[dot] Tagua Releases its First Alpha

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1189276647/

From: Jos Poortvliet <jos at mijnkamer.nl>
Dept: smooth-animations
Date: Saturday 08/Sep/2007, @11:37

Tagua Releases its First Alpha
==============================

   Tagua [http://www.tagua-project.org/], a generic boardgame for KDE,
is approaching version 1.0, and the developers decided it's time to get
the word out on this exceptionally cool application by releasing a first
Alpha [http://trac.tagua-project.org/wiki/Release1_0_alpha]. Read on for
more!

     A little less than two years ago, Paolo Capriotti started
developing KBoard, a generic application supporting all kinds of board
games. His intent was to create a definitive platform that would make it
easy to develop board games and variants. After some time, Maurizio
Monge joined the project, contributing with exceptionally innovative
ideas. Development got a big boost
[http://pcapriotti.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/kboard-an-update/] after
aKademy 2007 [http://akademy.kde.org/], and currently it doesn't even
seem to compare to the old KBoard anymore. The name was thus changed to
the more original and less boring "Tagua"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagua].
   Tagua smoothly in action


  I. THE CURRENT STATUS

     The Free Software world doesn't have a decent, good looking Chess
game which is properly network aware, so Tagua is focusing heavily on
good looks and online play. Being a generic board game, this of course
also benefits all other games built upon it. And boy, does it look good.
Everything is animated smoothly, pieces explode, and the move history is
very fun to play with. The theme engine is very powerful, so hopes are
high that artists will create some great looking things.

     Currently it features 2 games (Chess and Shogi) and some variations
on them, like 5x5 chess and simpleshogi. But it is very easy to write
new games (the 5x5 chess is just 20 lines of simple code) so this is
expected to change as well.

     Online playing is possible, but some work is still to be done on
the usability front. And playing against the AI is already implemented,
it just lacks a GUI. So, we can expect some improvements still, but the
game is already very playable, and it's time for users to start
submitting new themes and implement new games! The developers have
promised that the best ones will be shipped with KDE 4, so go nuts.
 [http://www.tagua-project.org/wiki/Development]