[Scummvm-devel] GSoC 2009

[John Willis]

Max, Everyone,

> 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"
> ?

One caveat I would have with this (much like Torbjörn) is that any OGL
backend would have to be clean and easy to disable at run time should the
user run into issues with their render pipeline.

This also raises another interesting point, there are an increasing amount
of mobile devices (predominantly Linux based) that are implementing decent
OpenGL ES stacks these days (Pandora, BeagleBoard, anything OMAP3530 based,
some Freescale devices etc.). 

If we considered that the OpenGL task was valid I think we should insist
that it will work with OpenGL ES. This is not a particularly arduous extra
task as most OpenGL things you may need for ScummVM are in OGLES 1 and 2.

I'll try and add some flesh to this idea and pop it on the WiKi.
 
> == 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...

I could not agree more with that.

> 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 ... :).

The snag with this is that language barriers could become an issue. 
All told however it's a great idea.
 
> 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 ;-)

Standardizing on the interview questions is a must ;-). 
Just like any other job application consistency at the interview stage is a
huge boon.

Regards,

John