[crack-attack-devel] Fwd: About crack-attack (KDE4 port)

[Andrew Sayman]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hugo Parente Lima <address@hidden>
Date: Jan 28, 2008 11:24 PM
Subject: Re: About crack-attack (KDE4 port)
To: Andrew Sayman <address@hidden>


On Jan 28, 2008 1:42 PM, Andrew Sayman <address@hidden> wrote:
> First of all, I find this entire endeavour of yours awesome. I'm
> cc'ing the devel list to discuss it.
>
> On Jan 28, 2008 1:46 AM, Hugo Parente Lima <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Hi, I'm porting crack-attack to KDE4 (the port is 90% done), you is
> > the current maintainer, so I want to inform you and maybe do few
> > questions:
>
> I have some questions for you too:
>
> Are you doing this against the latest SVN or the last release? The
> latest SVN is miles ahead of our last release and really I've just
> been far behind on getting it out. This actually counts as lighting a
> fire under my ass to get the next step officially done.

From the latest release (a bad idea, I know).

> > - I do not plan to change the game play, but I plan to write some code
> > to improve the multiplayer fun in a near future (support up to six
> > players like tetrinet, multiplayer chat, etc via GGZ, etc).
>
> I've been wanting to do some of these things for a while. I think the
> multiplayer chat isn't necessary, but I won't begrudge anybody that
> implements it and uses it.
>
> - How do you expect the six player mode to work?

Simple, like tetrinet, pressing the keys 2-6 you choose who you will
attack, so again like tetrinet you can play with teams too.

> There are two things in the pipeline that I've been working on
> off-and-on lately:
> - An AI you can watch play
> - A split screen mode so multiplayer matches you can see the other
> player. As a note to Webb, broadcasting your moves will be optional
> for those of you that want your tactics kept in the dark.
>
> Have you done any work towards either of these things? I'd rather work
> together on the network code than potentially collide.
> Would GGZ require not using ENet anymore? I've been really really
> happy with ENet both in coding and its performance.

I did not started it and do not know about ENet, maybe because I do
not touch in the svn code at the moment.

> > - To make crack-attack in conformance with kdegames GUI guidelines I
> > removed the highscores code and I'm using the kdegames highscores
> > code.
>
> How well does this work outside of KDE? Do you know if it integrates
> at all with the GNOME one as well?
>
> Essentially, there are many users of Crack-Attack that prefer GTK+,
> and also that don't like using desktop environments at all. How does
> this change affect them?

I know... this is a problem.. it add a lot of dependencies that is
useless to a lot of crack-attack users.

> > - I also replaced all glut code with Qt code (basically the keyboard
> > and window creation routines... few lines).
>
> Considering the above concern, I'd like to find a way to maintain both
> of these inputs on top of each other if its not too unwieldy. I know
> the current design is not very modular in that aspect, but I'm working
> on it.
>
> > I do not know if you agree with these changes... anyway your opinion
> > is important, because I do not know if the game can remain with the
> > name crack-attack and be just "the kde4 port" or need to change their
> > name and be officially a fork.
>
> I'd rather do what we can to not make this a fork and even not make it
> the "KDE4 port." I'd like to find a way to make this a "building with
> KDE oriented flags." One of the problems that Crack-Attack! has had
> since Nelson moved on is that people end up developing little things
> for it in pockets and never talking to each other. The more of this
> development we can bring to one place the better for everybody.

Well... I think that we can do the KDE4 version, the GTK version and
the command line version in a single source, I dont know about the
newer code, but the only thing that is needed is modularize the
keyboard input and the OpenGL initialization (glut window creation,
etc), so with really few #ifdef's we can do all in a single code base.

Ah... I'm that guys that hate autotools... maybe because I never had
enough patience to learn it... so I also changed the building tool to
cmake (www.cmake.org).

I'll download the latests revision from CVS and see what can I do.

> > When I complete the fork (this week) I'll put the code under kde svn
> > repository and later try to submit it to kdegames package, but I need
> > a answer about the game name, if you want to join the project, etc.
>
> Keep the name. I don't want to move SVN, so we'll have to figure
> something out. Most of my active development is actually done using
> GIT and then just patching out for savannah.
>
> > I'm also sending two screenshots.
>
> For the latest release I'd really love if you added some info about:
> Bjørn Lindeijer  <address@hidden>
> He dropped like a bomb on the project for a little while and cleaned
> up a lot of code and upgrading to the latest ENet which I didn't even
> know existed at the time.
> --
> Andrew Sayman
> Jabber: address@hidden
>




--
Hugo Parente Lima
"Precisamos de mais gênios humildes no mundo, hoje somos poucos!"
JID: address@hidden



-- 
Andrew Sayman
Jabber: address@hidden