[Kde-games-devel] granatier

[Arturo Silva]

Thank you, Mathias.  ^^

Although as you know, thanks to your help, I did manage to build Gluon
and Granatier.  Admittedly there were a few problems doing this, since
a lot of the cmake files were referencing to the wrong headers, but
hopefully this will be a thing of the past once the underlying Gluon
code stabilizes.

Also, remember I am not a coder, I'm not quite sure if this is
currently in its alpha or beta stage, and also can't say if this is
the honest-to-goodness current version of your game (or whether you're
working on improved graphics/sounds in private).  So forgive me if I
point things out unfairly, since I am only writing this feedback from
the POV of an artist and user.

To make this easier to read, I'm presenting my analysis in a PROs,
CONs and WISHes list, followed by bullet points:

PROs
=====

- Although I've seen this with all the dev games tested so far, I'm
glad to see the polish of the build implementation.  Meaning the game
already sets itself correctly in the Games menu (with bomb icon, which
is neat), and already has all the Main Menu fields established with
default field entries.  In essence, it already feels like it can be
include in KDE just be outright appearance.

- The graphics, though simple, are as you said quite complete, and the
game itself is in a playable state.

- The addition of sounds was a great touch that adds an admirable
level of polish, and while they do seem a bit rough for the context (I
kind of expect the balls to squeak painfully when blown up, not yell
like a dead FPS character), at least they are in place.  It would
simply be a matter of changing them based on the theme if possible.

- Though the sprites themselves have no animation, the clever
"wobbling" of the goo balls as they walk, or the expansion/contraction
of the bombs as they get set is a quite clever and charming way to
compensate.

- Pausing when removing focus from the game is also a good addition,
although I still wonder if the same holds true during a multiplayer
match if later supported.



CONs
=====

- There is no Help file yet.  Obviously might be too early in the
stage for this, but we have to make sure one is ready by October.  Of
course I can help with this. ^__~

- There is no AI.  Again, likely too early in the stage for that, but
without another player it got pretty boring blasting things by myself
while the little red blob just sat there waiting to get blown up.  :P

- The two add-ons, one to increase speed, the other to increase range,
took me a while to understand what they do.  Either this will have to
be explained in the future help documentation, or we can look into
making their icons a bit clearer (such as the speed icon can be a pair
of shoes instead).

- Unlike the bomberman games I played, the movement is not restricted
to the tiles (even thoug bomb and explosion placement is).  While this
allows for much smoother movement, this ironically cuts down in the
polish of the game because the movement around the corridors ands up
looking a bit awkward (like you press down near the corner of a wall,
and the whole blob just shifts over to the next panel).  Worse yet, if
you're in an open area and try to evade a bomb, you don't have to
switch over to a different tile -- simply nudging the blob a little to
the left or right will avoid the explosion, even if the blob is still
visibly within the outline of the explosion.

- The configuration screen is a bit sparse and also has the same icon
for Theme and Arena, and currently theme only changes the bomb type,
not the graphical theme of the map.  Then again, this is something I
can help with (graphically).  :)


WISHes
======

- Hopefully more add-ons that allow the player to do different things
(such as create walls or set traps or make the bombs homing or explode
more in a single direction..

- A little scorekeeper somewhere on the map view itself would help, as
there's not much movement on screen aside from the activity of the
blobs

- Additional difficulties only decrease the speed of the blobs.  But
the starting speed in Level 0 does seem a bit slow -- perhaps raising
this a little will help make the game more fast-paced.  Also,
introducing other handicaps such as being able to use a finite level
of bombs (when you run out, it takes 6 seconds to generate a new one,
unless you can find a cache of bombs in one of the blocks) can also
lead to more gameplay challenges.  :)

- I know we talked about animation before, but this is very important
and can allow for an unparalleled level of polish if implemented
properly.  I still don't know why few of the KDE games use animated
sprites (KGoldRunner is the only one that comes to mind, because even
KSpaceDuel just moves shapes around which is different), and I worry
the reason is technical since this will limit the ability to make
really eye-catching games.  Not to say we can't work with a static
environment, but if at all possible this really should be something to
look at seriously.  Granatier has many places where animation can be
used to make the gameplay more lively and exciting (and I've already
mentioned a few to you).  As I look into contributing some artwork to
this, I'll see if maybe I can help discover the mystery behind
animated sprites in QT4.  ;)


And that should be all I have for you today.
Thank you for walking me through how I can start changing some of the
artwork.  I'm interested in creating a Konqi theme, with two dragons
duking it out and laying rotten dinosaur eggs as the bombs.  I'll also
have to play clanbomber to get an idea of what your inspiration was,
as I admit I didn't play it much myself for XYZ reasons.  ;)

Hopefully the feedback is useful.  If you have any questions about it,
let me know.

Thanks again for your help and your work with Granatier!


--Arturo "C-quel" Silva
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