[Scummvm-devel] GSoC application

Thu Feb 18 00:27:18 CET 2016

Hi everybody!

There is a rather glaring conflict of interest :) since I plan on 
applying in case ScummVM gets accepted as an org, so I was going to keep 
my mouth shut.
My opinion has, however, been directly solicited, so here's my two cents.
In fact, as you shall see, I have more questions than answers and/or a 
fully formed opinion.

I am maybe not the greatest RPG fan, but I love the idea behind RogueVM 
in itself.

I love, that is, the idea of iterating the ScummVM approach over other 
games; the approach has very obviously shown its strengths and the 
osystem and backends are a veritable treasure [we have a better idiom 
for this in Italian, the English equivalent I can't quite put my finger on]

But is it interesting GSoC-wise, you ask.

Since I support the idea I quite obviously support the idea of having 
students work on it :)
I wouldn't put *very very* much weight on the idea of using it to gauge 
interest, because GSoC students are highly non-representative of 
anything but the set of GSoC students.

I have no specific opinion re: sister project or not sister project 
being that the project is still in its embryonic phase anyway.
In the grand scheme of pipe dreams the ultimate consequence, a few years 
down the line, *could* possibly be that the osystem and backends be 
factored out and RogueVM, ScummVM and a hypotetical TetrisVM share it as 
clients?
Maybe this could be an... interesting vision to pitch, more than adding 
support for increasingly obscure games?

That said, I *have* to wonder whether the idea could actually backfire - 
i.e. what if it makes the proposal look *more* unfocused?

Let me play devil's advocate for a second here: if I squint my eyes I 
can see how to the casual observer ScummVM might (deceivingly) look like 
a spent force because... well, you can only get so good at emulating 
Scumm, AGI and BS; and ScummVM is so very good.
In the same vein, Don Knuth, the wise man he is, decided that the TeX 
version numbering would converge to pi, because within a small epsilon 
you can only get so good at typesetting documents.

By adding RPGs, you propose a coherent vision of growth, or you are just 
stuffing random things in and looking like you are adding things for no 
particular reason after you have more than accomplished your project's 
main goal?

More importantly, would it be wise to do so before Residual - which has 
interesting things going on and offers the students a learning 
experience in 3D graphics as well - is really "in focus"?

I don't know.
I don't know what the folks at Google think.
And I don't even know how to interpret the data point (basically a 
single bit of information) from last year.

To draw conclusions (and not a lot of them):
     - I very much support the idea of RogueVM and of ThingsVM(TM) in 
general
     - I believe you can use it to make a great pitch or to shoot 
yourself in the foot, but I wouldn't be able to tell which one is which.
     - I believe it also depends on the specific tasks and engines, 
which you have not mentioned.

Whatever you do, I trust you'll do the best possible job :)

    Good night

On 17/02/2016 20:30, Willem Jan Palenstijn wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Our Google Summer of Code application is due this week, and Arnaud, Eugene and
> I (ScummVM's GSoC admins) have been discussing how to make our application
> stronger, since as you know, we didn't get accepted last year.
>
> We have our current tasks listed at:
> http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/GSoC_Ideas_2016
>
> Like the last two years, they include tasks for ResidualVM.
>
> This year, we'd also like to add tasks for engines for classic RPG games. For
> quite some time, there's been interest among ScummVM devs in RPG games, to the
> point that there are now serious plans to create a new sister project RogueVM
> for RPGs, based on the ScummVM OSystem + backends. That is also where any
> outcome of the GSoC tasks would be included.
>
> This would allow us to add several high-profile engines to the task list, which
> should greatly increase the attractiveness of our ideas page. Additionally, it
> will demonstrate to Google that we are ambitious about growing the community
> around ScummVM (where I include ResidualVM and the nascent RogueVM), which is
> one of the main goals of the Summer of Code program. In short, I think this
> will make our GSoC application significantly stronger. Not adding them has the
> risk of making it look very similar (IMO too similar) to our rejected
> application from last year.
>
>
> If there is sufficient support among us for this idea, and we get accepted into
> GSoC, and students choose RPG tasks, that will also be a good opportunity for
> evaluating after the summer how much interest in RPG games there exists among
> our users and developers. If it turns out to be very popular among everyone,
> then at that time, we could also revisit the discussion about extending the
> scope of ScummVM beyond adventure games. (My own opinion about that is not at
> all formed yet.) If not, then this would mean RogueVM would become a separate
> sister project like it is planned now.
>
>
> Summarizing, we think adding RPG tasks with several well-known engines on the
> idea list will be a very strong addition to our GSoC application. It will also
> provide a good chance to evaluate how popular the idea of RPG engines is with
> everyone after the summer.
>
>
> What do you think? Good idea? Any objections? Other thoughts?
>
>
> -Willem Jan
>
>
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-- 
Tobia Tesan
<tobia.tesan at gmail.com>
<sip:tobia.tesan at ekiga.net>
"Live by the foma that make you brave
  and kind,
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