---
layout: post
title: 2017 in Review
date: 2017-12-31 19:40:00
---

Hello SuperTux friends,

with 2017 coming to an end, we'd like to reflect on what's been happening with
SuperTux development in the past year and on our plans for next year.

This has been a slower-than-usual year for SuperTux with most of the changes
being bugfixes. See a [full list of the changes since 0.5](https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux/compare/release/0.5...master).

Nonetheless, there are some bigger changes worth mentioning:

- Quite a lot of work has been put into reworking levels on Forest Island (part
  of a larger redesign of the story, see below; many thanks to RustyBox and
  serano!)
- Some new backgrounds and sprites (many thanks to BlasterMaster!)
- [Nightly builds](https://download.supertux.org/) are available now for all
  major platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux) (thanks to maths22 for the website
  and mt for implementing support for AppImages in the build system)
- Above point also means that for the next release, Linux binaries will be
  available in addition to Windows and macOS binaries
- Scripting improvements
- Some usual fixes concerning smaller problems
- The included PhysFS library was updated to version 3.0 (thanks to Tobbi)

These are the things we're currently working on (with which we've made progress):

- Expanding and working on the story line as dicussed in our story line meeting
  earlier this year.
- Replacing our legacy scripting wrapper with Sqrat (work on this was started
  by christ2go and continued by Tobbi, we hope to include it into the next
  version)
- Add-On manager improvements by christ2go

However, there are also some things we would like to achieve for which we need
help, more or less specifically:

- More graphics, sprites, and ideas for further game content (e.g. enemies,
  objects, ...)
- A change allowing proper support for non-Latin scripts, especially for RTL
  languages and scripts that require text shaping, is pending - however, we
  need support for multiple fonts or a single font that contains all the major
  scripts

If you haven't noticed yet: We have released the 2016 Christmas Add-On to the
public! So, go and grab it if you haven't yet!

Furthermore, we want to invite everyone who is interested to an open discussion
about plans and ideas for SuperTux during 2018. Feel free to join us next week,
on January 7, 2018, either in our IRC channel [#supertux](https://kiwiirc.com/client/chat.freenode.net:+6697/?nick=Guest?#supertux)
on freenode, or using [Riot](https://about.riot.im/)/
[Matrix](https://matrix.org/) in [#supertux:matrix.org](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#supertux:matrix.org).
You're most likely to find some active developers around afternoon and evening
in central Europe.
Everyone will be welcome, we're hoping to share our plans and ideas but also
we'd like to hear more feedback from the community!

We also want to give a shoutout and big thanks to the many people who support
SuperTux. This includes but is not limited to:

- All the people who donated to the project
- All people who designed small and large levels for SuperTux (and especially
  those who shared them with us)
- All the translators, coders, graphic designers, sound designers, story writers
- Everyone who writes bug reports and tests the game
- People spreading the word about SuperTux on social media and other community
  sites


Without all of you, SuperTux wouldn't be where it is today!

The SuperTux Team wishes everyone a happy and successful year 2018!
