Are you also one of those who find setting up multiple displays in KDE workspace is not as good as it could be. The part that handles this is called Kephal, which provides KDE apps with a unified interface to various display configuration backends. On GNU/Linux this means XRandR and if is not available it uses Qt’s QDesktopWidget as a read-only fallback. Currently Kephal doesn’t support all the latest and greatest features available in XRandR and the graphical configuration tool, available in System Settings, is also not so nice to use. More streamlined integration into KDE workspace would also be nice.

And here is where Google Summer of Code comes in. This year I’ve been selected as one of the 50 students who will be working hard on improving various KDE parts. And as you guessed it, I’ll be working on improving Kephal. The main direction I envisioned is that Kephal should become smarter so that it would be able to configure most of the display related settings on its own, in a way a user would expect. This way the need for user intervention would be reduced to a minimum, and only if there is a special configuration needed, user would open the tool to adjust settings (accessible for example from Devices notification widget, in a similar way as actions for storage media). These settings would be saved and then later loaded as needed automatically, depending on the detected display combinations, or maybe even depending on location/activity other KDE services provide. Details about everything will be decided next week when I’ll have my first meeting with my mentor Will "bille" Stephenson,

At this point I also have to thank Gustavo Pichorin Boiko, who was helping me put my GSoC proposal into shape.

BTW, if you have any comments about multi-display support (what you miss, what you don’t like, any nice ideas about improvements) you’re welcome to add them to this blog post.

No, včeraj je Nokia končno izdala novo različico svojega odprtokodnega razvojnega ogrodja: Qt 4.6. Istočasno je na dan prišla tudi nova različica preprostega integriranega razvojnega okolja (IDE-ja po domače): Qt Creator 1.3. Poleg veliko novosti, izboljšav in drugih dobrot sta to tudi prvi različici Qt in Qt Creator, ki vsebujeta slovenske prevode. Ni mi sicer uspelo posloveniti povsem vsega in nekaj prevodov je malenkost nerodnih, a mislim, da mi je prvi prevod uspel kar dobro. Ni kaj, novih nizov je bilo pač ogromno in tudi izredno koristen pomnilnik prevodov v Lokalize, napolnjen s prevodi KDE-jevih programov, ni pomagal dovolj.

Za pokušino sta tu dva zaslonska posnetka:

Slovenski Qt Creator

Slovenski Qt Designer

Prenesite si Qt 4.6 in Qt Creator 4.6 (oba skupaj sta zapakirana v novem Qt SDK-ju) in ju preizkusite. Ob tem upam, da boste malo bolj pozorni tudi na slovenske prevode. Če najdete kake napake ali pa imate predlog za izboljšave, pišite na dopisni seznam Lugosovih prevajalcev. Seveda so dobrodošle tudi pohvale. Še najbolj vesel pa bi bil, če bi se mi še kdo pridružil pri prevajanju.

Sedaj pa je čas za prevajanje programov za prihajajoči KDE Software Compilation 4.4 …

It’s the fifth year in a row that Google is running their Summer of Code program, and the third time Thousand Parsec is participating as a mentoring organization. We did great last year and we will sure try to do at least as well this time around.

So, if you are into turn-based 4X space strategy games and would like to help in game development, this is your chance. Take a look at our Google Summer of Code and Ideas for Programmers pages and get involved. There is even US$ 4500 to encourage you to take that step into the world of open source software programming.

Interested students now have a few days to get to know us better. You can chat with us on IRC (Freenode network, #tp channel) or write to our development mailing list. After that, starting from March 23 and ending April 3, student applications must be submitted. I’m looking forward to be a mentor again.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

There’s less than one month left until the beginning of this year’s Akademy conference in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium. Just a few moments ago I’ve finally arranged everything for the trip. The room at youth hostel Domein Roosendael is paid for and the plane ticket is registered. One more time I have to thank Linux Users Group of Slovenia (Lugos), who are paying for the flight. This will be my second time to Akademy and this time I’m staying for the whole week. The only thing left now is to decide which talks from the two parallel tracks I will be attending. Looking forward to meet cool KDE contributors!

Tags: kde, desktop, akademy, akademy 2008, free software, open source, belgium, linux, lugos

A couple of days have passed since eight students found out they will be hacking on Thousand Parsec as part of Google Summer of Code 2008. All have come to Thousand Parsec IRC channel to say Hi in and all of them posted their introductions to Thousand Parsec Development mailing list. Each and every student now also has a spot on the web where they will blog about their experiences and progress.

I’ve created a Thousand Parsec Blog on Blogger which links to all the blogs of our students. The page will also serve as the blog for everyone who would like to write about Thousand Parsec but doesn’t feel like setting up his or her own blog just for that. So, if you are interested to see what we at Thousand Parsec are up to this summer, this is the place to start. Of course we will also make sure that feeds from our blogs are aggregated on Planet SoC. You will then be able to see all GSoC posts from our blogs in one place and add the feed to your favourite feed reader.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

A couple of hours ago Google published the final list of 1125 students who will be working on free and open source projects as part of Google Summer of Code 2008 program. This year 8 students will work with us at Thousand Parsec project. This is twice the number of students we had last year. Here’s what they will be working on this summer:

• 3D Client for Thousand Parsec - Blog - Eugene Tan Jie Ming
• Tigris and Euprhates Ruleset Adaptation - Blog - Dustin E. White
• Genetic Conquest: An AI Client for Thousand Parsec (RFTS ruleset) - Blog - Victor Ivri
• DroneSec: A simple, one hour game for tpserver-py - Blog - Juan Lafont
• A Modified Risk ruleset for the Thousand Parsec C++ server - Blog - Ryan Neufeld
• Remote Server Configuration Protocol and Single-Player Mode - Blog - Aaron Mavrinac
• AI for RFTS - Blog - Vincent Verhoeven
• Schemepy - Blog - Chiyuan Zhang

You can be sure that all of us, students and mentors, will do our very best to complete these projects successfully. Exciting months for open source 4X games are ahead of us. I hope you look forward to the results as much as we at Thousand Parsec do.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

Parsek is a KDE 4 client for turn-based strategy games where your goal is to build a space empire. These games are known as 4X games (from four primary goals: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate). Specifically, Parsek is a client for games created using Thousand Parsec framework.

I’ve started working on Parsek a little more then a year ago. It was one of my ways of learning Qt and KDE programming. Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to work on Parsek since then. Well yesterday I’ve imported Parsek into KDE’s Subversion repository, into playground/games/parsek.

Parsek can’t be used to actually play games yet. It can connect to the server, download properties of objects in a Universe and display objects in a simple tree and it can download the messages and display them in a simple table. Two of the main things to be done before Parsek is usable is to make it possible to view and add orders to objects and to display a nice map of the Universe. Anyways, here is how Parsek currently looks like:

If you find this interesting and would like to help in any way, you are more than welcome. The basic instructions on how to compile Parsek are on its Wiki page.

Yesterday I have also been browsing through the history of posts on Planet KDE and I found a post about lack of user research by Celeste Paul. She also put together a user research template which I will try to fill out as soon as possible and will then put it into Wiki and in plain text form also into the Parsek’s source code folder.

Tags: games, gaming, strategy games, 4x games, kde, kde4, free software, open source

Google has just published the list of accepted mentoring organizations for Google Summer of Code 2008 and it is great to see that Thousand Parsec has made it once again. We must be doing something right

So, if you are into turn-based 4X space strategy games and would like to help in game development, this is your chance. Take a look at our Google Summer of Code and Ideas for Programmers pages and get involved. There is even US$ 4500 to encourage you to take that step into the world of open source software programming.

Interested students now have about a week to get to know us better. You can chat with us on IRC (Freenode network, #tp channel) or write to our development mailing list. After that, starting from March 24 and ending April 7, student applications must be submitted. I’m looking forward to be a mentor again.

UPDATE: Student application deadline has been extended to Monday, April 7th.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

Alternative operating systems like Linux and Mac OS are getting more and more popular these days. That’s why cross platform technologies and programming are also increasingly popular and important. One of such technologies is a C++ GUI programming library and framework called Qt. Today I’ve just finished reading a book about it, The Book of Qt 4 – The Art of Building Qt Applications. This is my short review of it.

The author of the book is Daniel Molkentin, who is one of the main developers at the KDE project. KDE is an entire desktop environment based on Qt. On more than 400 pages Daniel did a great job of presenting basic concepts and components behind Qt 4. Compared to another Qt book I’ve got, C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4, the introduction to Qt in this book is more smooth and friendlier to readers who are just starting to learn Qt. Examples are simpler and there is a separate example for every topic. So you don’t need to complete something from the beginning of the book to try another thing from the end. It is also nice that there are step by step instructions on how to use Qt’s graphical tool to design the main application window and dialogs. With 48 and 44 pages two of the longest chapters describe model/view programming using Interview framework and Qt’s powerful painting system called Arthur. Like the rest of the chapters these two are also presented in a way that doesn’t overload the reader with too much information. For complete list of topics covered check out the table of contents.

At the end I can say that this is a great book for anyone getting started with Qt 4 programming. By learning Qt 4 you will be able to reach more users, program faster and enjoy more while doing it. Not to mention you will be ready to start developing for KDE 4, which will be released in a few months and is destined to be one of the most exciting desktop environments ever.

Tags: trolltech, qt, programming, development, c++, gui, toolkits, frameworks, cross platform, multi platform, software, linux, mac, windows, kde

I just got an e-mail with some great news. It looks like I am among the lucky ones who are selected to receive a grant under the Qtopia Greenphone Innovation Grant program. This means that I will soon get a full Greenphone mobile phone SDK, with the phone itself, connector cables and development tools. Greenphone is one of those mobile phones of the new generation which are based on an open platform. Another well known example from the new generation is OpenMoko. Apple iPhone on the other hand still belongs to the old closed platform generation.

And why will I get Greenphone? Well it looks like judges from Trolltech found my proposal for a new mobile phone application interesting. In this rather short time (submission deadline is October 31) I will try to create a free and open source mobile phone client for playing turn-based 4X space strategy games which are based on servers and the protocol of Thousand Parsec project. A C++ library for the protocol is already available and I hope I’ll be able to reuse it as much as possible. If all goes well most of the work will involve the user interface and use of the C++ protocol library. The work will also be of use with my other project, which is to create a game client for KDE 4 desktop, which heavily uses Qt toolkit and framework, which is very similar to Qtopia used on the mobile phone and other mobile devices.

Can’t wait until postman brings me the package. In the meantime I should start reading more about Qtopia development. I also need to come up with a name for the game and the way a user would interact with it. Any suggestions are welcome.

Tags: greenphone, qtopia, trolltech, mobiles, mobile phones, gsm, mobile devices, programming, linux, 4x, games

Just in time for summer people from Trolltech have released a new version of my favourite framework for cross-platform GUI programming. For me the most interesting novelties in Qt 4.3 are much improved OpenGL support (I’ve just started learning basics) and integration of QtScript (based on ECMAScript 3, like JavaScript 1.5). Main Window is also enhanced quite a bit with new styles, more advanced tabs, titlebars and animated toolbars. For more details check out Qt and Qtopia Core 4.3 Release Announcement, What’s New in Qt 4.3 and list of changes in Qt/Qtopia 4.3.0. By the way, this version is also the one which the upcoming KDE 4 desktop will be based on.

Download Qt 4.3 for Linux/X11, Mac and Windows

Tags: programming, development, c++, trolltech, qt, qtopia, gui, qtscript, javascript, ecmascript, opengl, kde

When I woke up yesterday morning a message from Tim Ansell was waiting for me on Jabber. It was some extremely great news about open source game project Thousand Parsec, which I joined a couple of months ago. Google has just published the list of mentoring organisations for Google Summer of Code 2007. What is so great about it is that Thousand Parsec was one of the selected organisations. This also means that I get to be one of the mentors.

I must say this has surprised me a bit. Thouand Parsec is quite a small project, not that well known and 4X space strategy games are unfortunately not as popular today as they were a few years ago. Who knows, maybe the foundation of existing code base, our plans for the future or some other part from the project description convinced Google to choose Thousand Parsec. Whatever the reason, this is our chance to get some fresh new developers, to get the project to the next level and make it more known and appealing to gamers. We have to make the most out of this chance.

So, if you are a student and would like to work on a task for a vibrant free and open source game project, I encourage you to take a look at Thousand Parsec : Google Summer of Code 2007. Here you will find some instructions and ideas for a project on which you can work during the summer. I’m sure it will be fun, you will learn something new and if you finish your project you will even get 4500$. Our community is waiting for you! And don’t forget that the deadline for submission of student applications is 26^th of March.

Update: The deadline for student applications has been changed to 26^{th of March, So you now have about 4 days left to join the fun.}

Tags: games, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, stars!, galactic civilizations, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc

As I’ve written before, Thousand Parsec is a free and open source project aiming to create 4X space empire building strategy games similar to Stars! and Galactic Civilizations. We are currently running an AI programming competition. So, if you know the fine craft of writing code and would like to take a shot at game programming, be sure to check out the official competition page and join us. Who knows, you might even win one of the cool prizes. The preferred source code languages for submissions are C++, Python and Ruby. But you can use any language of your choice. The deadline for submissions is 31^st of March 2007.

Update: The deadline date was wrong. You have one month of extra time than previously reported.

Tags: games, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, stars!, galactic civilizations, programming, ai, artificial intelligence

After a couple of weeks of travelling across the Atlantic ocean the book C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 was finally delivered into my hands this morning. Quite a nice timing actually. Today the first development snapshot of KDE4 was released. KDE 4 will be based on Qt 4.2, so this book will also be of great benefit for learning programming for KDE 4. Another nice thing is that authors of the book have added a short chapter about embedded programming with Qtopia (a special version of Qt for embedded devices). This is nice because more and more mobile phones and devices are nowadays running on Linux. A couple of days ago Trolltech introduced the world’s first fully open and programmable mobile development device Qtopia Greenphone. It attracted a lot of interest from developers all over the world. So I guess it will only be beneficial in the future to also have some knowledge about programming in Qtopia. Now I only have to read and learn. When I finish (won’t be that soon) I will write a review of the book.

Tags: book, books, c++, programming, development, gui, trolltech, qt, kde, qtopia, greenphone

A couple of hours ago Harish Kukeja submitted quite a lot of new source code for Physiks into SVN repository at KDE. The basic features of the physics simulation framework should mostly be functional now and I’ll have to take some time later to take a look at the new code more closely. Probably I will also have to brush up my knowledge of the C++ that is related to this code. If I’ll have enough free time, I may try to write some simple Qt application to test the current state of physics engine and see how it feels using it. Maybe I could also start working on a web page for the project. It would also be nice to come up with an icon that represents something (someone) that immediately makes you think about physics. But first I have to catch Harish on Jabber so we discuss about this idea.

Tags: physics, engine, simulation, simulations, education, kde, linux, soc, summer of code, programming