SuperTuxKart (STK)
The SuperTuxKart Team is recruiting for contributors and team members in all areas of game development. If you want to work on a fun game that is appropriate for anyone age 5+, then make it STK. Or if you just need a small respite from your current project you can make a one time contribution and we’ll add you to the game credits. 
STK has been in active development for seven years and it is one of the most popular open source games, with over 2.5 million downloads. It’s available for anyone for free on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris. STK is also translated into many languages. The game is fully playable and the game mechanics are reaching a mature state. However, the game needs some juice Youtube.com to make it feel alive and more interesting. That’s why we want your help, to make SuperTuxKart a truly great game.
Download
Roadmap
Specific development areas
Table of Contents
(The programming section is listed at the end as it’s much longer than the rest.)
Art
Modeling and Animation
Animation
Level Design
Sound Design
Programming Art
This section deals mostly with images, so no 3D modelling (blender) experience is necessary, unless specifically stated. It is generally easy to replace any texture with an improved one and immediately see the effect in game.
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Replace low quality textures
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New skyboxes that are more appropriate for specific levels
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New particle effects for things like crashing into another karts or objects, (or player) head on collisions and landing from a high jump.
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New skins for weapons and characters
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Working with level designers to get colors and themes consistent or interesting
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Fan art
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for the website or possibly during loading windows
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Add new objects like trees, bushes, architecture, wildlife, scenery. (requires knowledge of Blender)
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Replace models that do not fit the game’s cartoony feel. (requires knowledge of Blender)
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ModelingBlender 3d is used for modeling karts. Read our kart modeling tutorial to learn how!
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Add more karts and/or improve existing ones
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Depending on performance impact: we might add a ‘low quality’ option in the menu, so that people with a lower end computer can use the lower quality karts.
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Improve existing characters and animations
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More animations (e.g. waving, fist shaking) to replace the current over-the-top ones (like being sucked up or erased)
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Level Design
The same applies as above. Here is our tutorial for using Blender 3d for track design:
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Add new tracks
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Add new objects such as trees, bushes, architecture, wildlife, scenery.
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Incorporate new features into new and existing levels such as:
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More animations in scenery (waterfalls, objects rolling around, trains going on a track, non opponent cars driving on the track, animals walking around, (or other moving obstacles and environmental hazards)
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Using the cannon which shoots the player across the track
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(The cannon is specifically used to avoid otherwise slow and boring uphill sections).
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The cannon can be used sparingly, but we’d like several tracks to incorporate it.
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Ramps/jumps, trampolines
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Moving terrain, e.g. conveyor belt, or a shallow stream
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Higher resolution textures
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Where necessary – of course generally keep the resolution as low as possible
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Make a series tutorials (video or online) on level designing for STK
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Sound/Music -
Per-kart sounds
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Already coded, but disabled due to the karts lacking individual sounds. It is rather difficult to get different sounds for all drivers, without them getting repetitive. This also requires coding better algorithms that will play sounds only when they are relevant.
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Character Voices for the following
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using an attack powerup, using nitro, being hit by a weapon or obstacle, falling from large heights, winning/loosing a race, being chosen in character select screen
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probably a very fun task with someone with a sound proof room.
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New sounds for head on collisions and landing from jumps
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New song for completing a challenge and a sound effect for the treasure chest opening
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Improving or replacing existing sounds
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Quality Assurance -
Bug testing and reporting
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Diligent bug testing is very valuable. You also need to be able to run STK in a debugger (for which we can provide instructions), and even better is if you are able to compile STK yourself (in order to test any new bug fixes).
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Updating and organizing the wiki
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Volunteering on the forums to answer questions and welcoming new fans and contributors
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Updating websites that feature an article about STK or allow you to download it
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Translating to another language and updating translations when new versions come out
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Miscellaneous -
Give the karts have different characteristics. This does not involve any programming, the physical data of each kart can be modified in a simple text file. Suggestions for this are already in (in an older forum thread), but a lot of playtesting is needed.
Programming
STK is written in C++ using Irrlicht 3d, Bullet Physics, and other, less frequently used/modified libraries (curl, openal, ogg, vorbis, pthreads). We rarely use any of the more complicated C++ features, so the code should be reasonably understandable for C programmers as well. The code base is relatively large, so some experience is necessary to find your way around it. However, STK has reasonably good documentation through doxygen. Please read our coding standards.
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