[Kde-games-devel] Re: new KDE game: dominoes

[Jay Glascoe]

> On Friday 08 November 2002 20:34, Neil Stevens wrote:
> > So you've completely removed the ability of the artist
> > to have total
> > control over the look of the dominoes?  I'm
> > disappointed...
> 
> [Rob writes:]
> The whole point of dominoes is that the pieces with the
> same value connect and 
> look the same to the user, though. If artists can still
> design the appearance 
> of both pieces and face values, I see no problem..

I think it makes the artists job a little more complicated,
in some ways, but easier in others. The artist has to be
able to separate the faces from the tile. But he needn't
create all 28 dominoes

6-6 6-5 6-4 6-3 6-2 6-1 6-0
    5-5 5-4 5-3 5-2 5-1 5-0
        4-4 4-3 4-2 4-1 4-0
            3-3 3-2 3-1 3-0
                2-2 2-1 2-0
                    1-1 1-0
                        0-0

Let me describe the dominoes: I paste "pips" onto
a pipless domino. The pipless domino isn't completely
blank,
there's a solid black line dividing it in half and a raised
brass dot (that's what it's supposed to be anyway) in the
center (the best domino sets have these raised metal dots
to aid in shuffling the face down dominoes). The pips are
black and shades of black into cream color for
antialiasing.
The rest of the pip / face is transparent. The face
actually
overlaps a bit of the center brass dot so transparency is
necessary.

Any new domino graphics would have to include 7 faces, a
pipless domino, a face down domino, and a 3D relief. (The
domino and its relief are drawn to the canvas 
separately, with the domino above the relief.) Transparency
would be optional, depending on whether the faces overlap
anything interesting.

I could imagine (and maybe I'll do it for the hell of it)
using mahjongg tile art for the faces and a resized
mahjongg
tile for the pipless domino. I don't think I'd have any
trouble "borrowing" from, say, KMahjongg or KShisen.

What I'm trying to say is that with 7 faces and one domino,
you have as much freedom as an artist as you could ever
seriously need with dominoes as your medium (not a very
free
medium). You'd only run into trouble if you wanted the
"5" half of a "6-5" domino to somehow look different than
the "5" on a "5-3". But I can't imagine why you'd want to
do that... it'd only confuse the user.

-Jay

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2