[Kde-games-devel] moved Kajongg from playground to kdereview

[Wolfgang Rohdewald]

On Friday 19 February 2010, Jeremy Wickersheimer wrote:
> I think using a dialog for prompting the user actions is not a good
> idea, kwin with compositing will darken and lock the other windows
> so it is very hard to see the board (and is very distracting).

I was not aware of that problem since I do not use compositing.
Do you know how I could prevent darkening of the main window?

> Also dialog placement is sort of unpredictable for the user.

it was meant to save/restore its previous position but it does that
only while kajongg is running. I will try two things: 

- save/restore its position relative to the main window, also 
surviving a program restart

- but not move it when the main window is moved

would that be better?

> I think a big improvement would be to have those buttons on the
> board next to the player hand (and always visible, just disabled
> when not in the player turn).

Absolutely. I tried that. Problems are:

- if the main window is small, the dialog can cover a good part of
it if it is to remain readable. I tried a resizing QGraphicsWidgetItem
with the dialog but this is almost unreadable on a netbook
screen. So I think the size of the dialog font should use the KDE
defaults.

- this will be even more problematic if / when I introduce an option
to show the tiles without borders and shadows - that should make
it more playable on a netbook. Borders/shadows do take a lot of room.

- there really is no space anywhere for a constantly displayed dialog.
The room between the concealed tiles and the wall is used for declared
melds, and the room to the left is used for the bonus tiles of the
lefthand player. I already have to do tricky things in placing the
bonus tiles - if a player declares four kongs, there is no room
for four bonus tiles - in that case I have to move them to the 
other line.

so when I play, I normally place the dialog above my own wall side 
but only if the screen is large enough - not on the netbook.

xmj (debian package xmahjongg) always places discarded tiles ordered
and leaves space in the middle of the screen for the dialog such
that the dialog never covers anything. But then the xmj main window
cannot be resized...

xmj has 3 options for the dialog placement: 
- as just described
- as a popup like I do but without remembering the previous position
- in an extension of the main window at the bottom

so others had the same problem before...

> Also i think it would be great to have simple (single key) keyboard
> actions (space / P / C / etc .. ) by default for all the game
> actions, instead of alt+x. This game is very suited for keyboard
> only game

Agree again. I will do that. Did you notice you can move between
the choices with up/down arrow (or the j/k keys)? Unusual but
the right/left arrows are used to select the tile to be discarded
while the dialog is visible.

BTW a big touch screen is quite nice for Kajongg. I have one since
a few weeks and I love it. I wonder if it might be feasible to
have a special mode where such a touch screen
can be used with Kajongg as a fully automated Mah Jongg table -
you would need to place something between your tiles and the wall
such that only you can see your own tiles - without hindering the
touch screen mechanism. And make the four sides of the main
board symmetric, and rotate and place the dialog accordingly.
Should be doable, I think. Even with a keyboard for every player
if wanted.
 
> I'd prefer that the tiles in the player hand not be spaced, right
> now there is some horizontal spacing and grouping. That's just a
> personal preference, but for example it wont group sequence so it
> will display [X 33  4  5  X] which i found a little distracting.
> Also on a real table top game you wont space your tiles so players
> like me are used to view them like that :)

I will introduce an option "propose melds for tiles on hand", default 
True, because that is the better choice for beginners, I think. Would
that be OK with you? (btw that will mean I need a new tab in the 
config dialog - this will be the first option that is not part of
the ruleset). If False, tiles will be ordered like now but without
spaces between melds. This is what xmj does.
 
> I had the game crash (actually the server returned an error) when i
> captured a tile (Pung) so i did not play it a lot though.

That should certainly not happen. Can you mail me the error message?
Should be somewhere in /var/log. Also kajongg.py --help and 
kajonggserver.py --help show some debugging options.
 
> I cannot comment on the python dependencies which should be
> reviewed by the KDE games group (for example you need
> zope-interface / twisted).

You certainly know that but for others: zope-interface does not
mean kajongg depends on the entire zope. It implements class
interfaces in a different way than the usual OO inheritance,
and twisted uses that extensively (kajongg does not). So if
twisted is installed, zope-interface is also installed
automatically. This is a twisted FAQ:
http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#WhydoesTwisteddependonZope

For the network I considered using ggz / kggz but decided against
because its development seems to be rather stalled, it would make
kajongg installation make more complicated (I believe, without
being a ggz expert), and because I was very unsure whether ggz
really lets me do all I need like defining gaming rules for a new
table and letting the player compare the table rules with his
locally defined rules. I did not want to start development and
only later notice I would first have to extend ggz.

But if anybody wants to add a ggz interface - you are definitively
welcome. Ggz has the advantage that it already offers a central
server which always runs for finding other players. Kajongg now
needs somebody to act as a server, and it has no chat function -
yet.

python-twisted should be supported by all distributions - I am not
so sure about ggz. Last year Josef told me I have to bug my 
distribution if they do not have ggz. And if you look at the
twisted mailing list, you can see it is very active. twisted
certainly made it rather easy to write network support (of course
only after getting used to its unusual philosophy).
 
> Anyway thanks for your great work, i was meaning to write this game
> before but did not get the time to commit to it, i am sure it will
> be an awesome addition to kshisen for mahjong players :)

Thank you for your kind words!

It might take a few days until I can do those changes, my weekend
is going to be rather busy. I will also add support for calling hands
especially initial calling in the next two weeks or so. 

-- 
Wolfgang