[Kde-games-devel] Improving theme authoring for kgoldrunner

[Ian Wadham]

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 11:44:54 am Arturo Silva wrote:
> First off, Ian had asked me if I had any feedback about KGoldRunner in
> general and I do have some.
>
Modesty forbids me to replay the nice things you said about KGr, Arturo,
but thank you very, very much for saying them.  Suddenly you have made
years of work worthwhile.  I even feel inspired to get to grips with those
graphics and GUI libraries yet again ... :-) ...

> Admittedly, at least in the version I played, there are two issues that jar
> me a bit.  My mind still blurs between the 1994 Sierra version, and the
> original Broderbund version I played on my Atari 8-bit, but I don't recall
> ever being in motion continuously.
>
Well it *is* classed as an arcade game ... ;-)  The keyboard controls are
as they were on the Broderbund version on Apple II.  And I still have a
working Apple IIc to prove it.  You have to hit spacebar or dig-keys to stop.
Esc has always paused the action and so does P in KDE.

> Normally that means I simply wouldn't like the mouse control, but I also
> end up not liking how the keyboard control works either.
>
The mouse control tries to emulate a joystick, which *real* players liked
to use back in the day ... :-)  The hero would stop when the joystick was
released and sprang back to center.  Our family wore out 4 or 5 sticks.

In mouse mode, the hero stops when he catches up to the arrow.  So
the trick is to point where you want him to go and he stops automatically
when he gets there.  When you get to know the enemies really well,
you can pick a good stopping point and rest or have a think, while
they mill around uselessly in the distance.

> Granted this does keep you on your toes and is true 
> to the "runner" name, but often I yearn for the guarantee that one small
> accidental flick of the mouse or a key press that won't register at the
> right millisecond won't plunge me to my doom.
>
Heh, heh!  Did you get through the ladder-trap loop in Mazes, level 13.
Well, this *is* an arcade game ...  The thing I loved about Lode Runner is
that it also had puzzle and strategy characteristics.

> As I mentioned earlier, I always assumed [as a user] that KGoldRunner,
> endowed with tons of levels, 6 excellent themes, quality animation, sound
> and a very complete menu subsystem, really didn't need any more help, most
> definitely not in artwork.  With only a finite amount of time, this is why
> my first task here when joining your mailing list was to help out Kolf,
> since THAT was a project I thought needed a little more love.
>
Quite right too!  You have been a wonderful help to KDE Games, Arturo!

> But once a desktop game has enough love on the developer end, isn't it only
> fair to move on to help other desktop game projects?  After all, the point
> of a desktop game has traditionally been as a simple, quick-loading, and
> above all IMMUTABLE pastime -- if you had hoped for a different opinion
> from your userbase, then I think that point needs to be advertised so that
> players won't simply just play and maybe, if you're lucky, occasionally
> drop in a kind word of appreciation.
>
> In addition, assuming I never joined this mailing list, I wonder if it's
> entirely clear how I could contribute custom artwork.  It took a real leap
> of faith just to sign on to a mailing list, and I definitely rule out IRC,
> and neither are particularly good mediums for the display and evaluation of
> art proposal IMHO.  I'm lucky because I already have webspace I can upload
> my samples too -- otherwise, the 150KB limit would have driven me away eons
> ago.
>
> And then of course there's always the uncertainty of whether my artwork
> will be well-received to begin with, and given the number of frames
> required to draw (~30 per?) I might be hard pressed to go through the
> aforementioned loops without some guarantee that I put so much love and
> heart will be used, commented upon and hopefully loved in return.  (I
> imagine coders have a similar dilemma with their programs too, although its
> been my observation that artists, not always but often, are more fickle and
> dramatic perhaps owing to the greater subjectivity of the medium.)
>
Your excellent points are well-taken.

> For example, I would LOVE to draw an Ubunchu theme for KGoldRunner (and
> maybe many other KDE games too).  But if I'm lucky that any of you know
> what "Ubunchu" is, then I'm sure you'd be in agreement that its a little
> too....... specialized....... to be considered as a permanent theme.
>
Well, it's not in Wikipedia, but we have Google around here too ... ;-)
I even linked to the first issue of "Ubunchu", in English.  When I was in
Japan some centuries ago, I loved the traditional culture and found much
of the popular culture interesting too ... King Kong movies, music halls,
precision chorus lines ... but I could not understand pachinko and manga
comics at all ... :-(

My son, Peter, who composed the KGoldrunner sounds and many of the
levels, is devoted to the movies of Hayao Miyazaki and I rather like them too.  
My favorites are "My Friend Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service".

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro

So, if you would like to do an anime theme, please be my guest ... :-)  The
tech details are in kgoldrunner/themes/README.

> If you're willing to open up those kinds of floodgates (and if you've ever
> seen a M.U.G.E.N. game, you'll know how wild that kind of uncontrollable
> participation can get), then a system does have to be in place beforehand
> (not just for KGoldRunner,  but perhaps even for all of KDE in general)
> that promotes not just active, but very easy participation.  Easy as in I
> can see a Help Wanted list of [up-to-date] graphics that need to be drawn,
> I can see another list of graphics that have already been submitted by
> other users (complete with comments and grades), and I can upload my own
> with no more difficulty than a nicely massaged registration process (a la
> the KDE Bug Tracker).  In other words it'd almost be like KDElook.org, only
> married to the particular application in question, so each application no
> matter how small can have its own "mini community" of interested users
> accessible straight from the main menu (as in not needing to navigate to
> some website just to dig to the relevant section or posts dealing with
> KGoldRunner).
>
> Even the laziest users I'm sure wouldn't mind participating in a 5 second
> "love it/hate it" survey if its immediately accessible to them from, say,
> the Game Over screen.
>
> Well that's my thought on a general infrastructure improvement that's not
> necessarily tied to KGoldRunner, but that I'm sure it could benefit from
> tremendously, especially with regards to the matters brought up in this
> thread that, IMHO, are best conveyed to people who play this day in and
> out. And that's really all I have to say.
>
These are excellent ideas, Arturo.  I hope the rest of the KDE Games team
are following this thread, but I'm not sure if we are ready for MUGEN ...

> I'm sorry if I couldn't be of any help to you in the end.  :(
>
You have been a wonderful help already, Arturo.

All the best, Ian W.