14 DAY TRIAL // The developers of the SuperTuxKart open-source and cross-platform racing game built around the Linux mascot Tux the penguin announced today the release of SuperTuxKart 0.9.3.
Previously in RC state, the SuperTuxKart 0.9.3 release comes four and a half months after the previous version, and it brings awesome news for the fans. The big news for this release is that for the first time, users can now enjoy SuperTuxKart on the go, on their Android smartphone or tablet, as the game hit Google Play store.
As for the cool new features added in SuperTuxKart 0.9.3, we can mention a new "Cornfield Crossing" track set in a farm, new "Candela City" nighttime track in the European city, new "Las dunas stadium", arena for the battle mode, as well as updated karts with new graphical effects like exhaust smoke and headlights.
On top of that, there's now a new kart, Kiki, the mascot for the Krita popular open-source digital painting software, the Hexley, Konqi, and Wilber karts received improvements, a new mesh format is now available, which is optimized for space and hardware skinning, and in-game screen recording is finally here.
"Most of those tracks have been part of previous gift packages, and as we have promised we are now making them available for everyone," said the devs in today's announcement. "Another major news is that for the first time, SuperTuxKart is available on Android! You can find it in the Google app store."
Reduced RAM and VRAM usage, better loading times
Under the hood, the game received numerous optimizations and performance improvements for reduced RAM and VRAM usage, better loading times. SuperTuxKart 0.9.3 also got a bunch of physics and graphical enhancements, a new, smoother camera, improved gamepad configuration, and dozens of bug fixes.
Also, the mipmap generator is now of higher quality, wall driving was improved, as well as the cannon, parachutes, and GP points. In the meantime, work on the networked multiplayer continues in the background as the developers now wait for a WAN version, and initial work started to play the game in a Steam environment.
For now, the game can pick your Steam username and avatar, but the devs can't yet publish the game on Valve's Steam digital distribution platform because of legal issues related to the fact that they don't have a company in place. Until SuperTuxKart hits Steam, you can download version 0.9.3 for GNU/Linux, as well as macOS and Windows right here.
