[Kde-games-devel] Here, there be feedbacks

[Richard Hartmann]

Hi all,

I upgraded to KDE4 and decided to do some bug hunting for KDE
games. Poor Johannes will probably have had a heart attack when
he saw his issue counter jump from 2 to 20 ;)

First of all, let me say that I really like the games in KDE. They
do feel a _lot_ more polished.

One thing I am noticing over and over again is the lack of
consistency between the different games and with the overall
KDE design principles. An incomplete list of those issues is
below.
There might be very good reasons to do something the way it was
done. Maybe I just can't see that reason in particular case. On
the other hand, different programs having the same design
principles is a Good Thing.

Now, for the list

1) Kdiamond and KSpaceDuel have no 'View' menu item. But
they offers 'show toolbar' and 'show statusbar' under 'Settings'.
This is different from standard KDE.

2) Some games offer you to change the hotkeys, others don't.
Some let you edit notifications, others don't. knetwalk and
kdiamond even let you edit your toolbar.

3) kdiamond starts a game immediately when you open the
application, most others wait for you to press a button.

4) kbreakout has an overlay with 'game paused', kblocks simply
pauses the game without telling you this is the case.
Note that kmahjongg etc blanking out the field is a Good Thing
that should remain different.

5) Kmahjongg offers a demo mode. Other games like
kspaceduel and kjumpingcube don't (you can set them to have
the computer play both sides, but still). I would argue that it
would make sense to add an explicitly labelled demo
functionality to every game that has an AI. And that the user
should be able to stop/continue the demo at any point in time,
taking over any side he/she wants to.

6) kblocks has a 'get new themes' button in the settings,
kbreakout does not.

Long story short, I think the games should present themselves
in a more uniform way. Maybe there should be some basic
design documents and guidelines?


Also, I am not sure what to file bugs & wishlists for the
highscore against. Does anyone know?


Please note that I am not even halfway through with the games
and will probably file a lot more. If you get a dozen small reports,
please don't be annoyed. I just learned that for these things,
actual reports/tickets/whatever are a _lot_ better as you can't
lose track of them :)


Richard