[Kde-games-devel] Status of games in SVN

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Dmitry Suzdalev wrote:
> Hi, Mauricio!
> 
> Thanks for taking this up!!!

Actually Johann will take this review process up, I was just posting my 
findings during the review I did for FISL. Anyway it seems to have 
generated some good feedback already, nice.

>> atlantik: retrieves the server list and attempts to connect to the
>> server, but the game never starts. Not playable. Not converted to SVG,
>> no themes.
> Today I thought about  future of this game. Is it maintained? Is it wanted by 
> users?

That is difficult to answer. Apparently he last game related fix was in 
2004, and from there it appears to have only received commits to keep it 
compiling. I would say that even if users really wanted it probably 
should be moved to playground or unmaintained for KDE4, and maybe 
rescued in the future.  That is just my opinion, of course, but I 
believe there was plenty of time during the past 6-7 months for games to 
be adopted, and unfortunately no work was done in atlantik.

> Now what's about apps I maintain:
> 
>> katomic: works fine, SVG implemented, game window resizable. Some work
>> still needed in loadable theme support and the molecule preview window.
>> Ready for usability review.
> By "preview window" you mean window with detailed molecule info or window 
> which displays... well... molecule preview? =) uhm...
> If the former, then some work on it will happen in near future - Carsten from 
> kdeedu developed 3D-molecule-view kpart which we plan to use in KAtomic.
> OTOH, when this kpart is unavailable (e.g kdeedu not installed) I need to 
> display some simple info (or maybe no info at all?). The thing is that I need 
> some advice about this info - what kind of info should I display, how to 
> present it etc etc. Perhaps I should somehow ask several katomic gamers about 
> this :-).

I actually was thinking about a way to not let the molecule preview 
completely obscure the background, just some way to deal with that ugly 
grey window :) Nothing serious, a cosmetic change mostly.

>> klines: works fine. No SVG support, or SVG artwork: game window and
>> elements resizable using the older png elements. No theme support.
> I'd like to add here, that it's a matter of several minutes to add SVG support 
> (and => themeing) as long as someone creates an SVG artwork. I wrote code 
> with SVG support in mind, so it should be very easy to provide it once 
> artwork is ready.

Nice!

>> kreversi: not playable right now, maybe due to GGZ changes? Game starts,
>> but local play is not working (GGZDEBUG message in console.) SVG
>> implemented, window and elements resizable. Minor work needed for
>> loadable theme support, and background implementation. Probably needs
>> GGZ UI or configuration option, otherwise ready to review when
>> GGZ-changes are reverted.
> This is gonna change soon ;-). See the neighbor thread ;).

Yes, I know it was mostly ready, and it is now the testbed for GGZ. Just 
reporting on the current SVN status, nothing major.

>> ksokoban: not playable, crashes at startup. Apparently has no SVG support.
> I'd like this game to rise... But judging from the state of its code it needs 
> a major rewrite... If I happen to have time to take it over, I'll do it. But 
> not now... :)

Another case of probably moving it aside, and rescuing it for KDE4.1, 
when improvements are made.

>> ksquares: works fine. Vectorial graphics implemented, game window and
>> elements resizable. Loadable SVG themes probably not applicable, but
>> could be nice to have some more color configuration options (background,
>> for accessibility reasons.) Ready for usability review.
> Ahh, our precious newcomer :-). Haven't had a chance to look at it yet (svn up 
> is running atm). Hey, Ksquares, here I come :-).

You will like it :)

BTW, one of the things I think we should keep in mind is that some games 
will continue to be available as KDE3-linked applications. For some time 
we will have KDE3 applications living in a KDE4 desktop, in the same way 
we have KDE applications on Gnome desktops, right? This is something we 
should probably consider when reviewing games: if a specific game (let 
us say ktron) is basicallly the same, with no improvements at all and 
not following the guidelines we established for KDE4, maybe it should be 
moved to playground until it is adopted and brought up to the level of 
the more mature ones. Users would still be able to continue running the 
KDE3 version, as they do now. Is this reasonable, or is there an obvious 
flaw in this idea?

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini