Who games on Linux? #4 Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart #

Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart is a mod of a Doom Mod where you race. It's a lot like Mario Kart 64.

Game Info #

Name: Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart(Abbreviated SRB2)
Genre: Multiplayer Racing
Demo: N/A. Free game
Linux: Exists, but support will vary

Thoughts #

It's a lot of fun. The technical shortcomings of the DOOM Engine are evident in extreme circumstances(like when the camera tilts up or down too much), but other than that, the only other technical shortcomings is on some maps like Sub-Zero Peak Zone where going off the path into deep snow renders the kart improperly.

As a multiplayer game it performs very well. As a modded game it performs very well, though it could benefit with a more integrated modding scene I.E. with either an integrated or a simple modding system. As it stands, it's just downloading a .pk3 file, placing it in the addons folder and playing the game. On startup, you need to enable all the relevant addons. In this regard there should be an easier way to enable the addons you use on startupt(I suspect there is, and I'm just unaware of it, as some default .pk3 files are used in the base game but considered "addons"). For multiplayer it's click and play. The client downloads all the relevant .pk3 files from the host. This does suffer an issue though, a server with many addons results in a lot of time spent for clients in the downloading of these addons. Beyond that there's no issue.

For Arch users, I had a few issues getting it to run. The publicly maintained aur package "srb2kart" has issues compiling due to an included header being wrong.

#include "SDL_mixer.h"

Not being found. To fix this, you will have to compile it from source. I'll list my steps below.

git clone https://github.com/STJr/Kart-Public.git   # Get the source code and dependencies as normal
yay -S srb2kart-data
pacman -Syu sdl2 sdl2_mixer
vim Kart-Public/src/sdl/mixer_sound.c               # We need to change an include header

in mixer_sound.c change

#include "SDL_mixer.h"

on line 31 to

#include gt;

Build the game as normal

cd ../../
make -C src/ LINUX64=1                              # If using 32 bit linux the command should be LINUX=1
./bin/Linux64/Release/lsdl2srb2kart                 # If using 32 bit linux, use the Linux dir

After these build instructions have been followed you can have fun. These build instructions are needed for me running under Arch Linux, so your mileage may vary.

Repository to git clone

It also seems to have dedicated servers. I might host one :^)

The game can be found for free here. Instructions for other linux distributions are included.

Published on 2021/05/20