[Kde-games-devel] kreversi_rewrite is almost finished... Please review.

[Inge Wallin]

On Thursday 07 September 2006 17.36, Dmitry Suzdalev wrote:
> On Thursday 07 September 2006 16:43, Inge Wallin wrote:
> > Heh, this is the one thing that I had already done.
> >
> :-) Than I done that again :-). Tested my programming skill, you know ;).
>
> Btw, I think now I should call myself maintainer of kreversi, as it
> contains a lot of my code which I (surprisingly) happen to know :).
> I hope you don't mind? ;)

Well, writing code doesn't make you the maintainer, but asking me nicely 
might.  :-)

Seriously, sure you are from now on the kreversi maintainer.

> > The engine was totally
> > decoupled from the view and only communicated through signals and slots.
> >   Actually I don't think you can talk about a graphical engine at all,
> > since the engine is the AI, at least that's the terminology that is used
> > in most chess programming and other similar games.
>
> Yes, you're right here. I used wrong terminology. Ah, let's just forget
> it :-).

Well, I won't hold it against you, but I think we should use the same 
terminology as the rest of the game programming world.

> Btw, Inge, while you're here I'll ask a couple of questions :).
>
> First is: is it really necessary to bring "casual" vs "competitive" mode
> visible to user? I mean is the "casual" one really needed? Do you have some
> info regarding whether it was used by players?
>
> I think that lowest strength makes it quite possible to win even for novice
> player.

I have no feedback about it, but it was implemented due to a user requesting 
it.  I'm not really sure that the feature is good, but at least it makes for 
a little more varied game.

> For now I silently call computeMove with "competitive" set to true and
> there's no chance for end-user to change that in a GUI.
> Or you do think I need to make some corresponding option?

I think you should do as you like.  I can agree with some people when they say 
that KDE has too many options.  This is definitely such a case.

> Second is: currently it is impossible to swap sides. I.e. human is always
> playing "black" and computer is always "white".
> Well, that's probably my fault - I didn't notice this option from the
> beginning and wrote the game with "human plays black and makes first turn"
> hardcoded in my mind :).
> Of course, that can be adjusted, but currently it'll require me to find all
> places where I relied on that hardcoded thing and make them more general.
> Can this wait for some time?
> In other words: do you consider "swappable sides" feature a major and
> important one?

I didn't implement that feature and I think that playing white by starting a 
game as black and then switch sides sucks badly.  The right way would be to 
implement a "start game" dialog where the user chooses if a human or an 
engine (and which strength) play each side. 

You could get some inspiration from the very nice gnome program Quarry.  I 
really think you should download it and see how they do it. It's at 
http://home.gna.org/quarry/.

	-Inge

-- 
Inge Wallin               | Thus spake the master programmer:               |
                          |      "After three days without programming,     |
inge at lysator.liu.se       |       life becomes meaningless."                |
                          | Geoffrey James: The Tao of Programming.         |