Google Code-In 2017 Mentor Recap Thread!

[anuar2k]

So we (this year's students) prepared a small gift for you guys...

As this year's Google Code-In is coming to an end, MovingBlocks' students would like to hear any feedback you have on the competition. Please reply to this thread with a filled-in copy of the survey template below! (Unfortunately, we don’t have any task on GCI website to claim and submit for you).

[B]1. Tell us about yourself![/B]
Please mention your name on the GCI website, as well as GitHub and IRC nicknames.

[B]2. What led you to work on Terasology/Destination Sol?[/B]
How did you discover the game? Were you a GCI student too?

[B]3. What was your experience with this year's students?[/B]
How were they? How did they do when compared to previous year?

[B]4. Which task did you enjoy reviewing the most?[/B]
Where were the most creative submissions?

[B]5. Was there anything you would have wanted to see as a task, but didn't make it?[/B]
Was there some game issue that would have made for a nice task? Or did you have any idea for any other task that would be interesting for students? That could be potentially used next year?

[B]6. Hardest part of being a mentor this year?[/B]
Was it the students asking questions? Weird non-reproducible bugs? Some feasts taking place in your place delaying you from work? Feel free to tell us!

[B]7. What was the best outcome of this year's GCI?[/B]
Was there some great module created? Bug fixed? Code refactored?

[B]8. Would you like to see MovingBlocks register again and would you like to be a mentor next year?[/B]
The only accepted answer there is "YES". (Technically, this form accepts even other answers, but be prepared to be SO spammed by us if you answer anything different.)

[B]9. A few students are planning on staying after GCI. How would you like to see them develop?[/B]
What would you like them to focus on? Is there some part of code that particularly needs attention?

[B]10. Is there anything else you want to tell us? ;D[/B]
You can say "Hi" to your favorite student, mentor, or anything else you want.

 

[MandarJ]

1. I'm Mandar Juvekar from Pune, India. I am a class 12 student (will finish 12th grade in March). Github: mjuvekar7. IRC/Slack: mandarj. Discord: VenomousCow.

2. I started working on Terasology during GCI 2016. As I started making more contributions, I mentored for GSoC 2017 and then for GCI 2017. Had a great time over the past year, meeting some amazing people, making new friends and working on making Terasology the best game possible.

3. They were awesome! Sometimes a bit too talkative (the lack of Slack pings now that GCI is over does feel nice), but awesome nonetheless
As to how they compare to previous years, this is only the second year we're taking part in GCI, and last year was my batch of students (me, SMS, jelly, iojw, et al), so I may be too biased to answer that/

4. The world generation tasks were pretty sweet. Some great world generators. I remember NicholasBates' being nice, one by Soundwave which was just insane, and quite a lot more which I'm sure I'm forgetting. Arpit's video task was also a nice (unique) demonstration of the physics engine.

5. GooeyJr. We were struggling with getting GooeyJr to work with Heroku at the start of GCI. Iojw, being the legend he is fixed it, but we couldn't get together a good writeup and stuff in time for GCI to get over (lots of other stuff prevented us from doing that).

6. Surely the big 3 week gap I had to take from GCI because of miscellaneous school work, exams, college apps and such. Otherwise it went quite smoothly.

7. Uhh I really can't pinpoint the _best_ outcome. Too many things happened during GCI for me to be able to do that off the top of my head. Maybe I'll edit it in once I think of it.

8. Affirmative (don't you dare spam me)

9. Depends on the student, really. Some students are still a bit new to coding, and they should focus on becoming fluent in Java. Others who are more developed programmers should probably start making/improving content modules, maybe even working on issues in the engine.

10. Don't use @everyone pings!

 

[smsunarto]

1. Tell us about yourself!
My name is Scott Moses Sunarto my handle is @smsunarto everywhere.

2. What led you to work on Terasology/Destination Sol?
Yes, I was a GCI student and that's how I learned about Terasology

3. What was your experience with this year's students?
Awesome, but not as awesome as last year (Me, MandarJ, Jelly, and Isaac). We are way cooler. Just kidding.

4. Which task did you enjoy reviewing the most?
Artwork. Kappa.

5. Was there anything you would have wanted to see as a task, but didn't make it?
More work in TerasologyEdu! It didn't get as much attention I wanted it to have this year.

6. Hardest part of being a mentor this year?
Not enough descriptions of problems/issues the studdent is facing + College App.

7. What was the best outcome of this year's GCI?
Secret ;p

8. Would you like to see MovingBlocks register again and would you like to be a mentor next year?
Yes.

9. A few students are planning on staying after GCI. How would you like to see them develop?
Help us build the gameplay! We plan on becoming an actual playable game by Q1 of 2019, so more effort is needed in that field. We need to use the features that we already have to create actual content.

10. Is there anything else you want to tell us? ;D
Don't use @everyone ping.

 

[Michael]

1. Tell us about yourself!
I'm Michael Pollind, @michaelpollind or pollend if I'm on github.

2. What led you to work on Terasology/Destination Sol?
Through GSOC, but never actually was a GSOC student. I just stayed around even though I never was actually enrolled into GSOC.

3. What was your experience with this year's students?
I learned quite a bit about javadocs, how to review PR and also how to guide people a bit better. I enjoyed the whole experience, even when the messaging could get a little annoying.

4. Which task did you enjoy reviewing the most?
Rails and BlockFamily

5. Was there anything you would have wanted to see as a task, but didn't make it?
Wish I had finished itempipes a little earlier, and prepped more tasks.

6. Hardest part of being a mentor this year?
Trying to help someone when I didn't quite know the answer. It was pretty hard not to just tell students exactly what to do and how.

7. What was the best outcome of this year's GCI?
I really loved the cart joining stuff from @eviltak. The Rails module is almost feature parallel with the original which is a good sign. The sorting block was another feature that was really great thanks to anuar2k. I like a lot of the new carts in AdditionalRails. The hoover cart and track laying carts, and one-way rail specifically stood out to me. I want to hopefully try to reorganize these a bit and move them into their own respective modules.

8. Would you like to see MovingBlocks register again and would you like to be a mentor next year?
YES

9. A few students are planning on staying after GCI. How would you like to see them develop?
I would like some of the features in AdditonalRails and AdditionalItemPipes to be refined more and cleaned up. It would be really great if this could be transitioned into supporting more gameplay. At the moment they are fun to play with but there isn't much gameplay to be had.

10. Is there anything else you want to tell us? ;D
It was a great experience and a lot of gameplay was added to the Rails module. I'm hoping to try to incorporate this more into gameplay.

 

[Cervator]

1. Tell us about yourself!

I'm Cervator everywhere other than when my real name Rasmus Praestholm is used. I've been here since the arbitrary point we declared day 1 long ago when the old forum came online, although @begla was coding some even before that point. I do things. Not as many things as I should and rarely any codey things anymore.

2. What led you to work on Terasology/Destination Sol?

I found it! Well, I found the first one, when it was still Blockmania and a demo project Begla had worked on and mostly left alone. Then PrivateAlpha/Rulasmur later on found DestSol on Steam asking for a potential takeover team and convinced me that we should go for it and we did. As for motivation I was looking for a hobby game project, having realized working game dev full time would probably be full of doom and gloom (not that there isn't plenty of that in enterprise IT but there I get paid)

3. What was your experience with this year's students?

Somewhat difficult to judge as I was on vacation in Europe for more than half the duration, which turned out more problematic for me being active than I had hoped. So my experiences are very broken up just noticing a few highlights here and there but not quite enough to get solid (good!) impressions of more than a few students. I do have some thoughts on task design and student responses I aim to put on the GCI mailing list - we did differently this year and I'm still not quite sure if that's a good or bad thing.

4. Which task did you enjoy reviewing the most?

Probably the Groovy Wrapper ones although I never actually really finished, some of the PRs and merges are still on my list ...

5. Was there anything you would have wanted to see as a task, but didn't make it?

We had aimed to put some behavior tree implementation tasks into the system, but never had the time to get around to it. They would have involved using a different branch setup that would make it tricky to get started. Last year we did behavior writeups so it could have been cool to see some of those (or new ones this year) implemented in-game

6. Hardest part of being a mentor this year?

Being on vacation in Europe

I know, #firstworldproblems, but I sincerely thought I'd have more time while over there to mentor. Instead I struggled and I think that hurt our overall performance.

7. What was the best outcome of this year's GCI?

Good stuff happened! We got a few surprisingly solid tasks completed just like last year, and it is always great to see that, plus have the associated students stick around to do more work and later even mentor

8. Would you like to see MovingBlocks register again and would you like to be a mentor next year?

Of course. We had all kinds of great plans this year after lessons learned last year and had them all lined up like a month before GCI started ... and then, I guess, life just sort of happened? Argh at how inconsistent effort and motivation can be even across a larger body of people ...

9. A few students are planning on staying after GCI. How would you like to see them develop?

I would like to see them take on mid-sized projects / take responsibility for an area that's going without much effort at the moment. Working on something like that a while is a great first step toward becoming a mentor later on, not to mention of course learning a bunch of things and meeting cool people.

10. Is there anything else you want to tell us? ;D

I wish we could declare more finalists! Again we ended up with a technical top 11 instead of top 10 and even so there were more great students that missed out from lack of quantity despite having plenty of quality. It is hard to choose.

 

[vampcat]

1. Tell us about yourself!

I am vengeance! I am the night! I am the batcat vampcat!

For most of you, I'm vampcat, with only a rare few knowing my real identity.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Also known as Aresh Mishra.

I usually lurk in the pixel-forge, with an occasional excursion or two outside for random stuff. Elegant code is my fetish, and debugging my favourite pass-time. Oh, and I like to travel galaxies in my Imperial Large (If you don't understand the reference, you suck)
Currently a college student in India, I like to think of myself as a jack of all trades (and master of some). I'm usually an easy-going guy, with nocturnal tendencies. I love creating (or destroying) things, learning anything I can lay my grubby paws on, and then passing that knowledge on - which is why I was particular keen to mentor this year

2. What led you to work on Terasology/Destination Sol?
Alas, I discovered GCI too late. However, I did discover GSoC on time, and worked last summer with MB to overhaul DestSol.
GSoC was the reason I discovered MB, @Cervator the reason I stayed on.

3. What was your experience with this year's students?
Mostly awesome. We had quite a mix of students, and I think I can safely say that I interacted with almost all of them - and enjoyed it as well. You know the fuzzies you get inside, when you help someone with something? That's the feeling I got when helping students. Heat them (the fuzzies, not the students!) in a volcano to get some real warm fuzzies, and that's the feeling I got when I could point students in the right direction, and let them learn on their own. I'm glad that my feedback was taken mostly positively, with a few exceptions.

4. Which task did you enjoy reviewing the most?
I don't wanna play favourites here
That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing tasks where the student took initiative of their own accord, and made something I did not expect.
Also, woot Nyan-Ship!

5. Was there anything you would have wanted to see as a task, but didn't make it?
Well, maybe a couple of UI skinning tasks, but that was pretty hard since the support for replacing skins was added after gci. Other than that, I also wanted to get in a few rendering tasks in, but that was also pretty hard. Oh, and now that I think back on it, more DestSol tasks would have been awesome, but I did not expect so much involvement in that game from you guys. So yeah, tons of other things I would have liked to see as tasks.

6. Hardest part of being a mentor this year?
An isolated incident or two.

7. What was the best outcome of this year's GCI?
MOAR DS CONTRIBUTORSSSS!
That, and the knowledge that a student or two are taking away something truly awesome from this GCI

8. Would you like to see MovingBlocks register again and would you like to be a mentor next year?
NO.

Spoiler

Let the spam begin

9. A few students are planning on staying after GCI. How would you like to see them develop?
Learn all you can. Not just coding things, but also effective communication, how to work in a team, looking at the bigger picture to understand what works and what doesn't, and tons of similar stuff. We, as mentors, are learning as well - come learn with us

10. Is there anything else you want to tell us? ;D
USE A BLOODY BREAKPOINT!

 

[MandarJ]

1. Tell us about yourself!
My name is Scott Moses Sunarto my handle is @smsunarto everywhere.

2. What led you to work on Terasology/Destination Sol?
Yes, I was a GCI student and that's how I learned about Terasology

3. What was your experience with this year's students?
Awesome, but not as awesome as last year (Me, MandarJ, Jelly, and Isaac). We are way cooler. Just kidding.

4. Which task did you enjoy reviewing the most?
Artwork. Kappa.

5. Was there anything you would have wanted to see as a task, but didn't make it?
More work in TerasologyEdu! It didn't get as much attention I wanted it to have this year.

6. Hardest part of being a mentor this year?
Not enough descriptions of problems/issues the studdent is facing + College App.

7. What was the best outcome of this year's GCI?
Secret ;p

8. Would you like to see MovingBlocks register again and would you like to be a mentor next year?
Yes.

9. A few students are planning on staying after GCI. How would you like to see them develop?
Help us build the gameplay! We plan on becoming an actual playable game by Q1 of 2019, so more effort is needed in that field. We need to use the features that we already have to create actual content.

10. Is there anything else you want to tell us? ;D
Don't use @everyone ping.

You copied my "anything else" . @admins kindly take disciplinary action against @smsunarto for plagiarism.