Slashdot Mirror
Tuxracer 1.0 Retail Version Finished
Nailer writes "Tuxracer 1.0 is complete Version 0.6 has been downloaded over a million times, and 1.0 looks like it will kick its older siblings arse. This latest version has a massively improved set of features compared to the earlier versions, including multiplayer support, far more detailed tracks, new hazards (giant boulders, better trees, vehicles, and entire towns with roads, houses, castles, fountains, etc) new players (a girl tux, a funky polar bear, and others), split screen multiplay, internationalization, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff. Take a look at the screenshots and trailer movie. The initial release of the game will be proprietary for Windows and Linux (and perhaps Mac), but some of the code from 1.0 will be released as Open Source. Sunspire are still looking for a publisher, but should be taking direct orders soon. And when they do, I'm buying it."
Too bad it has gone to closed source.. older versions used to be free (as in beer & GPL).
You can still download the source of the 0.61 version directly from their homepage, or from sourceforge
-J
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
I couldn't find the link to the trailer movie... can someone point the way?
I've been following the development of this, and it's nice to see a game being developed simultaneously for Linux and Windows, rather than being released on Linux a year or more after the Windows counterpart.
I also like the fact that the binaries for all platforms will be on one CD. I'm tired of buying two copies of games if I want to run them on both Linux and Windoze.
Hopefully they will find a partner and be successful. It could be a good shot in the arm for Linux game development. It will be hard for them to say who is running it on what platform though, but I can live with that in return for getting all of the binaries in one box.
or does this look like a big load of shit that's only got on here cos it stars a penguin?
;-).
I'll get my coat
Just out of interest - who has intellectual property rights over the Tux character?
Well done slashdot / Nailer / Timothy.
is the penguin so slooowww! only 73km/h as maximum speed (at least on the screenshot) if not fun enough, i hope they will have introduced a bonus to boost it up to 300km/h :)
The 'real work' in a game is pretty much split 50/50 between programming and things like artwork, level design etc. I'm sure there are exceptions (Final Fantasy could be one), but that's been pretty much the way it is on the games I've worked on.
This is one of the reasons I can't agree with RMS. Why is it that someone who creates some music, a level design, some textures or a model deserves compensation for their hard work, but somehow someone who spends just as much energy writing code does not?
I'm really not trying to troll here, but IMHO a game called "Tux Racer" will conjure up images of racing butlers. Without a more exciting name, people who don't know or care about "tux" the linux mascot will turn their noses up at this game.
I sure hope Boris the polar bear (one of the playable charachters) drinks Open Cola and not coke.
John Carmack fan, browsing at +5 since 1999.
TuxRacer started as an open-source game and as such it was right to use Tux. But as a commercial game I feel like little Tux has been betrayed.
Remember what Tux stands for. It's Tux not Mario or Sonic. He's a free animal and I want it to stay this way. I won't buy this game.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Isn't closing the source on a GPL'd project a violation of the GPL?
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
Race with the Super Mario characters.
Race with the Disney characters.
Race with the Looney Tunes characters.
Race with the Hanna Barbera characters.
Race with the Donkey Kong characters.
Race with the Star Wars characters.
Race with the Austin Powers characters.
Race with the South Park characters.
Race with the Muppet Show characters.
Race with the Disney characters again, except something went wrong and only three disney characters are there.
You know where were heading, don't you? Mary-Kate and Ashley mall racing, that's where.
God help us. God help us all.
Forget the fact you can download it for free, or have it included with your favorite linux distribution; convience of getting it off the shelf at best buy under the GPL GAME SECTION for five bucks a pop, is the way to go.
The proprietary version will probably be 30$ and they'll sell 10,000 or so vs. 75,000 gpl'd games at 5$ a pop.
--the temptation to exploit users through hidden code is too great for proprietary software. ie.. haven't they learned anything yet? 300,000 gross sales for propiretary version vs. 375,000 for gpl games, you do the math!
More cool screenshots can be found at this link :
http://www.sunspirestudios.com/images/
Indeed - check out the new competitive team based mode, with voice commands and enemy taunts!
The GPL is a grant of additional rights, that you the user has. It in no way restricts the original copyright owner from exercising their right to exploit their copyright in other ways. So long as no-one else contributed to the current code base, the fact that prior versions were GPL is irrelevant.
Didn't see it anywhere on the site, but most competitors in the down-hill snowracers business (as in snowboard games & the likes although few on the PC) always features a bunch of tricks you can preform to obtain higher scores. Something that really increases the replay value. Or why not add weapons and downhill-deathmatch?
Imagine a 360-inverse-tux-flip or perhaps a tux-slide.. There's no end to the possibilities =)
That put aside, the linux version wil be mine.
I think this is the perfect platform to place this game on. This game is perfect for kids of all ages, which Nintendo prids them selves on having a platform of the same ideology. This could bring HUGE exposure to the game and probably be the place where it is most successful since consols make for better multiplayer splitscreen platforms than the Computer.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Why should they be free?
Why shouldn't the person who created the code/art be entitled to compensation for the work they put in?
This is one of the things that I really don't understand about RMS's philosophy. He asks 'how can it be wrong to share a program with one's friend?' without asking 'how can it be fair to make use of another person's work without compensating them for the effort they put into it?'
I remember downloading it and thinking it was kinda neat. An OpenGL game written with linux in mind, and it's somewhat entertaining. While I think it above many other GPL games in many respects, I don't think it's so great as to be worth anything money wise when you look at the market out there.
The gameplay is pretty straightforward and boring. Doesn't even seem as interesting as, say, the snowboarding mini-game in Final Fantasy VII, which wasn't even meant to stand on its own. Snowboarding games and the like typically offer a significant deal more than TuxRacer, and for this reason if I was going to shell out cash for a game of this genre, I'd go with a good game.
For another thing, the graphics are not that spectacular. The scenery has some nice textures, but the characters and objects are simple gouraud shaded polygons, and even then the polygon count in the player models and how they are put together is now substandard. I understand that having a low polygon count helps performance, but companies like Square show how you can really have some decent looking graphics without complex geometry.
All in all it was a neat little game that kept my attention for a few minutes when I first got it. It's not on the level of any commercial competition in my opinion, considering games from 97 have roughly equivalent graphics and the gameplay is really boring and repetitive, with next to nothing to spruce it up.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Looks like the authors have the same problem seperating the poles as Gary Larson lamented. Oh, well, it's just a game. ;-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Don't eat yellow snow"?
I didn't realise there was a game option for the polar bear to piss himself on the way down... Or does Tux leave a _yellow_ groove in this version?
Grab.
It looks like a good gift for the holiday season!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
With that particular perspective of Tux going down the hill, I was wondering how they were going to differentiate between a girl Tux and a boy Tux. Looking at the screenshots, I am glad they decided on a bow and a pink snowsuit :]
The tuxracer 0.61 tree has been forked - it is called Openracer and stays GPL.
e s/ OpenRacer
:pserver:anonymous:@cvs.openracer.sourceforge.net: /cvsroot/openracer
They try to move away from the original game, though, in order not to interfere with the commerical versions' development.
Their site is at:
http://moria.mit.edu:8080/wf/dev/systems/releas
You can check the source out from cvs using CVSROOT
Please note that it will need the newest plib version from CVS, too, though.
It's simply because they (Sunspire) are the original authors of the code. When they placed it under the GPL, they did not lose the right to give it to anyone under a different license.
It's not a derivative work! It's the original work!
It seems that I am the only karma whore on the line that still remember about the openracer project:r
1 9&mode=thread
http://moria.mit.edu:8080/wf/dev/systems/OpenRace
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/02/20262
Good point! Conversely, I bought Sonic because I thought it was a game about a bunch of roller-skating waitresses in tiny skirts.
...
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I couldn't care less about Half-life or Diablo, and don't get me started about Super 3D Virtua Kick The Shit Out Of Rendered Anime Guys Champion Edition. I play a lot of MAME and newer games with outstanding gameplay like Bomberman, Myst, Quake 2, and Chu Chu Rocket. As far as racing goes I haven't really seen anything since Road Rash that was fun, and really Road Blasters was pretty much the pinnacle of fantasy driving experience. I can't imagine myself ever playing a snowboarding game, but Tux Racer is kinda pretty, whimsical, easy to pick up in 30 seconds and put down when you're bored with it, and satisfying.
Playing it with adult family members leads me to the same conclusion. For the 80% of the population who's never touched a Playstation 2, games like Tux Racer are an embarassment of riches. Finding out that it "just comes with Linux" just makes them sort of stare blankly and then a month later ask me if they should run Linux instead of Windows. (I still haven't answered "yes" to anyone because things like Reader Rabbit and American Greetings don't work under WINE yet.)
I'm not sure it'll make it if it ever gets to retail shelves, even with all the extra nice stuff I see in the screenshots -- I kind of expect to see it in the 10 dollar bin at Staples or computer shows pretty quickly -- but the vast middle ground of people who like games but not enough to know what "CTF" stands for or buy a Playstation are the perfect market for Tux Racer.
At any rate, I'm going to pick up a copy just so my partner and I can race each other in real time instead of having to take turns.
Guess what this game seems to be worth boys and girls.
Well, it sounds like it's worth about $5 to you. Which means you may just not get to have a copy, I guess.
For me, I'd be willing to pay $30-$35 for it, as the original Open Source Tux Racer was a hell of a lot of fun, and I'm willing to pay up for the man-years of effort that have gone into the game since then.
In any case, Economics 101 says that the best way to price things in a free market is to find the optimum price, where the most money will be earned.. if someone out there was willing to pay one million dollars for their copy, then that's what SunSpire should charge.. million bucks free and clear, and if a second person ever wanted to buy it, then that's gravy..
In the real world, they'll probably price it somewhere in the 20-40 buck range, depending on how good they think the game is and how well they can market it. They'll hopefully get a good bunch of sales, then if their sales start to drop off, they'll put it on sale and maybe someday it'll be at a price even you, personally, can afford.
Open Source is well and good (I've spent the last 6 years working on a GPL'ed project), but Linux needs commercial software development to be successful.. it's okay if you have only a handful of Open Source databases, or only a couple of complete Open Source web servers, but if you want to get a consumer mass market, you need hundreds and thousands of games, and there's only so many people with the talent, desire, and disposable resources to produce open source games.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
In other words, Sunspire Studios won't have Tux Racer out in time for the biggest shopping season for games.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
installation for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000
Obtain the tuxracer-win32-.zip file from the Downloads page.
Unzip this file to your hard drive. You will need a program like Winzip to do this.
You're done!
installation for Linux
Make sure you have (and have correctly installed) the following libraries:
An implementation of the OpenGL API version 1.1 or greater (Mesa versions >= 3.2 work; see http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net). Note that you will need a hardware-accelerated implementation of OpenGL in order for Tux Racer to be playable.
The GLUT library, version 3.7 beta or greater. This is distributed in the MesaDemos package, so if you have installed Mesa you probably also have GLUT. Otherwise, see http://www.opengl.org.
Tcl Version 8.0 or greater.
(Optional) Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) Version 1.1.1 or greater. This is required for joystick support.
(Optional) SDL_mixer Version 1.0 or greater. This is required for sound and music support.
Obtain the tuxracer-.tar.gz and tuxracer-data-.tar.gz files from the Downloads page.
Unpack the code tarball:
shell$ tar xvfz tuxracer-.tar.gz
shell$ cd tuxracer-
Configure for your system:
shell$
Many people will be able to run configure without passing any options. The more commonly-used configure options are:
--prefix=DIR: Specify where to install tuxracer. (The tuxracer binary will be placed in DIR/bin)
--with-tcl-libs=DIR: Specify Tcl library location
--with-tcl-inc=DIR: Specify Tcl header file location
--with-tcl-lib-name=NAME: Specify Tcl library base name
--with-gl-libs=DIR: Specify OpenGL library location
--with-gl-inc=DIR: Specify OpenGL header file location
--with-glut-libs=DIR: Specify GLUT library location
--with-glut-inc=DIR: Specify GLUT header file location
--enable-stencil-buffer: Use if your hardware has a stencil buffer
--with-data-dir=PATH: Location of tuxracer data directory (can be also configured in options file later)
Run
Compile:
shell$ make
Tux Racer should compile cleanly, with few (if any) warnings. Please see the FAQ or our Support page if Tux Racer fails to compile.
Install the tuxracer binary:
shell$ make install
Unless you specified the --prefix option when you ran configure, this command will install the tuxracer binary in
Install the data files:
shell$ cd
shell$ tar xvfz
shell$ mv tuxracer-data- tuxracer
You may install the data files anywhere you wish, but tuxracer looks in
You're done!
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Point is, all that stuff is there and waiting when you need it. That convenience is worth something.
The vast majority of people do not wish to spend time looking for libraries, or downloading and compiling source, or any of that stuff. They want it all ready for them.
My freshman year, I had a C professor who watched my pitiful attempts to find the optimal solution to a sorting problem. This thing would be rarely used, and not all that critical, and not often executed. He told me, "Let it go. Programmer time is always more expensive than CPU time." Point is, you have to look at the optimal solution in terms of preserving what's valuable rather than what's technically superior. Make a person go through 5 minutes of work to save $.12 worth of hardware and they'll run away from your solution like it's coated in anthrax.
My time is far more valuable than the 25MB of hard drive space DirectX takes up. I'm glad it's installed by default in WinXP. I was able to get my XP box up and gaming in ten minutes. It's been a month, and I still can't get my Linux box to run quake3.
1.0 is a completely different game from 0.61. Yes, nobody would buy 0.61, its a vey ancient tech demo.
In 0.61 you:
* Skied / jumped down a slope
* Tried to race on icy bits to get the lowest time
* Collected herring which didn't do anything
* Enjoyed the occasional jump
* Stop moving when you hit something
In 0.1
* Race opponents (computer controled and split screen)
* Deal with hazard like falling ice blocks, moving vehicles, giant boulders, interfering opponents, logs across your path, stumps, moving cable cars, ice spikes, falling snow, etc.
* Have cool ice tunnels to use centrifugal force to climbs the walls within
* Actually collect herring to contribute to your score, which can be places in the sky and only accessible via jumping from a ramp or perhaps a hidden rooftop, making the game much more challenging
* Ski through slopes, towns, ice tunnels, fountains, roads, etc. More detailed backgrounds and artwork make the levels much more unique and complex, check out the realistic trees and beautiful sunsets
* Stop moving when you hit something in a way that makes it seem like you actually hit something
* The path may diverge in more than one direction, meaning there can be hidden shortcuts.
1.0 is nothing like 0.61. Yes, 0.61 sucks as a videogame (as I said, its an ancient tech demo) but 1.0 (from the screenshots and trailer movie) looks like being a quality game up there with most Nintendo titles, and, more to the point, worth my cash.
Last version of Tuxracer I played was old and crusty from many months ago, but it did have the capacity to do stunts and tricks.
Hold down the jump key, wait until it powers up, then release it and slam a direction key. You'll spin end of end, flipper over shoulder, or even do a fancy horizontal pirouette.
It's all in there ... you just gotta read the docs. (Docs weren't added to make the gzip larger.)