GSOC 2016 - DONE!

[Cervator]

Alright we're about a week out from midterm evaluations. Exciting, isn't it? Almost like being back in school or something, woo!

I'm thinking about doing a related event this coming Saturday. Since shortly after starting our three teams have worked independently with an occasional update here and there. Maybe it would be an idea to get together and look at process + compare notes on what has been working so far and what could improve? Maybe test around and/or play something for fun? Most the activity is on Slack (or even voice chat) so it can be hard to know from the outside what's going on

Still liking the ZenHub burndown chart even if it is a little goofy singing its praises over a two out of four issues complete line making a minimal graph - yet it still is a way to chart progress visually!

That one is from @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi who is several PRs in with the tree view UI element shown 3 posts above. Maybe by the weekend we could have something more merged that we could test somehow? Would we be able to edit the tree view and have a button to apply updates, then see if somebody can break it?

@Cpt. Crispy Crunchy has gotten in on the ZenHub game with a board but without dates on the milestones the burndown chart doesn't work. Issues are getting closed but not visualized. Want to try adding dates to see how it looks?

The DynamicCities module on GitHub is taking shape and being built in Jenkins where it can be downloaded and played, screenie also above. I can confirm it runs and does stuff! Wonder if we might be able to have something minimal to play with in the weekend just to test it out a little, maybe in multiplayer?

@tdgunes' big PR is still going strong, lots of comments and subsequent tweaks. Being 3d wizardry I have a harder time getting a feel for whether we might be able to merge it by the weekend and maybe have some sort of goofy placeholder effect driven by the new architecture just to check out? Also not sure if there are any issues we can use for a nice ZenHub burndown chart sometime. Maybe its forum thread could use an update or two on what's going on?

So question for the three of you and our mentors (will ping on Slack): think we could have something minimal to present/review/discuss this coming weekend? Maybe we can review GitHub issues and get a nice burndown chart going for all three? Need any players for testing or just fun?

Our usual weekend time is sometime US afternoon / European evening on Saturdays. I'll fish around and see if there's interest and a good exact time we can aim for. Might also be a good opportunity to talk about expanding physics to help other development like combat

 

[Cervator]

It dawns on me it may help to actually see said burndown chart rather than me just describe it - especially since it takes a browser addon to see, and a separate style addon to get the sweeeet dark theme for GitHub:

 

[Cervator]

This Saturday's event went great! We had little presentations and a Q&A session, then played three different rounds of multiplayer, last and longest JoshariasSurvival. I've saved a copy of the server for later should we wish to resume it

We're now in the midterm week and evaluations are open for both students and mentors. We didn't get much issue/ZenHub organizing done but there's still some talk about doing updates this week, which is still well timed. I'm available whenever for questions.

Evaluation at least on the mentor side seems pretty straight forward. Might be good if we straighten up burndown charts for the second coding period so we can aim better for the final evaluation

Pinging @tdgunes and @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy for student FYI (@Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi already submitted) plus our three primary mentors @Florian @Skaldarnar and @msteiger!

Edit: Bonus ping for @manu3d who isn't technically primary but might still be the one to do that eval? Dunno!

 

[manu3d]

Quick question for the students, @tdgunes, @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy and @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi, can you let us know IF/WHEN you get paid for the mid-term evaluation and if it's the full amount expected? As you know this is the first time Terasology (or rather, Moving Blocks?) has been accepted as an organization in the GSOC and we don't quite know those details.

 

[Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi]

@manu3d: on the 27th (about 6 hours after the midterm evaluation deadline) and yes - absolutely no issues here

 

[Cpt. Crispy Crunchy]

@manu3d: on the 27th (about 6 hours after the midterm evaluation deadline) and yes - absolutely no issues here

Same for me .
Insanely quick, they said initially we should expect it at the first of July

 

[tdgunes]

@manu3d: Got it on 29th, missing 3.99$ probably due to Turkish banks

 

[manu3d]

Thank you guys. It's good to know the timeframe in which the payments happened and that there were no major deductions. It's useful information to reassure next year's students. =)

 

[Skaldarnar]

The coding period is going well and everyone successfully passed the mid-term evaluations. About one month of coding time is left, and we are eagerly looking forward to the final results. Being part of the Summer of Code is an exciting experience for both the students and us as (first-time) organization. Although everything is running smoothly, we all can learn a lot from this.

I stumbled upon the suggestion to have students write (daily) devlogs to document their work. The short entries may contain references to commits/PRs submitted by the student, opened/closed issues, references to research papers, links to other blogs, as well as transcripts of conversations or chat logs. Although I'm not a big fan of the daily reports being daily but rather would allow students to manage their time as fits them best I favor the idea of ongoing documentation.
Additionally, it is something the student can look back upon and say "hey, I did all of that!".

There is a GitHub repository with a template devlog setup at https://github.com/karandesai-96/devlog which could probably be used for next year's GSoC. Check out the student's actual devlog as well: https://karandesai-96.github.io/devlog/

Let me know what you think about this approach, both the students ( @tdgunes, @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy and @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi ) and the mentors (@Cervator, @manu3d, @msteiger, @Florian )

Keep the good work going

 

[Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi]

-snip-

Let me know what you think about this approach

Sounds like a nice and relatively low-effort way to log progress! The single-page layout makes this nicer than WP/Jekyll/other blogs. The devlogs could actually be created retroactively after the coding period deadline, even.

PS: The repo you've mentioned is unlicensed (i.e. copyright applies) and I'm not sure if it was intended to be used as a public template. Though if the author is asked nicely I'm sure they'll license the repo anyway

 

[Skaldarnar]

Thanks for the license hint The whole devlog topic was posted to the GSoC (mentor) mailing list, the repository was explicitly linked there. I assume the it's basically an internal "tool" and they did not expect much attention from externals. There's at least one more student using the template (same project though): http://mishinma.github.io/carsusdevlog/. I will kindly ask them to put a license on the repo...

 

[Cervator]

Time for another update! Timeline in first post has been tweaked and our Calendar updated.

The coming Saturday about a week and a half from now is our (new'ish) regularly scheduled play test event for August (on the 6th). After that there is just past two weeks left and GSOC finals are due! Scary I suggest we mix in some GSOC review/demo that Saturday, like we did once before:

• I believe @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi's NUI editor is about usable in-game, so maybe we can throw some new UI ideas at it and see what kind of assets and in-game screens we get
• The cities from @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy were working even last time, maybe in a week and a half we can have in-game visualization of economic activity / growth via Oreons?
• And for both the above assuming we can even see them that probably proves that the work @tdgunes has been doing is functional! Maybe cycle some new debug modes?

This would be one last chance to review progress vs. original/tweaked GSOC proposals to see what'll still fit. While there is a ton of extras we could get into for all three proposals we have to resist for another month and stick (mostly) to the proposals submitted to Google. The last two weeks should probably focus on adding final polish and documentation / tutorials / videos rather than any new work. So close now! I suggest re-evaluating the individual project timelines (via ZenHub) over the next week to see if anything should be cut or added.

On the boring administrative angle I just submitted our entry into the Google Supplier System, which is the way we can accept organization funds from Google. The expectation is that we'll get $500 x 3 students + $2200 for sending up to two mentors/admins to the Mentor Summit at the end of October. That's $3700 - not bad! It also pushes us way past the threshold for reporting taxable income in the U.S. (actually just our Patreon donations alone for the year will be enough to do that, mostly thanks to @manu3d - yay!)

I've been using my mostly unused U.S. corporation "Nanoware" (also our test org on GitHub) which has a business checking account, tax documents, and everything. I expect I'll personally absorb the tax burden at least for this year as it shouldn't be huge, probably a few hundred dollars. For next year I should probably go ahead and register a non-profit already - I think it would cost about the same, but then maybe we can get some extras like free premium access to Slack and such

As for the mentor summit it is October 28th-30th. There is a small site with a FAQ section if you're curious. We can send 2 delegates out of our 7 mentors/admins. I would like to volunteer as tribute, er, delegate. Would aim to make it a vacation along with my wife to finish my sabbatical in style, although naturally I'll pay for the extras and not go past $1100 from org funds. Anybody mind that, or want to go as a 2nd? Apparently it is tradition to bring local chocolates to a "chocolate room" they maintain. Huh

I'll post an announcement thread soon for more details and thoughts on the Saturday event. Will aim to do a stable release in about a week so we can use that unless something newer of interest shows up later (Oreons wandering cities? Eh? Eh?)

 

[manu3d]

It also pushes us way past the threshold for reporting taxable income in the U.S. (...) For next year I should probably go ahead and register a non-profit already - I think it would cost about the same, but then maybe we can get some extras like free premium access to Slack and such

Let me know if you'd rather register it in Switzerland. Although that might put you in just a different can of worms... =)

 

[Cervator]

Let me know if you'd rather register it in Switzerland. Although that might put you in just a different can of worms... =)

Indeed! I have no idea what pros and cons would come with picking a different country. I figure if I'm going to do it might as well be U.S. so I have some personal flexibility about what to do when and where. I also have a slight advantage of free access to some tax accounting / attorney stuff if needed.

If we went for any other country the main thing would be whomever actually lives there should lead and maintain the process. More than happy to accept alternative eager volunteers there if any!

 

[Cervator]

We're on the final stretch! Deadline for students is in about .. 14ish hours? All three students have their final project review pages up for submission to Google!

• @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy with Dynamic Cities: http://forum.terasology.org/threads/gsoc-2016-city-simulation-project.1587/
  
• @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi with the NUI editor: https://rzats.github.io/gsoc/2016-final-report
• @tdgunes with the DAG pipelines: http://tdgunes.org/2016/08/23/gsoc2016/ (he even snuck my goofy shader-screenshot in his video!)

After that we have about a week to fill in the final project evaluations, but that's pretty easy, not much to do as far as I understand. Then August 30th Google will announce stuff!

I've followed along on the organization paperwork angle, next up Google is supposed to send me a work order of some sort, then I send them an invoice and so on. My silly side corporation Nanoware is actually an officially registered Google Supplier now, that's kinda weird! Next time I'll probably have to do that all over with a new non-profit so we can avoid taxes

Saturday September 3rd is our next multiplayer test session where we'll have all three GSOC projects fully available (maybe even another few tweaks). I would also like for us to have a bit of an overall team retrospective on how GSOC went (all indicators seem positive!), what we can do better (plenty of stuff, but it seems the major stuff went well), and how we might want to plan for the future. We still have some funds to do mini-GSOCs on secondary projects, but both students and mentors may want to take a break

At the end of October the GSOC mentor summit happens in California. I expect to be going and will probably try to get tickets soon. If we have a second delegate able to make it we probably need to figure that out soon, just two months and a week to go

 

[sehranzop]

having per-student forks with their own issues would individualise each project, and then using that tool to schedule issue fix deadlines would be very helpful, techzpod download mobdro