Re: [TuxKart-devel] tuxgames

[Caleb S. <gam...@gm...>]

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 02:44:52 -0500, Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...> wrote:
> 
> 
> Caleb Sawtell wrote:
> > tuxgames did a review of tuxkart and we will be able to take some of
> > there ideas to make tuxkart better the review can be found here :
> > http://www.linuxgames.com/?dataloc=/reviews/tuxkart/
> 
> Yeah - I can't disagree with most of what they said.  I thought
> the 'ding' they gave us for 'Installing' (5 out of 10) was a
> little harsh.
> 
> Most of the other complaints should get fixed with this GoTM effort.
> 
> Other comments about their review:
> 
> The sounds seem like 'stock' sounds - well, yes - that would be
> because they *are* stock sounds.  (Have you ever *tried* to record
> sounds of your own with a microphone or whatever?  It's just about
> impossible without a folie stage and professional equipment.)
> 
> As for the worry that parents might find it 'offensive' for younger
> players...sheesh!  Can I count this as an educational game?...Educational
> for parents that is?   There isn't a kid alive of an age who could
> play TuxKart who doesn't see fart and belch jokes on TV - or from
> friends or whatever.  Compared to the gore and violence in most games,
> I think a good healthy belch from a Penguin who *loves* his herring is OK.

heh yeah I did not even think that parents would find this 'offensive'
I mean com on they would find it cute or funny :D
> 
> Graphics are 'chunky' - yes - they were designed to run on a Voodoo-1
> and a 133MHz CPU!  That gives you only a thousand or so polygons to
> play with and still get reasonable frame rates.  Most of the karts
> are already up at several hundred polygons - so every polygon that
> could be shaved off - was.  This is certainly an area we can fix if
> we focus on graphics cards with hardware T&L - or even non-T&L hardware
> with a faster-than-133MHz CPU.
> 

lol yeah its very good for a p133 with a voodoo-1 :D

> It's interesting to dig out an old Nintendo 64 and look at MarioKart'64
> (which bears 'certain resemblances' to TuxKart!)...notably, the karts
> in MarioKart'64 were not rendered in true 3D.  They pre-rendered the
> karts from a number of positions - and draw them as flat, 2D billboards.
> The result is that the lighting on them never changes. They have to be
> very careful with camera angles. As the karts turn, they do so in
> distinct 'steps'.  Even so, the couple of levels which we did to look
> like MarioKart levels stand up reasonably well to comparison - even though
> an N64 is much faster than a Voodoo-1 card.
 
wow I did not know that I thought that the  Nintendo 64's did 3d rendering...

> 
> They are dead on with their complaints about game-play.  My AI is just
> pathetic - and interest from users died out before I got around to
> writing any 'series' competition modes.  I think a split-screen 2 player
> or 4 player mode would help a lot - but back then, we barely had the
> throughput to render one scene - let alone 2 or 4.

to true

> 
> The complaint about needing a track editor is a bit unfair.  Tuxkart
> doesn't need a special track editor - you can build tracks fairly easily
> in Blender or AC3D - in a sense, those *are* the track editors.

is there AC3D for linux?

> 
> The version of Tuxkart in CVS supports 'mirrored' tracks which adds some
> extra life to the existing levels.

I will go check it out tomorrow

> 
> Overall, a fair statement of the current state of the game...but hopefully
> that's all about to change.
>

yeah :D
 
> ---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
> HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>    WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
> HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
> Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
>             http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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