Kart 0.13.3 — depth in the landscape, walls that have seen races

Depth in the landscape and walls that have seen races.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: the launchers update the folder before the next game. The content is the same as 0.11.0: nothing big to download.

What changed:

• The landscape recedes into the air. The hills and woods a few hundred metres off take a little of the haze's colour, as distant hills do on a summer day: the circuit reads deeper.
• Walls that have seen races. The red and white walls are grimy at their foot from the track's spray and dust — more on some stretches, most on the outside of the bends where karts brush them.
• Everything from 0.13.2: a crowd that follows the race, birds and animals that mind it, mown grass by the circuit, karts that look raced, ray-traced light on RTX cards (play.bat --tier T4), the leaderboard page.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Kart 0.13.2 — a crowd that follows the race, birds and animals

A crowd that follows the race, birds and animals in the country, mown grass by the circuit.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: the launchers update the folder before the next game. The content is the same as 0.11.0: nothing big to download.

What changed:

• The crowd follows the race. Spectators turn to watch the karts go by; when one passes close and fast — and most of all when one spins or jumps — they get up and cheer, each their own way (waving, both arms up, a fist, pointing, clapping, either arm), at their own pace, and sit back after a while. No two races' crowds behave alike.
• Birds and animals. Flocks wheel over the hills and birds of prey glide high; birds feeding near the track fly up when a kart passes; rabbits bolt from the karts; deer at the woods' edge raise their heads.
• The countryside. Mown grass in light and dark stripes just past the barriers; scrub in thickets on the hills.
• Everything from 0.13.1: karts that look raced, cleaner ray-traced light (RTX cards: play.bat --tier T4), the leaderboard page, tricks that tumble and bounce.

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Kart 0.13.1 — karts that look raced, cleaner ray-traced light

Cleaner ray-traced light, karts that look raced, and a fix for karts toppling on the grid.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: the launchers update the folder before the next game. The content is the same as 0.11.0: nothing big to download.

What changed:

• Karts that look raced.
  • Cast rims with six spokes, a hub and its nuts; slick tyres scrubbed grey on the tread.
  • The livery is broken by a slash across each side pod and a chevron over the nose, with more stickers; road dust on the lower bodywork and the tyres.
  • Bodywork with the crisp edges of moulded plastic, not cushions.
  • A full-face helmet with a chin bar and a visor that wraps round; the race suit's colours in stripes down the arms and legs, not rings.
• Ray-traced light (RTX cards, play.bat --tier T4): much less grain. The light each surface showed over the last frames is reused, so the blotches on a wet road at night are gone. Tell us how it runs on your card.
• Fix: a trick a hop off the road no longer topples a kart (it happened on the starting grid).
• Everything from 0.13.0: the leaderboard page, karts that tumble and bounce through a trick.

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Kart 0.13.0 — a leaderboard page, ray-traced light for RTX cards, karts that tumble

The world's leaderboard as a page, ray-traced light for RTX cards, and karts that tumble and bounce.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: the launchers update the folder before the next game. The content is the same as 0.11.0: nothing big to download.

What changed:

• A leaderboard page.
  • While play.bat or play-two.bat runs, open http://localhost:8080/leaderboard.html.
  • It shows, live, every track's best laps, races and time trials (the best five, who, with which driver and kart, when), and the race being run.
  • With host.bat, everyone on the network can open it at the host's address, on a phone too.
• Ray-traced light, for RTX cards (try it: play.bat --tier T4).
  • The sun, the sky and the lamps light the scene as light does: soft shadows, light bounced off the grass and the kerbs, true reflections of the floodlights on a wet road at night.
  • A filter of our own removes most of the grain the rays leave.
  • It needs an NVIDIA RTX card, a Radeon RX 6000 or newer, or an Intel Arc. The game does not choose it by itself yet: tell us how it runs on yours.
• Karts tumble and bounce.
  • A trick (Space over a crest) rolls the kart through the air as a solid body: a jump too short lands it tilted, and the first tyre to touch the road bounces it back onto its wheels — or tips it.
  • Spun round on a crest, a kart lies on the slope instead of sinking a wheel into the road.
• Smaller things.
  • Dust only from the tyres that are on the grass.
  • Spinning wheels no longer look like wire mesh under motion blur.
  • At night in the rain: the haze no longer glows grey; flames and sparks are no longer blown out.
  • The barriers' paint is on the grain of cast concrete, not stained.
• Everything from 0.12.1: the best picture each graphics card can draw, engine classes (G), bot difficulty (L), the two-player split screen.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Kart 0.9.0 — hills, bridges and tunnels, and a new interface

The ninth Windows preview of the osage kart game: tracks with real relief, and a redrawn interface.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: play.bat, host.bat and join.bat update the folder before the next game. The content has changed (the interface's fonts were added), so this update downloads it again: about 234 MB, once.

New to it: download both zips, unzip them into the same folder (you get one osage-kart folder), and double-click play.bat. Windows may warn that the program is not signed: "More info", then "Run anyway".

• osage-kart-windows-x64.zip: the game, the world, the updater, the launchers, the README and the licences. Built by the release-windows workflow; it appears about half an hour after this release.
• osage-kart-content.zip: photographed textures and skies (Poly Haven), recorded sounds (Freesound) and music (OpenGameArt), all CC0; and the Saira fonts, under the SIL Open Font Licence (its text is in assets/saira/).

What changed:

• Hills, bridges and tunnels:
  • Eagle Ridge is in the mountains: 1.1 km, 40 m of climb, a tunnel under the summit and a bridge over a ravine.
  • Red Gorge is in a canyon: 1.26 km between red rock walls, two bridges and a tunnel.
  • Karts slow uphill and speed up downhill.
  • A new cup, High Roads, takes in Pinewood, Eagle Ridge, Gull Point and Red Gorge.
• A new interface:
  • Clear panels and a racing typeface: your place in large, lap and clock, the item you hold, and the standings with each driver's colour.
  • Keys are shown as keys.
  • Between races, three cards: the event, the records, and your kart.
  • The settings (Escape) are a proper menu, and each setting says what it does.
  • The crash-report question is easier to read.
  • The frame counter shows only the frame rate, at the bottom centre.
• Sound: your own engine is a little quieter in the default view and from above, so you hear the others better. From the driver's seat it is unchanged.

Everyone in a race should run this version.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Kart 0.8.0 — play-test fixes, graphics chosen for your PC, crash reports

The eighth Windows preview of the osage kart game: the fixes from the first play test on a gaming PC, and crash reports that send themselves.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: play.bat, host.bat and join.bat update the folder before the next game. The content is the same as 0.7.0: nothing big to download.

New to it: download both zips, unzip them into the same folder (you get one osage-kart folder), and double-click play.bat. Windows may warn that the program is not signed: "More info", then "Run anyway".

• osage-kart-windows-x64.zip: the game, the world, the updater, the launchers, the README and the licences. Built by the release-windows workflow; it appears about half an hour after this release.
• osage-kart-content.zip: photographed textures and skies (Poly Haven), recorded sounds (Freesound) and music (OpenGameArt), all CC0. The same as 0.7.0.

What changed:

• Sound:
  • The engine no longer drones: its recording repeated every second at top speed.
  • Your kart sounds the same in every view.
  • You hear the others coming and going: closer is louder, left and right follow the view, and the pitch rises as they come and falls as they pass (Doppler).
• Graphics chosen for your computer: no more "tier" to pick, only the frame rate (Escape, 30 by default).
  • The game picks the best picture your graphics card can show.
  • If that picture does not work (a screen of one colour), the game notices within seconds, starts again with simpler graphics, and remembers that for this computer.
  • The frame rate and the graphics level show small in the bottom right corner.
• Knocks between karts: your kart no longer drives through another one and jumps back. The game now works out the knock on your screen at the moment it happens, with the other karts placed where they really are at that instant.
• Items: a tyre you throw, or a cone or oil you drop, appears right at your kart at once, not metres away.
• Oil: driving into it takes your grip, not your speed. The kart slides on the way it was going and hardly steers until the tyres are clean.
• Slow-motion finish: a rocket's flames no longer fly ahead of the kart.
• Crash reports: if the game stops unexpectedly, does not finish starting, or the graphics report errors, the next start asks once whether to send a report to the developers. The report carries the error and the end of the game's log, without your name, folders or addresses. It is published as an issue on GitHub (smichea/osage) and read by DeepSeek. Answer N or X to never send one.

Everyone in a race should run this version.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Kart 0.7.0 — rain, and marks on the track

The seventh Windows preview of the osage kart game: rain, and the marks tyres leave.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: play.bat, host.bat and join.bat update the folder before the next game. The content has changed (a new sky for the rain), so the updater downloads it once, about 235 MB.

New to it: download both zips, unzip them into the same folder (you get one osage-kart folder), and double-click play.bat. Windows may warn that the program is not signed: "More info", then "Run anyway".

• osage-kart-windows-x64.zip: the game, the world, the updater, the launchers, the README and the licences. Built by the release-windows workflow; it appears about half an hour after this release.
• osage-kart-content.zip: photographed textures and skies (Poly Haven), recorded sounds (Freesound) and music (OpenGameArt), all CC0. Authors and sources are in assets/manifest.toml.

What changed:

• Rain: some races are run in the rain, Gull Point most often (about one race in three), the Paddock least. The sky turns grey, the road goes dark and shines, the karts throw spray. In the rain the road grips and brakes less: brake earlier, and expect a drift to slide further. Time trials are always dry. The host can force the weather: kart-server --weather dry or --weather rain.
• Marks on the track: drifts, slides, spins and hard stops leave black rubber on the asphalt, and running on the grass leaves ruts. They fade over about 25 seconds.
• Since 0.6.0: time trials against ghosts, battles in the Yard, paints won in cups (P), a photo mode (O), a flyover before the start and a slow-motion finish.

Everyone in a race should run this version.

A preview: expect rough edges. For a few seconds at the start of a rainy race the sky may still be the clear one while the grey one loads.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Kart 0.6.0 — time trials, battles, paints and a photo mode

The sixth Windows preview of the osage kart game: new ways to play — time trials against ghosts, battles, your own paints — and a photo mode.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: play.bat, host.bat and join.bat update the folder before the next game. The content has not changed since 0.5.0, so nothing big is downloaded.

New to it: download both zips, unzip them into the same folder (you get one osage-kart folder), and double-click play.bat. Windows may warn that the program is not signed: "More info", then "Run anyway".

• osage-kart-windows-x64.zip: the game, the world, the updater, the launchers, the README and the licences. Built by the release-windows workflow; it appears about half an hour after this release.
• osage-kart-content.zip: photographed textures (Poly Haven), recorded sounds (Freesound) and music (OpenGameArt), all CC0 — the same as 0.5.0. Authors and sources are in assets/manifest.toml.

What changed (the host presses T between races to choose the event; the others' T is a vote):

• Time trials (any track, "time trial"): everyone alone against the clock. No bots, no items, and karts pass through one another. Your best run comes back as a ghost (a pale kart you can see through) with the fastest runs of the others; beat it and it is replaced. The host keeps the ghosts in the kart-ghosts folder, and the best trials join the records.

• Battle ("The Yard (battle)"): a wide bowl of asphalt. Every kart has three lives, and each thing that hits you (a tyre, a cone, oil, a drone, a bumper) takes one. With none left you are out, and your kart turns see-through. The last kart in wins, or the one with most lives after two and a half minutes.

• Your profile: the game remembers your driver and kart. P paints your kart. The eight team colours are yours from the start; points won in cups unlock silver (20), pearl (50), midnight (90) and gold (140). Paints only change the look, never the driving.

• Presentation: while the karts wait on the grid, a camera flies over the track. When you cross the line for the last time, the finish is shown again in slow motion.

• Photo mode: O freezes the picture and frees the camera:

  • W A S D move it, E/Q up and down, the arrows turn it;
  • R/F zoom, Z/X focus, 1/2 the lens;
  • F12 saves the picture, and O goes back.

  The race goes on without you meanwhile.

Everyone in a race should run this version.

A preview: expect rough edges. Battles between bots alone often end by the clock; it should go faster with you in them.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Kart 0.12.1 — the best picture each graphics card can draw

A fix for graphics cards whose best picture failed (the grey screen at the highest quality).

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: the launchers update the folder before the next game. The content is the same as 0.11.0: nothing big to download.

What changed:

• Your graphics card gets back the best picture it can draw.
  • Until now, when the best quality failed (for example the grey screen on some RTX cards), the game dropped one whole level of quality.
  • Now it tries the same quality again, leaving out one effect at a time, until the picture works: first the sky lighting, then anti-aliasing and motion blur, then ambient occlusion, then shadows.
  • It remembers what works on your computer. A card that had dropped a level gets one more try.
  • Each try that fails costs about ten seconds at start-up, and the game restarts by itself.
• Everything from 0.12.0: engine classes (G), bot difficulty (L), drivers who react, the two-player split screen.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Kart 0.12.0 — engine classes, bot difficulty, drivers who react

The twelfth Windows preview of the osage kart game: engine classes, bot difficulty, drivers who react, and a finished split screen.

Playing an earlier version? Nothing to do: play.bat, play-two.bat, host.bat and join.bat update the folder before the next game. The content is the same as 0.11.0: nothing big to download.

New to it: download osage-kart-windows-x64.zip and osage-kart-content.zip, unzip them into the same folder (you get one osage-kart folder), and double-click play.bat (or play-two.bat for two players). Windows may warn that the program is not signed: "More info", then "Run anyway".

What changed:

• Engine classes: 50, 100, 150 (the usual) and 200 cc. Between races the host presses G to change the class; it applies from the next race. At 200 cc you have to brake earlier.
• Bot difficulty: easy, normal or hard. Between races the host presses L.
  • Easy bots are slower, more cautious and make more mistakes.
  • Hard bots are faster, bolder and all drift.
• Drivers who react: a driver on the podium raises a fist and waves; a kart spinning out leaves its driver shaking their head.
• Two players (play-two.bat):
  • Player 2 picks a driver and a kart with the arrows between races, and a paint with the . key (among those you have won).
  • Player 1 picks with A/D and W/S.
  • Smoke and sparks now face each player's own camera.
• On a server: kart-server.exe --class 200 --bots hard sets them from the start.

Everyone in a race should run this version.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code