[Kde-games-devel] Here comes Kubrick

[Ian Wadham]

Hi everybody,

Kubrick, a game based on Rubik's Cube, is now in playground/games.
It has been converted to Qt4 and KDE4, so it should be compiled and
built in a KDE4 development environment.

It uses OpenGL graphics and I am hoping it will become KDE Games'
first 3-D game.

The cube dimensions can range from 1 to 6.  Objects with one dimension
= 1 are called "mats".  Those with all three dimensions are cubes (obviously).
And those with unequal dimensions are "bricks", hence the name Kubrick.

You can use the game as a normal Rubik's Cube puzzle and you can choose
how many shuffling moves to have.  A 3x3x3 cube with 20 shuffling moves
is your classic Rubik's Cube.  You can also attempt shorter puzzles, such as
a 3x3x3 cube with 4 shuffling moves, the idea being to solve it in no more
than 4 moves.  There are also smaller cubes, bricks and mats for younger
players.  Other settings allow you to view moves in progress and set the
speed of the animation.

To move a "slice", click and hold with the left mouse button on one of
the colored "stickers", then drag to an adjacent sticker and let go.  To
move the whole cube (by 90 degrees), do the same with the right mouse
button.  You can also get 3 different "views" of the cube/brick you are
working on (see the Go menu).

As well as puzzles, there are demos of moves used to make "pretty
patterns" and of moves used to solve the 3x3x3 cube systematically.
At the moment, they run too quickly, and I must find some way of
making those moves easier to follow.

I would also like to improve the user interface, by which I mean the
operation of the cube/brick itself.  There is a keyboard mode, based
on typing x, y or z for the axis of rotation, a digit for the slice number
and right/left arrow for clockwise/anticlockwise, but I am hoping to
introduce a text box containing Singmaster notation, as used in books
about the cube.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Handling rotations of the whole cube is not very elegant ATM.

Another thing that needs improving is the feedback on the status bar.

Hope you like this game, Ian W.

P.S. If you stop the game, it auto-saves itself.  So an unsolved cube comes
back to you in the state you left it, just like a real Rubik's Cube ... ;-)