[Kde-games-devel] KsirK ready for kdegames ?

[Kleag]

Hello,

Le mercredi 24 janvier 2007 23:12, Albert Astals Cid a écrit :
> Some thoughts:
>  * The timer to get mouse position has to go away, if you want to know mouse 
> position activate mouseTracking on the widget and use mousemoveevent.
Probably yes. This way, I could check mouse position on mouse move events and 
switch to scrolling if in the good position and switch off when it is no 
more.
But, anyway a timer will be necessary because the scrolling should be done 
step by step and not too quickly. Thus, is it better to check if a scrolling 
enabled by mouse move is necessary each N ms or to test the mouse position 
each N ms ?
But maybe is there also a better solution than timers for the scrolling 
handling ? 


>  * I think using the status bar for questions and the toolbar for actions 
does 
> not really work, because the question like "With how many armies do you 
> defend Pakistan" is on the bottom part of the screen while the actions are 
on 
> the top part. I'd go for a qwidget containing both a qlabel and some 
> qpushbuttons.
You're right but in the previous version, the toolbar was at the bottom of the 
window just up to the status bar. In KDE4, I did not found how to 
programaticaly move the toolbar.
At the beginning, I used the toolbar and statusbar because they were very easy 
to use, but it's maybe time to switch to another solution. That could allow 
to have bigger icons maybe easier to use or differently set up.

>  * What is the use of the button on the right part of the status bar? If 
it's 
> only to show the current player make it a qlabel?
No, when it's your turn, you can click on it to be remembered of your goal... 
I knwow, it's a little cryptic. There should at least be a tooltip associated 
to it and it should be enabled only when it's your turn.

>  * I find the current Drag and Drop mode for moving/attacking quite 
unnatural, 
> i think a click to select origin + click to select destination is more 
> natural. You are free to disagree of course ;.) But i'd want more comments 
> from other people here.
I already heard this kind of opinion. But this is one of the distinguishing 
features of KsirK in front of other Risk clones (like the animated sprites). 
There should be better visual clues of what's happening and what you're doing 
though. This is planned for a future version.


>  * A pause button is needed for the turn of the computer players.
Exact. And also the ability to save games during a computer player turn.

>  * About button crashes
To be corrected ASAP.

>  * Preferences button placement is strange, about should be probably the 
last, 
not preferences
Yes, I'm not happy with this button. It shows maybe the limits of the buttons 
only interface.

>  * There seems to be a maximum number of moves i can do per turn, but i 
can't 
> find any place to see how much moves i have left.
If this is the case, it is a bug ! There is no officialy such limit :-)


>  * Moving flags rock! :-)
Thank you. In fact, all sprites can be simply animated (just draw it and 
configure the number of frames in the skin file) but I got lazy after drawing 
the exploding cannon with an icon editor... I'm really not an artist, there 
is plenty room for Johann Olivier work ;-)

>  * If the map does not fit in the window i get no scrollbars
It's a feature, not a bug :-) Because I find scrollbars ugly with this kind of 
game. This is why there was a scrolling map using window borders. But, 
without this scrolling, this is quite problematic...

>  * Dialogs need proper layouting.
Yes, I cannot understand how this damn thing work, even more with the 
designer... For the new game dialog, I can have a not too bad layout but it 
is broken when I add the skin snapshot at runtime...


> You said in IRC that you need help for some things like layouting and 
> graphics, i can help with layouting and sure others can help with graphics, 
> but we need that on KDE svn. So at least i would approve a move to 
playground 
> or kdereview as a first step, not sure about directly to kdegames itself.
Yes, you're right. I will correct a few things (like the i18n problems and 
other things you repoted) and then import it to playground or kdereview. 
Which one ? There is sure some things to correct and improve so it is not 
ready to be flagged as "release ready", thus arguing against kdereview. But 
also, it is not really a new app having to prove its concepts thus arguing 
against playground. Also, KDE4 will not be released before at least a few 
months leaving time for correcting the problems. KsirK is maybe more advanced 
in kde4 porting than other kdegames games.

> Comments from others?
Yes, please, others ?

> By the way, how does the "map" work? Is it SVG? If so how are 
the "countries" detected?
The map is SVG but its initial size is known, thus I can get a mouse position 
relative to this known position. I then check the color associated to this 
point in a pixmap map mask where each country have a red color value 
associated to the corresponding country definition.

About SVG, what do you and others think about it for this kind of game 
(supposing it would be redrawn by an artist) ? I'm not sure you could obtain 
results as here:
http://kde-apps.org/content/pre1/21450-1.jpg


Thanks for your comments !

Kleag
-- 
Gael de Chalendar
CEA-List
Centre de Fontenay-aux-Roses
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-- 
KsirK - a turn-based strategy game for KDE
http://gna.org/projects/ksirk

KGraphViewer - a GraphViz dot graphs viewer
http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kgraphviewer