tl;dr Wanna check what you guys are working on, with working on it as a goal I cannot right now achieve, due to me noob. Also Conclusion ->
So, before the introduction itself, I believe there is a need for a disclaimer (aka. messier introduction).
Conclusion: I am here to first of all learn, and I look forward to learning (hopefully) with some help/guidance from the people here. I also look forward to being able to give back to the project some day soon.
This post is a declaration of interest and intent, though I am still not fit to contribute. Thank you in advance for everything.
P.S. Any and all feedback, no exceptions, is welcome, if not sought after. This introduction included, as well as matters of approach, mindset, work conditions, recommended shampoo, anything. I am here to learn after all, so criticism, constructive or not, considerate or not, is always something to be looked into... I think I gotta make this into a signature.
So, before the introduction itself, I believe there is a need for a disclaimer (aka. messier introduction).
Hi, as you will read summed up below, I call myself Daxter, and I happen to be a university student in my very early years (see. second) in an Electrical and Computer Engineering school, of a Technical University. I found out about your project via GSoC, but, to put it bluntly, I do not have the skillset or alternatively, the experience necessary to be competitive in the selection process (nor do I want to take a slot, that a person more suited to than me could take).
Still, to keep things very very simple, I am really interested in this project for reasons associated with the principle behind the game/project.
So, since I realize that GSoC is but one means of entering such a project, that simply happens to come with bonuses, I decided to try the independent approach. I want to become, slowly over time, a contributor to this project, without the GSoC strings attached, in order to get all kinds of experience from the process.
Still, to keep things very very simple, I am really interested in this project for reasons associated with the principle behind the game/project.
So, since I realize that GSoC is but one means of entering such a project, that simply happens to come with bonuses, I decided to try the independent approach. I want to become, slowly over time, a contributor to this project, without the GSoC strings attached, in order to get all kinds of experience from the process.
- Name: Orpheus 'Daxter' Xenakis
- Social: Here is a Facebook account that I do not use, but can serve as a secondary communication channel (notifications turned on to reach me through e-mail).
- From: As partly apparent from the name, from the (//TODO *insert exuberant praising adjective here*), and known-to-be deeply humble, Greece
- Skills / Tools: Painfully few, and to an extent uncultivated. Have worked with C (Codeblocks and Netbeans), and soon will have worked with Java (Eclipse), both to the extent that I can confidently say I can learn and adapt readily to any new relevant or somehow similar knowledge coming my way, in a short amount of time (Similarity/Relevancy not limited to those languages, nor coding alone, I feel confident in my capability to handle new knowledge in math, and I have a reasonable background since my University is a polytechnic one).
- Found via: Google Summer of Code, of course, since it is this time of the year.
- Interests: Short version of what interests me in Terasology is : Game -> Minecraft-inspired -> Fully modular. Of course that is not enough info, therefore, I'm--
- Building on it: I'd be lying if I said that my attention wasn't initially drawn here by the name of Minecraft. What made the decision for me though, was the promise of a fully modular game, and the thought of contributing to such a project. Breaking anything (in this case a game) down to lower- and lower-level building blocks, and building up from that, is an idea that kind of fascinates me (love coding itself for that reason); so a game that promises exactly that for the end-user instead of the developers only, is naturally very appealing.
- Extra: The last information that is important about my case, is clarifying at least short-term expectations of this interaction of mine, with the community (both your expectations and mine, and clarifying to you as well, but mainly to myself).
- For now and the immediate short-term future, all I want if possible, is the most basic of pointers, to links and pages about where I should start, the basics of setting up, all under the assumption that I have no idea what is going on (of course I have looked around and still am as we are talking--(er... you're reading), and I do have some at least basic understanding of how such projects work), but I think it best to assume nothing, so that I can be sure-footed in acquiring knowledge. Included in that info, are the optimal ways of communicating with people, and asking general questions (I assume specialized questions have clear places to be asked in the forums).
- Blabber goes here: So, as a bit of probably not redundant context:
- I understand that this period may be (or probably is) hectic due to the GSoC process and everything related, and at the same time, I will be doing this with 0 starting experience; therefore at least for the immediate future, my presence anywhere except question-asking pages will be nil.
- All I want out of this period, is to get a start, a hook, which I will use to set up, at a later time (Google *Summer* of Code brought me here). Long term, I also am not setting significant goals, apart from being ready to participate in some project in next year's GSoC, on something from this organization if possible (though GSoC is for introducing people to the project... Existing members of any form shouldn't be allowed to join, that'd defeat the purpose, huh... oh well, point remains, that is my target capacity (perhaps a very low bar, I know)).
- Of course those are my "official" goals, which are limited by a pinch of pessimism, and most of all, realism. Ignoring those last, unimportant concepts, I actually want to get my hands dirty in this project, when at some point I do get the proficiency to do so.
Conclusion: I am here to first of all learn, and I look forward to learning (hopefully) with some help/guidance from the people here. I also look forward to being able to give back to the project some day soon.
This post is a declaration of interest and intent, though I am still not fit to contribute. Thank you in advance for everything.
P.S. Any and all feedback, no exceptions, is welcome, if not sought after. This introduction included, as well as matters of approach, mindset, work conditions, recommended shampoo, anything. I am here to learn after all, so criticism, constructive or not, considerate or not, is always something to be looked into... I think I gotta make this into a signature.
