There is currently a way to switch kart view in debug mode, I'd need to port this and assign it to some button.

More than two ghosts (files, because one file may contain more than one kart), but how many ? Three, four ? The UI would not be able to accommodate much more. There are diminishing returns here.

How should the live difference be defined if there are multiple karts played ? Difference to the kart before/behind ? Difference with the first kart ?

New features :

For the moment, I've kept the number of replay file you can compare to two and it's not yet possible in normal version to switch view from kart to kart as I do here (I use a debug feature for this).

https://github.com/psypherium/SpeedrunnerSuperTuxKart/releases/tag/0.9.4-pre_alpha-windows

Git+SVN Build as of 20/05/18 - Windows x64

New changes since the last update of this thread :

• The ghost mode improvements presented earlier in this thread have been integrated. There could be further refinements (comparing more than two ghosts, the ability to switch from one ghost to the other), but it's already a huge step forward.
• The sound in nitro challenges has been fixed (will be triggered even if you used some nitro) and a sound has also been added for when you go from over the target to under it.
• Bigger minimap (+80%) for easier quick lookup, also displayed during the initial countdown phase.
• Several bugfixes and small improvements (as a french, I particularly like the one fixing the inputs from french keyboard layouts, some keys didn't work)
• New visuals for skidding particles.

Here is another demonstration of the @Alayan ghost replay patch, built from the most recent Git code:

My new dark theme has been integrated :

There are other improvements to STK's theme, some under the hood (reduce duplication) and some more visible, like much much more clear checked status for checkboxes.

Meanwhile, the code for online multiplayer has seen significant progress, but that feature is very complex for a small team, so while time-trials are already in a decent shape, there is still a lot of work to do.

At this point, it is very likely that the next version will not be called 0.9.4. But it may be 0.10.0 instead of 1.0.

Is it just me, or AI's parachutes seem to be much more rare in the current code? I did several races without being affected by any parachute, but it was not uncommon in 0.9.3 to get like 5 parachutes in one race.

If so, it is a good news for us.

This change list is not up-to-date.

Notable changes since my last update :

• Many networking improvements I can't keep track of
• Many android bugfixes I can't keep track of
• New capture-the-flag and free-for-all modes in networked multiplayer
• Improvement to the unlock cutscene so it display things correctly when 5 or more things are unlocked at once
• hiker fixed the cushioning bug : sometimes, when jumping over a downward a slope in 0.9.3, it is possible to never land on the ground, because of the way the compensation meant to smooth the landing work. This makes the kart uncontrollable as it remains in the air much longer than it should. This is no longer an issue now.
• hiker also tried to improve the collisions issues : head-on collisions now reduce greatly the kart's speed instead of sending it flying around. However, when it is closer to using a ramp to jump than a full head-on collision, the behavior remains similar to 0.9.3.
• Huge revamp of keyboard navigation. Previously, up/down functioned like next/previous, cycling across elements like the "tab" button typically does. Left/right only had effect inside elements (spinners, ribbon grids). Now, the navigation is fully multi-directional : it selects the closest element in the requested direction (and can wrap around)
• Addition of vertical tabs. The main advantage is that more of them can fit in the screen and they can all keep displaying a title text.
• Revamp of the options menu using vertical tabs (separating the language selection to its own tab)
• Revamp of the help menu using vertical tabs (I improved many descriptions, and added some new sections)
• Sorting issues with several lists have been fixed. The sorting behaviour now always matches the triangle icon in the column, and sorting ghost replay by track name sorts according to the translated track name, not to the internal short name. The default replay sort is also much more useful, and the sort used is stable so sorting according to one thing won't make a mess in the order of replays identical for this thing.
• PNG image sizes have been significantly optimized, and redundant data between skins has been moved to a common folder instead of being duplicated. In the current git, it is possible to get an android APK with all official tracks fitting.
• Display nitro efficiency among kart stats in the kart selection screen, improve the values for the others bars
• Display times up to the ms in modes available in replay (time-trial and egg hunt), be it on the finish screen or when showing highscores in the track info screen.
• And - I guess you waited for it - a full revamp of the probability to get a given item. Sadly, some of my changes to fix inaccuracies have not been merged, and I have my doubts on the random number used to determine an item (I'll have to try again in the future to get this fixed). You can see my explanation of the changes here : https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/pull/3216 In summary :

• Instead of having probabilities of item depending on if the kart first, in the 1st/2nd/3rd 1/3rd or last, the probabilities are different for every kart. There are reference points at 0 (1st kart), 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1 (last kart), and a kart's probability to get an item will be a weighted average between two reference point. E.g. ; you have 4 karts. The 2nd kart will be at 0,33 ; so its probabilities will be 1/3 those at 0,5 and 2/3 those at 0,25 (1/30,5+2/30,25 = 0,33).
• Instead of having a single probability for all kart numbers, the probabilities change depending on the number of karts. Instead of using 20 probability list, 5 are used, and number of karts in between use a weighted average.
• A full rebalance of item probabilities using the new system. I wanted to fix all outstanding balance issues in the previous distributions. See the PR explanation for more details. And yes, parachutes are significantly less common now.
• Specific weights for FTL (no cake at all)

Cool list! If only I had more time to do contributions and follow the latest improvements.

Oh, I hated cushioning so much... Cool if this is fixed. There are also some rare yet annoying enough cases where skidding very sharp (but technically right) in certain places make the kart bounce away. Example, Shifting Sands around the bananas after the first bridge. And other places with random obscure physics weirdness making the kart bouncing for no reason. These are hard to reproduce, but I hope that someone has acknowledged and fixed these problems.

For the items, I would personally use the Mario Kart 8 system, with the probabilities only depending on the distance from the first kart. The last driver, if he is not far from the rest (if the racers are packed), should not get more powerful items. In the other hand, if the first has a huge lead, the second and everyone else should all get powerful objects.

Else, this is very nice about the parachutes. They should be as rare as the Lightning Bolt in Mario Kart... I had many races with multiple times 2-3 parachutes in a row.

One more dev aspect that I would like to have is to not be dependent on libopenglrecorder for the recorder... This seems not to be a standard package, as I cannot apt-get this... There should be a way to record without using this library.

I'm firmly against having better items depending on the distance from the first kart. While over many races, skill certainly matter in MK ; the average race is too luck-dependent in my taste, and this only compound the issue.

At the beginning (the only moment when most karts are close), those in the last positions can indeed get a good item making their position not so bad ; but remember that STK do not have items as overpowered as many of MK's item. The star, the bullet bill, and many others, are extremely powerful, much stronger than what you can get in STK. While I think it would be nice for STK to have one item better than the zipper, this is not really a concern.

And when the first kart is far ahead, it means that the player driving it drove much better than the other players/AIs ; if despite the standard item advantages they can't keep up, they don't deserve to win. Giving them many OP items to make them catch up with the first is rubber-banding at its worst. The 1st lap of a 3-lap race barely matter in MK, you can wait 10s before starting and your odds of winning are barely reduced.

In MK, you often have in multiplayer people who deliberately try to not be first in order to get a blue shell to use close to the end. I don't think this is an healthy dynamic at all.

Of course, I acknowledge that for casual players who drive badly, getting a lot of OP items to compensate their ineptitude make them happy, so it is not a bad trick when the goal is to sell to millions of people.

As someone who has been more often on the other side, being at the receiving end of things like a blue shell - thunder - red shell - red shell combo ; I don't want STK to clone this. For friendly multiplayer between players of different skill level, using the handicap option (which ought to be improved) is imho a fairer way to keep it entertaining.

I've coded in the "fast but hard" way to unlock the SuperTux difficulty I wrote about earlier.

The standard way requires getting 250 points (basically, gold on half the challenges, silver on the other half) ; the "fast but hard" way requires beating the SuperTux times while playing in expert or less in 5 different challenges.

For example, currently, the required time in Expert in Cornfield Crossing is 2m45s ; while in SuperTux it is 2m20s. If you play in Expert but do less than 2m20s, you'll have one of the 5 required challenges to unlock the SuperTux difficulty.

All this means that SuperTux%, while of course longer than any%, won't be a grind requiring to do twice all challenges. At the same time, beating the SuperTux time on first try on the 5 fastest challenges you can have access to requires more skill.

Maybe instead of 0.10.0 it could be 0.19.0 Easier for people to know if they are running the most recent version. Maybe they are scared to be "locked in" to a yearly release schedule? Eventually it would be something like 1.20.2 (Major version - yearly revision - minor version)

It would also be good to add a watermark to the lower left corner of the main menu, showing the currently running version number. Most other open source games have something like this to help the player know if they are up to date.

I don't like this idea of putting the year into the version numbering.

But it could be nice to put the version and its release date in some visible place in the main menu so that people become more likely to search for a newer version when the one they are using becomes old.