[Kde-games-devel] KMines SVG

[Mark A. Taff]

On Saturday 10 February 2007 06:07:37 Mauricio Piacentini wrote:
> a) Shadows in all elements/numbers/smiley. I see that you used the
> Oxygen shadow for these elements, It is more visible at closer
> inspection and larger board sizes. To me, this is not really necessary,
> I believe we have discussed this already in IRC (talking about Katomic,
> where you can see the same issue in the arrows when you click on an atom
> to move it.)
> The shadows are perfect for the Oxygen icon theme. For game elements
> they do not look as good or necessary (to me), specially under the
> numerals. I believe you could/should keep the shadow in the flag and
> mine elements perhaps, but it could probably be removed from the
> numerals and the smiley.

I agree that the oxygen style shadows on the numerals at small sizes, like 
22x22, are a bit hard to see.  I wil work up an alternet set of numerals 
without the shadow so we can see how they look.  But this brings up another 
question.

When KMines was made, screen resolution was small, so we had to use small 
tiles to be able to use it at  640x480px.  Since we are now using scalable 
graphics, I would suggest a default/design sprite size of 32px, which would 
then scale down to 22px nicely or up to 128px nicely.  This default size 
ought to be, imo, a config setting, either with or without a gui.  At 
1680x1050, 22px tiles are pretty small, and they are only going to get 
smaller in relation as screen sizes increase.  Plus, a slightly larger 
default sprite size lets use show off more of the detail and beauty of the 
svg images.

Comments on this?

> b) Mine icon. I am not sure about which one to use, it is nice that you
>   have included two. But to be honest I like the one in classic better,
> with spikes on all sides, even if it does not look like a real one. I
> think I prefer the classic one mostly because it kind of matches the
> look we are used to on most Mine sweeper games (Vista, Gnome, KDE3...)
> But this is just my opinion, the spiked one you added looks ok as well,
> and we only see the mines when everything is over anyway! What do you
> think of this?

There will always be people who prefer to spikes (aka contactors) on all sides 
mine, so it is important we keep a classic version.  For me, I was a soldier 
in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, so a landmine is more my speed than if I was in 
the Navy. ;-)  Note that my landmine is still only a wire-frame, far from 
complete.

I see a potential for a beige-tinted tile with the landmine, and perhaps a 
blue-tinted tile with a sea mine.  So a land version and an ocean version 
perhaps.

While I like my sea mine much better than the new classic sea mine, it is 
still not quite right.  It really needs to be made in blender, perhaps making 
a top-contactors only one and a all-over contactors one.  My skills aren't 
good enough to make the mine totally right in inkscape, and definetly not in 
blender.  What I like about my mine is:

1) The weld seam around the middle of the sphere;
2) The nomemclature and national stock number written below the weld seam;
3) The highlights and shadows to give it a 3D appearance;
4) The varying lengths/angles of the contactors so that it looks 3D

The top-only contactors vs all-over contactors is really an issue of 
perspective, now that I think about it.  If you look at my mine from directly 
above, you see an image like the classic all-around contactor mine.  In 
oxygen, all elements are seen from a side view (I think that is one of their 
formal guidelines).

Is there an artist here who could make a sea mine in blender and give us a top 
perspective and a side perpective to compare?  Perhaps even a 45 degree angle 
perspective as well?  I opened blender once and was so totally overwhelmed I 
shut it down in short order. :-(

> I will probably use your .svgz soon in the SVN version, and then we will
> start to explore the configuration options and how to best expose these
> to the user. But I liked your approach of setting a background tint
> value, and we should probably find a way to expose this as an in-game
> configuration option.

Thanks.  I'm flattered.  Of course, all my work is under gpl.  I'm not sure of 
the official KDE way of noting that in graphics files.  I have that in the 
document properties, but I leave that to you. ;-)

Please let me know when you commit my version, and I will start using that 
version as my master and send you diffs to commit as appropriate.

I will continue working on numbers, borders, multi-segmented display, and 
perhaps the mine.  I won't get much done today--Saturdays belong to my 
fiance.  But I'll get some more work done on Sunday.

As for your other email, the critiques on this list thus far have been quite 
postive and helpful.  I understand the list practise of not responding to 
things you agree with, but instead discussing things that actually need to be 
discussed. ;-)

I appeciate the reception I have been give, as well as the postive and 
constructive critiques.

Regards,

Mark