[Scummvm-devel] GSOC, Z-Engine and stuff.

Filippos Karapetis bluegr at gmail.com
Mon Apr 22 10:07:13 CEST 2013


Hi there and sorry for the late reply - I've been away these days

However, there is a teensy bit of a problem: I do have real world
> programming experience with small and medium projects and I'm a reasonably
> good student (my grades are around 95/100 - or, roughly, I'm in the top
> 5%), but I have never hacked ScummVM.
>

That's not an issue per se - this is the purpose of GSoC, to give an
opportunity to code for an open source project, and learn from that
experience! :)


> I read the proposed ideas, but I'm not sure if they are doable without
> previous experience with the codebase and, more importantly, game
> development.
>

AFAIK, none of our students had any previous experience with the or game
development in general, so don't let that stop you. You'll pick things up
on the way.

>
>
> I am especially attracted to the idea of reimplementing the Zork engine
> (see, Zork Nemesis is on my wishlist, playing it on "my" engine would be a
> dream come true), but I don't know if I'm up to the task.
>
> I consider myself good with algebra and geometry, but I have little
> knowledge of 2D engines and SDL/whatever.
>
> Should I give it a try anyway?
>

ZEngine itself is a separate project:
https://github.com/Marisa-Chan/Zengine

Its codebase is written in C, and as the task says, you need to create an
engine out of it, convert as much of the code as possible into C++ and
remove the direct access to SDL. We could chat a bit on IRC and I'll let
you know of the details, if you're still undecided between ZEngine and
Avalance. IMHO, the Avalance task is a bit harder, since you need to know
both Pascal and C/C++. In the end, it's up to you. I'd suggest to have a
look at the codebase of each game, and decide which one you like most. I'm
not on IRC regularly these days, but if you have any questions regarding
Z-Engine, I'd be happy to answer with an e-mail.

Regards
Filippos

-- 
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes" - Oscar Wilde
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