[Tuxmath-devel] New icons for tuxmath

[Tim H. <ho...@wu...>]

Hi all,

My third-grader wondered when the igloos and penguins were coming to tuxmath. 
When I told her that somebody had to make them first, she enthusiastically 
volunteered. Thus begins the next generation of open-source contributers...

So, with a wee bit of help from dad, she's produced some candidate icons for 
replacing the exploding cities. There are a few samples attached, as png 
files. The originals are SVGs we created with Inkscape, which seems to be one 
heck of a drawing program. (I'm attaching the SVG file too---improvements 
welcome!) The penguin was based on some clip art by "Anita" submitted to the 
Open Clip Art gallery. And we were inspired by the tuxpaint igloo stamp, 
although our drawing is from scratch.

The attached PNG files represent 3 combination icons that we would envision 
fleshing out with additional samples (some of which are already drawn, as you 
can see in the SVG file): the happy penguin inside its intact igloo would 
occasionally flap its wings; the penguin does a "duck and cover" whenever a 
comet is about to hit (as seen in the "incoming.png" file); steam goes up at 
the moment of impact (there, I suspect our drawing needs work...). We've also 
wondered about stealing the "running penguin" from tuxtype and having the 
penguin run off-stage when its igloo is completely destroyed. (That was my 
daughter's idea, which I like because that way the penguin itself doesn't get 
hit by any comets.) And finally, an enhancement to the arcade mode play: 
after the player clears a wave, one destroyed igloo gets subjected to a "snow 
storm" that partially (or completely?) rebuilds it. The penguin happily 
reoccupies its igloo. This would basically provide "extra lives," which seem 
so effective in maintaining kids' interest in other arcade games.

Anyway, all these ideas would take some effort yet to implement, but we 
thought it best to share our work in progress with the rest of you to see how 
you like it, and how to proceed from here.

Best wishes,
--Tim & Kendra