Re: [TuxKart-devel] Thoughts on Kart Models.

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Ingo Ruhnke wrote:

> There is nothing wrong with reusing stuff, I just want to reduce it to
> the good parts and throw everything else away.

That much (at least) we agree on.

Dump what didn't work - add new to replace it...but keep what *did*
work.

>>Why change a spinning herring to a spinning coin or a pink elephant
>>or something? 
> 
> Because I am hell of a lot confused by having red-herrings as bonus,
> green-herrings as bad things and hell-I-can't-remember-which-color-
> herrings as speedups. They all just look kind of the same when driving
> with high speed.

So what scheme *does* work for you?  Pretty much every game has
highly ad-hoc things.  MarioKart uses Cubes with '?' on them for
good things and cubes with an upside-down '?' for bad things.  The
confusion-until-the-last-minute thing is absolutely crucial for
game play.  Ditto with herring colours.

>>It's change for change's sake.
> 
> Yes, in parts that is true, but thats the point. The game has to fit
> together as a whole, one can't do that if one keeps all the old stuff
> around.

I don't see how choosing an ice cube over a computer monitor changes
how things 'hang together'.

 > To make it all fit together one has to start from scratch and
> then only bring back old stuff that was good and useable. One needs a
> good reason to *keep* something old, not one to change it.

That's a ludicrous position.  Change absolutely everything except
what we can't change?   I don't know *ANY* commercial games of the
'cute' genre that do that.

>>M$ bashing of the *obvious* kind is not good - but a little subtle
>>play is OK IMHO.
> 
> Well, if its subtle enough than it might be ok, however so far I have
> mostly seen only the very damn obvious kind MS bashing in linux games,
> thats why I better avoid it all together in the first place.

xtux was stupid (attack specifically recognisable/named Microsoft
employees with a chainsaw wielding penguin)!!  xbill - ditto - not
subtle enough.

BSOD is on the very skinnymost end of that curve...I couldn't imagine
a more subtle dig at one of the most truly evil companys on the planet.

>>The Big Picture only works well if we don't try to invent the whole
>>range of characters every time we write a game.
> 
> I just don't consider this 'Big Picture' finished or even mature
> enough to call parts of it fixed, thats all.

Not *fixed* - but evolvable.  Not change for the sake of change.

> As said above I find using herring for a whole number of different
> things a pretty bad idea.

See earlier comments about the role of the spinning cube in MarioKart.

> Sure I could now start and create different
> looking herrings and such, but I easily get a far better result by
> starting from scratch and not using herring for each and everything.
> Just for the record, herring shouldn't be used in Tuxkart as Coin,
> since other drivers might not be penguins, so something generic could
> be better.

It's just an icon.  What does a toadstool need coins for? Banana's are
not in fact part of the natural diet of a gorilla.  Herrings only swim
in the Northern Hemisphere but Penguins only live south of the equator.

Who cares?  It's an icon.

>>xtux didn't have collectables (as I recall) and the original
>>SuperTux didn't follow the herring convention AFAIK.
> 
> SuperTux had a golden herring for invulnurability, got replaced with a
> 'classic' star.

...and that helped the game how exactly?

> Speaking about logos and such, we could reuse them for the basic
> design of the Karts, not sure if its such a good idea, but it might
> work and be much less abvious then using them as characters. So for
> Geeko it would be something like this (just green, four wheels and in
> Kart shape):
> 
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/luxrota-uv7.jpg

Yeah - well, once you change the character, I don't think you need
to preserve anything of it in kart design.  The karts need to somehow
fit with the characters...and most of all, they need to look good
in the situations where you see them most.

> I am not even sure if Penny should be a penguin, after all I have a
> hard time imagine a female penguin that doesn't just look like Tux +
> bow in the non-existing hair.

As I explained - I polled the female gamers about this - and they were
pretty unanimous about what they wanted the female image of Tux to look
like.  You are not a female game player - you aren't the one who'd be
most likely to want the 'play as gown' thing.

> In SuperTux we have this little IceBlock as BSOD replacement:
> 
>  * http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/iceblock.gif

Yeah - it's OK - but it's going to look silly in a lava-themed level.

> And while, since BSOD is just the most obvious Microsoft bashing, I
> really would prefer to get rid of it.

Sorry - I just can't agree with you on this one.

So what's the solution to such impasses?  Put both in there is
my recommendation.

> Nolok, which is the bad guy in SuperTux:
> 
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/nolok.png

OK.

> As replacement for the butterfly-Tux we could use this little guy:
> 
> http://super-tux.sourceforge.net/milestone1/images/flyingsnow.png

Change for change's sake again...why change?  What is the reason that
snow is so good and a butterfly Tux is so bad?   I can give the
reasons why butterfly Tux is good:

The butterfly Tux was originally an angel-tux...your guardian angel
coming to help you...but then we decided to make it religion-neutral,
hence the butterfly - a sign of peace of sorts.

> Some other (not yet used) SuperTux characters:
> 
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/eviltux.png
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/yeti2.jpg

So your basic view is that any character you designed is good - and
anything the original 'consortium' of designers put together is bad?

Is that what you're trying to tell us?   You're sure coming over that
way.

Those are OK - I like the evilTux - but the Yeti is a DISASTER because
he has fur and doing good fur is a BIG no-no for anything but the
VERY latest of hardware...and even then, you have to want it pretty
badly to take the performance hit for it.

>>My view is that it's pretty pointless to simply make up a character off
>>the top of our heads (assuming we can do that convincingly) - when there
>>are so many OpenSourced characters out there already.
> 
> The problem is that there aren't any characters, just logos and stuff.

Aside from geeko (which I've agreed we should drop), I disagree.

>>I think the Mozilla dinosaur is a good pick too.
> 
> Would need a serious redesigned, a dragon like creature would be good,
> but I wouldn't call it Mozilla, Mozilla itself is just too huge.

The early versions of Mozilla were a cuter, more cartoonish dinosaur.

The idea of a dinoasur in the abstract is surely a good idea - painting
it red and calling it Mozilla doesn't make much difference to much - and
some people will doubtless like the reference.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>    WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
            http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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