[Kde-games-devel] Porting game to qml

[Ian Wadham]

On 26/03/2013, at 5:06 AM, Manas Joshi wrote:
> > Yes, I worked on porting Kdiamond to QML last GSoC.
> So, this clearly implies that kdiamond has already been ported ,so this can't be taken up this year.
> I would be helpful if you could guide me with some games that seriously need porting because I think this list at <http://community.kde.org/KDE_Games/Porting>, ain't updated..

That is the list we used in last year's GSoC, in which there was also a task
to port games to QGraphicsView, KgThemeProvider and KGameRenderer.

And yes, it is not updated.  People come and go in the FOSS world and so
the work they did is apt to become out of date.  You need to beware of this.
The one thing that is as up to date as it can be is the GIT source code
repository.  Even that depends on the people available and the time they
have available.

Last year, "porting a game to QML" was an experiment not an absolute.

It was to evaluate how much code in a game could be taken across to QML
unaltered, how much would need to be rewritten and how much could be
provided by new KDE Games library features.  The hard part of the job was
to reproduce the way our games can switch graphics themes and be resized
continuously without loss of graphics quality.  Our graphics are drawn in
SVG (scalable vector graphics) and are rendered to fit the current window.

So far KBreakout has been completely ported to QML, by Viranch, and
the KDiamond port, by Avnee, is incomplete.  All the other KDE Games
are available to be ported to QML, but many of them are much bigger
than KBreakout or KDiamond and will present a bigger challenge.  Take
your pick … :-)

This year we will have Viranch's new library features, see the thread
"Review Request 109365: Support for QtQuick in libkdegames" and the
Review Board item http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/109365/  So the job
of porting games to QML will be easier than it was in last year's GSoC.

BTW, "porting" does not mean "rewriting in another language".

Cheers, Ian W.