[Kde-games-devel] KBlocks further development?

[Mauricio Piacentini]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Dapeng Zhang
<zhangd at informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
> Hi Mauricio,
> Hi Stefan,
>
> I'm Dapeng Zhang from University of Freiburg. We did some research on
> tetris game. We are interested in developing KBlock towards a standard
> test-bed (or Benchmark) for the research.

Hi, nice to see your research is ongoing.

>
> We did some tests on KBlocks yesterday. It compiles fine and can already
> run with an "AI player". The goals are as follows.
>    1. create a two-player mode.
>    2. create a built-in AI player.
>    3. create a network (socket) interface for the LAN connections. (The
> game will be controlled via these connections.)
>    4. create a "engine" mode for very fast game (generate statistics of
> the AI player).
>

For these goals, I think your current route of working with ksirtet is
not bad, as it already provides most of these, and your interest is
(IIRC) mostly academic. When I designed KBlocks I built it
specifically as a single player game, very simple, no AI or other
features that are more geared towards programmers and researchers, and
really not to the end user.
Of course, we can change this. If you want to add these to KBlocks it
would be fundamentally a different program, and will probably in the
future end up with a similar fate to KSirtet: unmaintained due to code
paths that, while interesting for research, are not within grasp of
the future maintainers that might come after me :) But, if people
think it is worth, you can maybe implement these features in a way
that is not obstrusive to the current single player experience. Then,
you would need to help me and become the maintainer (or co-maintainer)
of KBlocks, because this code would need to be taken care of at least
until KDE 5.

So, two options :)

a) implement this in ksirtet, as you were doing, and ressurect it.
Lots of people would love this, some will complain about duplication.
b) implement it in kblocks, and take over maintainership of it.  I
will of course continue to help. If possible, maintain a "simple" mode
where these options do not interfere with the current experience for
single player users.

Both are good options, let us hear what others think! Don't let this
however discourage you, it is great to have you working with kdegames
in this field. I did not have much time this year to work on it and
Kmahjongg due to the birth of my son, so it is very good for the
project if these projects could get work from new (and fresh)
maintainers, with more stamina to spend on them right now. I would
gladly pass the torch, this will let me work on other KDE related
projects I have been considering.

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini