Intro Hey everyone!

[capybara512]

• Name: capybara512
• Social: https://github.com/capybara512
• Skills / Tools: My strongest skills are Java and programming in general. I also know a bit of OpenGl and C++ and a little bit more web development. I can administer Linux servers and I run Linux on my home computer. In addition to this I am somewhat familiar with git and open source in general.
• Interests: I am very interested in doing somewhat complex things in code, such as implementing an enemy AI or writing a multiplayer protocol, and in computer graphics.
• Extra: I'm really excited to get started here for Google Code-in!
• Age/Grade: I'm presently in 9th grade and am 15 years old.

 

[Cervator]

Welcome! Good to have you here, sounds like you've found the right place if you want to get deeper into Java code

Have you done the GCI task yet to run the game from source? That would be a good first step. Then there are some other small tasks to get used to things.

We have loads of todos related to AI as well as improving multiplayer, especially from the server side such as exposing a REST API from the server that you could hit from a server management utility of some sort. Some of those are probably outside the scope of GCI, but on the other hand if you're willing to take some of it on we can see about finding some of those to make good tasks from

 

[capybara512]

Have you done the GCI task yet to run the game from source? That would be a good first step. Then there are some other small tasks to get used to things.

I've run the game from source, but, I decided to start on a more advanced task (terrain generation, since it will allow me to actually make a module that does something) before completing any more basic tasks so I can get started in the interesting stuff more quickly.

We have loads of todos related to AI as well as improving multiplayer, especially from the server side such as exposing a REST API from the server that you could hit from a server management utility of some sort. Some of those are probably outside the scope of GCI, but on the other hand if you're willing to take some of it on we can see about finding some of those to make good tasks from

All of those things sound interesting,. Which one would help the project the most at this point? From a technical standpoint I can probably do any of those, except for maybe a RESTful api since I've never even used one of those. Although, I could definately implement some sort of api that is usable from PHP-like languages and works over HTTP (my searching just now seems to say that REST has various requirements that, while I could attempt to follow, I would probably miss a few things and thus disqualify what I would make from being called "RESTful.").

 

[Cervator]

As far as REST goes I suspect there are Java libs out there that'll help get the structure right, but even if not quite right first try that's something that can be figured out over a while through code review and so on. Likely to be a long term project though

AI is likewise somewhat complicated, but go ahead and read https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/2070 for some background. At the end of that issue @Marcin Sciesinski actually re-implemented some of the behavior tree magic and offered for us to just copy paste that code into Terasology to get it to work. So you could probably get an idea from that how difficult it would be.