[Kde-games-devel] Future of Taxipilot

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi,

some of you may have tried taxipilot (http://taxipilot.sf.net) before, but 
others probably have not, so I'll start with a short summary:

Taxipilot is a game loosely based on my memories of the classic Spacetaxi. 
It's a rather simple thrust based game, where the objective is to pick up and 
deliver passengers in a number of different levels. The basic idea is pretty 
simple, but can be fairly addictive, if properly backed up with small visual 
effects, nice graphics and interesting levels.

In short, I think it's a really nice game concept, but making it truly worth 
while requires a good deal of attention to details, and support by skilled 
graphics designers.

The sad point is: My graphics skills are pretty horrible (but a number of 
pretty nice graphics has been contributed; you'll easily be able to tell, 
which ones have been contributed, and which ones I did myself). Moreover, I 
just don't have too much time to work on the project anymore, and the bare 
minimum to keep the game working does not seem enough to keep the game 
interesting. In fact, I hardly got around to writing this mail.

Then KDE4 is coming up, and I just don't know, whether and how I 
will be able to do the porting (main issues are QCanvas, and arts 
dependencies; nothing impossible, but will need a bit of time - which I 
probably won't have). So, while development has been mostly dormant for a 
pretty long time, already, now there's a real threat of the project dying 
entirely. Despite it's limitations, I think that would be a pity.

So here's a call for help! Please take a look at the game, if you can find the 
time. If you think it's worth while, consider whether you can help some with 
maintaince and porting. If you want to invest more time, I'll be happy to 
hand over full control. If you'd like to host the project in KDE's SVN 
instead of on sourceforge - all fine with me. I'll try to help as much as I 
can, but be aware that "as much as I can" is unlikely to be much more than 
answering some questions here and there, and providing some ideas.

Any (space) taxi pilots out there?

Regards
Thomas