[Kde-games-devel] When will background be configurable? (was: Kpat and card style chooser)

[Matthew Woehlke]

Parker Coates wrote:
> I personally think the independent selection of card fronts and backs
> is a simple case of over customisability. When buying a real deck of
> cards, you're pretty much stuck choosing the front and back at the
> same time.

True, but the fronts of most "real life" card decks are much more 
similar than what we have, while the array of choices of backs is huge.

I still don't like making fronts and backs inseparable. What about 
standardizing on some common sizes, and restricting the choice of backs 
to those matching the "shape" of the deck? You can still do "unusual" 
decks; they just won't have many choices of back. But "standard"-sized 
decks can have many choices. (And a back can provide more than one 
"shape", of course.)

> It also seems a bit odd that in KPat 4.2 you can choose
> card backs independently, but not the background image which is
> something I would assume a lot more people would be interested in
> customising.

I've been complaining about that for some time :-). I want my leaf back 
:-). I also want the option for a "green felt" background, and possibly 
even the original "neutral gray" background. And I'm sure others will 
come up with more great backgrounds... if only you could actually use them.

> Of course, if we're in the process of unifying decks, then maybe it
> makes sense to also include backgrounds and transition from "decks" to
> "themes". It works for our other games, why not for our card games?
> For example, the current default background looks very nice when
> combined with the Royal Jolly deck, but looks a bit odd when combined
> with one of the cleaner, simpler decks like, say, Nicu Ornamental.
> Letting deck designers choose their backgrounds seems pretty
> reasonable to me.

...but then you /remove/ that choice from the user. IMO there's a reason 
our mahjong games didn't go this route.

(Given it-s's comment, I guess I should add that, while I've fiddled 
with the themes, I'm not otherwise a kpat developer, though I do play it 
quite a bit :-).)

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
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