[Kde-games-devel] KMines SVG

[Nicolas Roffet]

Hello all,


Le vendredi 9 février 2007 04:08, Parker Coates a écrit :
> Maybe I'm alone on this, and if I am then we can pretend I never
> mentioned it, but can't we get rid of the smiley face? It strikes me
> as out of place and very tacky, even when beautifully rendered in
> vector graphics.

I think it is a good point to debate. :)


> Obviously it's a carry-over from the classic Windows version and most
> of us have been seeing it for years, so it no longer strikes us as
> being that odd, but really I can't come up with a single logical
> reason for it being there.

I'm not *for* the smiley face, but let's think about it. Why do we have it? 
I think the 1st reason is that we want something to show the state of the 
game:
 - running / not running
 - won / lost

Without it, how would a player *obviously* see that the game is over? 


> Maybe [Microsoft] thought a
> sometimes sunglasses wearing smiley face would really up the fun
> factor of the game.

Yes: IMO this is the 2nd reason, why we have it. 
I think this is a nice gratification and pleasure as a player to see the 
smiling face with the sunglasses: One feel happy, maybe thinking of being 
laying on the beach under the sun or something like that... Without it, the 
game is a bit more boring: "OK, I found all the mines, and now? That's all??"


This is a general problem. Not only for KMines but for other games also. (But 
not for all games: Tetris-like games for instance are not concerned, as you 
can see that the game is running because of the moving items on the screen. 
And you can't win or lose: soon or later, you allways lose!) ,)
I'm facing the same problem with the game I'm maintaining KBlackBox: In the 
current implementation, a dialog is being displayed at the end of the 
game: "You did quite well / You need some more practice"... I don't like 
this, I don't find it really user friendly. I would like to avoid to have to 
display a dialog. But what can I do? Any suggestions?

In a way, the Bug 103232 raises the same problem:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103232


> Happy faces have no logical connection to
> the act of uncovering hidden mines.

That's right.
So, what can we do? Do you think this could be a good idea to provide a 
special KDE Game widget as an alternative for the smiley face to solve 
this "problem" in all the games where we need it? 
Something like a small picture (or better animation) of Konqi smiling and 
feeling happy if the player wins or sad and crying if he loses? Personally, I 
would like something like this, but what do you thing of this suggestion?

(Something similar: Do someone ever played Tetris on Game Boy with 2 human 
players (on 2 different Game Boy) with the linking cable? There was something 
like this. At the end of the game, you had a jumping happy Mario or a sad 
crying Luigi, depending of the game issue... It was a nice player 
experience...)


> Heck, even Microsoft 
> decided to get rid of it in Vista.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Minesweeper_Vista.png)

Could someone try the Vista version of the game? How does Microsoft manage the 
end of the game? Is something special happening (Dialog, animation, ...)? I'm 
curious to know...

Best regards,

-- 
Nicolas