GSOC 2017 - finals & results - 10 projects!

[Cervator]

Prizes for GCI 2016 haven't even been finalized yet, but there is no rest for the weary, it is time to start prep for GSOC 2017!

The timeline has been posted, summarizing here below:

• Jan 19th - org apps open (dev meeting Jan 21st to discuss doable ideas)
• Feb 9th - org app deadline
• Feb 27th - accepted orgs published
• March 20th - student apps open
• April 3rd - student app deadline
• May 4th - accepted proposals published
• May 30th - coding starts!
• June 20th - eval phase 1 deadline
• July 28th - eval phase 2 deadline
• August 29th - student deadline
• September 6th - results published
• October 13-15th - Mentor Summit (@Cervator @Skaldarnar @SkySom @MandarJ*)

Worth noting for this year the student stipend payout has changed to be location specific. That might be a let-down for students in less developed countries as the flat rate meant GSOC was worth way more there than in highly developed countries. The stipend now ranges from $2400-6600 and factors into student count, as more students now likely will get slots than in past years (without exceeding GSOC's budget)

Our ideas list needs updates! To capture it here before we start editing here are our 2016 ideas with status:

• Customizable characters: still doable, main related change is the introduction of the Equipment module by @xtariq meaning if we had a nice avatar you could vary it via in-game character screen
• Particle system: partially done since it was added, @Linus did some work in the past and @Instant (Max) more recently with a PR pending. Probably not valid for GSOC anymore. Active interest in the topic
• VR support - mostly done (revived) by IndianaJohn on GitHub, including initial support for controllers. Still needs gameplay system support and more polish, but probably not valid for GSOC (full VR UI?)
• Renovate MasterOfOreon: bits and pieces done, old item. Likely obsolete although perhaps could be overhauled as a new gameplay item.
• Advanced combat: Mostly still valid, although mixed up with combat-oriented AI (base combat works but isn't very interesting). Would like to hear from @Anthodeus
• Behavior Trees (AI): High priority item IMHO with no less than 3 partial implementations by now. We need this badly!
• DAG Pipelines: Partially done for GSOC 2016 by @tdgunes - we way underscoped it. Could possibly leave space for a round two, @manu3d would be the one to know and describe that better.
• Game preview: Was originally a very small item, but could possibly be merged with the PlaTec support item and a new item I'll list below
• Improve problem visibility: Remains a good item, with interesting hooks into the CrashReporter and better overall reporting. Related change is the Launcher now having one similar piece set up now
• Agent based land usage: This was @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy's item for GSOC 2016 that resulted in DynamicCities. Next up could be showing inhabitants physically present or enabling trade, neither really GSOC level items
• Distinct terrain features: Unsure about this one. Old item
• Leap Motion: Old item, may be relatively close via the controller support in the new VR setup. Interest voiced to do it, but may not be enough on its own - combine with a full VR UI approach?
• Rest API / mobile management: Still a great item as it doesn't get in the way and isn't critically needed
• NUI Editor: Done by @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi for GSOC 2016. Further extraction blocked by dependencies (see new items)
• Anatomy: Has had interest surface a few times and we have two stats systems now with @jellysnake considering overhauling Health after finishing extracting Inventory. Probably not good for GSOC (unless a sub-item in advanced combat?)
• Android: Waaay blocked by dependencies
• Far rendering: Blocked by dependencies (unless part of DAG round two?)
• Port growth sim: Sort of a decent but low priority ancient item. Tricky due to its level of detail vs voxel world. Plus we have a fair amount of growth stuff already. Maybe mix some sort of advanced hydrological + nutrition cycle for farming into it
• Plate Tectonics: Also ancient item, probably poor on its own. Could perhaps be mixed with world preview / other new stuff below

A lot of those need some solid updates and tweaks to be good for 2017. Here are some new items and remixes I'd like to consider:

• Sectors: Anybody haven't heard me rant about this yet? Seems like GSOC potential.
  • Architectural challenge: somewhat intertwined with the extraction of gestalt-entity-system as it would likely result in substantial changes (multiple independent entity pools, transfer of entities between pools, overlapping areas...)
  • Potential bonus areas: Multi-world support, multi-surface support
• Module context and configuration: Bit of a grab back of related issues here, sourced from Game preview above (should allow easier previewing/activating of stuff)
  • May need some focus and scope improvements to work with GSOC:
    • Targets PR #2074 and some related ideas
    • Modules activated in the main menu (could support theming or languages with fonts in modules)
    • Modules solely activated on a client (texture packs, visual effects via modules, language modules)
    • Module config changed after world creation (easy for the above, harder for new worldgen..)
    • Module categories, optional dependencies, etc ...
    • Should help improve environment/context switches
    • Maybe related: #1296, #1621, #1737, #1770 (pretty advanced), #1795.
  • Architectural challenge: Probably sorting out CoreRegistry -> Context and/or extracting Config/Context/Injection. Not guaranteed but seems like it would relate
• Destination Sol with Gestalt: Overhaul Destination Sol to use Gestalt, including gestalt-entity-system. Implement at a minimum easy modding akin to in Terasology.
  • @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi already got gestalt-module and gestalt-asset-core working (pending testing on Android)
  • Architectural challenge: Yep, gestalt-entity-system again
  • Potential bonus areas: Multiplayer
  • Completely new area beyond Terasology itself. Exciting, but also tricky, especially mentor-wise
• Documentation infrastructure: Fairly open item that needs specifics if it to be viable.
  • GCI exposed flaws in the way we track credits and image attribution. We need something better
  • We have some types of automatic (or automatable) docs available (javadocs, api list, key bindings, assets...) but they aren't really published anywhere. How do we organize it all and make it visible plus useful? Fancy module listing site?
  • We need to improve our tutorials, make more of them, and harden them against going out of date (add build step to diff source vs code snippets in wikis?) - how to highlight all that well?
• Additional gameplay content: This can be a tricky thing to scope and review right, since it can be so open ended and subjective as we saw with Dynamic Cities - there are so many different ways to get it right, so it is hard to write exact requirements then test that they were met.
  • An advanced system based on Genome might be an idea
  • Expanding our city simulation substantially could be done
  • Finally implement some gameplay for Light & Shadow? Depends on better AI
  • We're at a point where large new gameplay templates could form, with small teams behind them. We need to support this better, yet it probably doesn't work well with GSOC. Maybe something we can discuss in general at the dev meeting.
  • There may be some more potential in the conlang thread or the game identity thread
• I'm sure I'm missing some ... post away if you spot any! Or come talk about it during the dev meeting.

So from all that it might be clearer why I hope tomorrow's dev meeting can help shed some light on our architectural future Also curious who is wanting to work on some issues outside of GSOC because they simply want to or think we need it sooner / for sure.

With us no longer being a newbie org and the changed stipends we might end up in an interesting position of having too many interested good students and/or having too few mentors to fit more good student candidates. So hopefully we can come up with some more items and get some more mentors signed up.

 

[smsunarto]

Give life to maze gameplay!

 

[Florian]

Maze or more general advanture gameplay content I think would be a very good GSOC item.

There are a lot of advanture gameplay blocks, items and monsters that could be added so that modules like Gooey's Quests or a Maze world can use them.

I think it is very good for GOSC as it allows for a lot of small work packages and it is an existing topic.

Here is a list of ideas of mine of what could be added(if you read this and want to implement an item go ahead, there are enough ):

• Swinging blades (attached to wall, swing from left to right and force player to time its movement forward to not be hit)
  
• Blocks that break shortly after walking over them (to make a collapsing bridge)
  
• Spikes that come up from ground after delay
• trip wire
• rolling boulder
• fireball as spell item and trap shooting it
• Protective rune stone that prevents any block addition and removal nearby. To force the player to solve traps
• Teleportation Cycle/Quad
• Preasure plates that activate traps
• Mechanic to suspend traps and other activity while no player is nearby (for good performance when there are lot of traps in the world)
  
• Make existing skeleton monster have fire hand and shoot fireballs
• Add blocks that move around where the player can jump onto
• Add (big) doors that can only be opened with a key or by solving a puzzle
• Locked chests that require special award keys
  
• Chests that offer per player rewards.
  
• Add keys/keystones that run or fly around and need to be catched (nice evaluation for behavior trees! )
  
• Use existing chess figures to create a chess minigame. There are a lot of chest riddles where some figures are placed and you need ot win.
  
• Add a bow (if we don't have one already)
• Add jump pads that when walked make the player jump a big distance
  
• Blocks that fall down if nearby blocks get mined
• Blocks with spikes that fall down when player is below them
• Piranhas (a marker block gets placed in water, nearby water will have piranias jumping out o the water periodically while player is nearby) Jumping pirania damage and push player a little. If player touches water piranias start attacking.
  
• A shark that moves towards player in water
• Ice wisp: A floating light blue glowing small cube that makes nearby water blocks turn ice for a short while. Allows crossing of water (with piranias).
  
• Button: Can be activated to let something happen
• Wind ball shooting stone trap: A stone figure that looks like someone blowing. Spawns periodically a "wind ball" (dust particle effect) that travels in a straight line and pushes players (e.g. from pillars they try to travel over)
• Gravity trap: A specially looking block that pulls periodically players towards it. It may have spikes in front of it that players get pulled into. Players can go behind blocks to avoid being pulled in.
• Healing fountain: Water that emits particles and heals players within it. Can be filled up in bottles for healing potions
• Big jumping cube boss: A big hostile cube that tries to jump on players. Has a weakness like a vulnerable back and a slow turn rate.
• Proper illusion blocks that turn to dust if touched and return to fake block appearance after a short while
• Grapnel that can be used to swing over some dangerous area.
• 2x2x2 block that can be pushed and pulled around by the player to reach otherwise unreachle places father up
• Shield item, that when activates reduces received damage for 1 second and has a 3 second cooldown
• Ring of swiftness, item that when activated gives you a 3 second speed boost of 200%
• Scroll of desperate teleport: Teleports you to any visible target but sets your health to 1
• Book chase block that allows for interaction: E.g. it allows you to obtain book related items like spell scrolls, quest scrolls or maps. Use is limited to 1 time per player and region.
  
• Boots of faith: When equipped: As long as you don't look down you don't fall down when you walk over a cliff

Of course the student would not have to do all of those items but just a selected few and he would also have the option to suggest other adventure gameplay content.

 

[smsunarto]

Maze or more general advanture gameplay content I think would be a very good GSOC item.

There are a lot of advanture gameplay blocks, items and monsters that could be added so that modules like Gooey's Quests or a Maze world can use them.

I think it is very good for GOSC as it allows for a lot of small work packages and it is an existing topic.

Here is a list of ideas of mine of what could be added(if you read this and want to implement an item go ahead, there are enough ):

• Swinging blades (attached to wall, swing from left to right and force player to time its movement forward to not be hit)
  
• Blocks that break shortly after walking over them (to make a collapsing bridge)
  
• Spikes that come up from ground after delay
• trip wire
• rolling boulder
• fireball as spell item and trap shooting it
• Protective rune stone that prevents any block addition and removal nearby. To force the player to solve traps
• Teleportation Cycle/Quad
• Preasure plates that activate traps
• Mechanic to suspend traps and other activity while no player is nearby (for good performance when there are lot of traps in the world)
  
• Make existing skeleton monster have fire hand and shoot fireballs
• Add blocks that move around where the player can jump onto
• Add (big) doors that can only be opened with a key or by solving a puzzle
• Locked chests that require special award keys
  
• Chests that offer per player rewards.
  
• Add keys/keystones that run or fly around and need to be catched (nice evaluation for behavior trees! )
  
• Use existing chess figures to create a chess minigame. There are a lot of chest riddles where some figures are placed and you need ot win.
  
• Add a bow (if we don't have one already)
• Add jump pads that when walked make the player jump a big distance
  
• Blocks that fall down if nearby blocks get mined
• Blocks with spikes that fall down when player is below them
• Piranhas (a marker block gets placed in water, nearby water will have piranias jumping out o the water periodically while player is nearby) Jumping pirania damage and push player a little. If player touches water piranias start attacking.
  
• A shark that moves towards player in water
• Ice wisp: A floating light blue glowing small cube that makes nearby water blocks turn ice for a short while. Allows crossing of water (with piranias).
  
• Button: Can be activated to let something happen
• Wind ball shooting stone trap: A stone figure that looks like someone blowing. Spawns periodically a "wind ball" (dust particle effect) that travels in a straight line and pushes players (e.g. from pillars they try to travel over)
• Gravity trap: A specially looking block that pulls periodically players towards it. It may have spikes in front of it that players get pulled into. Players can go behind blocks to avoid being pulled in.
• Healing fountain: Water that emits particles and heals players within it. Can be filled up in bottles for healing potions
• Big jumping cube boss: A big hostile cube that tries to jump on players. Has a weakness like a vulnerable back and a slow turn rate.
• Proper illusion blocks that turn to dust if touched and return to fake block appearance after a short while
• Grapnel that can be used to swing over some dangerous area.
• 2x2x2 block that can be pushed and pulled around by the player to reach otherwise unreachle places father up
• Shield item, that when activates reduces received damage for 1 second and has a 3 second cooldown
• Ring of swiftness, item that when activated gives you a 3 second speed boost of 200%
• Scroll of desperate teleport: Teleports you to any visible target but sets your health to 1
• Book chase block that allows for interaction: E.g. it allows you to obtain book related items like spell scrolls, quest scrolls or maps. Use is limited to 1 time per player and region.
  
• Boots of faith: When equipped: As long as you don't look down you don't fall down when you walk over a cliff

Of course the student would not have to do all of those items but just a selected few and he would also have the option to suggest other adventure gameplay content.

Agreed to what @Florian said, ideally we should want it to be an actual 'gameplay' in which end-user can play, rather than a lot of random stuff jumbled together.

 

[oniatus]

I added API for Integration Tests to the ideas list which is my personal second priority. Testing the entire environment may be very useful for a gameplay module that wires a lot of stuff together and needs to be sure that the modules are always able to interact with each other.
E.g. that it is always possible for a player to craft item A from module B on Workstation X from module Z. Especially in multiplayer environments where testing is expensive.

My first priority would be the Behavior System and maybe Pathfinding because these are two features which would really move us away from the "Minecraft Clone" and more into "Dwarf Fortress" etc and are also an amazing toolset for gameplay/module developers.

I am not sure what to think about gameplay elements as gsoc feature. On the one hand, we really need a more mature gameplay to attract people but on the other hand gsoc is very short and a well polished gameplay module may need at least one person to take over the responsibility for a longer timespan.

 

[Skaldarnar]

We are in!

I was really happy to read exactly that in my mails today! We ended 2016 (and started in 2017) with the overwhelming experience of Google Code-in, and now we can take the momentum over to this year's Summer of Code. We are all curious about the upcoming weeks, all the new people we'll meet, and all the interesting applications we will have to review.

If you are a student interested in starting Summer of Code with us, don't hesitate to introduce yourself in the forum, hop on IRC and say "hi", and get in contact with the community. We will happily answer your questions!

 

[Cervator]

Update: There is about a week until student applications open and we already have interacted with some promising students on IRC with several invited onto Slack for deeper discussion

For anybody out there still waffling about whether to participate or not: get started already! Worst case you put in effort to learn how to write a proposal and interact with a friendly open source community, and will have that as a life lesson for later. Best case you get in, spend the summer being paid to write code for a video game, and have something awesome to put on a resume, plus a great learning experience. At this point several students have impressed us meaning they're already looking good even before proposals start. You don't want to wait until after the apps open to make first contact!

If still wondering about some details check out this blog post by @Skaldarnar which gives a nice point of view from a mentor.

You can also see some examples of past proposals in this GitHub repo which also includes the proposal that got @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi an accepted project slot last year.

 

[Cervator]

Talked to @tdgunes a bit via email, he's OK with us publishing his winning proposal, so here it is

In other news proposals can be submitted starting about 36 hours from now!

And also come join us in a play test session in about 12 hours - see this announcement for details (more being added shortly)

 

[Cervator]

Slight bump: We are now in the slots request phase where we as an org have to pick a minimum and maximum slot amount we expect we'll be able to match students and mentors for. Been a busy last month but a more quiet last week or two, at least in the open. Lots of review and such behind the scenes which will continue for another couple weeks or so until we know the exact number of slots we'll get and have assigned them to students

 

[Cervator]

Time for another update: We made our slot decisions were made a little while ago and we're just waiting for Google to make the announcement on May 4th (we can't give out further details until then). As I'm about to post as news elsewhere our next multiplayer test session is the Saturday two days later so I'd like for us to accept and give feedback to students by then if anybody is interested in the decision process or want to make suggestions to help us improve

After that the next step is the bonding period until coding starts officially on May 30th. That's supposed to be when we get to know each other better, although honestly I don't know how often any students get accepted without having already done that before even submitting a final proposal. So I expect our primary goal for the month of May will be taking the accepted proposals to refine them better and create issues on GitHub to cover the features to implement.

Last year we used ZenHub to add further details, which provided a kanban board, story points, epics, and a burndown chart. Great example below for how @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi organized his implementation of the NUI editor - I think first it was sketched out in a single overview issue then later individual issues were created that could be modeled on a kanban board.

However, it actually looked more simple way back then. GitHub added their own "Projects" thing now that has a Kanban board too and can itself serve as an epic. To stay ahead ZenHub added "Releases" as visible in the sidebar above, which isn't the same as a GitHub release... somehow. Other stuff too, but there is a lot of overlap now and ZenHub is problematic in that it requires a browser addon to integrate itself into the GitHub UI which in turn adds lag for when you load pages.

IMHO ZenHub has gone past the point of added complexity I've been looking for personally, and GitHub has caught up. Now ZenHub adds clutter and lag. GitHub just needs to add story points + a burndown chart and I'll be happy. With the kanban board you get from Projects I think we should be able to model 3 months + bonus items just fine and aim to make each issue roughly similar in scope (anything bigger should be broken into smaller items). Maybe something like this (enlarge, it is a bit wide):



That fits 6 columns comfortably on my screen, although smaller resolutions might just show 4 or 5.

As a nice bonus the GitHub version allows you to start with little notes that aren't issues yet, then you can play around and turn them into issues later (good for getting started with a mentor during the bonding period). You can also add existing issues from across any repo in an entire organization, although not from across orgs (ZenHub still wins there but has other related drawbacks). Some proposals would include work in multiple repos either on the engine/logistics side (MovingBlocks org) or in module land (under the Terasology org) so this is a good way to tie them all together. If one proposal affects both MovingBlocks and Terasology org repos then we can use a small amount of proxy issues submitted under one org to refer to real issues under the other.

I'm hoping that'll be a good way to organize this year and am curious to hear both from students and mentors, especially those from last year. The Project page would probably also be an ideal way to "Show your work" at the end of GSOC as you need to be able to point to a single link covering all your work. Like with a ZenHub board in the past I would expect a Project page would become central for staying organized with something like weekly review done between student and mentor(s), maybe by default on Saturdays but up to those involved to determine.

 

[Cervator]

GSOC PROJECTS ANNOUNCED AND THERE ARE A FULL 10 OF THEM WOO! At last

I created a summary in a Post in Slack, that way anybody within Slack (generally confirmed contributors) can help edit it to keep it accurate, while the public can view it using this link. It includes project name, summary, student, mentors, GitHub project link (todo), designated Slack channel, forum post (todo), blog page (if a student wants to post updates to a personal blog)

Next steps:

This is largely for the student + mentor groups per project, which should be the focal point over the summer. Don't make me do this stuff I'll be a huge bottleneck! Save me from myself, I'll have a hard time resisting getting involved in all the things!

• Talk within project groups (probably ideally using the "public" Slack channels) how student + mentors want to coordinate and when. Suggestion: Weekly (or more often) sessions on Slack or even appear.in / other voice/video conferencing
  • One suggestion has been having students post updates in a personal blog as the project progresses over summer. That way the public can keep up and the student can use all that later. On the other hand posting updates in a forum thread might do just as fine
• Spend May solidifying proposals into a GitHub project (as described in the prior post). Aim to use the project board during team meetings to review what's been done, what's next, what's realistic, how's the timeline, etc
  • Brainstorm on Saturdays this month in particular - Sat 6th is for general GSOC feedback, 13th has a worldgen session, maybe combat? Others? Will generally be same time as play sessions (afternoons US Eastern time) but really any time works
  • Saturday the 6th is also for any other students who would like to provide or receive feedback, and maybe especially if you're curious to pursue an item unofficially (with or without big code bounties / mentor support)
• Update the Post in Slack a bunch (help!)
• Decide on a forum thread to use for permanent updates and if the student wants to (or already does) run a blog for updates

Slack changes

Did some reorganizing to better fit all the GSOC things.

• Added #combat (re-added, really, it used to exist but was renamed to #content)
• Renamed #nui to #ui - it was made specifically for @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi's NUI Editor GSOC project
• Archived #movement-refactoring and reshared the main thing from there into #ui
• Shortened #world-generation to worldgen just because
• Renamed #citysimulation to #exploration since it seemed like it might kinda fit (and links to StructureTemplates + other stuff already - was @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy's GSOC channel for 2016)
• Noticed flo beat me to creating #scenarios for that GSOC item
• Created #artwork for the Blender item and art in general. Figured it was distinct enough from #rendering which might remain busy anyway even if we don't have a dedicated GSOC rendering item like @tdgunes' work in here last year
• Created #telemetry for that item and future processing of it somehow? Maybe we can have some integration dump report links in there when they're submitted?

More suggestions: add integrations to the Slack channels to related GitHub repos/Jenkins jobs. Unsure what permissions on Slack that actually requires. Somebody try it out!

Students and mentors: start your engines!

 

[Cervator]

@Nihal Singh wins the "earliest blog post" award!

http://nihal111.github.io/2017/05/08/GSoC-week1-2.html

Note: Nihal is starting early due to some obligations toward the end of summer. It is still officially the bonding period and regular work doesn't start till the 30th or so.

In the meantime May remains on target with the stuff in my prior post above: focus on finalizing proposals / turning them into notes & issues on GitHub. If any students or mentors have yet to reach out to the other party to collaborate on that now's the time!

Edit: Also worth noting is that Nihal's project entry on GitHub looks like a pretty good example for any other students (or mentors) curious how one might look). I just added another column to the right to enter simple notes just containing the link to a blog post. Figured that would be a handy way to "read through" the development of a particular project

 

[Cervator]

Bump! Based on this thread it may seem like we're having a quiet summer, but that's far from the reality we live in

Last week for example saw about 3000 messages on our Slack (some of which are visible via our new chat bridge to IRC and Discord), there are student blogs all over the place, videos, and so on. Some of it has gone through our social media and a bunch is covered on a central blog post on our updated splash site

We are closing in on being two thirds done with the second evaluations due in a couple days. Need students and mentors to complete those as soon as possible. Mentors additionally have to evaluate their interest in participating in the GSOC Mentor Summit Oct 13-15. I went last year and we'll be sending at least two mentors this time so if I go I won't be alone again! Also this year the summit is right after both PuppetConf and GitHub universe, so fairly easy to arrange a two-for-one (maybe even with some job support for the other one!)

In about a week and a half we have another play session, which should be able to test more GSOC stuff. Lots of exciting new stuff, will try to cover later when Alpha 8 is finally ready!

Edit: One most recent video I wanted to drop in a place or two

 

[Cervator]

And GSOC 2017 is in the home stretch with all work completed! Right now mentors have a few days to finish final evaluations, while the students have already completed theirs. Results will be announced September 6th. And such results - so much work has been done over the summer that it is hard to track and honestly pretty humbling

It wouldn't have been possible without all our great mentors, especially @Florian who really stepped up after only reluctantly accepting a single student to primary as there were no other suitable mentors for that item. He also had planned to follow one other student some, but ended up nearly primarying three separate students plus getting involved here and there with others. As such we've prepared a one-time mentor award for outstanding effort including a cash prize of $1000 - woo! Congratulations and thank you (and everybody!) so much!

Our next play test is this coming Saturday, September 2nd, in just over 36 hours. All outstanding blockers are being addressed and we should be able to play a release candidate likely to finally pass, with all the work from GSOC. All ten projects have testable bits to look out for. I can't cover everything and link to all the things or I'll still be writing this as the test begins ... but here are some highlights that can be tested now:

• Anatomy/Genome - enable WildAnimalsGenome, "spawnPrefab deer" in the console, and e click them to enable mating. It should work and produce baby deer so long as you pair them together! There is also a bunch of console commands you can play with, do a "search anatomy" to find most/all of them. @arpan98 naturally knows more
• Behavior Trees - not covered by Alpha 8, and to test it you'll need to run from source at the engine v2 level plus some modules at the same v2 engine level. Very cool stuff and I can't wait to see @dkambersky take the system further while we get v2 some more effort overall
• Blender Addon - an updated version is available including three chapters in the asset tutorial! We need this tested out by more people willing to set it up locally in Blender and see if any particular creature models will export OK or hit issues not yet addressed. You can try some of our existing & recently added animal models in their repo and see if you can get them working in-game - @Kartikey Agrawal can help with questions and to troubleshoot issues we need to resolve
• Combat - try out the CombatSystem module in-game, select the bow, and place arrows in the quiver slot that appears. Then start shooting stuff! There are also traps and stuff.
• Destination Sol - the very latest develop branch has a hugely improved version of the game that's far easier to work with, and two surprise content creators came out of nowhere and added new factions lately @vampcat aims to continue further down the Gestalt rabbit hole, both for DestSol and Terasology (with loads of rendering too!). Note: Have to run this one from source as well as there is still a packaging issue outstanding with the binary version. There is also finally an option for number of solar systems
• Exploration - @Nihal Singh actually finished this a little while ago as he shifted his work period some. Check out his final blog entry for testing instructions - you'll need to grab a special game zip with a save game included to see the full thing. All the content is of course also available normally, including new deer variants
• Scenarios - You can enable this module and play with the neato new hub tool to develop a scenario from within the game. Mark areas, set actions with triggers, and so on. @Cata did a great job with this and partway through Nihal's exploration world also started depending on this. There is a ton of potential to take this further and build more content on top. Cannot wait!
• Server API - this one is a little trickier to test out as you need extra pieces attached to a game engine running a server. But at that point you can then gain admin access to the server to modify things remotely, rather than having to be logged in. Check out @gianluca_n's entire blog series to see what can be done. This also ended up including some pre-GSOC work where you can register at http://utility.terasology.org then gain a portable game identity for use on different servers as well as with the admin interface.
• Telemetry - this can be accessed via the latest Alpha 8 build, if you go under the Metrics settings to enable publishing of telemetry you can review at http://utility.terasology.org:5601/app/kibana - you can get more details in the wiki for the tutorial module. Feel free to play around with it and ask @GabrielXia lots of questions
• Sectors / Zones - another v2 engine item so not included in Alpha 8. Loads of details behind the concepts and the implementation so far in this forum thread. @Vizaxo has made a version now of DynamicCities that uses the new approach, as well as a Zone-based version of @Isaac's Inferno world that you can now enable for other world generators (to then simply get the Inferno zone added far below the regular world surface)

... that still got kinda long. And we need something longer and better for a more formal project blog post wee!

If any students have remaining PRs pending merges for Alpha 8 now's the time!

 

[Cervator]

Alright, Alpha 8 is released, all GSOC projects are fully evaluated, and other than final results and the Mentor Summit GSOC is officially over!

However, that is not the end for all the stuff that came out of these awesome projects. You need to "strike while the iron is hot" and we're coming off this summer with a lot of heat

Many students kept individual blogs and we've also done occasional central blogs and updates. I'd like for each student+mentor group to spend some time on their topic reviewing what could be done next, while preparing a single blog post for formal publishing at http://terasology.org covering a few topics:

• What got done during GSOC (at a high level)
• What is now available to use
• What could we do next, after GSOC
• How can others help improve that area

The first and maybe second bullet point is likely already there at least in part in the students final review post meant to be submitted for Google. Now we should do that for public use ourselves with the next couple topics covered as well that will help us move forward

To try to organize that I'm dusting off a suggestion made previously about using Trello as a sort of clearinghouse for what's going on and preparing things to get published. We really should have started that ages ago anyway, it would have been a good way to organize the projects beyond just relying on students to post blog entries on their own.

So on the Roles & Projects board I've added a card for each of the 10 projects and assigned all the students & mentors I've got in Trello (poking those I don't). It isn't a mandatory assignment or anything - feel free to take yourself off projects you aren't wanting to continue with or better yet add yourself to projects you're interested in furthering (even if you're a student on a different item, or entirely unrelated to GSCO!)

If anybody wants to join in just let me know your Trello username or email.

What I'm hoping to see soon:

• Review and finalizing of the GitHub project boards for GSOC - are there outstanding issues or clear TODOs remaining? Make them into regular issues. Just ideas? Post them in the forum or somewhere like that
• Each item should have an existing forum thread (a few might not yet) for further discussion and brainstorming. Slack is OK too but should be summarized in the forum thread
• All the nice videos, tutorials, sample modules, etc from the projects should be gathered on the Trello cards as part of building a future blog entry covering the item (and probably also be linked in the forum thread)
• For the bigger and longer term projects like @Vizaxo's Sectors & Zones we need to create "round two" GitHub boards or similar to approach the future with

The 10 GSOC projects need not all have formal blogs ready in a week or two - I figure we can trickle them out every other week or so, with the trickier ones last (again: sectors). The Trello list is sorted in rough chronological order from what I imagine will work the best:

 

[Cervator]

Results have been announced and I'm happy to say all 10 students passed, with all kinds of great work having come out of the summer

That concludes the majority of GSOC for 2017, leaving just the Mentor Summit in October where we were actually invited to send three delegates rather than the usual two thanks to our earlier participation in GCI. And we actually even tried to send four with @SkySom and @MandarJ going on the waiting list - but it turned out there is an age limit preventing MandarJ from going to the official stuff at the Summit. Still, Google remarked at how thrilled they were to see a whole bunch of younger mentors this year

So we ended up with Skysom in the third slot but will still send Mandarj as well, to go to GitHub Universe right before the Summit together with me. We should all four manage to meet up at least once and I've also secured him a GSOC swag package

Beyond the Mentor Summit Google also organizers smaller GSOC/GCI get-togethers and just announced two more, open to both mentors and students from any year who have completed projects (for GCI that counts winners and finalists):

• Tuesday, November 7: New York City, USA 5.30-8.30pm - New York City (Manhattan - Chelsea neighborhood) for a GSoC meetup complete with dinner.
  
• Tuesday, November 14: Munich, Germany 5.30-8.30pm - Munich, Germany for a GSoC meetup event and dinner for mentors, org admins and students.

If anybody is interested in that you probably should already have gotten the notification from one of the mailing lists but if you can't find the info I can probably find a way to hook you up, just let me know. Attendance requires sign-up and may run out of space relatively quickly.