[Kde-games-devel] Theming suport

[Parker Coates]

On 3/14/07, Branan Riley <branan at gmail.com> wrote:
> So the dialog should probably just be a list of all SVG files in the search
> path that contain _every_ sprite for the game. Then in the advanced section,
> it lists all SVG files in the search path, and lets the user choose which
> sprites from which files (with a nice preview of course). Sequence sprites
> (like a running animation or an explosion) should probably be selected as a
> group - that is, you can't switch out a single frame of an animation.

Including this in the UI seems like overkill to me. While it might be
"neat" to mix and match sprites, the majority of the time, the results
won't be very aesthetically pleasing.

The good news is that with SVG themes, one only needs Inkscape and a
basic understanding of vector graphics or a text editor and a basic
understanding of XML to mix and match sprites. In fact, I bet we'll
start seeing a bunch of "remixed" themes showing up on KDE-Look
shortly after the 4.0 release.

> While I'm up on my soapbox about standardizing, there should probably be a
> standard for sequence sprites, too. Something like:
>
> spriteName_001
> spriteName_002
> ...
> spriteName_nnn
>
> That way artists don't have to learn a new scheme for every app.

It's a nice idea in theory, but I doubt you'd be able to get everyone
to agree on the details. As long as everyone is using a logical and
consistent (within the application) naming scheme, I doubt the artists
will have too much trouble.

Parker