[Kde-games-devel] Kolf Graphics Question

[Paul Broadbent]

On Friday 01 December 2006 22:26, Ian Wadham wrote:
> From Paul Broadbent, Wednesday, November 29
>
> > I've been thinking about using SVG graphics, but I'm not really sure
> > how it'd work with Kolf. Things like the ball and holes would be fairly
> > straightforward, but I can't see how puddles and sand would work.
> > Currently they are ellipses using a pixmap as their texture, so I
> > can't just have a water svg, since the water ellipses can be in any
> > shape or size.
> >
> > I can achieve scalability simply by using QGraphicsView::scale so
> > use of SVG graphics isn't essential. However, the current graphics
> > in kolf are greatly inferior to those used by the games that have
> > had the SVG makeover.  Katomic, kmahjongg, ksame and kreversi
> > all look absolutely amazing, and alongside them
> > kolf looks really dated. I think kolf could do with a bit of an "oxygen"
> > style look, but I'm just not sure how. I've been playing around with a
> > few ideas, but not really got anywhere yet. Any ideas? Is there a way to
> > get around my problem with the puddles and sand being of irregular sizes?
> > Does it matter if I don't use SVG at all?
>
> You could try OpenGL in 2D mode, at a large cost in learning-curve
> and programming :-(  It has scalable graphics, textures, lighting, etc.
> and you draw everything on the fly, but it is probably an overkill for
> Kolf.  
Wow, I really would have quite a lot to learn to port to OpenGL, I'd also need 
to re-write not only the graphics, but the ball movement and I'd need to 
radically change how courses are saved. So not something I can really 
consider at the moment, I'd like to get this finished for KDE 4 rather than 
KDE 5 :)

> IMHO the problems with Kolf graphics - remembering that 
> they are diagrams of golf holes, not realistic representations - are:
>
>     a) the coloring is rather "Technicolor" - real grass is never so
>         green, water never so blue and sand never so yellow,
>
>     b) the moving bridges need a better color and maybe a texture,
>
>     c) the shading on the grass slopes, humps and hollows does
>         not blend well with flat areas.
>
> I think a) and b) should be easy to improve, perhaps by using
> paler "map-drawing" colors (?), but c) might be hard.

I think your right there, a) and b) could be pretty easily improved and the 
slopes are definitely a significant issue. The current shading system can 
look really ugly, but I've not yet thought of any way to easily improve this.

One cause of this is that you can do physically impossible things with them, 
since there is because there is no real difference is height, everytime you 
go up or down a slop you pretty much end up at the same height you started 
at, so with any realistic representation of the slopes could look really 
strange.
>
> All the best, Ian W.
>
> PS. Have a look at the diagrams of golf holes they show on TV
> broadcasts of golf tournaments.  They seem to look OK, but
> maybe what looks good in one environment (TV) might not
> look so good in another (KDE desktop).

I've googled around a bit but couldn't find any such diagrams, and there 
doesn't seem to be much golf on TV at the moment. Could you send me a pic to 
show me what you mean?

Thanks

Paul