[Kde-games-devel] Proposing KGameRenderer

[Luciano Montanaro]

On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Stefan Majewsky
<kdemailinglists at bethselamin.de> wrote:
> On Saturday 12 June 2010 15:15:23 Luciano Montanaro wrote:
>> But this restructuring is not going to be noticeable by players
>> (except for, maybe an improved startup), while there are tons of
>> features that could make them happier, and are not too hard to
>> implement.
>>
>> For example:
>>
>> - KNewStuff3 for themes and levels
>
> KNewStuff3 is in 4.5.

I know, but are all the games that could benefit from it currently using it?
I have not had the time lately to follow kdegames development, but I
understand there could be low hanging fruits there.

>
>> - sound support in all games
>
> The problem here is which sound framework to use. KDiamond successfully uses
> KNotify, while other apps seem to need less delay.
>

I know. Phonon could be enough for many of our games; it't snot too
bad in kgoldrunner, provided a goog backend is installed. It is a sore
point however, I agree.
QMultimendia could have been a possibility, but it seems to have been
put on ice as well.
Still, there is the Gluon Audio library in the work...


>> - more animation and "bling"
>
> The rewrite of KDiamond towards KGameRenderer made the animations so quick
> that I'm actually thinking about adding cooler animations. "Animatability" is
> something which is very much related to the rendering efficiency.

That's good. It's a game, it has to be entertaining. I do not know how
kdiamond handled the animations before your change... surely it did
not use svg directly?


>> - in game Tutorials
>
> Yes, I'd like these, too.
>

Well, not every game needs them absolutely, but they are a nice touch,
if we can do them. For some game, it would be sufficient to have a
bubble explaining why a certain move is forbidden when the player
clicks on the wrong tile.

>> - Usability review and interface streamining
>
> Could you expand on that? For most games, I do not know how to make the
> interface any simpler.
>

Yes, many games are ok, but I think some are still too complicated to
setup, and are descouraging to potential players.

In particular, I had a bad memory of KSirk...
I just tried it again; it's better than I remembered, but there are
still many roadblocks for the potential player.
I can compile a list of them if needed.

Luciano

-- 
Luciano Montanaro

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