Intro Hi everyone! I'm Luis!

Luis

New Member
  • Name: Luis Calona
  • Social: GitHub
  • From: California, US
  • Skills/Tools: Java, some Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript
  • Found Via: GSoC 2017
  • Interests: I'm really just interested in learning new things, exploring new areas, and working through challenges. I realize that's pretty vague so relating to Terasology, I'm really interested in working on the Exploration World or the Game/Saved World/Module Preview Image Content projects. I'm also interested in Virtual Reality.
  • Extra: I've recently worked on a VR project so I have some development experience with the Unity game engine but I don't know if that will have much use here. I would have loved to work on a VR application of Terasology but unfortunately I don't have the equipment. So I have to look for a new project now. I'm really interested in working with Terasology as I remember playing Minecraft years ago and currently, my younger sisters play it too so it would be cool to be part of the development of a similar game.
I've already completed the Dev Setup and started looking at the code, issues, and wiki pages. However, I am new to open source and have only started to really explore more this past week as I just got on break from school. I really hope I'm not too late to start and would appreciate any tips on how to get started. :)
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
Logistics
SpecOps
Welcome @Luis !

It is not too late, although quite a few students have shown up already, so there is some amount of competition, especially for a few specific items like the exploration world. To improve your odds you might want to dig into the other item you listed as I haven't noticed anybody talking about that one yet (admittedly we've been flooded and I haven't been able to keep up with every new student)

To get started, ideally look around in the code related to your target idea, so for instance the create/load game interface or the modules screen. Look for TODOs in the code or related issues on GitHub. Poke at a few things just to see if you can make a change and see it locally, look for something simple to fix or improve, and ship it to GitHub in a PR!

Then start looking for places where a preview image might be hooked in. Where might it fit? Should we add a new module detail screen? It is hard already to fit text on the create game or modules screen, so that would be pretty handy, and a good place to then enhance. Probably we could split to where module.txt both has a short description and a long description, along with maybe an optional field for an image the new screen could display.

And so on and so on ... :)

At some point you've gotten a few small changes made and understand the area better. Then you can throw together a proposal for what you think you could do over three months inspired by that GSOC idea. At this point you probably need to get to that relatively quickly, probably no later than a week from now you should aim to have a fair proposal submitted.

Hop on IRC and hang out, after a few changes and some good chat we'll get you a Slack invite to be better able to discuss proposals and such.

GSOC or not we're glad to have you here and hope we can work on some cool stuff together, even some more VR down the road!
 

Luis

New Member
Thank you Cervator!

I will definitely continue to look around, get familiar with everything, and work on some changes.
 

Luis

New Member
Hello again! I've already submitted my first PR (although incomplete, I plan to finish it with some guidance) and am actively working hard to get a strong proposal done before the deadline. I have most of the elements of the proposal complete but need some help with the timeline, planning out week-by-week what I aim to get done. I hope I am not too late and would greatly appreciate any feedback I can get!

Here is the draft: GSoC Proposal (MovingBlocks)
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
Logistics
SpecOps
Alright, I can do some feedback here if you like :)

First: Great idea about replacing the actual background with a flavor image from a module / save game / etc. Not sure why I didn't think of that, clever! :D

Second: As you might have noticed the preview image on its own isn't a very big item and can't really fill a whole summer. I'll give roughly the same advice I gave another student interested in that item recently.

1) Build a new module detail UI screen. While you're on the "Modules" screen add a "Details" button that'll open the module detail screen with extra details on the selected module. This is where I was going to suggest putting an optional image/logo/etc from the module, but you're right that just switching the background (maybe with some partial transparency within the detail frame) would be way better. For details you can expand the fields in use in module.txt to cover more stuff, like splitting the detail into a summary and a long form description. Put the short version on the Modules screen and the long version on the Detail screen. You could add an author(s) field with optional links to their GitHub or whatever else. You could also prepare a spot there for module configuration something we've needed for a long time. That could simply be a set of config properties the author wants to support and expose for a user to fine-tune the module in some way.

2) In a very similar vein do the same for saved worlds. Rather than just have the screen where you can select a game and load it add a button for "Details" and open up a detail screen triggering an image, a list of which modules are active in that world, what age is it, what was the time of day when you logged out, maybe a map of where you logged out, and so on. This would be a great spot to change which modules are actually active - allow the user to add new ones and so on. Check out a saved world's files and you should find a module list in a manifest file. This might be a bit trickier to get to work but it would be a good thing to cover later on in the work period.

Roughly I'd focus on working out the initial preview image and the base module detail screen month 1, add in module configuration options month 2, and repeat that for a save game detail screen for month 3.

Check out the PolyWorld module. When you enable it and pick "Island World" during world creation / load the module actually replaces the active background. So doing that with an image loaded from a module (which is in fact the case for PolyWorld) should be fairly straight forward.
 

Luis

New Member
Thank you @Cervator! :)

I completely forgot about splitting the descriptions into summary and long forms for more details on the module/world so thanks for reminding me. I will get started right away on adding the new Details UI Screen with more descriptions and configurations into my proposal and check out the relevant code and PolyWorld module.
 
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