[Kde-games-devel] KDE Games Report from Akademy 2008

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

Fela Winkelmolen:

> I'm going to fix this as I get complaints from a lot of people, but the
> simplest solution of fire on mouse click wont work, it was that way when
> in beta and people kept clicking outside of the window, making the game
> lose focus, and that was even more annoying than having to get used to
> using the keyboard, believe me.

I was initially just thinking of ‘click to start game’ when you start a new
game, not ‘click to release ball’ when you have the ‘glue feature’ on the
ball. Then there will be no problem using ‘click to start’. In Kollision,
it works very well. But there would still be the problem of having to use
the keyboard when you have the glue feature.

Also, in Kollision the mouse pointer is visible before you start the game. I
actually find it somewhat confusing that the pointer disappears when I move
it over the KBreakout window (the playing part of the window). It feels,
well, a bit uncomfortable, and I find it somwehat difficult to even get to
the menu bar.

What I have seen in other games that use window mode, is a ‘click to grab
mouse pointer focus’ way of working. Initially, the mouse pointer is
visible, but when you click in the playing field, the the game
is ‘activated’ and the mouse pointer disappears (and it’s not possible to
move it outside the window). You then have to pause the game,
using ‘Escape’ to get the mouse pointer back. (I’ve pressed ’Escape’
several times in KBreakout and been surprised that it doesn’t pause the
game, so you might want to add this as an additional pause key, in addition
to ‘P’.)

Some ideas:

When you start KBreakout, don’t grab, and don’t hide, the mouse pointer.
Then it will be easy to get to the menu bar. The game should be ‘paused’,
so that the paddle doesn’t follow the mouse pointer.

Have a ‘Click to start game’ (overlay) button in the play area (in the style
of the buttons of KBattleship?). When you click it, it the mouse pointer
disappears, the mouse controls the paddle, you click (or press ‘Space’) to
fire the ball, and it’s not possible to move the pointer outside the
window, without pressing ‘Escape’/‘P’ to pause the game.

When you pause *or* lose the game (no more lives left), the mouse pointer
should return, the paddle should stop following the game, and everything
should work just as when you first started the game, so that you can easily
use the menu bar or quite the game.

-- 
Karl Ove Hufthammer