[Kde-games-devel] The Future of Game Development in KDE

[Arturo Silva]

> That's be absolutely brilliant - we do need a good lump of help with
> documentation :)

hehe, you got it!  Just fill in the blank for the gluon mailing list
and I'll scoot on right over.  Remember, that line is blank in the
project website itself. ^^;

> A distribution system similar to Steam or
> Impulse, but for OS-agnostic packages of assets and scripts, doubling as a
> launcher for them... there's good possibilities in this stuff, but it would
> make sense to wait until we have the rest running before we start that one :)

Oh certainly (one step at a time).  ^^
But very happy to see you're thinking along the same wavelength.  The
concept certainly has me excited, and I'm not even a dev yet.  -v-

Sometimes the unwillingness to self-compile, especially from a git or
svn source, is really more due to lack of time than lack of skill or
patience.  For example, tonight I finally got Granatier built --
however, to say I didn't spend more than a fair amount of time trying
to build it the last two nights is an understatement.  In an
environment that can at least guarantee the game will build and run, I
would have had the time to play, write feedback and offer contribution
art much earlier (certainly well before the weekend, where I switch
off from all dev work temporarily).  :P

> What KGameStudio is about: It will (when/if I or someone else starts work on
> it) not be a traditional development environment, but a design environment.
> You have a bunch of fairly generic objects (e.g. 2D item, player, input
> interface, ...), which you combine through rules. These rules have to be
> formulated in some special language, or in an interface similar to the script
> editor in Warcraft 3 (my Konq is broken because of the 4.3.1 update, so if
> someone knows that, please look for and link to a screenshot from the web).

> Graphics come in quite naturally: One loads a sample SVG theme, and all named
> elements are extracted into some list, which we can use to associate items on
> the scene with textures (i.e., named elements from the SVG theme file).

> When everything is ready, we save everything to a file, and open this file in
> some interpreter shell which instantiates all objects and works through the
> rules when events occur. Alternatively, we can generate code from this file,
> and compile it to get a native application. (With this way, we could even ship
> KGameStudio-based games with kdegames.)

I love the name for sure (call me a fan of the "k-" nomers).  ;)

I do have a bit of trouble visualizing this "research project"
approach, so bear with me if the analogy is incorrect.

If the proposed game is a Frogger clone, this SVG theme file is akin
to a paper cutout, which would contain pictures of the frog, some
random cars and trucks, and other obstacles.

The script file contains human-readable rules indicating that the frog
is human-controllable, can move in a certain way, and must reach a
certain place to win.  Other rules determine where the tracks are
positioned on the screen, what they do, how fast they move, and so on.
 And yet other rules pull preset graphics (such as grass, water and
roads) contained in KGameStudio and predefined actions whenever the
frog jumps, wins, drowns or gets run over.

At the end of the day, the "game" ends up being a single file that can
be transferred and played anywhere KGameStudio is installed, and can
also be cross-compiled into regular QT4 for "normal" distribution.

This is almost how Ren'Py does it, but I think it's own distribution
mechanism involves several [mostly Python] files, not just one.

So if this is accurate, for sure I love that idea too. And not to say
the hypothetical functions of KGameStudio and Gluon Creator can't be
mutually exclusive -- in reality, that's just a way to create a very
quick little game (espcially 3D ones), but may certainly hit snags
when attempting more complicated ones such as RPGs and car/flight
simulators, in which case the functions of a regular (albeit
user-friendly) game design tool will come in handy.  ^^b


--Arturo