---
layout: post
title: "SuperTux 0.4.0"
date: 2015-12-20 14:50:00
---

After more than a decade of slow, but hard development the SuperTux team is happy to announce the first stable release after 0.1.3 (which was released on 2005-07-09), 0.4.0. Compared to 0.1.3, this release features:

- a nearly completely rewritten game engine based on OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL2, ...
- support for translations
- in-game manager for downloadable add-ons and translations
- Bonus Island III, a for now unfinished Forest Island and the development levels in Incubator Island
- a final boss in Icy Island
- new and improved soundtracks and sound effects
- new badguys, bonuses and power-ups (air-, earth- and ice-flower)
- a halloween tilemap
- new graphic effects (glowing objects, particles, ...)
- levels and worldmaps are scriptable using squirrel
- much more game objects: trampolines, switches, portable stones, wind, moving platforms, ... - most of them have scripting APIs
- improved statistics
- many invisible changes, like unit tests, efficiency improvements and more bugfixes
- much more...

And of course we updated the official levels to make use of all the new features. Compared to the latest beta, 0.3.5a, this release features:

- updated translations
- reworked add-on manager to support downloadable and updatable localization packs
- many bugfixes
- added iced-graphics to some more badguys
- melting animation for some badguys
- updated more levels (fix playability, ...)
- updated build system, featuring unit tests, libraries as git submodules and improved Travis-CI builds to support nightly builds
- more levels in Incubator Island
- support for horizontal and vertical gradients that span the length / height of a sector. Add `(direction "horizontal_sector / vertical_sector")` to your gradient.
- much more...

A big thanks also to our translators who worked very hard, even providing translations for strings changed after the announced string freeze. We'll try to not let that happen for the next release. Note: Please remember that language packs are now managed via the add-on manager. This means that you need to install language packs if you previously used a localized interface. Moreover, you may want to regularly reinstall the language pack from the add-on manager to keep the localization up-to-date (an update system is planned for the 0.5.0 release: \#270). Merry Christmas everyone, and happy playing!
