KBillar's homepage

What is KBillar ?

KBillar uses a sophisticated 3D interface to make the experience more interesting and also uses a KDE user interface.

To parse complex mathematical maps, KBillar uses methods from Kalamaris.

Tell me more about KBillar

You're surely wondering "why a billiard game over surfaces?" . The answer is simple : "why not?" . Well, in fact, the right answer is a bit longer. I had a subject of Mathematical Models last year in which every student had to implement an application that models something. In my case, I choosed a billiard game to model the movement of balls over surfaces (in the case where you have no friction and no gravity, balls should follow the geodesics curves, but in other cases, it should move quite realistic).

Ok, but I still can hear you say "and why that silly mispelled name?". Well, the name is not mispelled, it's just spanish. I started using it so long ago that I prefer everyone to use the spanish name than me changing my mind and use another name for KBillar. Note that there's another game called kbilliards done by Samuele Catuzzi and which is unrelated to this one.

I'd like to see KBillar' features

• KBillar allows the user to play billiard on:
  • A Sphere
  • A Cylinder
  • A Torus
  • Any z(x,y) function like z(x,y)=0 (the usual, flat table), z(x,y)=cos(y) ( a "wave" table), z(x,y)=Cos(x)*Sin(y), or whatever (see the screenshots for some eye-candy).
• The user can define his own borders for the tables, so that you can play billiard on a square table, a circular table, a star table, etc. You can even play billiard in a maze, and also, it's possible to mix different surfaces with each of these (and others) borders. The possibilities are infinite ! The format of the files that define a border is so easy that everyone can add its own borders.
• The state of the balls can be saved to continue a game later or to generate a special case manually and start from a well-known position.
• There's even no need for all balls to be the same size. You can define the radius of each ball.
• There's a mode of earth simulation where balls are shown as satellites above earth, and you can play billiard with satellites :-).
• The detail level is configurable for those with less CPU power. Textures can be enabled/disabled, and numerical steps can be adjusted for more/less precise calculations.
• Be a ball yourself ! There's a mode in which you _are_ the ball and you can rotate around the table. Ever wanted to know how a billiard ball feel ? :-)
• There's also special effort in making KBillar as real as possible by using phisically correct equations to simulate the movements and hits.

I want to see some screenshots !

Ok, here you are :

Click here to see more screenshots.

Where can I download KBillar latest version from ?

You can download KBillar by clicking on the following link :

kbillar-1.0.2.tar.bz2 (824 Kb.)

Release 1.0.2 only fixes the compilation problems of 1.0.1 and other small issues, nothing worthing an update if 1.0.1 is working for you.

How do I install KBillar ?

• Mesa
• libgmp library for arbitrary precision numbers
• The Qt library compiled with the opengl module (most probably, you'll also need the threaded version of Qt, but don't worry, usually binary packages in your distribution already include all of this).

Once you have it all installed, run ./configure ; make ; make install on KBillar sources.

Are there any known bugs ?

Yeah, sure. It will crash if you enter a non evaluable function to define the table (for example, using unbalanced parenthesis). The friction model is not very good, but I'll leave it to be fixed when I have some time.

How can I help with KBillar development ?

You want to collaborate ? Good. Just write me and tell me what you'd like to do.

What are KBillar terms of use ?

KBillar is distributed under the GNU General Public License Version 2.