[Kde-games-devel] Kapman sprite system (also, connecting-tiles systems)

[Matthew Woehlke]

Mauricio Piacentini wrote:
> a) Had you looked at the KGlEngine specs? Maybe collaborate with these guys?

Possibly. By the name, I take it that's GL-based, though? Given that I 
have no GL on one machine, that could be... difficult.

I'm not sure how related they are, though. I would guess they don't have 
a tiling engine, and the two things I am looking at are that and a frame 
extraction system (and since I'm apparently the only one that thinks the 
latter is worthwhile...). Getting into actual animation probably there 
will be some overlap; that might be a good time to see if animation can 
be split from the graphics backend (always a good idea).

> c) Write the frameworks AND a new game to use it at the same time, in 
> playground. This could help you experiment with both the art/maze code 
> and the animation one at your own pace, and hopefully with reusability 
> in mind. Then if people find it useful it would go into libkdegames. I 
> think KTank was started this way, as a proving ground for what is now 
> shaping up as KGLEngine, right?

Tile code doesn't need experimenting, I've already done it, it works 
:-). It just needs to be a: dusted off, and b: extracted from Kapman.

(I snipped that part, but) I might even start the tiling engine in 
KSame, since as you say it's a clear case of both having a need for the 
engine. Right now I'm poking at Kapman because I've got a theme already 
to use as fodder for testing.

Also, to do KSame tiling first, if I've already done Kapman sprite 
stuff, will need either to put the frame-extracting code in library form 
early or just copy the code. Probably either one is okay to do, we 
shouldn't be talking about large amounts of code.

> What I do not think wise is to attempt to force the framework design to 
> be adopted by other games before it is ready. We end up in the land of 
> speculation and personal preferences, and no productive work being 
> churned out. KGoldRunner for example could potentially benefit from your 
> ideas, but it has undergone several rewrites and I think Ian/Luciano and 
> me are not up to yet another API change, at least for now ... :)

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I certainly would not push something like this 
out everywhere without it working in at least one game first :-).

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
"Who wants to sing?" -- Orcs (Warcraft II)