[Kde-games-devel] Kreversi and general suggestions for board games (aKademy notes)

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Hi, Dmitry and guys. I collected some suggestions during aKademy, mainly 
from Inge Wallin, and others as well. I will list them in no particular 
order of relevance. Notice that these are just ideas, some apply 
directly to reversi, others apply to all board games in general, others 
may apply to all games. I will just list them for our reference in the 
future, if you want to get inspiration for new stuff to implement.

a) Make it possible to use a plain color for background (possibly dark 
green as default)

b) Maybe alter the default board to use green, as most reversi games are 
played on green felt tables.

c) Have a look at other reversi implementation, like quarry, to examine 
the layout of the move list
http://home.gna.org/quarry/

d) Make it possible to click on the move list and go back to that 
position. (note by Mauricio: you can do this for example in KBoard, code 
in playground.)

e) One step further: make it possible to branch or create another move 
tree when you go back in time, and maybe record all trees, for 
comparison of possible outcomes. See for example 
http://home.gna.org/quarry/0.1.16-editing-go.png for a sample of this 
using go, in quarry.

f) Maybe use the SGF file format for loading and saving of board games? 
http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/.

Also, specifically for the current Kreversi art, and regarding the call 
for comments in the last SVN commit: I suggest that you do not use a 
colored square for showing the available moves and the last move, if 
possible. A best option imo would be a graphical svg sprite: it could be 
a dot over the chip for the last move for example, and an X (or another 
symbol) to mark the possible new ones, like you can see for example in
http://knaan.com/cezebra/cezebra.htm . If you want I can send you a 
temporary version, and Johann or another artist can tweak it later.

This way you avoid the issue of having to get a pixel-perfect alignment, 
not possible on some scaling sizes, due to antialiasing artifacts. And 
as a bonus it will be easier to accomodate accessibility needs in the 
future. Using just colors is difficult for some users, due to people 
being color blind, or not able to really distinguish between different 
tones of close colors. Ideally we will need to have a monochrome/black 
and white version of all games, and be able to customize it using the 
foreground/background colors chosen by the user, specifically for users 
that need high contrast themes due to limitations in sight.

Please notice: I am only listing these for future reference, before I 
loose my aKademy notes :)  I am very satisfied with the current state of 
the game as it is!

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini