[Scummvm-devel] GSoC application

Miguel de Dios Matias tres.14159 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 18 00:47:26 CET 2016


Don't reinvent the wheel.

There is a engine reimplementation of popular RPGs such as Baldurs
Gate I and II. It is a mature project but it is growing slow.

https://github.com/gemrb/gemrb

is not it better a meeting with the people of GemRB for to merge into ScummVM?

Regards.


2016-02-18 0:27 GMT+01:00 Tobia Tesan <tobia.tesan at gmail.com>:
> 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,
>   and healthy,
>   and happy."
>         -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
>
>
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