[Scummvm-devel] GSoC 2009

[Max Horn]

Hey folks,

some news on our application for GSoC 2009:

== Wiki ==
Somehow it was not announced *cough cough*, but there seems to be  
activity regarding GSoC on the wiki. Spelling fixes and suggestions  
are welcome!

The application page is here: <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Summer_of_Code/Application/2009 
 >.

For this year we have a new "Project rules" page: <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Summer_of_Code/Project_Rules 
 >.


== More tasks ==
I am going to bed now, but maybe other find the following two task  
also interesting and want to write a tasks page for them. Or tell me  
that no, we shouldn't bother to try that :-)

1) I would like to have another go at a generic decompiler. This time  
we'd mentor more aggressively, and insist on clear documentation for  
everything, immediately, and not after the fact. Also, I would suggest  
we ask for a decompiler for stack based VMs, as that seems to be what  
a majority of our engines are, and we have no decent decompiler for  
those yet.
I'd be willing to mentor or co-mentor (maybe LordHoto, too?), and  
would this time try to verify *during GSoC* that the code is  
understandable and that I feel I could continue work on it should the  
student vanish.

2) From <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Talk:OpenTasks>
"New default backend using SDL+ *OpenGL* and allowing arbitrary rate  
scaling. Well written and maintainable! With fallback to the old  
rendering code if OpenGL support is not available. Many people ask for  
it, and if well-written, it could actually be relatively clean. And  
it's interesting to write. Of course, doing it properly is hard, but  
any interesting project should not be too easy, right? ;-)"
And maybe combine this with "adding 16bit support to the graphics API" ?


== Interviews ==
I wrote down some ideas and notes after the GSoC 2008 mentor summit.  
Well, most of what I had back then is now in our "Project rules" page,  
but there is one other thing: I think it would be good to conduct IRC  
interviews with all applicants. Either via IRC (in a dedicated chat  
room, maybe, not in "the public", with 1-N mentors present. If they  
can't use IRC, we probably don't want them...

Even better might be phone interviews. With Skype, it is cheap  
wherever they are. I'd be willing to help with that. This might be  
useful if we have say 2 hot candidates for the same task and can't  
decide. If we are really good, we do it with all candidates that end  
up in our "top" list ... :).

If we go with interviews, then we should prepare a list of questions  
we want to ask beforehand (and that one should be kept private,  
maybe... :-). And it should be prepared well, else the interviews are  
pointless. Like: What are you doing this summer? What about exams?  
When are they? What, no exams, how come? Prior experiences with coding  
in general, open source in particular? What do you study? Hobbies? Do  
you like T-Shirts and ice cream? How many three headed monkeys does it  
take to write one adventure game? Whatever ;-)


Bye,
Max