[Kde-games-devel] KDE/kdegames/kgoldrunner

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Ian Wadham wrote:
> Sounds great !!!  I'll be doing a major update and re-build of qt-copy --> 
> kdegames on Tuesday morning our time, about midnight Monday in
> Europe, after the kdelibs 3-day blitz is over.  Then I'll be looking out for
> your latest changes to KGr.  This is going to be a major revolution in
> the game, thanks to you and Johann.  I am getting very excited about
> it, Mauricio, and I can't wait to see it !!! :-) :-)

(sending a copy to the ml, so we can get feedback from the others!)

Well, after several long sessions in Inkscape and coding, I think I 
reached a point where I am happy with the art, at least as a start. I am 
sure you will see the commit messages, hopefully I have not butchered 
the code too much...

So update qt-copy, update strigi, update kdelibs, update kdegames, and 
have a look at it!

To test properly I also completed some of the pending tasks in code, 
like the rendering of blasted bricks (with elements from SVG, seems more 
appropriate at this point.) I discussed the background/border issue a 
bit with my wife, and she also thinks that having a continuous 
background bleeding through the edges of the play area (without a 
border) is strange in some cases. It is probably better to be able to 
have a diffent color marking the outside of the playing area, like in 
the original version. But we can have both: I modified the code so that 
this can be an option specified by the theme author, you will see the 
corresponding configuration entries in the .desktop  file. While I was 
there, I also added the option to specify the title and border colors 
using default QColor (hexadecimal) notation. If the theme author does 
not specify any of this options then it will simply behave as it was 
before the changes.

The new runner and enemy graphics were relatively complex to put 
together, hope you will like them. If not, then maybe Johann can create 
a different version :) It is very challenging to get good results at 
such small rendered sizes, but as I said, I am happy with these for now :)

I tried to use the background that Johann sent me (from Eugene), but 
while it is beautiful and very detailed, I do not think it fits this 
particular theme well. The bg is a bit too complex, showing the insides 
of a computer, beautifully rendered, but it needs some work in order not 
to "fight" with the foreground elements, imo. Still, I bet that Johann 
and Eugene can take my work and maybe do a different theme based on it, 
more complex, with more gradients, adding the background, redoing some 
of the characters, and tweaking the colors. Or maybe they can adjust it 
so that the background blends nicely. Please feel free to do so.

For this "plain" version, I re-did almost all elements, including 
bricks, concrete, gold. The stairs are probably the bits that remained 
more or less unchanged from your test file, but I adjusted the 
proportions and the shading a bit, to make them match the style I chose.

I need a bit of rest, 1:30AM here, pfff...

Last observation: the new graphics reveal what appears to be subtle bugs 
that had been lurking in the code. You will see that sometimes the 
enemies will stop (after a fall?), but they will be using the first 
frame of the "hanged" sequence. This also occurred before, and still can 
be verified with the legacy themes, so it is not something introduced by 
the changes. It is just more apparent now as the graphics are more clear.

Best regards,
Mauricio Piacentini