johannol

Hey. nice work. I love it, but let me suggest some small improvements:

1. Some more color would be nice, for example in the background. You said the background still needs some work, so I hope this is part of that work you planed to do. (What about a different color tint for each level? maybe too much work and too inconsistent.)
2. The walls would look so much better if the single pieces would mold into a complete wall. Right now they look kind of cluttered. Unfortunately this will be quite some more work for the designer as well as the programmer.
3. The bonds look a bit like double bonds (that’s when two atoms share two pairs of electrons instead of one pair) right now, because the darker gray strip in the middle looks a lot like the background and splts the bond visually into two smaller, lighter bonds. This would be another argument for a colored background…
4. I think it might look better if the molecule in the preview image would be centered to the preview image instead of being stuck in the top left. The same goes for the name of the molecule below. Maybe you could even move the name below the preview image, but I’m not sure about that one. The background could be changed from black to the current gray background of the game itself, too. I think the gray background would be well suited for the preview image because it doesn’t distract from the molecule, which is important at a size that small.

Sorry for the nitpicking. I really love where the new kdegames is going.

Another suggestion:
Put some trivia about the molecule about to be built in the sidebar. I’ve played this game on occation and really enjoyed it, but I’ve yet to learn something from it. Some trivia would be really nice, and it wouldn’t get in the way for those who don’t care.

Good work

I think the “score” section of the screen could probably use a little jazzing up, but otherwise it looks very nice.

I have a general question about maintaing a package, and that is what would someone do if they voluteered to maintain a package. For example, I would not mind maintaining Kolf as it is one of my favorite games on KDE. Yet, I can’t code proficiently and I suck at art. How does that fit into the equation? Just some thoughts.

Personally, I like the blocks. Trivia would, indeed, be nice, and there seems to be plenty of room for it. These games are looking great! I’m excited about KDE just for the cool new games!

hm… assuming you are using standard oxygen icons for the arrows, might it be possible to use svg stylesheets to get rid of the shadows?

this way, even if the oxygen theme updates the arrows the kde games would still look like they belong? this is a problem we suffered badly from in kde2/3.

it would require naming an svg element “shadow” or something similarly relevant in the icons so that it could be reliably addressed.

I don’t see any reason why the shadows must be removed. They don’t seem too out of place or distracting. In fact, they lend a bit of visual depth. I didn’t even notice them on first glance; I just thought, “wow, those graphics look good.”

Oh lots of comments I’ll try to awser each points:

# florian:
1) I’m not sure about a colored background for this game, because there are lots of severals colors with atom, and the

background must match well with all of them. I don’t say i will not try.
2) I also thought about that, but not easy to implement with our limited human ressources. Priorities are to have at least

1 nice oxygen for each game.
3) I think perhaps add a shaddow on background, coould solve this.
4) The preview part is of course to redone. I only worked on the game part.

# Bakterie:
Yes, nice idea

# Robert Knight:
In fact, i think do the score/preview part like the kwin4 mockup
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdegames/kwin4/grafix/default/everything.svg?rev=601034&view=auto

# Freddy

Art can be done by artists, and you can try to contribute at any game you want (fix a bug, add this or that…). If after

that you feel yourself easy with the code with the code, you will be maintainer.

# Louis
Comment like that give us more energy and motivation, thanks. And not only games will be exciting in KDE4. I’m myself

about lots of things.

# aseigo
I had this idea too (i don’t like dupplicate stuff and maintain it), but i finally reject this because of:
- The team is wanting severals styles, external contrib… even if the default one is Oxygen of course. If arrow is take from icon theme, it could be ugly on some.
- The goal is to have a default Oxygen style, not having the same arrow. For example, if oxygen’s icons arrows for toolbars are finally blue, the green ones in this game are still Oxygen.
- it is easy/fast to change, really (thanks to svg).
- YOU You were 100% right in an old blog post, something like “why kicker failed”. The art level is already becoming much higher than before (difficult to put number on art, but for example, there are 2x to 10x more elements per icon on oxygen than crystal), i’m already spending a large part of my time to teach beginners to our way to do, and i don’t want to increase that without reals needs, i prefer trying to build a 15 guys oxygen team, and not too hight entry level.

# Louis

I think more to shaddows on a other plan, shaddows on background itself.

Will 3D cards be used for the SVG rendering?