You can probably speak to Wax, il utilise Blender et parle français tout comme moi

Alayan has indeed an history of disappearing for months then suddenly reappear, though this time, after a full year of not logging in here, not sure if he will ever come back... Nobody has any news from him.
You can try to send him a message here or on GitHub, who knows...

Afaik Benau is the only remaining Stk Core Developer right now, so expect the development to be slow... And we are not a company with billions to spend, programmers and artists also have lives and there might be long cool down periods where not much happens. Who knows, maybe the situation in a year will be completely different.

Stk is a community project where everyone can contribute, so if you want to speed up a bit the development, you can yourself help if you have some programming or artistic skills and make concrete contributions.
But there is no use in pointing out the fact that things are currently slow and posting on several forums to get answers that don't exist or that you already know.

Of course that is not what I mean.
At some point someone used the popularity argument to include Mod Circuit to Stk Addons, I was referring to that.
What I mean is just because something is popular, does not always make it a good idea to include it in the game, I was responding to your "on the other hand online players seem to favour it and they are the much bigger group" phrase.
The community will make propositions and influence the game, but ultimately it is the developers that make the final decisions based on practical and technical rationales.

Well there are a lot of simple improvements that could accompany such track changes, like some balancing (make Heavy/Lightweights speed +/-4% rather than 5% or so), reduce the number of Ai karts in Story Mode, put the new Shifting Sands that everyone was talking about at some point, scale Zen Garden properly, maybe add some good Addons Tracks...
In that case, and assuming that 2.x will not be out until years, then I would actually support having a 1.4-1.6 category or something like that. We should just ensure that after these changes, we are good for at least 3-4 releases, with no compatibility breaks.
The point would be to have some significant 1.x turning point. Otherwise if it is just updating the tracks like that, I am strongly against and would rather wait years before a new category.

Regarding the versioning, it is the same debate as the Linux kernel that was forever 2.x, then suddenly someone decided that it should be 3.x now, and now we are at 5.x and soon 6.x. Or FireFox that used to remain for years in versions like 2.x, 3.x... then started to inflate that number for some reason, and now we are at 100+...
At the end it is just a number...

Wax sent me some screenshots so I saw the changes more concretely.
The changes are certainly debatable. It appears to improve the issue of the first person monopolizing the Nitro due to the long respawn time, but adding Nitro at more places will also still tend to favor a frontrunner that does not have any competition, and I don't see the need of doing that or adding Bananas.
I would be slightly in the "against" side...

I just express my opinion, if a large majority of people like that then fine. Though I also remember Alayan saying that the development should not be affected just because a change is super popular. With this reasoning we would have added Mod Circuit as a Standard Track, but I am sure that nobody plays on that anymore now...
Technical and practical aspects must be considered, and regarding that, the compatibility break is concerning and I am strongly against this. And we should certainly not make such decision on a whim over the course of just a few days!

Frankly, if the changes are not groundbreaking like that, yes, I would wait forever.
Unless there are enough versions planned like 1.5 and 1.6 before 2.x, AND you guarantee that there is not any compatibility break in 1.4-1.6 or so. But in that case just name 1.4 2.0, take the opportunity to make some more improvements, and keep the super big ones like new Story Mode for 3.x.

Affecting unexpectedly the compatibility would also create a bad precedent...
Many people are for some reason still using old versions too and if it becomes the trend to add or move a few Bananas or Nitros every minor version update that would quickly become a huge mess. There will also be servers that are slow to upgrade, etc.

Where can I see the changes concretely?

This is surprising, wasn't the game supposed to maintain compatibility until 2.x?
Is Alayan no longer developing? I am sure that he would strongly oppose to this...

With such changes, we would likely need to create a new/separate 1.4 category, unless they are not that important, after all, in 1.x, there were Iirc some shortcut changes in Xr591, and other menu changes that made one save a few s or so in Story Mode. But if you made this post, I suppose that they are significant enough.

The invalidation of older records is solved with that new category. But what I would really not like is to bloat the Leaderboard with 1.0-1.3/1.4/2.x categories... Once 2.x is out, there will probably be nothing in 1.4 and nobody would run that I think. I don't want to have another Misc category like 0.9.0-0.9.2 to manage... That would also be really annoying to regrind to make 1.4 runs if you made a lot of 1.0-1.3...
An option would also be to ban runs starting from 1.4 until 2.x.

My opinion is that we should not make track changes until the development for the 2.0 release starts, so 1.4 runs can be included in 1.x.
I posted it in the Irc.

Regarding your i) point, I would need to see the changes concretely in order to make my own analysis about this. Wax also gave me some details, like how it would favor Heavyweights even more, so if they frontrun like you say, that would indeed be bad...

So Stk 1.3 will be released soon. There are contradictory info whether there will be an 1.4 or if we will directly get 2.0 like there were no 0.9.4, but I think that we can already start discussing about Stk 2.0 here.

One thing for sure is that Ghost recordings will no longer be accepted as discussed a long time ago ( https://www.speedrun.com/stk/thread/39mav/5#17pbc ), videos will have to be recorded directly while playing, though Ghosts could still be accepted in the cases that do not require proof (for example IL 10% longer than Top Run).

I don't know if some fundamental game physics/mechanics (speed, accelerations, kart parameters,...) will be changed in 2.0 like for 0.9.3 -> 1.0. I am aware of a few tracks being revamped like Shifting Sands or an upscaling of Zen Garden. Thing is, if only a few tracks change a lot and the mechanics remain the same, it would be weird to have a whole new 2.x category where many ILs are basically the same between 1.x and 2.x, with runs that should obsolete each other.

There are plans of making a new Story Mode so there will certainly be a new 2.x for Full Runs.

For Stk Addons, I will make a new Mod some time after 2.0 is out. If there are Standard Tracks that are removed then they will go to Stk Addons 2 and their times must not be submitted here. The already existing thread for new tracks in the other forum can be used to suggest inclusion of new Addons.

You are welcomed to share important Stk development information that affects speedrunning here.

Speedrunners can also discuss about things that should be fixed in 2.0. Annoying things, bugs,... Or suggest things.
I think that there should be less Ai karts in the Story Mode...
We all know about the Checkline glitch that reduces for some reason the Finish Time in some tracks, this should be fixed. That would notably help for the GPs.
I suppose that the unintended shortcuts like the Volcan Island ones or the Gran Paradiso Island Big Jump will be fixed as well...

No, this run would be rejected. I will clarify this in the General Rules.

There were once a separate Android category, but as such runs are really uninteresting given the direct access to the final level, it was removed.
Android Runs for ILs are accepted, however.

If the Story Mode in Android one day becomes the same as in Windows or Linux, we could start accepting Android Full Runs and put them in the same category as the other ones. But if it is just a stripped down version of the "Desktop" one, we should not have a separate category.

The General Rules say that there are no strict criteria regarding this, a moderator can accept or reject a submission due a low quality recording at his own discretion. We are indeed fairly lenient, however if there are large parts missing, we will most likely reject the run (unless it is not a top run and more than 10% worse than the top run, which is not the case here as you are the first to submit).

You may still ask someone to record the Ghost for you, I am just not sure if you cannot record the Ghost due to performance issues in this particular track or if the Ghost itself is broken. In the latter case, you will have to make another run. Otherwise you can either upload yourself the video or let the other person do it, but in both cases you must be the one to submit it in Speedrun.com.

Live Runs from Frankfurt Speedrun are now explicitly accepted in reaction to the latest submitted run.
I don't really see anything against that, one should not be able to get any advantage running there and at worst getting great times there may be a bit more difficult, which is acceptable Imo.
I added the Frankfurt Speedrun Subversion, be sure to select it if you run on this server.

"IL Runs done on the following SuperTuxKart servers are currently admissible, but may still be rejected if there were noticeable lags or if we detect that the server made unacceptable modifications (different physics, etc.):
- Frankfurt Speedrun
Only Live recordings are accepted in these cases."

Also added a paragraph about cheating.

The main issue is fixed so Volcano Remake is now included. I actually find this track's Reverse fine personally.

One of the purposes of Stk Addons is to gather tracks that would be good substitutes to Standard Tracks. As all Standard Tracks have Reverse, I think that having a working Reverse should be a requirement. Unless Benau and Co would actually not be against adding tracks in the main game that don't have Reverse, in that case I will stop caring about Reverse. For me, Reverse is underrated and it is worth the effort to make a track work well on Reverse, it can always be done without lowering the track's quality...

I was much less picky during the early phases of Stk Addons. For tracks without Reverse, now I would have asked to support it.

It will not be included in Stk Addons if Reverse is not working... I don't ask for it to be perfect and could accept a few glitches, but at least enable it.

Most of the issues shown in the video are related, with Thunderbird putting you at weird places. If it is fixed that would already be good for me, there are always ways to do weird things like your 4:52 bug in most tracks I think. But if you want to wait for the track to become more polished it is fine for me to wait, though it does not have to be perfect (otherwise we might wait for Stk 2 Lol). Just let me know when you feel that the track does not need more updates.

I don't really mind if Basket Balls are broken here, after all they are in several Standard Tracks, but I would like that Reverse is at least doable. Adding Egg Hunt would also be a welcome addition so we don't have a subcategory for nothing.

Mars Park now included.

Unfortunately, the Volcano Remake fixes introduced other bugs with Thunderbird, sometimes respawning you very far for some reason and making Skips like this one possible. https://videos.supertuxkart.net/videos/watch/66a15506-98e8-47ef-a7eb-50aa8eae756a

Sorry, I don't like Mesa Party, I find it boring and the section with the moving obstacles is really annoying.

Still not much convinced by Mars Park, it did go to the good direction and I can include it, but I am sure that Mimiz could be much more creative and propose something even better.

Volcano Remake is however an excellent track and I would gladly include it. Though, there are several issues:

- I feel that there is something wrong with the smoke, it just looks like some weird moving textured polygons. This should be improved;
- There is a large skip, see this video: https://videos.supertuxkart.net/videos/watch/69a74394-29d0-4065-abe8-3227de52c161 ;
- There is this bug in Reverse: https://videos.supertuxkart.net/videos/watch/91c58ab8-945d-434d-8de1-606f0145d6ec
(I did the videos with Stk 1.2-Git, but they also apply to Stk Addons 1 which is based on 1.0)
(If you have trouble playing the videos, download them and play them directly with Vlc or something like that)

I could include both tracks right now, but I remind that once they are in the Mod, they will be frozen so no update can be applied until Addons 2 (well if it is purely graphical like changing the smoke or adding more stuff to the background, I could still consider that). If there are plans to fix the issues above or to make any other sort of updates soon, it will probably better to wait for these updates. Just let me know.

Ghosts will indeed be rejected starting from 2.0 (the Alayan remarks in the previous post make sense, but in all cases a ghost without the corresponding live recording will be rejected).
That would be a mod not listed in the allowed mods (and the "doing actions impossible to do normally" example also apply here), so it would be rejected by the rules. However, unless there is lag, I don't see how we could distinguish online ghosts from offline ones, though maybe Alayan has an idea.
If there is no way to distinguish a submission from something that does not break the rules, then it will be accepted, even if there rules were actually not followed, unless there are good reasons to suspect cheating. From the moderator side, there is no way to know whether the rules were broken in these cases anyway. Unless I see something off, I will always assume good faith when verifying a run, that the rules were followed. You could in theory submit these runs and I will probably not notice anything, though it would also be a bit sad.

The other one is adjusted because the 1/24 s is just free and broke the idea of actual time elapsed, and the correction is a simple and systematic 1/24 s addition.
Here, the correction would need to replay the run Frame by Frame, which is not the actual issue, but if we start to adjust for this then why not adjust Xr591 1.0 runs, runs when you collide with random walls, or for any other bugs...
Probably other runners also thrown away several runs because of this... You will do another Sub 1:39 or even 1:38.5 another day or when this will be fixed...

I just added a "Sub-version" variable for 1.x runs to distinguish the different versions. Git corresponds to a Stk compiled from source after the stable version (so 1.1-Git is a run in a Stk using the Git code after 1.1 and before 1.2; 1.1-Git would also include things like 1.2 Rc1). Mods will not affect the version.
I reviewed all the 1.x runs and gave them a Sub-version, according to the ghost's dialog, the video's title, or the date, though sometimes I had to guess. The difference between 1.1 and 1.1-Git is often the ms Timer when there is no other way to tell them apart.
Usually the Sub-version is just informative, but in some cases like Full Runs and tracks like Xr591, they are relatively important as there are some differences that have notable influences.

No, it is forbidden, please disable Debug Mode for runs.
Normally, I should have rejected your ghost as well, but chose to accept it anyway as there is no way to know if Debug was enabled or not in the actual run (which is also yet another reason to ban Ghosts as it is really prone to loopholes like that).

Just a reminder that Debug Mode must be disabled. That said I still accepted the latest submitted run (https://www.speedrun.com/stk/run/m35wp0dy) despite the Ghost Replay being under Debug Mode. There is no way to know if Debug was activated during the actual run, but Afaik, in ILs and if not using the tools, it will gameplay wise only affect the start and actually make the turbo start harder, so I chose to be lenient here.

When 2.0 will be released, Ghosts will no longer be accepted. This will clear confusion about invalid times, reduce cheating possibilities, and one can reasonably expect from runners to play using adequate hardware and recording software.
So starting from now, I encourage runners to always submit Live Recordings rather than Ghost Replays.

We can say that you were unlucky that Xue got hit in the last race, letting Pidgin get the 2nd place and win.
If you don't like gambling and want more control then indeed you should have Pwned Pidgin as well in the Abysses...