Re: Gnect Themes not working as documented.

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005, Alan Horkan wrote:

> Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 14:57:09 +0100 (BST)
> From: Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>
> To: games-list gnome org
> Subject: Gnect Themes not working as documented.
>
>
> The themes in Gnect do not appear to work as documented.
>
> I have tried Gnect 2.8 on both Fedora 3 as well as 2.11 on my notoriously
> dodgy garnome setup.
>
> The documentation suggests putting the files in ~/.gnect/pixmaps/
> It makes no mention of file permissions but I marked all files and
> directories as 755 which should have been more than enough.
>
> I also tried (as root) putting the graphics in /usr/share/pixmaps/gnect
> which also failed to work (I eventually copied my graphic to overwrite an
> existing theme which did finally work).  The theme is a simple
> modification of the Clean theme, not at all complicated.
>
> I noticed mandrake had what looked like theme configuration files with the
> extension .gnect but saw no sign of them in Fedora, so I checked gconf
> looking to see if the information had moved to there but no joy.
>
> I'd like to know how to get my custom theme working in gnect, please?
>
> I'm also wondering about SVG themes in Gnect.  Although Gnect is not
> scalable yet I was hoping I might be able to create (and recreate the
> existing themes as) SVG Themes now and fit them to the current fixed
> size layout.  Are fixed size SVG themes possible already?

Offlist Callum informed me this would work, gdkpixbuf would take care of
SVG (I didn't forward it to the list in case it was sent offlist
intentionaly).

Even before I read his response I had gone ahead and created a theme in
SVG which should accurately recreate the Clean Theme and the Classic
Themes as well as a few subtle variations there of.  I haven't created any
SVG in a while and I really enjoyed doing it.

The existing High Contrast theme looks like the Handiwork of Jimmac.  I
would be surprised if it was not originally created using Adobe
Illustrator and the orignal vector graphics may be available for
conversion to SVG.

Ever since watching the new series of Battlestar Galatica I've wanted to
create a them using octagons and depending on how much time I have I may
create more themes and recreate some of the other themes in SVG.  Some
should be relatively easy to recreate and others like the marble themes
would be a real challenge to recreate as SVG.

I might do a quick hack & slash so that I can use the same themes in
Iagno and Gataxx but I am unlikely to try and draw more than two states
(and I'll have to take a look at what animations librsvg can do).

I intend to put the themes I create in the Public Domain and submit them
to OpenClipart.org in case they might be of use to anyone else and if done
carefully it might draw attention to Gnome Games and encourage other
designers.  The artwork will all be "new" and from scratch although
largely unoriginal but I dont expect the licensing to be a problem.

Tomorrow I will try to post the few themes I put together this weekend.
If there are any ideas you might like to see someone try out I'd love to
hear suggestions.

> While looking at the Gnect themes I thought it might be an improvement to
> rename the themes "Marbles" and "More Marbles" to a more descriptive label
> such as "Cream(y) Marbles" and "Glasss(ey) Marbles" respetively (not sure
> about using adjectives).  If you like the idea I'll file a bugzilla
> request and try and put together a suitable patch soon.

I'm tending towards the workding "Cream Marbles" and "Glass Marbles".
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=47720&action=view

Strange thing is the Cream marbles are in the tileset_50x50_catseyes.png
but "Cats Eyes" is descibes the Glass marbles not the creamy ones[1].

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org
Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

[1] List of marbles for reference, includes a Cats Eye marble:
http://www.marblemansion.com/marbles/megamarbles/discontinuedlist.htm