Cervator out of state a couple times - send help, and sandwiches!

[Cervator]

I'll be heading out of town both this weekend Oct 15 - 16th for attending a wedding then Oct 26 - Nov 1st for GSOC's Mentor Summit (woo). While away my time will be limited, and it has become limited already after my sabbatical ended.

I'm falling behind on reviewing and merging PRs already now, we were just at 15 earlier today which I think is a new record. Need help! For those able to please jump in when available and merge when happy. Just add the PR and any associated issue to the active milestone (Alpha 6 at the moment)

That should probably be another one of the roles - PR review and merging. We get some of it now (especially review), but need more merging from others than just me.

In any case activity is great and appreciated, I hope it continues just anybody waiting for PR review please be patient!

I'll still have my phone so ping me on Slack if anything comes up. I should have a portable system but availability and utility on there will be limited.

 

[Skaldarnar]

Slowly catching up with forum and Github, will see what I can do about PRs and all the other administrative stuff.

 

[Cervator]

Leaving for round two now: GSOC mentor summit in Silicon Valley!

Never been to the US West Coast before, and in fact I've never really been to any serious professional conference. And it is for Terasology no less! Should be a bit of an adventure

I'm bringing a Terasology shirt my wife prepared plus some Terasology stickers. Also got some orange (the fruit) flavored chocolates for the chocolate table. Closest I could think of for "uniquely Floridian chocolate"

I expect to join a session on Google Code In (GCI) to learn more, which is the mini-GSOC over winter for high school students. Talked some to @Skaldarnar and @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi about that and they're doing some GitHub issue reorganizing that might help with that. So maybe we'll do it! Although it would be great to have somebody else organizing it other than me, hint hint

I'll be back late on Tuesday Nov 1st, the deadline for GCI is that Thursday Nov 3rd, I think. Until then I'll be mostly out of touch, although I should be able to follow-up if pinged on Slack or emailed.

Have a fun week! Probably will aim for releasing Alpha 6 to aim for the play session on Saturday Nov 5th.

 

[Cervator]

Small update from the summit (and a pic on Twitter)

It is an "unconference" so informal or even ad hoc sessions. I did one on organizing volunteers, which turned out to unexpectedly well received - I didn't expect my little system would be such a positive surprise to a few other attendees who wanted to adapt it as they weren't as organized on that area. I had thought others would be ahead of me so I could steal ideas!

Got a bunch more detail on Google Code In which may be of interest to @Skaldarnar @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi and others. If we made it in we would likely become very popular with students (high school students and a game entry? That looks like Minecraft?) and could become swamped during "Hell Week" (the first week or two which is like the GSOC intro period times ten). We'd need to have a ton of mentor capacity, although it could be much lower level than GSOC for that period.

The GCI tasks are actually submitted in a different system, like micro GSOC ideas, so while they can overlap with GitHub issues they need to be tracked separately (with caution to make sure a student and a random contributor on GitHub don't end up working on the same thing). Additionally to "succeed" the student needs to complete 3+ tasks, two of which can be special beginner tasks that actually can be duplicated per student if sensible.

If we get in I suggest we go for each student having to complete the same intro task: go through DevSetup, fetch a special tutorial module, create a new block, write your name with it in-game, then submit a screenshot and a PR to count as done. Each new block should be unique from others (could be a plant, a soil/stone/mineral, furniture, etc). Mix them all together and we get a nice new block module as a bonus.

Second beginner task could be a slightly more involved new block / shape / creature / logic system doing something simple beyond a simple block. Third could be any bite-size issue or even a smaller mentor-size issue. Or documentation, unlike GSOC.

Probably we should also straighten out bite-size (no pre-requisites - doable by high school type students with little coding XP) vs mentor-size (need some minor knowledge of some area or a mentor to help figure it out) some more, if that hasn't already been done in my absence, not able to keep up much

Past midnight now (actually 3 am my regular time) so off to sleep then up early for the last day.

 

[Anthodeus]

That's pretty awesome! ( but not being able to steal ideas? damn... )

Are the GCI stuff just supposed to be minor bug fixes? New implementations might be possible for people who are more advanced, but I guess that's why we need to have quite a lot of these small tasks . Some of them could be behaviours that they implement purely in the core and we can later separate into modules (if needed) and such while or we could just ask them for modules for the functionalities ( which would again prove their own challenge ).

All this might be asking for is new labels, breaking down existing some "bite-size" stuff or us giving random ideas to see if they can do it (I'm pretty sure everyone has some funny/weird ideas that they could come up with). We can also have more of them work together for some more complex tasks. Team effort is great for learning, but there can always be a hitch, and I'm not sure if it's ok by the rules of GCI and stuff. Eh well, I guess you'd know better

Have fun over there, y'hear?

 

[Cervator]

Pretty much small tasks of any type - bug fixes, typos, doc updates, new content additions, and so on. I'd consider, say, implementing a two-block chest about the limit of the "advanced" tasks there.

Like I've been emphasizing lately we likely need a lot more issues out in the module repos for new small / easy content stuff, rather than just engine bugs or new enhancements since we're so deep in that area already. It seems like a lot of the small stuff getting done in the engine by new contributors these days are simple UI fixes, which still do make sense.

One thing I suspect would be a great new tactic (that @Skaldarnar and @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi may have already done with L&S) is a few big list issues in the engine repo that link to individual issues in one or more module repos. That way we still have the high visibility of an engine / overall "game" project, yet the tasks actually live elsewhere. That could easily be modeled using ZenHub epics as well.

Main issue has a bunch of checkboxes we can tick off one by one as the other issues get completed. And said small issues could likely be reused in the GCI task system.

Team setup is like GSOC I think, it is more a competitive individual approach. Each org marks a few "finalists" that did really well and an overall winner gets a trip to Google. In the past it was simply the student that completed the most tasks but I think that was changed to a more org-centric approach (to encourage the students to stay with a community)

Lots more notes and stuff to share but still in Silicon Valley for another 24 hours or so. Taking off Wednesday (will be back late Tuesday) so I can catch up and we can consider GCI (deadline Thursday)