Talk:Tux Racer

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[edit] Speed

the up arrow, "paddle" will slow Tux down when at a high speed

Thank God I read this page - my times have gotten better by 10 seconds in some cases. :-) Evercat 02:43, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sunspire

Anyone know anything else about sunspire going bust? --there_is_no_spoon 12:27, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

They just quietly vanished. Their website has reverted to their domain name registrar - so they obviously weren't even selling enough stuff to justify the couple of hundred dollars a year it costs to keep the domain open and a website running! It was pretty inevitable though - they only ever made one game and it had to compete with a completely free version of the exact same game. That's a tough sell! Taking the OpenSourced version and going closed-source commercial with it lost them a LOT of friends and respect in the Linux community - that can't have helped their sales either. I don't think it was much of a 'company' in the first place - just a couple of guys who'd just left college who decided to try to make some money. As I recall, Jasmin Patry said that he and a friend had bought a copy of Maya to do better 3D modelling for the game and that they had to take it commercial in order to recoup that cost. Well, I guess that's their call - but for the quality and complexity of 3D models they used in TuxRacer, they could have used any of the free 3D modellers or AC3D ($40) rather than Maya ($1000 to $7000 depending on what options you pick!) Spending that much money on a tool - and then only using it to make one game doesn't make the best business sense. SteveBaker 12:56, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gender

Isn't Jasmin Patry a 'she', rather than a 'he'?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.183.41 (talk • contribs) 23:01, August 29, 2006

Nope - the couple of times we met, Jasmin seemed pretty male. SteveBaker 00:15, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Screenshot

Is it just me, or does the current screenshot have some sort of clipping problem that makes it look rather weird? Wouldn't a screenshot showing tux sliding down a slope be a better representation of the game? - James Foster 15:49, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Done! SteveBaker 18:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Planetpenguin site down for long time

This page features a link the the Planetpenguin racer site (http://projects.planetpenguin.de/racer/). The website has been unavailable for several months now (nearly a half year now). I've checked from different locations to check that it is not my connection.

This leaves two options: 1. The site has moved. Which I hope, because it a great game, and the link needs updating. 2. The PPracer poject had died, in which case the page needs a serious overhauwl.

I don't know anybody on the inside, so if somebody could find out I'd be much oblidged...

Offtopic for Wikipedia but if someone still has a copy of the source package, we should put it up on SourceForge or something so it doesn't get lost again. I'd be happy to make that happen - but I have no idea where the sources are. SourceForge never completely deletes packages - even if they aren't active. SteveBaker 16:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I found a mirror of ppracer-0.3.1 over on http://www.linux-gamers.net - it includes the sources - so the game is safe on my hard drive. I'll try to find out what happened to PlanetPenguin - if it's really dead and the project didn't move anywhere else, I'll stat a ppracer project on SourceForge. Thanks for the heads-up. SteveBaker 16:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Updated the links, the source is out there, found it. But a sourceforge project is a great idea, because it looks like the project is dead, let me know if you're setting one up. Madder 22:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I have a copy of the source too, which I've modified slightly to add a configuration page where you can set the lift force of flapping. I'd like to do significant development work if you guys are interested in maintaining it as an active project. Specifically, I think we should add the following:
  • Multiplayer
  • Additional characters
  • Swimming (add water height layer to level maps)
  • Configurable average slope, from 0 to 80 degrees
  • All-range mode (Allow player to move in all directions, rather than forcing down the slope)
  • Configurable paddle strength, swim strength, etc. Bluej100 02:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea, please keep in mind though that article talk pages are for the discussion of improvement or changes that need to be made to the article. You might want to take this to a forum like linuxgames or happypenguin, you might get a bigger response there too.--Crossmr 03:34, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for being polite about, Crossmr. I know that this isn't the proper place. We'll get it onto Sourceforge and out of here right away. Bluej100 06:36, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Has a Sourceforge project been made for ppracer yet? If so, perhaps we should mention it in the article. StevenBell 22:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PlanetPenguin Defunct

I came to mention that Planet Penguin's website was defunct, but it looks like someone beat me to it. I tried to confirm what Steve said about the sources being available on linux-gamers.net, but I could not. They are, however, available on debian. http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/ppracer/ppracer_0.3.1.orig.tar.gz.

There is also a 0.5 alpha version. Here is a link to the download from softpedia: http://download.softpedia.com/linux/ppracer-0.5alpha.tar.bz2

[edit] Happy Feet, Tux Racer type game?

I saw a commercial for the Happy Feet video game and it featured a 2 second spot of a mini game that looked a lot like a game of Tux Racer. Can someone confirm this? OptimumCoder 18:34, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Console?

Maybe some information about the console could be added? I ran across one at the Caribbean Resort at Disney World. It looked different from the one on the Roxor Games site (it had flipper-shaped paddle buttons) so maybe there are different versions... Unfortunately I didn't get a picture. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.179.131.104 (talk) 17:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC).


[edit] Game modifications

"Other modifications will allow Penguins to fly or achieve speeds of mach one."

I'm removing this, as it doesn't seem to add anything to the article. Tux frequently catches air, without any game modification. I've only seen speeds of mach 1 on courses like "Tux Way", which are completely flat and pointless to play. StevenBell 22:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] arcade!

http://stoffers.id.au/media/pics/tuxatmovieworld_small.jpg

John Vandenberg 08:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Planet penguin Racer/Extreme Tux Racer

We are up again with a wiki and all and are pursuing a re-release of the game with new features and multi-language support (Dutch, French, German, Swedish, English, and English(UK)so far. Our website is Planetpenguinracer.com however we are amidst a movement to our site of a new name due to our recent name change to extreme tux racer. Just making the edit.Spacedwarv 16:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)