[Kde-games-devel] Log of the irc discussion

[Ian Wadham]

Thanks very much, Luciano, for sending me the log .. :-)

First of all, please accept my profuse and humble apologies for
not being there in time.  As you know I was out at dinner with
Aaron Seigo, whom I have been waiting to meet for about 5
years.  Three other guys tagged along and it was a great
evening.  One of the guys was a senior Google/Gnome
developer and at one stage he and Aaron got into a big
argument.  I just felt it was ultra-important to stay and help
keep the peace ... and besides, the food and the wine were
excellent ... :-)

Everyone parted on terms of mutual respect I am happy to say,
but I was rather late getting home.  So, sorry ... :-(

Here are some thoughts on the topics you discussed.

On Sun, 3 Feb 2008 12:39 am, Luciano sent the log:
> [13:05] <piacentini> First topic: new games in consideration for 4.1
> [13:05] <tsdgeos> who wants to get in?
> [13:05] <piacentini> Deadline iirc is March 31
> [13:05] <tsdgeos> yeah
> [13:06] <piacentini> Which means March 14 in kdereview at most
> [13:06] <tsdgeos> sortof

I would like to try and get Kubrick in.

It is a 3-D Rubik's Cube game.  I will put it in playground, in
KDE3/Qt3/autotools form, as soon as I can.  Then I have to port
to KDE4/Qt4/CMake form and do whatever else I have time for in
the way of feature improvements.  I hope you will all like it!

> [13:17] <mikelima> What is not clear to me is how will theme
> designers publish their stuff?
> [13:17] <piacentini> annma: does edu have a server?
> [13:17] <annma> lack of server is still a problem

I know where there might be a server ... ;-)

Aaron Seigo talked about plasma at Linux Conf Australia, which was a
huge success.  After it, Sun Australia and their main OEM in Australia
presented Aaron (as representing KDE) with a new Sun server.  Now,
I wonder what Aaron plans to do with it ... ;-)

There was no chance to talk about it at dinner, due to the others being
there, but maybe I'll email him about it.  I think it would be a nice new
departure for KDE to have some kind of public utility server to handle
games and edu requirements and other things of interest to KDE users.

Further to that, there was a BOF at the conference for the game of Go,
which I attended.  Some people in the Go community perceive a need
for Open Source software for a Go server and an actual international
Open Source server.  See my separate post on that topic.

> [13:22] <dimsuz> ian's with as? ;)
    if (as == "Aaron Seigo") say ("Yes"); // ... :-)
> [13:22] <dimsuz> us
    else say ("Er, no"); // See my apology  above ... :-(
        // I'm really sorry I missed you, Dmitry.

> [13:22] <tsdgeos> piacentini: if sysadmin says "no server", then
> you can upscale to eV 

And Aaron is President of KDE e.v. and we and edu are his favourite
people right now ...  He was telling everybody, at dinner, what a great
job we had all done and yet KDE Games were apologising for having
"only" 24 games ready for KDE 4 ...  He is using our games all the time
at demos ... There are not a lot of other KDE 4 apps yet.

> [13:23] <piacentini> tsdgeos: ok. So maybe myself, annma and tsdgeos?
> I can write an email to sysadmin, with CC to you guys and jpwhiting, to
> trigger this
> [13:23] <annma> mikelima: as temporary server you'll have to use
> games.kde.org

That's fine.  The Sun Aust. server I was talking about above is still a piece
of plastic-laminated paper with a promise printed on it.

> [13:33] <dimsuz> piacentini: speaking of which - i think that popping it up
> after game over (like some games do - including maintained by me) might
> scare the user. it sometimes scares even me :) bad usability imho

Depends on the game ... if you have just sweated through 20 levels of
KGoldrunner you might be *hoping* the high score dialog comes up ...
as you lose your last life ... ;-) ... I always am!

> [13:33] <piacentini> dimsuz: agree, that is one of the motivations for the
> move to a woc structure, maybe
> [13:34] <piacentini> Like our current KGamePopupItem

Will WoC work on KGameCanvas?  Or is it another QGV-based thing?

> [13:34] <dimsuz> i think at first we'll need to analize what our games'
> highscore requirements are. i'll think about it

Dmitry, please take into account the list of KGoldrunner highscore data
items.  Last time I looked, they would not all fit into the libkdegames
highscore format, so I stayed with home-grown for KDE 4.0.

> [13:36] <dimsuz> agreed. I spoke with it-s about sound in klines. he
> suggested to add "dummy" support for sounds so the game would be
> ready to just play them when they arrive

Perhaps people could use clones of standard KDE sound files, some of
which are quite game-like ... just as a fill-in and for testing.

> [13:42] <mikelima> Ian's son is a musician, and he has volunteered for
> kgoldrunner sounds ...

He just got back from SE Asia.  So I'll have to brief him very soon about
the details.  Peter composed most of the KGoldrunner levels BTW, when
he was about 14.

> [14:05] <mikelima> Hi it-s! We just agreed to redo all the games in
> ascii art!
> [14:05] <josel> dimsuz_: yeah, i saw it, someone comitted a fix for it 

I'll drink to that ... hic!

> [14:33] --> ianw2 è entrato nel canale

ianw2 falls into the canal (???) ... :-)

> [14:33] <mikelima> hi ianw2... you are a bit late! But welcome, none
> the less!

Better late than never.  All the best, Ian W.