[Kde-games-devel] State of games

[Ian Wadham]

> From: "Dmitry Suzdalev" <dimsuz at gmail.com>
> I can right away give a little comment on ksokoban :).
> Conserning gameplay all seems "almost" ok, but its code...
> It's full of low-level C-style stuff like char*, some weird hashes,
C-arrays
> etc-etc.
> I liked the coolo's joke "Ksokoban is as old as QPopupMenu" :).
> Btw, coolo said that maybe we should consider removing ksokoban and
readding
> it as long as someone decides to hack on it to bring it's codebase into
> shape.
> That maybe an option, but, well, it's playable and hasn't very much bugs
(at
> least on a first glance), so I think that maybe removing isn't strictly
> necessary if someone (maybe that'll be me) can work on porting/improving
it.
> Btw, recently I tried to replace some old-fashioned C-arrays in one of the
its
> classes with Qt's QByteArray and I ended up with modifying a rather large
> piece of code which appeared to be tightly coupled :).
>
Well, my daddy always said to me, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"  That
was when, at age 8, I'd just taken apart my grandma's lawnmower and
couldn't get it back together again. :-)

So now I have something to say, in all seriousness, that is several
degrees away from concerns like "char *" and C-arrays.  I'm talking
about the actual enjoyment of the game.

KSokoban *is* broke, in a way.  I started to play it in KDE 2.  I was
really enjoying myself and had progressed to about level 30.  Then I
installed KDE 3 ...  All the levels I had been playing had disappeared,
along with my score file, and had been replaced by an entirely new
set of levels.  I found these too difficult and frustrating, so I stopped
playing the game.

Is there any way to get those old levels back?  I tried at the time, but
the game data was buried in some kind of KConfig file that I did not
understand then and anyway I was busy with the KGoldrunner launch.

I think it is important that:

1.  Games should have a progression of levels of difficulty, to attract
     and retain the interest of players of all levels of skill and all ages.

2.  Developers should not just throw away stuff that does not appeal
     to them but might be enjoyed by others.  This forum (I hope) gives
     us a way to discuss what to keep and what to throw away.

All the best, Ian W.