GSOC 2019 - Complete!

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
Logistics
SpecOps
We're in GSOC for the 4th year running :)

Our organization and community continues broadening as does the potential for where to work in a GSOC project. Terasology's engine and module land remains primary, but there are so many supporting tools and projects now, along with Destination Sol being at the cusp of having our libraries fully integrated and Android support restored. Next year maybe we might even have more than two games to play with?

Some of the highlights this year is that we're trying to keep up with a road map, even splitting out some work in detail like the architecture arc, with more of the Terasology engine getting kicked out into libraries or modules, and some of those like Gestalt being heavily updated. Our module and asset system have gained Android compatibility and are ready to be tried in Destination Sol. The entity system itself is aiming for another major release which should both be used for DS as well as Terasology itself (still runs on the old embedded ES version). As such we're in free-fire mode for API breaking changes if justified and mitigated by easy-fix guides or module PRs. Maybe we'll aim for a new major engine release after GSOC finishes - could even be the major version that takes us into Beta?

This year we've moved our ideas page to Trello where some of the ideas still need some more details and links. Free style ideas are also fine, but a bit more challenging. Talk to us on chat! Some general notes remain in the GitHub wiki, as does the suggested project structure and handling of the project over the summer, although that'll be more relevant after selections are made and students + mentors start getting organized.

I also hope to put the mentor role system through its paces more properly, with stronger commitments even as the responsibilities can remain small. One problem last year seemed to be the smaller footprint of mentor roles vs a more typical primary mentor jack-of-all-trades making mentor volunteers take the system less serious / too casual leading to a lot of mentors that, well, simply didn't show up regularly. That's bad and hurt some of the projects. While everybody did make it in the end we could have done much better as a community in supporting some of our students.

Primary style mentors where a single strong person can handle all the things and sink a ton of time into a project remain the more ideal approach, but that's just not how life works for most volunteers, especially here with a video game project of all things. So while I hope we get a bunch of strong mentors I still hope we can also apply those with less time or more niche roles to help more students so long as they're regularly active and visible. I'll reinforce this year that a commitment to mentor is a commitment and I need to see every such mentor on chat every single week unless something unexpected took them away for something critically important in RL.

For students: Check out all the links, come chat with us, and poke around at either game engine and various modules or side projects. The sooner you get started on making a splash in an area relevant to where you want to work for GSOC the better. Even if you're nervous about your skills or ideas apply anyway - even if you don't get picked the experience of competing for a slot and putting your thoughts into a formal proposal is a very valuable life experience, plus gaining some insight into how a major open source project works gives you some solid ideas for how you might structure your own future. Enjoy the experience, no matter what happens!
  • April 9th: Student app deadline (opens about two weeks prior, but start on those proposals sooner!)
  • April 22nd: Slot request (at this point we lock down the number of student proposal picks)
  • May 1st: Project selection (our deadline for picking student proposals)
  • May 6th: Projects announced! Community bonding after this
  • May 27th: Start of work period 1
  • June 28th: First evaluation deadline and work period 2 starts
  • July 26th: Second evaluation deadline and work period 3 starts
  • August 26th: Student final submission deadline
  • Sept 2nd: Mentor final eval submission deadline and results next day
 
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Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
Logistics
SpecOps
The ideas board has been substantially updated this weekend, with 22 ideas in the ready column now, and several more just awaiting a bit more effort to move there :) There's also a bunch more details in the "Meta" cards to read up on.

Some of the ideas are special - Google announced a new thing called Google Season of Docs, which is essentially GSOC but for tech writers working on documentation instead. Look for cards filtered for the new Documentation label to see just those potential items, but be mindful that GSOD starts later and we haven't even applied yet. Some Doc ideas can be worked for either program, just shifting the focus from code supporting docs or docs supporting code.

We converted a couple would-be students to mentors as well, so mentor capacity is looking a little better. Still early, another week till student applications even open. Keep in mind some ideas may not have mentors available. This board is for the long term so mentor attachments may be missing or go out of date, when in doubt just ask :)

For any students curious to see past successful projects and proposals look no further than to this sub-forum - past students have followed the GSOC project structure by posting their updates here, linking to blogs etc. You can also look at our Roadmap Trello to see past GSOC projects including links to proposals in many cases

Edit: Note that some old GSOC links and proposal links may not work - the past years are archived and the GSOC site itself won't work. In some cases students have shared publicly accessible proposals in Google Docs and such
 
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Adrijaned

Administrator
Contributor
Announcements of accepted GSOC proposals are out, and so the work can begin! Just for summarization, as well as for those who have not been keeping with us lately, here is the list of our accepted proposals along with their brief descriptions and mentors:

  • Apiculture (by Soundwave) - mentors asie, jellysnake and mpollind - provides mechanisms of keeping and breeding bees, akin to Forestry/ExtraBees Minecraft mods
  • Collective Behavior in Terasology (by casals) - mentors eviltak, dkambersky, jellysnake and TheFlash - improving AI mechanisms for NPC creatures in Terasology
  • Light and Shadow Remastered (by darshan3) - mentors iaranaraujo, llvieira, nihal111, skaldarnar and SuperSnark - fast-paced Capture the Flag style gameplay template for multiple players
  • Metal Renegades - Multiplayer Implementation (by wabadump) - mentors iaranaraujo, msteiger, mpollind, SkySom and SuperSnark - basic implementation of Metal Renegades' trading, combat, economy, quests
  • Metal Renegades: Initial World Implementation (by AndyTechGuy) - mentors Adrijaned, RatMoleRat, mandarj, msteiger and SuperSnark - complete implementation of the Metal Renegades' world and NPCs
  • Module Showcase Website! (by majordwarf) - mentors arpitkamboj, mpollind, Cervator, smsunarto - brand new site for agregating information about our modules as well as other cool stuff
  • Restoration 100 (by eakash) - mentors arpan, iaranaraujo, jellysnake, mpollind, Cervator - unificated API for working with health/mana/stamina
  • Terasology Launcher 4.0 (by Priydarshi Raj) - mentors eviltak, arpitkamboj, llvieira, Cervator, skaldarnar - extending launcher capabilities, embedding JavaFX
  • The render DAG enhancements (by Dave2S) - mentors eviltak, vampcat, mpollind - improvements to the Terasology rendering pipeline and its extensibility
While these are the proposals that we managed to get into GSOC, there have been of course even others we unfortunatelly didn't. For some of those, we do, however, want to still make them work, but rather as part of our unofficial Terasology Summer Of Code! (provided their authors still want to work on their projects) The exact terms of this project are still under discussion, but some projects that didn't make the cut for the official GSOC include:

  • The only Destination Sol proposal we got, by IsaacL
  • Characters by Hun43r
  • Shaderland by Loonride
  • Rendering by 4Denthusiast
  • MOO by Shanuk
  • MOO by n!ghtmare
  • Biomes by TheHxn
  • World Gen by kinshuk
Once we finish determining the exact terms for TSOC, we will contact you about viability of your project personally. Also, if you want some personalized feedback (and you definitely should) as to why were you (not) chosen for this year's GSOC, there is no better time to ask than NOW +- 1 week.
 
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