[Kde-games-devel] Game status view

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Stefan Majewsky wrote:
> Many of our games (KGoldRunner, KNetwalk, KBlocks, KDiamond, ...) have a 
> statusbar showing information about the game status (remaining time, earned 
> points, level) and the difficulty selector. At first, the status bar is an 
> obvious place for such information which does not constrain the size of the 
> actual game view very much. That is also the problem: the status bar is 
> difficult to discover if you do not know it, and it is hard to read on big 
> windows.
> 
> Other games (esp. those running in fullscreen mode) have information panels at 
> one of the screen edges where such information is organised. The situation is 
> the exact opposite here: An information panel takes much place away for the 
> sake of visibility and readability.
> 
> I would like to know how we actually came to the extensive usage of statusbars 
> for game informations, and whether there are better solutions to accomplish 
> this task (esp. with regard to small window sizes).

This is a somehow recurrent theme, and we could never truly reach a 
consensus. Some people (like me) advocate the use of the status bar to 
give feedback to the user, as it is automatically themed to follow the 
desktop style, fonts, etc. This is a camp that can better be described 
as: Games in kdegames ideally need to use the same metaphor used by 
other applications, including visible menus, toolbar, statusbar. In 
other words, automatically match and leverage the "desktop" APIs used by 
all KDE apps.
There is another position, which is to try to make the traditional 
desktop application controls invisible, if possible. So information 
should be presented in the game area, and input ideally should also be 
gathered there (no popup windows, no menus, no toolbar, no statusbar.
And there is a middleground, of course. I think ultimately it depends on 
the type of game. For games where a fullscreen experience is desired 
(KGoldrunner comes to mind), then maybe getting rid of the trsaditional 
desktop window elements is the way to go. For others, like KMahjongg and 
KBlocks, I prefer to consider them as desktop applications, and prefer 
to have them match consistently what the desktop uses (font sizes, 
window styles, you name it.)
There was a discussion last year you can find at

http://lists.kde.org/?t=118524668400004&r=1&w=2

There are also others, search for statusbar in the archives.

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini