[Kde-games-devel] Re: Another sokoban program

[Andreas Beckermann]

On Monday 11 February 2002 12:24, Ralf Schmelter wrote:
> Hello!

Hi
I play such sokoban games quite seldom but as one of the main kde games 
developers I think I have to comment on this (in german we say "meinen Senf 
dazugeben" ;-) )

> Some users of my Sokoban program EasySok
> (http://easysok.sourceforge.net) suggested to include EasySok
> into the kdegames package (and maybe replacing KSokoban). I'm
> not really sure if this is a good idead, so I want to ask you
> for your opinion (especially considering the last discussion
> about splitting up the kdegames package).
>
> The advantages and disadvantages as I see them are:
>
> Anvantages:
> - EasySok is more advanced compared to KSokoban, while beeing
>   as least as easy to use (apart maybe from the more complex
>   menu structure). There are advanced features for
>   the Sokoban fanatic (editor, duplicate level finder, editor,
>   highscore server, ...) and features which the casual user
>   will appreciarte also (solver, storing of all solutions and
>   the last attempt, drag and drop, themes).

And according to the web site: possibility to save the game as a mng animation 
(I like this one :-)).

> - EasySok is more compliant to the KDE standards (you can
>   change the toolbar and the accelerators).
>
> Disadvantages:
> - KSokoban is older and smaller, so that it will contain less
>   errors than EasySok.
> - KSokoban is already translated in many different languages,
>   while EasySok is only partially translated to German (and
>   a translation will need a lot more of effort due to the
>   number of messages and the size of the handbook).
> - Adding EasySok to kdegames will increase the size of the
>   tar'ed and bzip'ed kdegames package by about 200kB to 400kB
>   (depending on the number of themes).

I don't think we have to bother about 200kb.
Is that when we *replace* ksokoban?

> - EasySok may need more main memory (for storing the solutions).
>   This can be as much as 4 MB.

Why is it *that* much? Can't you just delete unused solutions from memory?

> - It's not tested on as many systems as KSokoban (especially on
>   low end machines).
> - Inclusion of EasySok doesn't adds a new game to the kdegames
>   package, but only adds a better(?) version of an existing game.
>
> While some of the disadvantages may vanish if EasySok is included
> into kdegames, the increase in the size of the kdegames package
> and the main memory usage will remain. On the other hand Sokoban
> has (like chess) some die-hard fans, for which KSokoban is simply
> not advanced enough (in fact I started coding EasySok because
> of some missing features in KSokoban).
>
> So, what do you think?

So if I understand you correctly you are in favor for *replacing* ksokoban.
This raises two questions: 
1. is KSokoban still maintained?
2. Would we loose something if we replaced the game?

The first question can be answerded by a short look at the code... It still 
uses QPopupMenu (pre 2.0 stuff). So only the second question is valid. I 
haven't played both games enough (and I'm not a sokoban fan) to say anything 
useful here. User comments are appreciated!

> Ralf Schmelter

CU
Andi