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

[Luciano Montanaro]

On venerdì 30 ottobre 2009, Eugene Trounev [it-s] wrote:
> I have been following the thread for a while. Well here are my thoughts.
> 
> > And how better to test KAL than trying to use it as a backend in
> >  KGoldrunner? ;)
> 
> I agree. KAL integration would be awesome!

It should improve latency, and being able to spatially position the sounds 
would be neat. Maybe it's more than what's needed for KGoldrunner, but since 
the feature is there, why shouldn't I use it?


> 
> > > IIRC Eugene was against the split between Actors and Set a while back,
> > > but maybe he has changed his mind.
> 
> He hasn't, but the decision isn't really up to him.
>

Well, I want your input on this. I don't want to make it so awkward to work on 
themes that you (or other potential theme creators) would be discouraged. 

But the monolithic theme has scalability problems. And not only for 
KGoldrunner, I think, also Inkscape gets slower if too many detailed objects 
are on the canvas. That's why I'd like to (be able to) split up the themes 
more. Actually, it should be possible to keep the current themes working. 

> > > Further splits of SVG files also concern me a little, because I do not
> > > see how an artist will be able to maintain color balance and contrast
> > > across multiple files.
> >
> > I tend to create a color palette for my own use. But my graphic style
> > tend to be on the minimalist side.
> 
> Don't worry about it. The way artists usually work is much different from
>  the way programmers do. Where the later try to split and separate, the
>  artists try to merge and consolidate :)
> 

Eh, eh! We try to merge and consolidate too -- programming is mostly about 
finding regularities and exploit them, I think -- but we have different 
viewpoint regarding what is merging and consolidating...  

But in my experience in theme authoring the really boring part was giving ids 
to all the animation frames, that's why I ended up working with one actor per 
file, and merging them only at the end.

> > > KGoldrunner is rather sensitive to these things because
> > > the tile-layouts in the levels vary visually so much and the figures
> > > move around so much.  It has been all too easy to lose sight of
> > > enemies, gold or even the hero against some backgrounds and layouts.
> >
> > Well, I want to load files separately, but you still can import the
> > other graphic sets in your vector editor anyway.
> 
> Well if you are to split the SVGs into smaller files I really don't see any
> reason to keep it SVG. Hi-res PNGs will do the job just fine. The only
>  reason I insisted on SVGs before is because it's so easy to keep themes
>  tidy, them being in a singular file.

From my point of view, SVG gives us scalability and structure. But if some 
parts are only needed later in the game, there should be no need to load it at 
startup. And there is no need to be purists, if high res graphics loads 
faster, than vector graphics, it's the better alternative. Sometimes it is, 
sometimes it is not. 

> 
> As for Ian's comment on my themes being too detailed - well I did, and
>  still do, believe we will keep increasing monitor sizes. So in a matter of
>  3-5 years the screens will become gigantic and then all those details will
>  be easily visible.

I understand your point of view, but 3-5 years means 6-10 KDE releases. We 
would have plenty of time to update the Graphics.

And there are two additional points: I think the technology would be there 
already for higher resolution monitors, but it's not being used because it 
would make stuff unreadable for many people. We in the Open Source world can 
simply select a bigger font or let the monitor advertise the pixel size and 
continue working, but I have friends on Windows that are upset because their 
monitor is too high res, so they configure it to get a blurry image, but with 
bigger letters.

On the second hand, even with higher res, the details are likely to remain 
invisible: I have one of those incredible N810 they gave out at the Akademy. 
The single pixel is almost invisible. So even there the detail would be 
lost... the bright side is that jagged lines are history.

Ciao,
Luciano



-- 
Luciano Montanaro //
                \X/ mikelima at cirulla.net