Re: GNOME Games split

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Robert Ancell <robert ancell gmail com> wrote:
>> I wonder: are you looking for maintainers for any of these games, or
>> are you going to take charge of all of them? Also, are any of these
>> deemed to be "core" right now?
>
> We're currently discussing the maintainership of them at the moment:
> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/games-list/2012-October/msg00001.html
> Short answer, I think if anyone was looking to maintain a project
> (e.g. someone who is learning GNOME) then they'd be very welcome.

Sounds great.

> Regarding which ones are core, I was waiting for you to ask that :)
>
> Well, it really depends on what we want for the default install. I
> agree we want a smaller set of higher quality games.
...
> ... this
> indicates to me that people like tetravex, lightsoff, mahjongg,
> aisleriot, chess, sudoku. In Ubuntu we ship aisleriot, mahjongg, mines
> and sudoku.
>
> In terms of the games that are in the best code state and thus easiest
> to improve the design of we should look at tetravex, lightsoff,
> mahjongg, chess, swell-foop, mines, iagno, quadrapassel. Sudoku and
> five-or-more are in progress being updated.
>
> So, I think we should decide based on the following:
> - A range of games that cover easy games that children can play to
> difficult puzzles suitable for adults.
> - Games that are modern and fun
> - A small enough set that can be effectively maintained and improved
> to keep standard high
> - A small enough set that can be effectively browsed from the shell

When I looked at this last, I came up with the shortlist of aisleriot,
sudoku, iagno and tetravex. These seem to cover the categories you
describe above. They also have concepts that are clear and easy to
pick up. While people might like mines, I don't think it makes a good
default game: it seems rather archaic.

One of the things that all the games need is distinctive, high quality
graphics. They should all look great and have an individual visual
style. If there are any budding graphical or visual designers out
there, this would be a great opportunity to contribute.

Allan
--
IRC:  aday on irc.gnome.org
Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/