[Feb 2, 2013] Google Summer of Code - Review participation options (Forum)

[Cervator]

Tinkering with XenForo events here and thought I'd put a reminder down to see if there'd be potential for us to sign up as an organization for next year's Google Summer of Code. The program usually starts in February, 2012 had an organization submission deadline of February 27th.

I was positively surprised to see at least three open source gaming projects on the list for 2012, viewable here (at least as I post this): http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/projects/list/google/gsoc2012

No need for action on this topic for quite a while, but this way we won't forget! And we get to put something on the calendar. I'm using the Announcements forum for this at the moment as I figure anything we'll put on the calendar will likely also be an announcement anyway... maybe rename to Announcements & Events sometime

 

[Cervator]

Bump! Lots of time has passed and GSOC is now just a few days from opening applications from mentor organizations (of which we could be one):

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2013

Anybody have ideas for what sort of code project we could propose as a GSOC project, if we should try to participate? The chosen coder would get paid by Google to code for about three months on something useful to an open source project liks us.

Trick is that it is a little out still (three months - starts in mid-June) so it can't really be something we're badly in a hurry to get. Yet it still needs to be something solid enough that we can define it ahead of time and keep a person busy for a while.

Lots of ideas available in the logs for prior GSOC events, including for games. I'm not sure what would be ideal for us, but here are a few thoughts (each sort of with existing candidates that may or may not be working on stuff):

• GUI framework - get it to a fully functional and extensible state (but we kinda need it asap)
• Liquid simulation system (lots of people have looked at this in the past)
• Porting the organic growth system from woodspeople to Java and our architecture (this may actually be a good one)
• Android / OUYA port (may be too complicated / core stuff?)

 

[Skaldarnar]

Maybe you can add some work on grammar systems to your list.... most of the building/city generators will be based on L-systems, if anyone would be interested in that

 

[ddr2]

A project with the leap motion may interest some students maybe ?

 

[Cervator]

Leap - maybe, but timeline is off since we'll likely try to develop it further before the official Leap release in June, after which point I'm not sure how much would be left

Maybe if the "Jitter" lib still has a lot more potential to develop by then, like easier user configuration / calibration. Trouble is, we need to know in detail right about now to be able to file an application

Grammar - thought about it, but I'm not sure what sort of well-defined sub-project we can come up with? Grammar, village gen, etc are all very needed ASAP

 

[Cervator]

FYI - I've prepared an application, but need a backup administrator to be able to submit (and really should prep a better write-up for GSOC ideas). I've poked a few, let me know if anybody else is interested in volunteering