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

[Ian Wadham]

On Tue, 3 Apr 2007 02:34 pm, Mauricio Piacentini wrote:
> 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.)
>
Hmmm ... I was intending to save artists a bit of work by providing an
algorithm to blast bricks (i.e. to modify pixels in the QImage where
the brick has been loaded from SVG).  Long-term, with more code
support required, we might have several varieties of "brick" in a theme
and several trimmings, such as flowers and grass, which is why I
thought an algorithm might be a help.  A simple algorithm would
be to lower the alpha gradually to zero (as with the Cheshire Cat).

Short-term, what you have done looks very neat and clean, Mauricio,
and is a vast improvement on my "kludge" of borrowing some blasted
brick images from the old graphics.  What do artists think?  Do we need
brick-blaster code?  Or is it easy enough to draw 9 more variants of the
basic brick in each theme?  The code would not be a huge job.

> 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.
>
I'm intending to put a thick line around the play area always, to
show where it ends and the border-area begins.  In some levels
the boundary line might not be obvious.  KGoldrunner needs the
border area, to absorb errant mouse moves and clicks without
disturbing the desktop: unless the game goes to full-screen mode ;-)

Whether the border is filled with background, as in KMahjongg,
or with a coloured frame is a matter for the theme designer, so
it's good that you have made it configurable.

> 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.
>
The ladder and bar were provided by Johann.  Maybe he will need them
again.  The rest was data I used for testing and will not be missed.

Some day, if we are going to stick with brick-like and concrete-like
objects, I'd like to see some more natural-looking colours and textures.
Is it possible to do surface textures in SVG (i.e. as in OpenGL)?

> I need a bit of rest, 1:30AM here, pfff...
>
You've earned it, Mauricio.  Have a really good Easter !  And thank
you again and again for all your work on KGoldrunner.

All the best, Ian W.