Games: SuperTuxKart and More
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[SuperTuxKart] On the way towards 1.5… and 2.0!
Some history
SuperTuxKart 1.0 was released 5 years ago, on the 20th of April 2019. With the introduction of online multiplayer, among many other changes and improvements, it marked a pivotal moment in the history of the game. Afterwards, it was decided to commit to a policy of version compatibility: instead of making breaking changes that would prevent online play between different 1.x versions or would make it impossible to compare records between versions, game mechanics and tracks have been kept functionally identical, with very few exceptions (such as expanding some checklines).
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University of Michigan ☛ Violence in independent first person shooter video games
In 1993, id Software released Doom, a game about killing demons and closing a portal to hell with your guns. In many ways, it is the video game. An expansion on the previous framework of id’s shareware hit video game Wolfenstein 3D, iconic for its Nazi-killer gameplay, it serves as an understandable starting point for the genre. In the beginning, we were blasting blood and organs out of demons and possessed soldiers — from metal album covers straight to the screen. Doom is rife with satanic imagery, body horror demons, blood and guns. It’s a carefully designed miracle that the game is so inoffensive. Depraved men with red eyes, goat-horned devil men — they are evil, ergo, kill them with your gun. From an outside perspective, the fetishization of guns and violence itself provides the most interesting thread to follow. Doom is a game that takes for granted the joy and excitement of wielding a shotgun and, in doing so, creates the language for the genre. A long time has passed since Doom. Looking specifically at the genre’s recent revival, games have gotten more thoughtful, merging mechanics with the practices of literary criticism expected of film and novels. This draws us back to the inciting question: Who are we pointing our guns at?
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University of Michigan ☛ Movement and difficulty in first-person shooter video games
That’s what it’s always been about, though. Just like in Quake, stay in the air. The games are always urging you to push it a little farther. Every time you bunnyhop, you’re making a choice of speed over control. At first, it’s tough — you’ll hit walls and feel stupid. Eventually, though, you’ll learn to pick your opportunities, and the game’s art will start to reveal itself in a series of split-second questions. The “fun” I’ve been liberally referring to throughout these first two pieces is exactly that: making decisions. When you have to choose between jumping over and sliding under an enemy attack, you are making a choice. Though it may not be as flashy or centralized as a narrative choice, there’s a lot more potential to use this. A smart game designer will build around giving the player as many feasible points of choice as possible. So why do we need the violence if it’s all just choices? If the form can be boiled down this far, why are we still following the old muscle memory of splatterhouse violence?