[Kde-games-devel] Kapman

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Thomas Gallinari wrote:
> Hi all !
> 
> We are Ervin' students working on Kapman. We are about to conclude our school project (one week remaining !), so we'd like some feedback from the community in order to present the final release before the committee. 
> We already know Kapman was not selected for the next KDE release... :'(
> Despite we are about to commit suicide ;-) we'd like to know what is missing to make the game ready.
> 
> Awaiting your comments we're going to play Kapman ! :-)

Hi, guys. Nothing was officially selected or discarded yet, so don't 
panic! I only mentioned in the previous email the games that were 
presented as candidates for inclusion in the last meeting. As for 
Kapman, I think it would be a nice candidate for inclusion, if it can be 
  improved a bit before April 6th, and get ready to be moved to 
kdereview. You mention that you guys are going to conclude the project 
in one week, so it looks like this can be done!

The technical requirements to move to kdereview/kdegames can be found in 
the STABLE section of this page:

http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Policies/SVN_Guidelines

The main one that Kapman appears to be missing now is documentation. You 
need to have a handbook with the basics covered. Maybe dinounix or it-s 
can help you guys with a template? Or you can get the docs for one other 
game and tweak them to follow the general style. Documentation does not 
need to be perfect yet, as we have a docu team that can improve it 
later. But it needs to be present, and accurate.

Someone (or more than one person) should also volunteer to maintain the 
game, at least for some time, and preferrably for the life of the KDE 
4.x series. Of course, this is not a contract or something set in stone, 
but it would be good to know if some members of the team are planning to 
stay around to maintain the game and deal with the bugs reported when it 
is released with 4.1 to millions of people :)

Also, I think you guys need to implement at least KGameTheme and 
KGameThemeSelector. All games in KDE 4.1 are themable, so you should 
have this even if you have only one team right now. You can have a look 
at KMines (or KBlocks in playground) if you need help in the 
implementation, but it should not be too difficult.

Kapman should also allow configurable keys for the actions. This can be 
added later, but if you want to do it know have a look at the configure 
shortcuts implementation in KBlocks and copy it :)

Again, the game does not need to be completely finished, but all the 
basic requirements (like docs) need to be in place. And you guys should 
also add the planned feature list to:

http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Schedules/KDE4/4.1_Feature_Plan

We will then have a couple of months to tweak and improve these 
features. Personally, I would like to act differently this time compared 
with the 4.0 freeze, and this was something we discussed in the IRC 
meeting last month: we should attempt to plan the features and move 
games to the module so they have at least a CHANCE of being included in 
4.1, and not just arbitrarily cut 4-6 months before the release while 
other modules are still adding stuff at the last minute. Of course, we 
need to be reasonable, and do not force things upon ourselves or the 
translators: if something is really not ready, and there are basic 
features missing, then it can not be considered for kdereview. But 
Kapman is almost there, I think it can make it.

IMO, before the release we should also work on a Oxygen-style default 
team, one that does not resemble the commercial game that inspired the 
development so much. This does not have to be in place right now (next 
week), but we should have it ready for April 22th, the first alpha. I do 
not think it is wise or desirable for us to release a game in our 
collection with the default artwork that is so close to one that might 
be protected in some countries. Notice that I am talking about 
specifically the artwork (player and ghosts), not the game mechanics or 
other non-patentable stuff.

Of course, nothing prevents us from making a "Classic" or 
user-contributed version of the artwork available as well for download, 
via KnewStuff or included in the package. But the default one should 
have unique elements imo. I am sure that (if he has time) Eugene could 
come up with something simple and distinctive. Do you guys have an 
artist on the Kapman team?

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini