New powerup giving a speed bonus

[Alayan-stk-2]

This idea has already been discussed a lot, but an issue had yet to be opened.

The new powerup should give a small speed boost for a medium-high duration, a noticeable acceleration boost, and optionally some form of protection against some attacks (not full immunity).

I will reiterate here the main reasons for this :

• The impact of powerups in STK normal races is quite limited. The bonus given to player in worse positions can be slightly improved without falling into the trap of excessive randomness. This would help increasing the fun of casual players (I watched a video of casuals testing networking alpha, and they need something like that).
• The zipper frequently cause unskilled players to have accidents. Giving them zippers doesn't help them as much as it should.
• Most of STK items are offensive items which harm other players. This often causes players in the middle of the pack to make each other lose time, even if the item distribution rebalancing has significantly improved things here. The new speed bonus item would allow to make them less frequent without a flood of zippers. Also, less offensive items would in some way reduce randomness.
• As a minor factor, this would give some additional novelty and variety.

Multiple approaches, both in look and gameplay, are possible.

[Mrxx99]

What about your giant-kart-item? Worked pretty well when I tested it.

[Alayan-stk-2]

I rather liked it, but it would need : 1)A proper name 2)A proper item icon (I would like some reference to SuperTux, but their egg isn't very nice) 3)A proper update of the physical model (if you test that branch again, you will notice that it's only the visual model which becomes bigger) 4)hiker and Benau making sure it works fine with networking (this would be true of any other proposal, of course)

I think the code handled the rest correctly (give the speed boost, protect against some danger, do the model size update progressively, handle some special cases like using the item while already in the process of changing size one way or the other).

[ghost]

1)A proper name

I'd call it 'Super' unless you think of something more creative.

2)A proper item icon (I would like some reference to SuperTux, but their egg isn't very nice)

I like (and used) the colored egg icon from the "UI Redesign" post on the forum:

(or something that looks like it?)

[Alayan-stk-2]

"Super egg" ?

For the icon, it's nice, but the art-style doesn't match the other icons currently in use, so some adaptation needed I guess.

[CodingJellyfish]

Why not just give a long time nitro boost? It should be used at once, and it's time is depend on nitro effeciency.

[CodingJellyfish]

In #4129 they want to make a spinach lol

[Fouks0]

Thinking about a reference to SuperTux, I just thought about something that transforms you in a Snowball during like 10-15 s, with the ball rolling being a bit faster than the kart racing normally. The physics could be similar to the Soccer or Minigolf Ball so you can still be hit by Bowling Balls (but are invincible to other stuff, or maybe cakes could melt the ball and turn you back to normal)

Also, maybe put a non zero probability for the Anvil (of course in this case lower the Parachute's one)? Or it could be an extremely rare Easter Egg with 0.1% probability to appear for everyone :p ?

[luffah]

do you want something like the star or the canonball in mariokart ? ... A bowling ball (disable), a swatter and a parachut (slowing down), a plunger (speed up), a boost (speed up), bubble gum (protect and trap), gift (trap)... Maybe the missing power is teleportation.

Many idea of power ups can exists in many style to add this kind of ability :

• (hyper speed) a bottle of A-GPL drink that cumulate speed karts around and put everybody on same level (that can push left and right openent out on a thin road)
• (avoiding physical limits with road) a jump-like jetpack that could allow shortcuts
• (avoiding physical limits with other karts) an invisibility+invincibility+fantomatic cape

[Alayan-stk-2]

The electro-shield added in the balance branch should satisfy this issue. The nitro-hack also offers speed-boosting.

No current plans to add yet another speed-boosting powerup, but leaving this issue open until the balance branch is merged.