[Kde-games-devel] Draft of IRC meeting summary for review

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Please email me with corrections to it, I will wait for a few hours, and 
then post the final version to a blog/wiki. I read the irc log (while I 
was away) and danimo offered to edit for publication on the dot. Does 
anyone here has his email address?

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini

PS- getting tired of typing non-code stuff :)

---------------------------------

First kdegames monthly IRC meeting summary

The idea of a monthly IRC meeting to discuss kdegames was well received 
by the KDE community. The meeting started on time, Wednesday Nov 1st, 
7PM UTC. There was about 25-30 people attending, including the majority 
of active kdegames maintainers, artists, new developers, translators and 
contributors in general.
We had a brief round of introductions and began to tackle the agenda. 
For reference it is still available at 
http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+Games+IRC+meeting .

The first topic discussed was the KDE Games Survey. Survey results are 
up (until Dec 15) at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/Report.asp?U=274837292751
Most people agreed that the game ratings were useful specially to 
identify which currently non-maintained applications we should 
prioritize for KDE4. So the question of finding active maintainers for 
some applications was raised, again. The ones who still do not have 
candidates and were mentioned specifically in the meeting are 
libkdegames, ksirtet, klickety, kfouleggs, kolf, atlantik, ksame, 
ksokoban and katomic.

During the meeting, we already identified people willing to step up and 
work on some of these applications. Dmitry Suzdalev is already working 
on katomic, so he volunteer to maintain it for KDE4. Johann  Ollivier 
Lapeyre (from the Oxygen team) will team up with him and improve the 
graphics.

Paul Broadbent renewed his former proposal made on kde-games-devel, and 
is already looking at Kolf. He intends to work on it for KDE4, but is 
still evaluating the project to get familiar with the code. But there 
are still several unmaintained applications. If you want to consider 
maintaining one of them please email the kde-games-devel list. An 
updated list of maintainers can be found at
http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE%20games%20maintainers .

The next issue was about removal of unmaintained games from the module. 
We also considered the removal of games that are starting to show their 
age and that were rated low in the survey. One proposal was to remove 
also duplicated functionality, and some mentioned KSame/Klickety as an 
example of this, which was not agreed by others. The discussion 
proceeded for some time, but it was clear that we would not reach a 
consensus on this. The survey results regarding this topic are also divided.

As a way to deal with this issue, we discussed what was tentatively 
called the "kdegames guidelines for KDE4", a loose set of rules 
specifying what we are looking for in games that will be part of the 
KDE4 distribution. Following the results of the survey, we agreed on 
some basic minimal topics:

-Scalable windows and graphics (preferrably SVG based)
-Theme support
-Usability improvements
-Some form of network support (where applicable)

We also agreed to form a review team for kdegames with some of the more 
experienced contributors, formed by Albert, Pino, Stephan and Johann. 
The plan is not to tackle the issue of removing games right now, but to 
re-visit this topic in 3 to 4 months. This gives us more time to find 
maintainers or contributors that can bring current applications to the 
level of polish we need for KDE4. There is plenty of time for this, but 
if no one steps up to maintain an applications, and if it is not 
polished to a level consistent with the rest of the KDE4 artwork (think 
Oxygen-quality), then the review team may consider removing it from the 
main kdegames module before KDE4 is released.

For the same reasons, the proposal to move some games from kdeedu to 
kdegames is on-hold. There is really not much difference to the end user 
where the applications are inside the SVN tree, the important point is 
to make sure these are grouped using freedesktop.org standard .desktop 
categories, which will end up grouping blinKen, KHangMan, KTuberling and 
Kanagram anyway under the GAMES/KIDS category. It was noted that the 
games in kdeedu all have active maintainers, so they are in better shape 
than some in the kdegames module. Colaboration is needed, but we already 
have developers working on both modules actively.

Following the agenda, we then discussed the inclusion of new games in 
the package. Initial candidates are Kisrk, Kboard, ksudoku and 
kbilliards. Kisrk and Kboard are already in SVN (playground.) We will 
invite the developers of ksudoku and kbilliards to join the module. We 
will follow the KDE procedure for inclusion of new applications, with a 
move to kdereview before games are accepted into kdegames.

There was discussion on the issue of using custom widgets for games. The 
general consensus was that we do not want to create a new widget set 
just for games, and will generally use what KDE offers in terms of 
dialog boxes, toolbars and other widgets. But the in-game GUI do not 
have to follow this rule, developers are free to use what is more 
appropriate for buttons, text areas and other control elements. A good 
example is blinKen. The in-game elements should preferrably be themeable 
as well.

It was suggested that all games for KDE4 ship with at least one 
Oxygen-like theme, for visual consistency. Johann is already working on 
this and has checked in a suggestion for KWin4 as a start. Other games 
that are already being revamped following the "kdegames guidelines for 
KDE4" are KMahjongg, Kpat and KReversi.

All in all, a very satisfactory result, considering it was a first 
meeting, and the chaotic nature of IRC communication. In the end we 
agreed to repeat the meeting experience next month. Scheduled time will 
be announced via kde-games-devel, and wiki.kde.org.