Super Tux Kart player's manual

Player's Manual

Introduction

SuperTuxKart (abbreviated STK) is a fun kart racing game, focusing on
fun and not on realistic physics. You can find more details on
http://supertuxkart.sf.net
It was originally based on Steve Baker's TuxKart (http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net),
but by now has developed a life on its own. It was
picked up by the Linux Game Tome (http://www.happypenguin.org)
Game of the Month project and got a big overhaul during this time,
but was left in an unfinished state.

A new set of maintainers, namely hiker & coz, took over in 2006,
and since then four official versions (0.2, 0.3, 0.4, & 0.5) have been released.

Requirements

Hardware
* You need a 3D graphics card that can support OpenGL or Mesa.
* You should have a CPU that's running at 450MHz or better.
* You'll need at least 32Mb RAM.
* A sound card would be nice - but it's not essential.
* Ideally, you want a joystick - preferably one with at least 6
buttons - you can also drive from the keyboard or the mouse,
thought currently it is hard to drive with the mouse.

Software
Right now, SuperTuxKart runs under Linux, Windows, and MacOSX.
While we are not aware of any ports to BSD, BeOS, etc., we try to keep the source portable, so you should be able to compile for these platforms without a problem.

You need the following programs installed:

OpenGL (or Mesa 3.0 or later)
    http://www.opengl.org, http://www.mesa3d.org

PLIB 1.8.4
    http://plib.sourceforge.net

SDL 1.2
    http://www.libsdl.org

OpenAL
    http://www.openal.org

ALUT
    http://www.openal.org

You should also be able to get pre-built binaries for various systems, including MacOS X and Windows. Many Linux distributions will have STK in their repositories, or .debs/.rpms will be available.

Controlling your kart

To win races you will need to master your controls. Here are the
predefined controls:

Function	Player 1	Player 2	Player 3	Player 4
Steer	Left / Right arrow	A / D key	F / H key	J / L key
Accelerate	Up arrow	W key	T key	I key
Brake	Down arrow	S key	G key	K key
Use item	Right control	Left Control	N key	. key
Wheelie	Right shift	Left shift	C key	M key
Rescue	Backspace	Q key	R key	U key
Jump	- key	Caps lock	V key	, key
Look back	Right alt	Left alt	N key	/ key

The rescue button is meant to be used if your kart is stuck; it
will send you to the track with your approximate progress, but
it will take a few seconds.

The Escape key pauses the game and shows the race menu. Also,
pressing Escape in a menu will exit from it, and in the main
menu it closes the game.

There are also some special functions:

F10 key - Save the last 1000 frames into a file ./history.dat
This can be used to reproduce problems occurring
during a race. This is mainly useful for developers.

F11 key - Toggle wire-frame view.

F12 key - Toggle frame-per-second display.

Starting for the first time

When you start the game for the first time, some features may be locked. To unlock these features, you must complete certain challenges- the are accessed by selecting “challenges from the main menu.

Game modes

Three different game modes are available:
1) Grand Prix
  A set of several races, each with several laps.

2) Quick Race
   A single race with between 1 and 5 laps (alone or against opponents).

3) Time Trial
   A single race focused on racing, with no collectibles (alone or against opponents).

4) Follow the Leader
   A single race where your goal is to be the closest to
   the leader kart and never be the last one.
  The last kart is eliminated at the end of each round.

The race screen

This screen has several components:

Position display (left) : here you will see the places of
everyone participating in the race; after the leader goes
though the goal, a counter will appear next to their images
showing how much time behind they are. The places are
initially colored in white, which will become a bit more red
with every lap finished; after the race is finished the
place appear in green.

Track map (bottom left corner) : this will show the position
of everyone, in relation to the track; humans are drawn with
bigger dots.

Lap (right of the track map) : the left number shows how many
laps you have completed, the right number shows how many laps
you have to complete to finish the race.

Item (top) : the number of items and what is that you are
holding is displayed here.

Power bar (right) : it displays how much power you have by
grabbing energizers (coins).

Speed bar (bottom right) : shows how fast you are moving.

Steering wheel: when you steer, the front wheels do not rotate
to their limit instantly; instead, they take less than a
second to achieve full rotation. The current rotation is
displayed here.

Current place: here it is shown how much you have advanced in
comparation with your competitors.

Time: how much time it takes for you to reach the goal.

Multiplayer

Split screen multi-player is supported, though you need a
somewhat powerful computer and graphics card to get a high frame
rate in this case. Network multi-player is not yet supported.

When playing with your friends, the screen will be divided in
cuadrants. Even thought there are default controls for all
players, you should change them if you feel uncomfortable, or
if you have a joystick.

Also, after you finish the race, you might want to go back to
give your friends some trouble!

Collectables

There are currently many 'good things' you can get (triggered by
touching an item box) and a few 'bad things'.

When you pick up one of the good things, you will see it on your
item box, and activate it by using an item (see above for
default key bindings).

Bad things happen immediately - and last for a few seconds
before 'going away' by themselves.

Notice that (unlike some kart games), the computer controlled
players also collect and use power-ups in the same way you do.

Energizers gradually fill up the energy level - as you collect
more, you'll find that an item cube will subsequently give you
two, three, four or five power-ups at one time!

Good Things

	Missiles: unguided but fast. If they hit anything (including the track), they explode impressively. The effect on a Kart is to stop it dead - so you have to accelerate again from zero.
	Homing missiles: slower than the regular kind - but they track the nearest kart and are quite hard to shake off.
	Fuzzy blob / Spark: even slower still, a kart can outrun them quite easily. They ricochet off the sides of the track and only explode when they hit a Kart. Since they are not moving fast, they'll tend to stay close to where you dropped them, thoughtyou won't know exactly where.
	Portable Zippers: these are just like the zippers on the track itself - they give you a sudden acceleration and temporarily increase the top speed of your kart.
	Portable parachutes: this pops out the back of all the karts in a better position than you and slows them down a for some seconds. The worse your position is, the higher the probabilities of getting this you have (but they are stillsmall). You can only have one at a time.
	Portable anvil: the driver in the first position gets dragged by a heavy anvil, allowing other drivers to catch up with him... like the portable parachutes, the worse your position is, the higher probabilities of getting this you have. However, you can't get this if the driver in the first position alreadyfinished the race, and you can't have more than one at a time.

Bad Things

Parachute: this pops out the back of your kart and slows you down
a little for a few seconds only. Enough to drop you back one place
if it's a close race though.

Anvil: gets dragged behind your kart on a rope for an even shorter
amount of time than the parachute... but the drag effect is much
stronger; your kart hardly moves at all.

Bomb: after 30 seconds the bomb will explode, but if another kart
touches you, the bomb will be transfered to it and the remaining
time will be reduced by 5 seconds. If you hit a banana while
having a bomb attach, it will explode immediately! Also, the bomb
can't be transfered to the inmediate previous bomb holder.

Game mechanics and tips

As a racer in SuperTuxKart, your goal is to reach the
finish line before your opponents, but as a bonus you might want
to show your awesome driving skills.

The item cubes contain helpful objects; which item you get is
matter of luck. If you have an item already, you will get another
item of the same type if by luck the random selection chooses
the same item type as the one you already have.

The energizers will increase the number of items you grab from a
single item cube. You may only have up to 5 items, except the
anvil and the parachute, since anvils are so heavy and you have
so many parachutes, there is not much room and you can only
carry one!

On the track there could be zippers, which will give you a boost
when you go over them. Avoid water and lava, since you can't
drive on them and you will have to be rescued just before
you touch them!

There are also nasty things left on the track which will put an
anvil or a parachute on your kart.

If you don't have items that you wish to use, try not to be in
a collision course towards other karts, since they might have
items of their own to throw at you! also, if they crash you
could go down with them.

If you are running rather fast, you can pop a wheelie, which gives
you an additional speed boost, but you can't steer your kart
while doing a wheelie (since your front wheels are not touching
the track), so be careful.

When all human controlled karts finish the race, the game will wait
some seconds for the AI to finish the race. If the AI doesn't, it
will estimate the arrival time based on the kart's average speed.

If you are tired of playing the same way, complete some challenges
and you will unlock new features!

Comand line options

Useful command line options:

-N, --no-start-screen   Quick start without any menus
-l, --list-tracks       List all tracks
-k, --numkarts NUM      Number of karts to race
    --kart NAME         Use kart NAME
    --list-karts        Lists all available karts
    --laps NUM          Number of laps to play
    --herring STYLE     Use STYLE as your herring style
-f, --fullscreen        Fullscreen display
-w, --windowed          Windowed display
-s, --screensize WxH    Set screensize, e.g. -s 800x600
-v, --version           Show version
-h, --help              Show command-line options

Support

If you have any problems, please send an e-mail to the
Super Tux Kart mailing list at supertuxkart-devel@lists.sourceforge.net .

The archives of this mailing list can be found at
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=supertuxkart-devel/ .

There is also a wiki on the homepage at http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net .

License

SuperTuxKart is released under the provisions of
the GNU General Public License (GPL).