supertuxkart - Man Page

supertuxkart

supertuxkart is an arcade-style game where driving faster than your opponents will do the trick. You're taking the role of Tux, the Linux mascot, steering its go-kart around various courses, racing against computer-controlled vehicles.

The main window that opens on startup provides a menu to select the racemode, track to race on, the number of laps to go, etc. In the race, you can either use a joystick, or the keyboard for steering.

During the race, several goodies can make your life easier while other gadgets shall give you a really tough ride. Go for the arrow shaped red and black zipper patches on the track, as they boost your cart onwards. The question mark cubes hide some nice powerups. Beware of the big spinning banana's though, they are yucky and slow you down. The herring coins on the other hand make for a fine appetizer. Eat enough of them, and the next question mark cube might yield not only one, but up to five powerups at once. Note that bad things happen at once, while the good things (well, good for you...) need to be activated. Here's the list of available extras:

Goodies

Missiles

Unguided but fast. If they hit anything, they explode impressively. The effect on a cart is to stop it dead, so it has to accelerate again.

Homing missiles

Slower than the regular kind, but they track the nearest kart and are quite hard to shake off.

Fuzzy blobs

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 cart.

Magnets

If you activate a magnet then it hangs around for about 15 seconds. If anyone comes within about 20 meters, you'll be pulled towards them and end up glued to their tail until the magnet 'expires'. Great for catching up with someone - hopeless for passing them.

Portable Zippers

These are just like the zipper patches on the track itself. They give you  sudden acceleration and temporarily increase the top speed of your cart.

Badies

Parachute

This pops out the back of your cart 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 cart on a rope for an even shorter amount of time than the parachute, but the drag effect is much stronger. Your cart hardly moves at all.

Joystick Left/Right or Key Left/Right

Steer.

Joystick Button 1 or Key Up

Accelerate.

Joystick Button 2 or Key Down

Brake.

Joystick Button 3 or Key f

Use a special item (if you've collected one).

Joystick Button 4 or Key d

Ask to be rescued by Tinytux.

Joystick Button 5 or Key a

Pop a wheelie--makes you go really fast, but you'll be unable to steer.

Key Esc

Pop up or hide the menu.

No drive-with-the-mouse support.

Slow performance on CPUs less than ~450MHz.

If you (or one of the computer players) goes off the edge of the track, or calls for rescue then Tinytux doesn't always manage to put you back onto the track correctly. If this happens, you may need to goto the menu to restart the race.

Sometimes you can be pushed through a solid object if you are hit by another player when in contact with the surface.

MESA_GLX_FX

If this environment variable is set, the game's resolution will switch from the default 640x480 to 320x240. This is mostly of interest if you have a Voodoo-1/2 graphics card and usually set this variable to fullscreen.

TUXKART_DATADIR

Path to the location of game data. Usually you don't have to mess with this variable.

TUXKART_TRACKLIST

Path to the location of track data. Usually you don't have to mess with this variable.

This manual page was written by Daniel Kobras <kobras@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). It was updated for supertuxkart by Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede@hhs.nl> for the Fedora GNU/Linux distribution.