johannol

Yesterday, we did the kdegames review. We succeeded in having a common point of view about which games should be keep and move, how hard it can be. Here the results:

Improved KDE3 games kept for KDE4.0:
- knetwalk
- kgoldrunner
- kolf
- katomic
- konquest
- kpat
- kspaceduel
- lskat
- kbattleship
- kblackbox
- klines
- kreversi
- kbounce
- kmahjongg
- ksame
- kmines
- kshisen
- kwin4

New in kdegames:

- ksquares
welcome in kdegame !
- kiriki
succeded in kdereview, so, welcome in kdegame !
- ksudoku
move to kdereview for 15 days
- bovo
we have to contact the autor to see if he want to move on kdereview days

Status still unknown:

- ktuberling
Candidate to be removed, but this is a really needed game. We are looking to see if it can be saved
- ksirtet (tetris clone)
keep libksirtet and ksirtet but we’ll remove them if ksirtet will not progress before the 1st june
- kbackgammon
a candidate for removal if the maintainer does not work on it before the beta.

Not ready for KDE4.0 (must mature more to be in 4.1)
- kollision
- ksirk

Moved to playground:
This is too soon for the black hole (all this game compile, are using cmake…) and can be resurrected:
- atlantik
- kfouleggs
- klickety
- kpoker
- kenolaba
- kasteroids
- ksnake
- ksokoban
- kjumpingcube
- ktron

We know this will generate some comments, some games are liked, even needed for educational purpose, but the survey we did mandate us for one thing: “quality over quantity”. We tried to do both of course… but the project was in bad shape. With the new contributors, the nice energies and feelings putted in this project, we saved already much games, and make them much better (code, artwork, usability…). It is not possible to do more without sacrifice quality or get (again) others contributors. We had to make choices, we did.

The kbattleship rewrite is going well 3 artists (Eugene T,
Robert Wadley and me) and 2 dev (Paolo Capriotti and Ruphy).

I must say that Paolo Capriotti was very reactive to implement the lastest ideas and artwork changes (ship under water, several steep for the hit…). The new fire from Robert Wadley is impressive too.

Even if the artwork is not final, this is showing where we are going

Today, to launch game, there are several way to do. Some game are asking a crtl+N, other to go on a menu… or go in a config dialog to set a right player mode, before to play. The other day, my nephews thought kbattleship was broken, because they couldn’t launch it. You can imagine the  younger don’t know what “crtl” is…

The other issue, some game has 1 player mode, 2 players, or both. Even network sometime… But you have to navigate to guest it

Perhaps with this kind of welcome screen, these issues will be solved.

Especially if we put it on every game (with the appropriate artwork of course, this one is kbattleship).  This is simple, and you see what it’s possible to do with the game.

Only some ideas to simplify the ksuduku UI. In my mind, the difficulty is saved for each entry, and each one keep their config. But the user has only 1 screen before to play, and a less frighting one.

Hope the devs will like it.

PS: In part based on oxygen style, but i did it very quickly, this is just the general idea for the UI improvement.

It’s maybe time to give some news about game’s SVG. And these are good

First, some screenshots was published here or on the Dot in the “road of KDE4″. Some was with really unfinished stuffs, some was more reals. Of course, we’re not posting screenshots for everything, it’s good to keep that for later, but yes, things are improving.

After that, i’d like to say it’s longuer to specify how SVG should be and code that in C++ than only draw them. This mean that after our SVG port job, some SVG should be improved. But this could be after the 4.0 release. Other people could (i hope will) do other SVG styles we hope after the release.

A very good news. After the talk with aaron, i understood KDE4 port and SVGization are not affected by the feature freeze. This mean a lot to us. This could allow us to release 70% to 100% of the KDE3.5’s games. Without that, this could be less than 50%.

Other good news, Eugene T. is doing a very good job on backgrounds, see for example the kbattleship one (and it’s hard to draw “the sea”):

He is always here, creative, and adapt himself to the KDE4’s needs. Working together on kdegame’s artwork is a real pleasure. And i hope we will continue that on others places (kdebase and others apps). Working with (the reals) C++ is also a pleasure (from KDEgames, KDEbase…) . They are wanting their baby to be the nicer possible, and they are always trying to do what we need. Thanks to them.

For our status, we have 9 games almost done (from artwork point of view, not usabillity or c++), some others games are running tmp SVG, at least in part, and there are still some unmaintained games that risk to be dropped for KDE4.0 ( kjumpingcube, klickety, ksirtet, ksnake, ksokoban, ktron…).

As you already know, we are trying to convert every KDE’s games to SVG, and harmonize them to comply with the Oxygen style. But this is a huge work, there are currently 30 games in the KDE repository, and some new ones are coming.

The migration process is often this one:

- A temporary (ugly) SVG file is made, with the several elements (used to make the game ex: piece, table, …), to allow developpers to SVGize the engine.
- The devs SVGize the engine. See kgoldrunner with the temporary SVG (except the scales)

- The artist can make, test, and commit improved SVG files, maintly elements part for now.

- Then , adjustement, some fix, …

Today, there are 11 games’s engines converted (19 still to do). And there are also kdeedu also to do. Honestly, with my job (the one that pay my food) and my new girlfriend, i don’t think i could do everything, especially all the backgrounds used in games. And i don’t even think about the completion to make them really pretty.
That is why i contacted some of the best “wallpapers makers” i found on kde-look, to ask them if they could help us. Only few hours after, i already had 3 positives answers, from Matthias Endler , Eugene T and Andrew Enyart !!! Click on their name to know what they done on kde-look.
Of course, i’ll help them to start to work with the KDE team.

See some of the others games at our current stages. There are all missing good wallpapers. But now, i feel myself a lot less anxious about it

ksame:

kreversi:

kpat:

knetwalk:

News from the kdegames revamping front

First, much improvement on Katomic. Black wall are finished now, and the 11 atoms too. There are still some littles stuffs to improve on atoms, finish background, and remove arrow’s shaddows.


Second point, we have now a wiki page to organize ourself for the SVG port, where we can follow what we are doing, what it’s done (with screenshoot), and still to do.

http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+Games+SVG+status

Third, with my last post we got a new maintainer, for ksame. Nice

If you missed it, here the most important part:

Some KDEgames were adopted by new maintainer (like Pinaraf), but there are still small games free for adoption. Perhaps it is a nice opporunities to get involved in kde, theses software are small in size, and doesn’t need to reverse-ingineering MS stuff… we plan to remove un-maintained stuffs for kde4, so if your favorite game is on this list… http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE%20games%20maintainers

I started to work with the kdegames team, and, it’s worderfull. These guys are very nice, have open mind, and are open to new peoples. It motivate me to involve more with them.

The goal for KDE4 is to have good usabillity and artwork, new artwork with SVG of course

Here a screenshot of Katomic with the svg engine from dimsuz, and a “work in progress” artwork. Imust still work on bubble, walls and background.

You can compare with your KDE 3.5 one

Mauricio did also a wonderfull job on kreversi:

I think Mauricio will post a resume of our IRC meeting. We saw it was a good thing, with new people comming, and we planned to make such meeting every month.

Some KDEgames were adopted by new maintainer (like Pinaraf), but there are still small games free for adoption. Perhaps it is a nice opporunities to get involved in kde, theses software are small in size, and doesn’t need to reverse-ingineering MS stuff… we plan to remove un-maintained stuffs for kde4, so if your favorite game is on this list… http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE%20games%20maintainers