[Kde-games-devel] Replay feature in KAtomic?

[Ian Wadham]

Hi Dmitry,

> Seems like I need a piece of advice :).
>
Remember that Kubrick game I sent you ... ?  (For info of others: it
is a Rubik's Cube, in KDE Games style and OpenGL 3-D graphics.
It's in a late stage of implementation, but KDE 4 and other work has
been intervening for several months ... ;-( ...).

> What I'm thinking of is a simple KAction like "Replay moves".
> But there are some options in implementing it, and I'm not sure what
> route to take. When user presses "Replay moves", replaying starts
> and user cancels replaying, what should happen?
> a) Atoms will be left in a positions at which they were when user
> cancelled replay. And the user can continue playing from that position.
> b) Things are reverted to the state in which they were before user
> selected "Replay moves".
> c) Intead of "replay moves" provide "Undo All" and then user can do
> redos by himself as much as he likes (up to an end of history).
> d) any other option?
>
Kubrick implements Undo, Redo, Undo All and Redo All, but
"Undo All" is called "Restart" in the GUI (that's a standard KDE Game
action).  Also there's a "Watch Your Own Moves" setting, where
each step is either animated (with choice of speed) or takes place
instantly.  You could get a feel for some of the above alternatives by
experimenting with the cube game.

Basically, Kubrick follows option (c) above and it plays quite well.
You can do Undo All, Redo any number of times and then Redo All (to
redo all the remaining moves, if you get tired of doing Redo, Redo).

You can also choose a different move at some stage during the Redo
steps ... but then all later moves have to be pruned from the list and the
new move becomes the new tail of the undo/redo list.

Kubrick does not have Cancel Redo-All, but if it did, it would have
to work like a) above ... again with pruning if the user chooses a
different move instead of Redo.

> What do you think?
> Maybe this "replay" functionality isn't needed at all?
> Actually I start to like item c) more and more :). It hasn't such
> ambiguities as replay mode. OTOH it is not very straightforward
>
Well, replay functionality would also be very nice when you are stuck.
You could replay your earlier moves, stop at some point, try something
else ... etc.  As you can see, I already voted for a mix of c) and a) in
the Kubrick cube game.

All the best, Ian W.