Google Code-In 2017 Recap Thread

[vampcat]

As this year's Google Code-In is coming to an end, the Terasology project 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! (And feel free to claim & submit the "Recap your GCI experience with Terasology" GCI task after you've done so.)

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

[B]2. Which task did you enjoy the most?[/B]
What was your personal highlight over the course of Google Code-In and why was it the best task for you?

[B]3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?[/B]
Did reviews for the task take too long? Were the task instructions or related documentation unclear? Was the difficulty a little too high for GCI?

[B]4. What was your experience with the community?[/B]
How was your experience with the mentors? If you've visited IRC/Slack/Discord for support on your tasks, were mentors (or other students) prompt and helpful? Also let us know if you had a bad experience - we sure hope you didn't :)

[B]5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?[/B]
Let us know if any console commands were unclear, the concepts of Git/GitHub weren't well explained or if you had any other issues while submitting pull requests.

[B]6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?[/B]
Did you add new prefabs, textures, etc.? Was something unclear while doing so? If you've used TutorialAssetSystem, what are your thoughts about it?

[B]7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?[/B]
Have you played with entities, components, component systems and similar things? Was something unclear? Do you still miss some information or did something really help you on your way?

[B]8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?[/B]
Have you generated new worlds from scratch or extended existing generators? If you've used TutorialWorldGeneration, what are your thoughts about it?

[B]9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?[/B]
Did you create new screens or even work on core widgets? Were the NUI editor or TutorialNui repository helpful?

[B]10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?[/B]
Did you create some new ships or guns, or work on some custom task? What are your thoughts about the experience of creating content for the game, and about the game as a whole?

[B]11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?[/B]
Let us know what we did worse - or better! - than other orgs.

[B]12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?[/B]
Be creative :D What would you like to see in our blocky/space world? You can answer individually for each game as well.

[B]13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?[/B]
You can say 'hi' to your favourite mentor here if nothing else comes to your mind ;)

 

[eviltak]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
I am eviltak everywhere, on GCI, GitHub and Slack (although gooey-bridge may sometimes use my full name, Arav Singhal).

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
I enjoy working with the Terasology codebase overall - I did and enjoyed a lot of work which did not have a corresponding GCI task. But if I had to pick a single task, I would choose the Connecting Carts task (for the Rails module). I love working on physics, and developing a joint system from scratch with an impulse solver and tweaking the solver to satisfy the rail track movement constraints was a gratifying experience. Coincidentally, I took up the task when I was developing something similar for a personal 2D physics engine, so the experience was all the more knowledgeable and rewarding.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
There were no such tasks that I couldn't complete throughout the course of GCI - the task descriptions were useful, documentation was clear and understandable, and the mentors were a great help in times of difficulty.

4. What was your experience with the community?
The Terasology community is certainly one of the best I have encountered. All the participating members are cordial and helpful, and I learned a lot just by talking to people in the community.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
The Terasology workflow is one of the best I have seen in any medium to large sized open source project. The ease of setting up the workspace, downloading modules, etc. through the use of utility Gradle and Groovy scripts is unparalleled, and something I look forward to taking inspiration for in all my current and future projects. Combined with the hub git wrapper for GitHub, everything I could possibly need for working on and contributing to the project is just a single command away.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I didn't really do much in the way of content creation except creating a custom rail block and a block family for the block family task chain, but the asset system definitely was easy to use in those times.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
I did and continue to work with the entity system in Terasology. Working on an issue I was initially a bit skeptical about keeping components dumb and moving all logic to systems as I preferred an object-oriented approach, but I am slowly starting to see the benefits of the ECS system. I haven't worked with any ECS systems like Terasology's before (Unity's does not have systems and all logic is part of the component), but the Terasology entity system does make modularity a lot easier once you are acquainted with it.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
I have only touched upon the world generation system as of now. From first impressions it looks like the worldgen system follows the same core principles that the whole Terasology codebase follows - modularity, ease of use, and flexibility.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
I created a new screen via NUI, and the whole setup was quite easy to follow thanks to the great docs and wikis. The Terasology UI system overall is very easy to get into and create something amazing with for both beginners and experts alike.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
I did not work on Destination Sol this time around because pretty much all the tasks related to it involved content (especially art) creation, something I could be much better at. I might delve into it once GCI is over though.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
I did not participate in any other organizations except Terasology this year unlike last year, so that should give you a pretty good idea of how good it is Even from last year's experience, MovingBlocks as an GCI org is at least on par with if not better than other orgs.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
Occlusion culling in Terasology. It will be difficult and possibly verges on the impossible, but it would definitely improve rendering performance by a lot.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
Keep up the great work! I could not be more thankful towards the mentors and other particpants for the sheer dearth of knowledge and experience I have gained through interactions with them during the course of this competition. GCI may have come to an end, but my participation in the Terasology community has not. Shout out to @manu3d, one of the best people I have ever met, for patiently guiding me through difficult times.

 

[NicholasBatesNZ]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
I'm Nicholas Bates and my username is NicholasBatesNZ all over the place. The NZ at the end of that is New Zealand because that's where I live B)

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
It is very hard to pick my favourite task as there were so many that challenged me and gave me invaluable experience working for a large-scale project like this. I'm going to have to say that my top two projects were:
1) The World Generation chain as it really challenged me but was also incredibly satisfying to have made a flippen world generator!!
2) Destination Sols: Create a Medium Ship. I really had fun with this task as I got make a Nyancat ship (thanks @vampcat for suggesting!). I had to challenge myself to make a custom engine to shoot out the rainbows, but it was so worth it when I saw the final result.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
I completed all of my tasks however I did need to request an extension at one point; this was entirely me being too busy to complete the task.

4. What was your experience with the community?
Okay wow, I love this community so much! All of the mentors that I met have been so willing to help out with various problems or just have a nice chat from time to time. I especially enjoyed getting to know the fellow GCI students over the course of the event and working with @vampcat and @TheGhostInTheMachine on various Destination Sol tasks over the last couple of weeks.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
Overall the Git workflow was very good. Most useful commands were made clear in multiple places such as the documentation and IRC room however the very useful thing that was not explained very much is branches. I only learned in the last few days the wonders of branches and I definitely would have benefitted from knowing about them earlier.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I only briefly used the Terasology asset system in the completion of the Block Families chain and overall it was alright. It did seem hard-pressed to find good documentation but that was fine due to the very helpful @Michael P on slack.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
I did not use the Terasology entity system at all this year.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
I did complete the World Generation chain this year and overall it was very satisfying. I both generated new worlds from scratch and extended existing world generators. I was initially frustrated by the outdated TutorialWorldGeneration wiki but I was soon made aware that the repository contained updated code to use as an example.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
I only completed the beginner NUI task and, from my memory, it was a straightforward experience.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
Did you create some new ships or guns, or work on some custom task? What are your thoughts about the experience of creating content for the game, and about the game as a whole?
I did work with Destination Sol this year where I both made new ships, a new gun and an engine. Creating the ships and guns were fairly straightforward as, once you know the structure of modules, you can quite easily get a new asset into the game. I did struggle creating my custom engine however as that uses undocumented text files to configure instead of the simple json that I was used to. Overall I loved creating the content and think that it is a really enjoyable game.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
I haven't participated in other organisations.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
Terasology: flowing water. I'm a simple guy xd
Destination Sol: change custom emitters to use json configuration instead of the current text file lul

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
I love you all! You guys have actually taught me so much and I'm so happy to have contributed to such an awesome project!

 

[TheGhostInTheMachine]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
Hello! I am Thomas O'Keeffe. I'm known as TheGhostInTheMachine on slack, discord and IRC and Steampunkery on GitHub.

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
I definitely enjoyed creating the trading system for mercenaries from scratch in Destination Sol the most. It was so much fun working on Destination Sol because it has a relatively small code-base that is very easy to understand.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
There was only one task I could not complete and ultimately ended up abandoning on the GCI website. That task was "Fix incorrect rail blocks being placed". I don't really have a lot of experience in doing rotations and elevations based on side bit flags like that task required. There were some terribly complex methods with no documentations involved in that task as well. On the bright side, that's really the only problem I've had in the Terasology code-base.

4. What was your experience with the community?
The community was very helpful! I remember back on the first day of the GCI I got on to the IRC channel and started asking some questions about Terasology and Java 9, and @Cervator immediately jumped in to help and the problem was solved 10-20 minutes later. That kind of leadership from one of the heads of the project is what I love to see in a community.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
Your git workflow is very nice. I enjoyed working with it very much. I probably learned as much about git and working with other people as I did programming. I really started to understand git when @vampcat recommended I download GitKraken. @vampcat was very helpful and patient with teaching me to use git.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
Terasology's asset system is very intuitive. I started my work with the block family chain, and after much helpful tutoring from @Michael, I was off and running with Terasology's asset system. Destination Sol's asset system is even more simple than Terasology's. I absolutely loved finding the textures and making the collision meshes then seeing it just work. There is a small hiccup involving eclipse and gradle not working with the assets in DestSol, but there is an easy work around for that. Shout out to @NicholasBatesNZ and @jellysnake for making the epic Nyan Cat space ship a reality.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
In all my GCI work, I did not end up using the entity system at all. If I had to extrapolate from all the other systems, I'd say it's simple and easy to use.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
Terasology world generation was the second task chain that I worked on. The world generation tutorial was extremely helpful. So helpful, in fact, that the solutions to the first two tasks in the chain came right out of the tutorial. I am also currently working on galaxy generation in Destination Sol. Using pseudo random number generators, I am creating a system to enable the player to spawn back into the same galaxy after they save (currently a new galaxy is generated every time).

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
I had no interaction with Terasology's NUI system. However, implementing trading between the player and his mercenaries in Destination Sol did involve a fair amount of UI creation. It was fairly easy to make new screens using the template options available in the code.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
I sort of hijacked all of the above questions to be about Destination Sol, didn't I? Well I'll use this space to outline my favorite things about Destination Sol:

1. How simple the code-base is. Because DestSol is a comparatively simple game, the code is very easy to tweak without having to modify every other class
2. Content creation is codeless. DestSol content can be created by anyone, regardless of if they can code. As long as you can find a sprite for your ship and follow along with a YouTube tutorial about collision meshes, you can pretty much add anything you want (with the small exception of engines)
3. Beautiful UI/Game experience. Who ever designed the opening screen of DestSol should be congratulated, it's so simple and the nebulae in the background are absolutely beautiful.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organizations, how does Terasology compare to them?
Sorry! I haven't participated with any other organizations in any meaningful way. Also I have no friends who program (you GCI people are my only friends who program).

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
More mobs in Terasology for sure, the worlds just seem a little dead. For Destination Sol, a full tutorial suite on par with Terasology. A lot of the DestSol wisdom is contained in the minds of the ancients (@vampcat and @Cervator).

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
@Michael, @vampcat, @Cervator, @jellysnake, @MandarJ, @NicholasBatesNZ (you're not a mentor but who cares), you guys are awesome. I have loved working with you guys. I'm definitely going to stick around after the GCI because of all of you.

 

[pamtdoh]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
My full name is Steven Rachman, and that's also my name in the GCI website. My username is pamtdoh in basically everything else.

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
Google Code-In was a blast for me, all the tasks are awesome and fun. My personal favorite is the Tiled demo task, it is fun creating your own project and experimenting with Tiled and Phaser. While doing it, you also contribute something to the community, and that's the best part.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
There were a few tasks that I didn't complete and it's completely my fault (really bad time management), and also the lack of inspiration for design tasks. All the task instructions were clear, the mentors are also there if you need to ask something.

4. What was your experience with the community?
Terasology's community is one of the friendliest of them all, although I'm not that active in the chat, but I can tell all the mentors and students are very helpful. Any help asked are always returned with a helpful reply. The mentors are really active and always gives thoughtful replies into improving my work.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
Compared to other project, Terasology's git workflow is very organized and I have no issues about it.
Upon setting up the environment, I had a problem that there's no world selection available, I don't really know how I resolved it. My friend also ran into the same problem, maybe someone can clarify what causes this.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
Yes I had, the tutorial is pretty clear. Adding a new block into the game couldn't be easier, any new user could easily follow the tutorial.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
One of the task where I got into the entity system is with the particle system tutorial task, using the ECS architecture makes it very simple to add things or change something to an entity. It is really cool, we can change or add something simply by adding a component.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
I did create a simple world, I didn't continue the task after that. However, I think the facet system really fits for a game like Terasology

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
I did the beginner task creating a simple user interface with NUI, the tutorial is pretty informative, didn't get to try the in game NUI editor though..

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
I didn't touch Destination Sol at all, sorry...

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
No complaints for Terasology, the mentors here are really supportive, they are very open to task suggestions, not limiting student's imagination. One of my friend who is in another organization said that her mentor reviewed her task after 24 hours she submitted it, they don't even let students do big projects suggested by the student. A big difference from MovingBlocks.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
Flowing water , although it is just one simple thing (probably hard to implement it), static water really takes the immersiveness of the game.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
Keep up the good work for Terasology .

 

[Alberto512]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
Hi, I am Alberto512 in Github, slack, irc ...

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
I enjoy a lot the structure templates task because they involve the design of the structure ingame and the creation of if

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
It wasn't any task that i could not to do, and they reviewed all the tasks in time

4. What was your experience with the community?
The mentors and students help me a lot to fix things in my code when i have an error or when i didn't know what i had to do

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
I didn't know how to use git, and in the beginning i had a lot of problems with it, but Cervator helped me with them

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I add prefabs, blocks.., and i think it is very intuitive

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
I used a lot the entity system, and as there are so many examples, you can understand very well how it works

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
I did the world generation task, so i used the tutorial, and i think that the explanation plus the code is a very good point

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
I follow the tutorial to create an interface screen, and it was very useful

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
I didn't work with Destination Sol

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
Before starting with Terasology, i did three tasks of another organisation, and i want to say that this community is much better.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
I would add more modules that make the game bigger, and i would add more content to the modules that only have one or two things

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
I want to thank all the people(mentors and students) who help me through the contest

 

[Ethereal_Crisp]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
My name is Thanh Nguyen, and my Discord name is Ethereal Crisp.

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
I enjoyed learning how to generate a world the most, even though I am currently not finished with it, I will continue even after GCI ends.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
Generating a world was very hard in that the tutorial code had bugs, and I did not had a full grasp of the functions of each method, as well as how to create certain structures in the world. The instructions were very vague, and I could not debug it by myself.

4. What was your experience with the community?
The mentors were really nice, and they often helped contestants with their work. Others also helped me with my World Generator, even though I still don't have it down yet.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
I struggled a lot in setting up the workspace and knowing which branch to push to, probably because my lack of experience with Git/GitHub.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I added a couple of new blocks for an Alien World, which I will continue to work on after GCI and showcase it when I am finished.
7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
No. I was still struggling with World Generation I did not have the chance to mess around with entities, even though I will surely do that in the very near future.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
Yes, and I had and am having issues with blocks spawning out of chunks for everything I tried to create.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
Yes. It was a fun experience, even though I did not have as much fun as generating worlds even in failure.
10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
No, I worked solely on Terasology. I would love to try it out after I get things figured out for my world.
11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
My friend participated in Zulip, and I think Terasology has a better base of helpers and admins to guide new modders on code and what things do.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
I would want to add AI or systems that can interact with blocks and items to Terasology, similar to Endermen in Minecraft or Electricity in Terraria.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
Tutorial Code had alot of bugs, but I appreciate the help of all the mentors that fixed my entire IntelliJ setup

 

[AneeshMalepatal]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
Hi, my name is Aneesh Malepatal, my GitHub account is also Aneesh Malepatal.

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
My favorite task by MovingBlocks is its spec feedback task. I really liked this task because I helped by telling the mentors about how to make their website appeal to others.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
I have successfully completed all of the tasks.

4. What was your experience with the community?
The mentors were great, they helped me through all the tasks and made sure I was doing everything correctly. IRC/Slack/Discord were very helpful because they gave me the proper resources I needed to complete all my tasks. Doing tasks for MovingBlocks was a great experience.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
I had no problems with the Git workflow. It worked great and it was easy to use.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I did not get in touch with the asset system.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
I did not get in touch with the entity system very well.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
I wasn't able to get in touch with the world generation system.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
I did not work with user interfaces.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
I did not work with Destination Sol.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
Teresology was the best organization I did tasks for. They were fun and interesting.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
I would add different biomes (like deserts, oceans, tundra, etc.). I think there should also be climate changes.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
I just wanted to say that doing tasks for MovingBlocks was a good experience altogether.

 

[Soundwave]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
I try to be Soundwave everywhere, but I use the prefix PS, or rarely a postfix '-' when there's a collision. If you see a PS-Soundwave (Github), or PS_Soundwave (IRC), that's me!

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
Favorite task was world gen 1. My idea for it was a blast from the past, and in the process I identified a shortcoming of the world gen system, and became inspired with a direction for further content creation. I hope to work on this further post-GCI.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
Couldn't complete enough tasks! Mostly my fault though, I severely underestimated the amount of effort I'd need to invest over my vacation to remain competitive. I think the two pieces of feedback I'd give are to avoid tasks where it isn't clear what kind of investment you're actually asking for (like bug fixing tasks), and if possible speed up the turn around time on tasks. Understandably mentors have lives too, but it's just a simple UX thing: faster response = better.

4. What was your experience with the community?
Occasionally an inquiry would just drown, but I think that's an inevitability of a small community spread over time zones. When I was actually interacting with people, I found them engaged, helpful, and friendly.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
I have many years experience using Git, so I think a workflow would have to be much more difficult than Terasology's to present a challenge. That being said, Terasology's is streamlined, and features a robust build system for support. The only thing I would recommend is potentially documenting the build scripts, as it's the only part that's difficult to figure out without assistance.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I did work with it. Don't have much to comment; It's an asset system and it works. My only complaint is that the automatic reloading of assets usually doesn't actually work effectively, either reloading before changes have been finished, which just results in a crash, or reloading a change that requires a code update anyways.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
Haven't done any direct work, but studied it quite a bit out of interest. I don't have a full picture of it, so I can't really make definitive comments on it, but as I continue working with it, my two primary concerns are its extensibility, and its control over the design. Right now, the entity system feels like a system separated from the others, which has some advantages: creators can create content without bringing on the weight of another system they may not use. But it also raises concern that a core design philosophy is not reaching some of the peripheral systems, limiting the effectiveness of that design and the expressiveness of the system as a whole.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
Love the design of the world generation system. It parallels the design of graphics shaders, which I think is appropriate. Other world generation systems work on a constructive principle, as if every element builds upon something else, when in reality world generation is far more like weaving features into a consistent fabric.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
The NUI system is impressive. A full-feature GUI system inside a larger application requires an impressive amount of work to get going. It was intuitive to understand how everything works for someone who has experience with previous GUI systems. I can't really comment on any potential shortcomings, as in my experience the demand of GUIs in block games is pretty low, and I believe the current system is more than capable of satisfying it. Even where there is potential short comings, the system is very open to extension, which should make it rather suitable for even the most complex of GUI tasks.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
Haven't worked with it, but from what I've seen of it, I really think it needs its genre fleshed out. The complaint I've seen a lot, which I'd have to agree with, is that the design seems flat at the moment. I think that's something that just comes with time and effort being put into it.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
No direct experience with other organizations, but I will say that just the tasks offered to beginners and initial contact with support on IRC made Terasology feel a lot more inviting than other organizations I reached out to.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
I'd like to see both games have more metagame. I don't think either game provides a core mechanic that by itself creates engaging gameplay, and trying to do that is often a fruitless endeavor. DestSol has room for improvement by the addition of game mechanics, but I think Terasology has to move in the direction of metagame to provide mechanical meaning to placing and breaking blocks; There's only so reasonably complicated you can make that.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
Hi

 

[Graviton48]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
I am Chaitanya Sant on the GCI website...everywhere else, Graviton 48.Also, I changed my name to Grav in Discord because everybody calls me that!

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
There were two tasks I liked the most.One was making an ST and the other one was the whole make a new ship for DestSol chain and making of a new collision mesh was a new thing to me.I enjoyed it.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
umm...yeah, I could not complete the making of a new WorldGenerator task. As I was new to coding..the syntax and the whole process was on the hard side for me.

4. What was your experience with the community?
The mentors, they were Great! The feedback they gave...the speedy responses, it made this whole experience Awesome! They also pushed me to submit the best quality of the tasks I did and this made it fun to participate. The other members and students were really helpful as well and were very welcoming when I was new to the community. I felt like home straight away.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
At the starting, yes, it was tough for me to catch up with the git commands but after some time...I got the hang of it.The Pull Request procedure was intuitive and made it much easier to learn.In the starting, I did run into some issues, but the cordial support of the mentors got me through it.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I did add prefabs and textures. I added a texture for a new projectile in DestSol and added new prefabs for making StructureTemplates.The experience was amazing.I got to learn a whole lot.I did not have a look at the TutorialAssestSystem but overall, the making of new content was great.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
Nope, I did not get in touch with the entity system.
.
8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
I did try to work on the world generation system but I was not able to make a WorldGen because it was more code based and I am new to coding.But, the community tried its best to help me.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
I tried to make a new user interface but ran into some problems.So finally, I could not create a UI but the commuity gave its full efforts to help me.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
I completed all DestinationSol tasks, adding new ships and a custom projectile to the game. For this, I also made a new module where the DevelopingModules wiki offered a lot of help.The experience was superb and really made me learn alot.it was a lot of fun!
Also, DestSol tasks did not require much of coding...anybody, irrespective of their coding experience can contribute to DestSol.
The game was Amazing and I loved to create content for it.Content creation was not code-based and really fun!

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
Me and my friend, both participated in MovingBlocks. But, I did do one task for BRL-CAD of setting up the workspace, but MovingBlocks was easily more welcoming and fun.Awesome job!

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
I would like to see Terasology become more optimized and have various Biomes in a single world.That would be great.Also, I would like to see the game get more modules and grow.
As for DetSol, I would like to see DestSol grow as much as Terasology with a better gameplay and experience.Also, it would be Epic if it was to become a 3-dimensional game.It would also be great if the DestSol grew in size. and I would love to see a multiplayer feature in DestSol.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
A great shoutout to @NicholasBatesNZ for helping me with ST and Suraj, Soundwave, Adrijaned, Ghost, Arpit, Anuar and all others for great support! All mentors were awesome and helpful, they made it a once-in-a-lifetime experience to participarte for MovingBlocks! I can't wait to participate for MovingBlocks in the next year's GCI!

 

[Adrijaned]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
My name's Jindřich Dítě, but I try to use nick Adrijaned anywhere where possible.

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
I enjoyed a lot of tasks, but for me, the best ones were the WorldGen tasks.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
I managed to complete any task I claimed, however, there were several tasks I didn't even try to claim. Those were BF3/4, because those required some constructive criticism, something I'm not particularly good at. Then, those were the tasks from testing/javadocs/rails family, since it was field I haven't had worked with during GCI before, and there was always something else to do.

4. What was your experience with the community?
I was on the IRC/Slack basically whenever I got the chance, and when I had a problem, I always received a quick help.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
It overally worked without any issues, just - arpit, extend the groovyw's -remote help message, please

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I did, work a bit, yet not for much, and from what I've tried, it worked logically and easily.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
I have created one custom component, and component system working with them. It seemed pretty well.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
I have created a new world. It was fun. I inspired by tutorial, however, past the basic terrain generation, I've only read through it to get in touch with the basic workflow and then worked on my own.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
No.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
T'was fun. And JSON. And some pictures. But more of the JSON.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
Except for MovingBlocks, I also completed one task for Ubuntu(translation-boring) and two for BRL-CAD (In the end, I couldn't even manage to compile it, and no one was capable of telling me why). So, yeah, I did tasks for other organizations, and Terasology was FAR better than those.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
Terasology:
- some optimalizations
- thirdperson?
DestSol:
- I don't know, uhmmm, firstperson?

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
Hi @vampcat @Cervator @SurajDatta @Graviton48 @arpitkamboj @MandarJ and y'all!

 

[Arpit Kamboj]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
Hi! My Name is Arpit Kamboj known as arpitkamboj on Slack/Discord/IRC and digitalripperynr on Github.

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
I enjoyed doing all of the tasks but the Groovy Wrapper tasks were the best. The remote functionality task was one of the best projects for me personally. I learnt a lot of things about git and groovy during that project.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
No. I completed all the tasks that I claimed but I did need an extension for some of them mostly because I did not have time to work on them because of exams in school.

4. What was your experience with the community?
The community was a major factor in choosing Terasology as this year's organization I wanted to work with. I worked with Terasology the last year and the community is excellent. @Cervator is the most helpful leader and it was great working for him. All the mentors were also super helpful and quick in responding. All the students were always ready to help and everything made up for an unforgettable experience. No matter what kind of a problem it was, I always received quick solutions for it.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
The git workflow is an also a major plus point for Terasology and DestSol. I worked on the workflow for the major part of GCI this year extending the functionality of the groovy scripts and I've learned a lot about git. I only knew basic stuff about git before working on the remote functionality of groovyw but I've learned a lot of advanced stuff now (mostly from @Cervator...Thanks!)

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
I did not get into asset system much this year. I added a couple of things last year and I like the fact that it is easy and well documented.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
No. I did not get enough time to get into entity system. I wanted to try it though...

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
I did not complete world generation tasks but I did review and test a few worlds created by students and I like the system a lot.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
Did you create new screens or even work on core widgets? Were the NUI editor or TutorialNui repository helpful?

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
DestinationSol task chain was cool. With a lot of help from @vampcat , @TheGhostInTheMachine ,@Adrijaned and @SurajDatta I was able to complete the chain within 2 days and get back in the top 10. It was super fun adding your own content to the game and playing with it. Also I learned a lot about JSON and collision meshes and stuff. It was a wonderful experience working on DestSol.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
I worked with MovingBlocks from the start of this season. One of my friends worked with JBoss this year and I think the competition for task numbers was definitely more in other organizations compared to MovingBlocks. That is great because it would not have been possible for me to balance between GCI and exams otherwise.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
For Terasology : definitely flowing water! It is a must. It would make Terasology much more realistic and fun. Also, the multiplayer/server mode needs some work and Terasology needs a lot of optimizations in general.

For DestinationSol : I think there could be more types of content added to the game.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
Just a big shout out to all my friends for helping me reach the top 10 at last!
@Cervator @MandarJ @vampcat @jellysnake @smsunarto Thank you so much for your support and guidance. I've learned a lot from you guys.
@Graviton48 @SurajDatta @Adrijaned @TheGhostInTheMachine @Alberto512 @NicholasBatesNZ @eviltak All of you made the experience much better by providing help and encouraging me whenever I felt low. Thanks, guys you all were super awesome.

This was my last GCI and MovingBlock made it a memorable one!

 

[anuar2k]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
Hi everybody! I'm Aleksander Wójtowicz, also known as "anuar2k" on GitHub, Discord and probably in every other place in the internet.

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
I can't really decide which task I've enjoyed the most, but "Create a radial-menu based emote system" was very interesting (I had to create a totally new module, work with prefabs and NUI) and "Add a sorting block to AdditionalItemPipes" which resulted in adding a new, very useful item for the @Michael 's pipe system. I've also spent some time with polish translations for the game.

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
I had to abandon one task - "Fix rail blocks being incorrectly orientated". I've spent three days trying to understand how exactly the rail placement works and I've even came to some conclusions what is wrong and how it could be a reason of existence of this bug, what I have discussed with my mentor but in the end I didn't fix the system. It was unfortunately too complex for me.

4. What was your experience with the community?
Terasology's community is awesome! I am very happy that whenever I had a problem, always somebody tried to help me with it. I've spent a lot of time chatting with mentors and other participants of this year's contest discussing not only about Terasology, but other problems related to software developent and not only. I have taught a lot from all of you guys, and that's what I want to thank you for!

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
I have to admit that working with Terasology finally forced me to learn how to use git - and I'm extremely happy that I finally know how to use it. I can't really jugde if the current way of submitting work is good or not because I have totally no comparison. Anyways, it was quite simple and after some days of working with the game I had no problems with git at all! Available gradle/groovy commands are a huge plus, too.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
Of course! I've focused mostly on adding new content to the game, so the most of the tasks I have worked on forced me to use the asset system. I want to say that it's well organized (at least in my opinion) and easy to use - TutorialAssetSystem was very helpful.

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
At first I had several problems to understand how ECS system works, because I've never worked with any other video game before. A few days of constantly reading the wiki and experimenting with new things made me understand how to use it and I must say it's very clever and flexible - I was constantly in touch with ECS from then.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
Unfortunately, no. I've been thinking about creating my own world generator but I decided to stick with other parts of the game.

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
Yeah. I had to create some NUI screens (for my carts, blocks and EmoteSystem) and I find it very easy to understand. NUI felt in some ways very similiar to Android's layout creation. I have also provided some fixes to one of the game's widgets, bringing it back to working state. TutorialNUI repo was very helpful, but NUI Editor felt useless for layout creation with dynamic content. I have sticked to plain JSON's when designing my interface elements.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
I've played Destinatiol Sol for a while, but that's all. Maybe it's an interesting game, but I've sticked to Terasology, at least for GCI. Most of the task were focused on art rather than coding, and I'm not the best at it.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
I have no comparison. None of my friends participated in GCI, neither they don't program at all, which is quite sad. But on the other side, I've got you, guys! I'm very happy that I've got to know people who share the same interests.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
I'm looking into going further with EmoteSystem (@Soundwave, @Adrijaned? I would like to work with you guys) and maybe creating the InternetRadio, which I have suggested as a GCI task.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
It was my first (and unfortunately, the last, because I'm 17 at the moment) experience with Google Code-In. This of course doesn't disallow me to work with Terasology further and contribute to this game! I want to thank every mentor who spent his/her time providing help for the contestants and I want to thank other competitors too! Terasology is a great project!

 

[jasyohuang]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
Hi ! My name is Jason Yonathan Huang (Jason Huang).. i'm known as jasonyonathan or jasyohuang(my new unused account ) on GitHub and jasyohuang on Discord. I'm from Indonesia and this is my first time doing GCI (and also my last time )

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
I personally love the DestSol tasks and testing. I like DestSol because it is fun to add new things to the game that you can play with and I also like testing because it is cool to do tasks automatically and efficiently

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
Well i did abandoned one task. It was the testing using ModuleTestingEnvironment. I did that because i took that task on the first day of my school in this new semester and i don't think i can complete it on time. But i would like to continue about that after this GCI since i still have curiosity on that

4. What was your experience with the community?
The community was greatt !! Everyone on the channel helps each other and all the mentors are kind and don't hestitate to help us(students)..

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
The Git workflow makes things become handy and the scripting was great... no issues

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
Yes i did touch the asset system. I added assets to the DestSol as ships, guns, and many others. I also added blocks and STs to Terasology

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
I haven't touched the entity system. Will do that after GCI

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
Yes i did the world generation and all are great. The partition of the code like mountains, caves, lakes are really good ! thumbs up

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
No i didn't work with NUI but i did the screen idea

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
Yes i did all tasks of DestSol and it was funn !
really love the game

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organisations, how does Terasology compare to them?
I Personally only work on this organization. But i have friends on other orgs and one of them goes to Syster. and i think all both are good. All mentors are really nice

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
hmm.. i want to add a vehicle to Terasology. It could be a block car (a floating car would be really nice and cool) or even an airplane

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
I just want to say thanks to all of the mentors that already help me in this community. This is my first time working with java and things come easier with u guys (I usually develop with C# and .Net framework before ). Thanks for giving space for me in this organization. Would be happy to work with you guys after this

 

[SurajDatta]

1. Tell us about yourself again!
Hi, my name is Suraj everywhere (may change to Zweihander later ), on GitHub, Discord, Slack..... etc. I am very passionate about computer science as a whole. This is my second time in GCI and I have given a load of effort this year, without sleep and food. I have worked almost 14 - 15 hours a day. hope the efforts I have provided gave me a firm position in GCI!

2. Which task did you enjoy the most?
The tasks which I enjoyed the most was Destination Sol (all of the tasks) and Making a video for physics. Personally, they were really fun and interesting to do!

3. Were there any tasks you could not complete? If so: what was the reason?
I just couldn't complete the Big Ben structures for Structure Templates, because, when I was in the process of doing so, I was told that no more GCI work is needed and tis better to focus on Non - GCI quality tasks because I have enough task count. Hence I stopped working on ST and moved on to the task which @vampcat assigned to me.

4. What was your experience with the community?
I really enjoyed the community chats! whether it was teaching or learning. There were many mentors who sacrificed a little time from their free time to help and monitor us. There were many people in the chat who I helped.

5. How would you rate our Git workflow? Did you run into any issues while setting up the environment?
In my opinion, I think the Git workflow and set up was crisp clear, well at least to me. There were clear instructions about getting the modules and creating new modules and much many more information in the module guide.

6. Did you get in touch with our asset system? What was your experience?
Indeed, I have touched and dug a fair amount in Terasology and DestinationSol. it was fun doing so....

7. Did you get in touch with our entity system? What was your experience?
I did not touch entity much but would like to do it after GCI.

8. Did you get in touch with our world generation system? What was your experience?
Yes! I have made my own World Gen named surajworld and I have completed all 4 - 3 tasks of it. It was really fun to make my own world and add all the features in it!

9. Did you work with user interfaces via NUI? What was your experience?
This year I haven't touched NUI but did a small UI task.

10. Did you work with Destination Sol? What was your experience?
This was my favorite part of all! I have done all 5 tasks of DestSol and made my own gun with bullets. it was really interesting to test it out! Tribe is my faction with serenity ships inside them.

11. If you (or your friends) participated in other organizations, how does Terasology compare to them?
So far this is my first game development experience.

12. If you could add one thing to Terasology/DestSol, what would it be?
I would like to see DestSol's game to be 3D and want to see a whole load of improvements in java classes.

13. Anything else you'd like to tell us?
I want to give shout out to all the mentors who were always there to support us. @vampcat , @MandarJ , @Michael , @smsunarto , @bjorn , @jellysnake and the great leader @Cervator. I also want to give shout out to all the GCI student to make this competition interesting!