[tuxracer-devel] Re: Tux Racer review

[Jasmin P. <jf...@mu...>]

On Wed, 19 Apr 2000, Lee Anderson wrote:

> Hi Jasmin

Hi!

> I'd like to introduce myself first off. My name is Lee Anderson, and I
> write articles, in particular gaming articles, for LinuxWorld. I have
> happened to take an interest in Tux Racer, and will be doing a review of
> the game due for publication in June. The story proposal has already
> been accepted by LinuxWorld and had a deadline on the 5th of May, but
> was pushed back due to a backlog of work on their end.

That's great -- thanks for deciding to write an article about Tux Racer!

> Anyway, enough of the formalities.  I will begin writing my article this
> week, but would like to ask a few questions that will hopefully help me
> with the direction of you project.
> 
> First off, what was the inspiration for creating Tux Racer? I realize
> that it was a project for a graphics course you took, but is there any
> particular reason for using Linux and the Linux mascot in your game? Did
> the course center on using Linux for development of such graphics?

Initially, Tux Racer evolved somewhat haphazardly.  One of the
assignments in the course was to create a 3D "puppet" that could be
positioned by selecting and moving parts of the puppet (the purpose was
to teach us hierarchical modelling, among other things).  We were only
required to do a very basic "stick-man" type of puppet, but were
encouraged to be more creative, and I thought it would be cool to create
a puppet of Tux.  Why Tux?  I'm (obviously) a big fan of Linux  -- I've
been using it full time since 1997, and off-and-on before that -- and it
just seemed like an obvious choice.

The final project in the course was open -- we were required to submit a
proposal for approval, and -- once the instructors and TAs approved it
-- implement and demonstrate it.  I thought it would be fun to use my
Tux model in some kind of game, and having recently played 1080
Snowboarding (a N64 game) at a friend's place, I came up with the basic
idea of Tux sliding down a snow-covered mountain.

The machines used in the course were SGI Octanes -- there is a lab full
of them at the school, but there were more students than machines so I
sought a way to do my work at home under Linux.  I did some research on
the web, and a week later I had a new Celeron 366@550 w/ Voodoo3 2000
that I could use for working on Tux Racer (my old P90 w/o 3D
acceleration just wouldn't have cut it :).  The development went very
smoothly, and the port from Linux/Mesa to Irix/OpenGL was as easy as
changing the Makefile (and I had the pleasant realization that my home
machine outperformed the SGI workstations!).

> Secondly, where would you like Tux Racer to head. Are you aiming for
> something like "Coolboarders" or 'Tony Hawk's Skateboarding" on the Sony
> Playstation, or are you just looking for a downhill racer? What about
> tricks for tux? Multiplayer? What I am looking for is what features are
> planned to be added and what would like to be added.

Because the game originated as a graphics project, it's still very
bare-bones in terms of gameplay.  I hope to correct that soon.
There's a development plan posted at
http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/plan.html , and it lists some of the
gameplay-type things that we hope to add.  There's currently a good
discussion about this on the tuxracer-devel mailing list, and many of
the details are being hammered out.  

Here's the tentative plan: the courses will be divided into groups
("cups" like in MarioKart), and to advance to the next group you'll have
to beat a certain total score in the current group.  You'll be given a
certain amount of lives to do this in -- "dying" during a race means
you'll have to start that race over, and losing all of your lives means
you have to start the group from the beginning.  

Points will be awarded based on completion time, tricks performed in
mid-air, a health bonus (based on how much health you complete the
course with), bonus points scattered throughout the course, etc.  

There will also be MarioKart-style accelerator chevrons on the course,
teleporters (which teleport you to somewhere else on the course -- not
always a shortcut), as well as strategically-placed "extra-life" tokens.
It's been suggested that we add a Coolboarders-style chairlift so that a
race can consist of multiple laps; I'm reserving judgement until I
actually play Coolboarders, though it sounds like a good idea.

Other things in the works: music (Joseph Toscano is working
on that, and has already contributed some excellent tunes) and sound
effects; we've decided to use SDL and the SDL_mixer library for that.
We also would like to allow course designers to place 3D models on the
courses, and for that we'll go with Steve Baker's PLIB library (which
will also be used for the UI and joystick support).  James Barnard has
done some promising work on sound effects and 3D models for use in the
game.

One more thing that I should mention: Steve Baker (author of Tux: A
Quest for Herring) has suggested that we aim for a consistent "style"
for our Tux games, similar to the consistency that exists between all of
the Mario games.  To do that Tux Racer will use silver and gold herring
for health bonuses, spinning Tuxes for extra lives, etc.

> Thirdly, is there any intention of additional controls? By this I
> basically mean joysticks.

Yes, once we have the ability to do tricks a joystick/gamepad will
definitely come in handy, and support for them is planned. I suppose
I'll have to go buy one. :)

> That's all I have to ask at this stage - I can assure you I will have a
> few more questions when writing commences. I look forward to hearing and
> working with you/your team. (I intend on *trying* to make a few levels
> to contribute, to demonstrate the level-creation process to readers.)

Ok, feel free to ask away.  I hope you don't mind that I'm CC'ing this to
the tuxracer-devel list; other developers might have things to add
(tuxracer-devel'ers: make sure you CC: Lee in your reply).  Creating new
courses is actually quite easy (there's a short primer in the README);
all you need is the Gimp, and it becomes even easier if you use Ingo
Ruhnke's script-fu scripts (on the Tux Racer webpage).  Again, don't
hesitate to ask if you have questions.

Cheers,
Jasmin

-- 
Jasmin Patry               Master's Student, Dept. of Computer Science
jf...@cg...         http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~jfpatry/