controller is intuitively "primary" despite not being a face button.)
• The convention for firing behind you is to hold Down on the analog stick or D-Pad and press Fire.

Wave Race 64 and Pilotwings 64 aren't even ground-craft racing games and they still follow the same convention as Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing, and LEGO Racers.

DOS and Windows kart racers prior to the XInput API don't have a consistent default mapping across different gameport or DirectInput devices (aside from DOS games like Wacky Wheels and Skunny Kart agreeing that button 1 is Accelerate.) and I don't have any XInput/SDL-era PC kart racers other than STK, so I couldn't include those in the comparison.

Pull requests welcome!

Sounds like the perfect first PR for a new contributor, should be pretty quick to code too

Also sounds like the perfect first/second PR for a new contributor

If you asked me a few years ago, I'd give it a try but,as I said, I just don't have the time to learn a new codebase right now and won't for the foreseeable future.
In fact, expecting to get that as a response (and being sleep deprived) is why I couldn't scrape together the motivation to file bugs/feature requests for these things.

That sounds pretty logical, I'll ping Benau, maybe it can be put in the next release.

That might be a little bit harder to implement, but I'll mention it to Benau.

Thanks.

[geearf]

that's probably because youtube defaults to a really low resolution (360p for me). it probably looks better at 1080p.

Nope, I checked and it was 1080P@60 by default.

Looks like whoever recorded the video segments did so at a low bitrate (likely they had underpowered hardware).

That would explain it. (Is it actually faster at lower bit rate?)
I think it should be redone, to give a better view of the game.

[leipero]

ssokolow I generally agree with what you wrote in the first comment (seems like valid and constructive criticism), however, you should consider the fact that "sane" default controls are quite subjective really.
Let me give you an example, I have no clue how can anyone play with A=accelerate X=brake on XBOX controller type layout, for me, that's insane..., B=brake makes much more sense, why? Because I can use one finger much quicker and easier, by holding thumb between buttons (leaning 1/3 towards accelerate), basically, using that technique you get much quicker response in comparison to using tip of the thumb.

[JMB9]

I was not trampling on SuperTuxKart in this post, I have in the past though, because it runs rather slow and is rather ugly and boring.
I just got to try LibreOffice 7 which I anticipated highly, but it was rather lackluster and boring, it is the same as LibreOffice 6. I had hoped for more.

Sorry, but what are you talking about? Are you playing on Smartphone or under Windows? Or did you have forgotten to update STK since last decade?
STK runs really fast in 1080p on an old, mitigated-to-death Intel Hasswell with a TDP of 45 W and iGPU ... it is among the fastest and most polished games ...
But of cause on current HW it is very fast using 4k ...
And this is a game for local multiplayer - so boring is the absolute opposite of that game.
Maybe you should look how real gamer use this gem before writing such trash.

But concerning LibreOffice - yes, it is office. I you want to get exited concerning quality you must use TeX/LaTeX ... of cause.
On the other hand compared to other office packages it does a quite good job (just to read those files from Office which can no longer be read by current versions of that app or to convert those files to something useful).
Maybe using a program more than 10 min per day may help to get to know something about those programs ... and start really using them.