johannol

Yeah, we *do* need this!

I’d love to see that with other games too! It’s so much better then dropping the user in a boring empty window.

what about >2 players?

sounds like a great idea in general. especially if it’s combined with a standardization of keyboard shortcuts and so on.

I think this is a very good idea. It is consistent with the way video games on consoles work, which has been pretty much unchanged since the 80’s. It will be familiar to practically all gamers.

Easy to do for the devs, easy to handle for the users… what else could we ask ?

I violently agree with chimai
An added benefit will be that games will look more like games instead of like applications. When I start a game and I have to fiddle with a “file” or “game” menu to start a game, it feels less playful and more like work than the new approach. Do it!

I am a student and system administrator at my university’s computer science department. Some of the professors are working on a distributed gaming environment written in python. They currently have it working in linux and mac os x. The idea is to have a framework to build network aware games. I suggested that kde could use the environment and they mentioned it might be possible. If you’re interested in seeing what it can do let me know and I’ll get you in touch with the lead developer. I’m at carl (at) cs.mtsu.edu . Keep in mind though that none of the professors use KDE so they won’t be able to help in porting.

Chani: >what about >2 players?

“many players” ? And yes, about usability, i’d like to harmonize keyboard shortcuts, icons, menus entries (…) between games, even if it’s a huge work.

I disliked it. The “KDE-ish” games, with menus and toolbars. To start a new game, I click on an icon that reminds me of the “New” icon in a text editor. Also, I didn’t (and still don’t) like how to set the keyboard “shortcuts” (they aren’t really shortcuts, are they?).

Now, seeing your screenshot/mockup, I think it’s defiantly a step in the right direction. Wonderful! As someone said, instead of a boring empty screen, you’re presented with a familiar way of starting a game.

A complaint: “Perhaps with this kind of welcome screen —”. That do yo mean with “Perhaps”? I see no disadvantage with this, just your devs getting some extra work

And finally, just some thoughts:
1. Rename “Two player (Network)” simply to “Network” or “Network Play”?
And maybe separate it from the others, for example move it down a little bit.
2. Have other buttons, like “Options” and “Quit”/”Exit”? Please note my question mark.

[…] KBattleship: almost ready This week I’ve been hacking quite a lot on KBattleship, adding almost all required features: a decent AI, network play and sounds. While Riccardo is working on KWelcomeScreen, a library class inspired by this blog post by Johann, I’m going to make some minor adjustments, add small missing features like scoring, and if everything goes well I guess we can move the application to kdereview within next week. This is a screenshot showing a game between the old KBattleship and my rewrite: […]

[…] This week I’ve been hacking quite a lot on KBattleship, adding almost all required features: a decent AI, network play and sounds. While Riccardo is working on KWelcomeScreen, a library class inspired by this blog post by Johann, I’m going to make some minor adjustments, add small missing features like scoring, and if everything goes well I guess we can move the application to kdereview within next week. This is a screenshot showing a game between the old KBattleship and my rewrite: […]