Five-or-More Modernisation: Progress Report

Over the course of the past couple of months, I was able to achieve a promising progress in modernising Five or More, although I would have to say there is a fair share of aspects to tackle yet.

I opted for rewriting the code module by module, without combining C and Vala code. There was was an old attempt to port Five or More to Vala, but I chose not to use it due to the fact that the partial port was 4 years old and it definitely needed an update, which might have taken quite some time, and might have produced some nasty bugs. While doing so, I paid extra attention to keep things nicely separated: all of the currently ported modules separate the game logic from the drawing logic and the UI.

I also managed to port the app menu and the preferences window. However, due to the new design gudelines, which are currently only in the state of a proposal, the app menu might require future alterations.


App Menu access with functional callbacks


The app window is currently resizable and it sports a customisable coloured board. After each click, the next shapes contained inside the next pieces widget are being spawned inside the game board.


Changing the board colour from the Preferences menu

Changing the board size from the Preferences menu and resizing the window (for some reason there is a colour flick when recording the screen for this one)

Clicking inside the game board area


I am currently working on the pathfinding algorithm, which will basically allow the user to move a shape from cell A to cell B inside the game grid.

The short todo list includes adding the game over logic and implementing both the scores and high scores system, by using the libgnome-games-support. There are also some extra-features to be added, such as animations, sounds and gamepad-support, and providing a fresh looking UI.

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