Re: [Xbubble-users] Stealing stuff from frozen-bubble

[Martin Quinson]

On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 05:07:02PM +0200, address@hidden wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Martin Quinson wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > on http://www.nongnu.org/xbubble/, you say that you wait for patchs to
> > enhance the graphics, and add levels.
> > 
> > Well, now, you could take this from frozen-bubble, which comes with really
> > nice graphics, and with 100 levels.
> 
> Frozen-bubble does comes with really nice graphics, but I don't think we 
> should
> rip off their work: firstly because I don't think it would be fair, and 
> secondly because that would be very confusing to users. And if you noticed
> the way Xbubble is designed, theming/changing graphics is really easy: all
> you have to do is use option '-r' to load alternate graphics.
> So I'd prefer an 'frozen-bubble theme' distributed separately, rather than
> fb graphics becoming the default xbubble graphics. 

Yes, you are right. those graphics shouldn't become the default ones, but
they should definitly be properly packaged so that the -r flag becomes usable.

> > I am willing to help here, but there is so ground decision I cannot meat
> > myself. For example, in fb, bubbles do not explode at all, and all of them
> > fall. It would allow us to get rid of a whole bunch of png in xbubble, but
> > need a modification of the source code. Are you ok with it, or do you prefer
> > not to get the graphics from fb to keep your ball explosion?
> 
> Actually I prefer the explosion animation as opposed to bubbles merely 
> falling down. That's why I spent some time doing POV-ray stuff. But's 
> that's a matter of taste...

That's why we should work on themable graphics. Ie, package other themes.

> > In fb, you cannot get a red ball if there is no red ball already on the
> > board. I think it's cool. Do you agree, and let me try to change that, or do
> > you want to stick to the current behaviour?
> 
> It would be quite easy to change, I don't have any problem with it.

Noted.

> > What's the point of the single player game vs the challenge mode? Is single
> > player were the game loading stuff should take place, and challenge for
> > random boards? 
> 
> Single Player Mode = Preloaded levels becoming increasingly difficult (a
> starting point for beginners)
> 
> Challenge Mode = Trying to empty the board starting with random bubbles 
> preloaded.

Ok, so single player mode should load the levels from a file like in fb,
noted.

> > We could merge those two, and let the player choose which
> > level he wants to play at the beginning of the game (with valid answers
> > being 1->100 or random).
> 
> OK, why not ?
> 
> > I like fb very much, and play it quite extensively. Sadly, its internals
> > aren't clean enough to let me hope of major improvement (like colaborative
> 
> I actually considered contributing code to fb the first time I saw it :-)
> But unfortunately, xbubble has a "player vs computer" mode that I like very 
> much, and I couldn't see how to implement it in fb (but admittedly I'm not
> good at Perl).

Same for me, beside the fact that I consider myself as "non-beginner" in
Perl. This code is hackish, with a lot of hardcoded consts here and there.
For example, if you set the animations to minimal, you loose chain-reaction,
as side effect of bad code splitting.

Networking games also seem impossible (at least VERY difficult) to
implement, given the way stuff is hardcoded here and there. That really not
the case in xbubble, even if I didn't look that close to it for now.

> > game on big board, or network game). The source code of xbubble is very
> > impressive and clean. I guess there is something to do here...
> 
> Thanks ! Actually, as you may have figured, I really don't have time to 
> play with xbubble these days. I wonder if you would be willing to take
> on the project, since you've already read the source code ;-) ?

Thanks for the proposition, but I'm not really in the position to do all the
stuff I have in head about xbubble of my own right now. Frankly said, do you
know what the chars sequences '/*' and '*/' do in C ? ;) 

For example, the target_cell function (which I wanted to modify so that it
become possible for a ball to skim another one without bumping on it) becomes
the following uncommented arguments:

CellArray ca, double x, double y, double vx, double vy, double * target_y,
Vector path 

And then, it uses the following local variables:
  int row, col, first_col, min_col, max_col, min_row, max_row, cell;
  int bouncing = 1;
  double v2, dp, vp, vp2, xt, yt, xc, xa, ya, half_range, dist, min_dist;

What are vx and vy? 
And then what are all those v2, dp, vp, vp2, xt, yt, xc, xa, ya ?


To say it short, I'm okay with becoming cvs write rights (my account name on
savannah is mquinson), but please don't disapear. I still need you to
explain me some parts of the code.

> I released today an old (version 0.2.4 - december 2002) source tarball 
> with improvements and cleanups, I didn't even have time to release it back 
> then. You should probably re-apply your patches to this cleaner and better 
> version.

Should be quite easy. Thanks.

> So let me know if you want to take on xbubble, I'll give you admin rights and
> all that...

Why not ?


Bye, Mt.

-- 
Moi, Adam et Ève, j'y crois plus tu vois, parce que je suis pas un
idiot : la pomme, ça peut pas être mauvais, c'est plein de pectine...
          -- Jean Claude Van Damme