[Kde-games-devel] kbattleship and welcome screen

[Ian Wadham]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:23 am, Johannes Bergmeier wrote:
> On Tuesday 12 June 2007, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > well, ksudoku's entry screen is not a very good example. it presents 2
> > groupboxes (nested!) with 6 widgets just to go in an play a simple
> > game... it -feels- heavy. kbattleship also provides 6 widgets but it
> > feels fun and easy. the latter is certainly what the games should be
> > aiming for, imho.
>
> in my opinion you are right on ksudokus welcome screen. We started
> designing it over 3 times now but it is still far from perfect. im
> currently the one who does most of the work on it, so i'm personally not
> the best person for testing. but when playing ksudoku i realized the
> following:
>
For some time now KSudoku for KDE4 has been hard for me to play
(using latest kdegames, kdelibs and qt-copy to compile it).  It also
seems to have lost some useful features since the KDE3 version (which
I play a lot), and does not display some features you mentioned (such
as Samurai and Jigsaw).  Specifically:

- Cannot enter "possibilities" after clicking the right mouse button (the
   "Mouse-only superscript mode" menu item is always disabled).
- Cannot turn off the tracker (that menu item is also disabled).
- Guided mode is on when you start, but is not selected in the menu.
- Symmetry option has gone.  In KDE3 I use that to enhance or
   reduce the difficulty ("no symmetry" seems a lot harder than "4-way").
- Push/pop facility has gone.

> 1) i use that difficulty slider rather seldom, although i need it far more
> often than an average user. i think we can simply move that config to the
> settings menu.
>
I use the difficulty option in KDE3 a lot, depending on my mood and the
time I have available.  If I just want to pass the time while compiling, I
tend to choose a simple game.

> 2) i change often the game i play, quite more often than for example in
> kpat. sometimes i play 10 or more games and change back and forth between
> samurai, jigsaw and xsudoku. i don't know whether i'm the only person doing
> this. but if i'm not the list of different games should stay.
>
If "Samurai" is a set of 5 overlapping 9x9 Sudokus, I'd really like to get
into it, but as I said, I can't get that station on my radio.  I've tried
16x16, 25x25 and 3D, but keep coming back to 9x9.

> 3) getting new games will be used rather seldom so i don't think it needs a
> button on the welcome screen. it can either go in the config dialog, the
> settings menu or be another option on the game list.
>
It's not clear what "Get New" means.  At first sight I thought it was how
to start a puzzle, because the button is off by itself, which makes it
prominent.  It just says "not implemented" if I click it.

> one button left: start empty. i don't know what to do with this one. most
> people would never need it as they play only ksudoku-created-games. but
> others will need it quite often for solving sudokus from newspapers etc.
>
I like this facility, but have relabelled it "Key in your own puzzle" in my
KDE3 version, mainly for my wife's benefit.  I'm sure she would not
understand "Start Empty".  I'm not sure if I do, either.

> so has anybody suggestions what's the right way to go?
>
Hope this helps, but I'd really like to get the KDE4 version playable.
Then I could offer some more suggestions.

Cheers, Ian W.