[Kde-games-devel] KPoker

[Inge Wallin]

On Sunday 06 May 2007 11.07, Martin Heni wrote:
> I was briefly thinking about making KPoker fit for KDE4. As I have done
> LSkat I think another card game might be not so hard for me to do. But I am
> not fully sure whether this is a good idea or not. A couple of questions:
>
> 1. Is someone already working on KPoker? If so I need not bother.

No, I don't think so.  Actually, I'm pretty sure there is not.

> 2. Is there any maintainer for KPoker? Is there someone who would keep it
> alive after KDE 4.0 as it is absolutely impossible for me to maintain it
> beyond the initial conversion.

There is no real maintainer, but I think I was the last one to do any 
significant work on it.  If we can work together to make it usable for 2.1, I 
can continue to fix bugs afterwards. Until the release of 2.0, I will have 
very little time for KPoker because a) I have to make KChart in KOffice 
usable for KOffice 2.0 and b) I have taken on a mentorship for a Google SoC 
code project in Marble.

After that I don't expect it to be so much problem.

> 3. Is the game generally worth keeping? What's the opinion on that? How is
> the AI playing? I could only do the QGV/SVG conversion but probably not any
> gameplay or AI issues. I am not a poker player either so I cannot judge
> this very well.

Well, I have fixed the main engine so that it values hands correctly and other 
similar stuff. I also made the code of the AI a bit saner, but didn't touch 
the playing algorithms (much). The AI is generally sucky so it's not a great 
challenge, but generally Poker AIs are still a topic for research since it's 
not a game of perfect information.

Regarding KPoker at large, what's really bad is the current GUI. It needs a 
major overhaul, and I see the need for the following:

 - The table. We need a completely new look, but I have already gotten a 
promise from the kdegames graphics guys to get help after the release of 2.0, 
so I feel confident that this will be fixed.

 - Network play.  If there is any game in kdegames that really screams out for 
network play, it's kpoker. Especially since poker is not a 2 player game, but 
multiple players. A question here is: Does ggz have a poker server?

 - More poker variations. Especially Texas Hold'em.

 - Maybe also improved AI, but although I am pretty familiar with game AIs (I 
used to work a lot on GNU go, which once won the computer olympiad), I don't 
have much experience with AIs like this.  I do think we can improve the AI, 
but I don't expect it to get to expert play. And especially I don't think we 
can make it bluff convincingly. :-)

> 4. Are there other things missing or buggy except for the graphics, that
> is, if I would make scalable QGV graphics would the game be alright then?

Well, see above.  I think the graphics needs a complete overhaul, and also the 
game flow.  Right now the bidding sucks, and there is no good way to see how 
much you have bet.

	-Inge

> Any opinions?

Always :-)

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-- 
Inge Wallin               | Thus spake the master programmer:               |
                          |      "After three days without programming,     |
inge at lysator.liu.se       |       life becomes meaningless."                |
                          | Geoffrey James: The Tao of Programming.         |