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Add-ons.md

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Add-ons are extensions for SuperTux which are distributed separately from the main distribution. In most cases, they are sets of levels contributed by users or groups of users. They may, however, include custom tilesets, which may give these levels a very distinct look.

Add-ons can be downloaded from within SuperTux. Simply ensure you have an internet connection, and select “Add-ons” from the main menu, where you can choose to install the currently available add-ons.

The addons are managed in two repositories:

addons contains the .zip files that are downloaded by SuperTux, while addon-src contains the levels in extracted form to make it easier to modify and debug them.

The process of updating the addons repository is documented at:

Manual installation

If you cannot use the Add-on manager for some reason (for example if you built SuperTux without libcurl), you can download the add-ons, which are distributed as .zip files. Just copy the file(s) to your SuperTux 2 config directory (~/.supertux2/ on UNIX / Linux, %APPDATA%\SuperTux\supertux2\ on Windows).

$ wget -P ~/.supertux2 $ADDON_URL

Creating Add-Ons

So you've played SuperTux, beating all the levels, including the bonus levels, and now you want more.

You can either install addons, or create your own. If you wish to create your own addons, the following instructions are for you:

Creating Levels

Levels are created in different ways depending on which version you are using, as the format changed between 0.1.x, 0.3.x and 0.5.x. Also, 0.3.x has a separate editor and game. Anyway, these will create some .stl files for you to enjoy.

SuperTux 0.1.x

Create as many levels as you want using the built-in editor. Try reading the editor help first by pressing F1.

Creating Worldmaps

You could try to use FlexLay for creating worldmaps.

SuperTux 0.3.x 
Download the SuperTux Editor. The Editor FAQ might be helpful. Alternately, you could create 0.1.x levels and
then modify them using a text editor or the Scheme converter script into version 2 levels. See the page on
file formats for details.

SuperTux 0.5.x to newest

You can use the in-game level editor to create levels and worldmaps.

Custom Addon Assets

Custom assets can be added to addons. You will have to manually package them with the rest of your addon's files, though.

The data/ folder in the installation directory of SuperTux is helpful for this process, because the directories and files you need to create would look identical to the ones in there. This mini tutorial will mention it as DATA and looking at it is recommended, because of occuring examples on given directories and files.

Adding custom music

Open your SuperTux user directory. Create a new folder, called music. If you wish to make additions to current music categories, available in SuperTux (take a look at DATA/music), create a folder with the same folder name as your chosen category, as listed in DATA/music. Otherwise, create a new folder for your desired new category.

You can now add music tracks into your folder/folders. Here's how to do that!

  1. Make sure your track is in .ogg or .wav file format (.ogg is prefered). If not, you will have to convert it to one of those extensions.
  2. Paste it into the folder.
  3. Add a new file, called {track_filename}.music (using the file name of the track you pasted in the previous step, without the extension).
  4. The contents of the newly created .music file should look as follows:
(supertux-music
  (file "airship_remix.ogg")
  (loop-begin 4)
  (loop-at    58)
)
  • file - This is the full file name of your .ogg (or .wav) track.
  • loop-begin (seconds) [optional] - Where your track should start playing in-game.
  • loop-at (seconds) [optional] - Where you track should stop playing and loop over, starting on loop-begin seconds in the track.
  1. Your music track is now added! You can now import it with its .music file into your worldmaps or levels in SuperTux.

Adding Custom Images Or Tilesets

In your SuperTux user directory, create a folder, named images. If you wish to make additions to current image categories, available in SuperTux (take a look at DATA/images), create a folder with the same folder name as your chosen category, as listed in DATA/images. Otherwise, create a new folder for your desired new category.

If you're adding tilesets, you can use the images directory directly.

Paste your images into your folder/folders.

Now, you can use the image file as it is, but it cannot be animated, nor do specific things on action. To be able to do those things with a sequence of images, you need to use a sprite. For information on how to create sprites, take a look at the Sprite documentation.

Packaging Addons

Once you've made these beautiful levels, you want to let the world see them.

Automatically packaging addons

Since SuperTux 0.6.3, you can package addons in one click, using the "Package Add-on" option in the main level editor menu.

However, if you're using custom assets in your addon, you will either have to add their folders (images/, music/) to the archive's root directory, or package your addon manually.

Manually packaging addons

  1. Pick a “meaningful name”. This name will be used as file and directory name - the user won't get in touch with it. So pick a short but descriptive name. Your name or acronym should be sufficient, for example. Here, we will use my-addon as example.
  2. Create a new directory hierarchy: my-addon-root/levels/my-addon
  3. Copy your levels (*.stl files) into the folder.
  4. If you made a worldmap, you have to put it in your my-addon-root/levels/my-addon/ as worldmap.stwm.
  5. If your levelset uses custom assets, copy their folders from your user directory and paste them into my-addon-root (the root of where the addon is being created).
  6. To make it an addon, create a my-addon.nfo text file in my-addon-root, and fill it in with the information, listed in NFO files.
  7. So that it shows up in the “Contrib Levels” -> "Community Contrib Levels" menu, you need to create a my-addon-root/levels/my-addon/info file. Its contents should look like this:
(supertux-level-subset
  (title "<Name as will appear in menu>")
  (description "<Description of your levels>")
  (hide-from-contribs #f)
  (levelset `<Do you have a worldmap? Yes ⇒ #f, No ⇒ #t>`)
  (contrib-type "community")
)
  1. Use a ZIP utility to package up all contents of my-addon-root into my-addon.zip.

The NFO File

Every Add-On needs an .nfo-file which looks like this:

(supertux-addoninfo
  (id "Worldmap-ID")
  (version 1)
  (type "world")
  (title "Your Worldmap Name")
  (author "Your Name")
  (license "CC-by-sa 4.0")
)
Property Description
id The ID of your worldmap. You are only allowed to use letters, _ (underscore) and - (minus). To avoid having two add-ons with the same ID, call it yourname_name-of-your-worldmap. The .nfo file should be named after your ID.
version If you updated your worldmap, count up. Only whole numbers are allowed, so do not set it to 1.1 or something.
type Use world or worldmap if you created a worldmap and levelset if you did not.
title The title of the worldmap.
author Your name or nickname.
license Leave it like this to allow sharing and modification of your worldmap.

Uploading The Add-On

Now you can upload your file. We recommend creating a new topic at the Levels & Add-ons forum.

Describe your worldmap, and add one or two screenshots, depending on the number of levels you created. Then attach your .zip-file to the post. Caution: Files larger than 2MB in size cannot be uploaded there.

TODO

This doesn't tell you all there is to know about modifying SuperTux; check back from time to time for updates. If you are knowledgeable about the following things, try adding them to this tutorial:

  • Intros or extros for levels
  • Scripting .nut files
  • Replacing game files
  • Installing a new supertux executable