Red Eclipse, STK feature in Microsoft Promo

Hat tip to forum member TheLastProject who posted about a promotional video for a proof of concept research project called 'IllumiRoom'.  The main game shown is Red Eclipse, but SuperTuxKart also briefly appears (implicitly as the game played by a girl!) around the 0:48-50 mark.

I doubt they were actually showing an Xbox as I'm unaware of either Red Eclipse or SuperTuxKart being able to run on one.

I find it fascinating that 2 FOSS games would appear this way.  Either this is an indication of red tape avoidance (no permission required for GPL games) or a cultural shift within Microsoft - or perhaps I'm just reading too much into it.

It certainly adds some validation to the games themselves, indicating they are impressive enough to feature as part of a video by one of the world's foremost technology companies.  So hats off to the developers of both projects and also the projects that enabled them (CubeSauerbraten, TuxKart) - I like it that both games are good examples of open source in action.

SuperTuxKart Lives, MTP Target!

SuperTuxKart has finally emerged as a game in it's own right, with a release planned for September 10th. I'm looking forward to playing it. If anybody thinks they can help out with the release, chip in!

SuperTuxKart is the result of the Happypenguin Game of the Month efforts from eons ago to update TuxKart. As a side note, I inspired GotM (although grumbel implemented it) and I also put forward TuxKart for GotM development. Sadly, at the time, the usage of SDL [TuxKart is PLIB-based] by the GotM team meant the original developer refused to help out unless all SDL stuff was removed - only PLIB didn't properly support fullscreen rendering at the time. I reckon it was a case of NIH syndrome since the TuxKart author is a PLIB developer. This caused the SuperTuxKart fork but all the politics detrimentally affected the development.

I think the GotM guys were right to introduce SDL. It was pragmatic as it supported the features they needed, and it was practical as PLIB simply isn't as widely used or frequently updated (and by virtue of that, not as well supported).

Version 1.2.2 of MTP Target was released. MTP Target is a fun Monkey Target clone. Strangely, though, I think you have to have access to the Internet to play it in order to register your scores - a little strange for what really is a single player game.