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

[Andrew Sayman]

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.

> - 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?

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.

> - 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 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.

> 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