In the last kdegames IRC meeting we all decided to skip the January 1st monthly-meeting, for obvious reasons. Someone then suggested that we should schedule an informal gathering to the second Tuesday of January. But we forgot to remind everyone in a timely manner, so what follows is the log of our quasi-meeting, pretty much myself chatting with Josef 🙂

I am just posting it by request. Nothing terribly interesting to see here, move along …

[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:00:25] it’s not too crowded yet
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:01:37] i’m going
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:01:38] sorry
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:01:45] i have business dinner
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:01:58] save the log and i’ll try to read it tomorrow
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:02:03] Join teprrr has joined this channel (i=tpr@kde/developer/rytilahti).
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:02:07] log will be saved for sure
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:02:11] bye!
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:02:12] tsdgeos: eat well
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:02:21] piacentini: thanks 🙂
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:02:24] Quit tsdgeos has left this server (Remote closed the connection).
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:02:53] josef: let us chat for a while then, apparently the others are lurking
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:03:00] yeah
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:03:22] Regarding the KConfigDialog issue, I think it should be used if possible…
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:04:17] the new config dialogs for KDE 4 all look nice, maybe there could be some common config elements for games
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:04:21] But I am trying to use it for libkmahjongg (selection of tilesets and backgrounds), and it seems to be tricky…
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:04:21] such as player colours, names, etc.
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:04:29] agreed
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:04:52] I was designing a standalone dialog for tileset selection, to be shared between Kmahjongg and Kshisen
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:05:07] ah, so libkmahjongg already provides such a card deck selector…
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:05:10] much like the carddeck selector in libkdegames
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:05:30] Join slougi has joined this channel (n=louai@a88-113-179-51.elisa-laajakaista.fi).
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:05:40] But now I am thinking about formatting it as a page widget, to be inserted into a KConfigDialog
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:05:56] is it intended to replace that? I mean, we shouldn’t hesitate to put better things into libkdegames so it gets a wider use outside of KDE
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:06:16] Actually the one I am coding is only for tileset selection at this time
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:06:26] ah ok
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:06:27] But I guess something similar should be planned for card deck
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:06:29] Join christoph4 has joined this channel (n=lxuser@138.77.76.83.cust.bluewin.ch).
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:07:04] for my own games I provide very little configuration atm but I guess this should be changed
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:07:13] One of the reasons for moving code to libkmahjongg is to let any other game that wants to parse/render mahjongg tiles use it
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:07:50] Well, my point is that if possible we should make game configuration as similar to the user as possible to configuration of any KDE app
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:08:26] there’s also the question of global config items for all games, such as server settings or maybe sounds (if someone wants to play without sound in office but still not deactivate sound every time)
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:08:51] That is another level. How do you propose this should be handled?
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:08:58] or a player photo/avatar, which could be read from KDE’s identity settings but this might not be enough
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:09:04] I have no clue 🙂
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:09:37] what I’d like to avoid is the “kontact issue” which provides two config dialogs per application
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:09:47] one for e.g. kmail and one for kontact
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:09:52] I see
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:10:06] The card deck selection in libkdegames is global, btw
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:10:08] (and one for shortcuts and one for filters and …)
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:11:22] what about Gtk+ integration: should we provide some way of letting them know what the user’s preference for carddecks is?
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:11:46] Well, the problem is that the card deck format is not the same iirc
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:11:57] And at the moment kpat is not even using the old selector
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:11:58] ‘t should be :/
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:12:45] coolo will probably code some form of card selection, and hopefully it will be useable by kpoker and lskat
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:12:51] but this is only speculation on my part
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:13:28] I still consider it worthwhile to have a well-defined card deck format, e.g. a flat directory with some SVG files and some meta information
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:13:56] sure, agreed
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:14:32] For mahjongg tiles I am documenting the format, and hopefully it will be shareable
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:14:54] very good
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:15:25] another TOC for today is SVG conversion, so I guess we’ve already partially arrived at this discussion 🙂
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:15:45] yup. Too bad johann and dimsuz are not here, but it is january
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:16:52] hm… so skip this point?
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:17:07] Is anyone else alive here 🙂 ?
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:17:44] As for me, I have implemented the SVG graphics in KShisen (actually sharing the Kmahjongg implementation)
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:17:51] But KMines is still on hold
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:18:34] I’ve recently fixed my KDE 3 SVG loader to work correctly on little-endian machines, and am looking forward to drop it… but it helps me to already be able to use SVG graphics
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:18:49] Did you and dimsuz have time to sketch anything regarding GGZ support in kdegames?
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:19:24] Join stampede has joined this channel (n=henrique@201.78.19.29).
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:19:41] yes, the README.ggz-kde4 document was updated and contains some nice progress… for example, full CMake support was added, and some usefull classes such as for reading binary packets which integrate nicely with the existing libraries
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:19:45] hi all
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:19:50] hi stampede
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:20:04] great!
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:20:27] there’s also a patch for KReversi, but it doesn’t work yet
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:20:39] once KReversi is done, the rest will follow easily 🙂
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:21:22] oh another thing…
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:21:33] we’ll release by next week
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:22:14] how is it going in regards to gnome games?
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:22:58] well, gnome games are still looking for a server… so in addition to theirs (which is always offline) they’re using ours but it won’t help ours once gnome is doing their release
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:23:07] so we in turn are looking for better hosting
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:23:41] I still got very little input from the player communities if they want to be split or not
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:24:00] ideally imo they should be consolidated
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:24:06] but there is the problem of server costs
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:24:15] for example, it would make sense to put all the cards players on one server, since they’re kind of a community on their own, but there are also some players who’d like to play any game
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:24:59] the cards players who were at MSN before have very low expectations to technology, whereas KDE/GNOME folks have much higher ones
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:25:58] so in summary, there are two paths to take at the same time: working on better distributed gaming, and looking for a server sponsor
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:26:33] distributed gaming like in a p2p setup?
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:27:11] not exactly, since for tournaments etc. you still need a central instance
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:27:40] to take off some load, games can run on other hosts but their statistics do not count as trustworthy then
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:28:01] and administration is not easier if one has a couple of hosts
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:28:51] Switching the topic a bit, I guess what we could do (in general) is to implement concrete examples for some of the ideas we raised in the past couple of months
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:29:16] For example: I am trying to implement a better configuration dialog for Kmahjongg
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:29:32] In the hopes that it will be scrutinized by others, etc.
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:29:39] Same as we did in SVG, basically
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:29:56] And regarding GGZ, I believe the starting step is really the KReversi effort you guys are doing
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:30:25] yup, dimsuz wanted to help so I hope I can soon give him some better material
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:30:36] Join [ksudoku]Josel has joined this channel (n=blackeag@pD9EE0BEE.dip0.t-ipconnect.de).
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:32:39] Quit [ksudoku]Josel has left this server (Client Quit).
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:32:42] Well, I think we covered the agenda…
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:33:11] pretty much so
[Tue Jan 9 2007] [17:33:49] K, I am signing off then. We should do a proper meeting in February, don’t you think?