[Kde-games-devel] Re : Re : What to do for default theme for Kapman?

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Thomas Gallinari wrote:
> I know what you think about a tile-based maze Matthew, but I'm now asking all the contributers to get more than one opinion, since it seems to be a huge improvement and an important feature :
> Is a tile-based maze essential for Kapman ? If it is, is it so urgent, should we make it immediately or can we wait for a while ?
> I'd really like to know since we have to plan our development until june...

What is urgent right now, if you guys want to see Kapman in 4.1, is to 
finish the minimal steps necessary for it to enter kdereview as soon as 
possible. For this, I would concentrate on:

a) Getting a (maybe temporary) second theme, without a pie chart as the 
main character. We know we want this as the default anyway.
b) Getting a docbook describing the app and main functions.

For a), maybe it-s can help as well. For b), I just committed 
documentation to KBlocks. You can maybe use it as a template and modify 
it slightly. Or let me know if you need help and I can try to document 
it for you. Anton could possibly help with review of docs as well.

To me, a tile-based maze is not essential. Maye nice-to-have, I agree. 
But as we mentioned before, the game will only have a single layout per 
theme right now. Artists can even get more creative if they do not have 
to deal with tiling and aligning, conceivably. Or they can create using 
tiles right now, just clone/arrange as a single element in the SVG for 
the time being :)
What you should/could do is to add a directive to the theme, and mark 
the current ones as "whole maze" ones. In the future, you could 
introduce "tile-based maze" themes as an option, without breaking the 
existing ones. And everyone would be happy.
Notice that I am not saying tile-based is a bad idea, but I think the 
limited time you guys have right now could be spent better in areas of 
the app that the user/player will notice, and not in this implementation 
detail. And there is time for this until June, anyway.

As for the name, I would keep Kapman anyway. And I think we should 
supply a retro graphic more or less like the current one, with ghosts 
and a pie chart. Just not as the default: it could come from a KNewStuff 
server.

The idea of having a Konqi one is great. It does not need to be complex 
or animated just yet, but kids would love it.

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini