[Kde-games-devel] Here comes Kubrick

[Parker Coates]

On Feb 18, 2008 2:14 AM, Ian Wadham <ianw2 at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> ...It uses OpenGL graphics and I am hoping it will become KDE Games'
> first 3-D game.

Sorry, but I think KSudoku has you beat by a few months.

> ...hence the name Kubrick.

Congratulations on the name. It's probably the best named application
in all of KDE. It just works on several levels.

> Any other suggestions are welcome.

Here's a (rather large) list of issues/potential improvements I
noticed while playing around. Don't interpret this as being too
negative. For a game just checked in to playground, it's in very good
shape.

- The toolbar is huge. 13 is a lot of buttons. I  had to maximise the
window to 1152 pixels just so see all items. Fortunately, I think a
lot of them could easily be removed.

- The "Next View"/"Previous View" interface is awkward. I there are
only three different views, why not give them names and let me jump
directly to them.

- As Mauricio pointed out, the initial flood of "You're doing it
wrong!" dialogues is a bit frustrating.

- If my drag and drop stops on the same sticker it started on, I
shouldn't get a warning dialogue. The move should just be ignored.

- It be pretty neat if when starting a move by dragging from a
sticker, arrows appeared on the four adjacent stickers to indicate
"drop points" for the four possible rotations.

- Watch your moves in progress should definitely be enabled by
default. In fact, I don't really see why one would ever want to turn
it off.

- "Clear tumbling to zero" might make more sense if it were name
"Reset orientation" or something similar.

- The right button drag interface is convenient when one wants to
re-orient the cube, but I think sometimes a less discrete way of
rotating the cube would be convenient. Maybe the middle mouse button
(or CTRL + left button) could be used to freely rotate the cube, much
like the left mouse button does in KSudoku.

- The text "DEMO - Click anywhere to stop" would probably make more
sense as "Demo - Click anywhere to begin."

- I'm not that familiar with Qt/OpenGL internals, but if possible,
anti-aliasing would be a nice option.

- I'm also curious if an option to remove perspective could be useful.
Sometimes I find the skewing of the faces to be a little bit
distracting. But then again, who knows; maybe I would find a lack of
skewing just as distracting.

- The "Go" menu should probably be renamed "View".

All in all, excellent work Ian. Well done.

Parker