[Kde-games-devel] ksokoban

[Ian Wadham]

On 04/08/2012, at 5:58 AM, Kantacki wrote:
> W dniu 2012-08-03 04:17, Ian Wadham pisze:
>> We do not work for money.  If you are enjoying KSokoban, it is because
>> some people put a lot of free time into developing and maintaining it.
> You mean "We" as kde-games developers, do you?

Yes.

I know some KDE developers have salaries from sponsors, but I do not think
any KDE Games developers do … or ever have.

> Thank you for your explanation in this matter.
> Part of your email suggested that you treat KSokoban as dinosaur and
> Magazynier is its successor and you do not wish to see KSokoban anymore
> in kde-games.  But you are right the other part says something else so the
> whole message was inconsistent and I was simply rather pesimistic than optimistic.

Here is where I stand: points in order of priority.

1. I would like to see a Sokoban game back in KDE Games.  Sokoban is a
     good game.  It is NP-hard (see the Wikipedia article), which means it is
     up there with the Travelling Salesman problem, but it can also have
     a variety of levels and level sets, including easy ones for beginners.
     In play, it is something like KAtomic, so if you like KAtomic you will
     like Sokoban.  I was very sad to see KSokoban go from KDE Games.

2. I would like to see the original sets of levels from KDE 1 & 2 days revived.
    I was really enjoying those and starting to become good at the game
    when someone deleted them and substituted the Sasquatch levels.
    They were too hard for me, so I rapidly lost interest in KSokoban.  If
    KSokoban is revived, I will try to revive those earlier levels myself.

3. KDE Games, since KDE 4 came in, has standardised on having
     themeable and resizeable graphics.  We are now considering porting
     games to QML and mobile phones or tablets.  In fact we have two
     Google Summer of Code students doing just that for KDiamond and
     KBreakout, as a trial, and it seems to be working out.

4. I do not care if a Sokoban game uses KSokoban code, Magazynier
     code or an army of trained rats to achieve its results, so long as I do
     not have to end up maintaining KSokoban code (or training rats for
     that matter :-) ).

5. I think Magazynier offers a better route into the future for Sokoban.
     See points 2 and 3 above.  I just wish I had finished my own version
     of Sokoban or the Magazynier guys had finished theirs.  Then we
     would not need to be having this discussion: there would be a
     Sokoban game already in KDE Games.

6. Dinosaurs are still among us, but they have evolved and are called
     birds nowadays … :-)

Cheers, Ian W.