Summer of Code/Application/2007

Draft Outline

Introduction

• scummvm description and purpose (Q1)
• scummvm hierachy

proper team structure, subteams for engines, ports, infrastructure.

• scummvm in facts.

LoC, # devs (active & all time), # ports, downloads (Q1)

SoC Participation Application

• participation statement. (Q3,4)
• - what will scummvm gain? (Q2)

new blood (devs); enhance and/or optimize codebase; resolve long standing TODOs;

• - what will students gain (Q2)

participation in leading sf.net project; interaction with a large team of devs (learn working in a large team); introduction to game development tactics for code (optimization etc); emulation (VM) principles; coding portable code; observe/use/integrate into leading OO infrastructure (osystem); produced code will be readily runnable across a wide spectrum of platforms;

• how to keep students interested (Q16,17)

weed out the applicants. we need entusiastic students, as we ourselves are passionate about our work. game developement is a very rewarding (in a spiritual manner :-) ) field of coding. lively and large team interacting though mailing lists and irc. makes turnaround time between a question raised and possible answers very small.

Mentors

• Short bios for _sev, Fingolfin, Jubanka. (Q12,13)

In particular, we do not need a "normal" CV, we need something to support we can mentor students, eg. great familiarity with code etc, students (if applicable), actively helping new devs. trying to answer (Q13) implicitly.

• nail (Q13) explicitly in the concluding paragraph

briefly reiterate each mentor's expertise.

When things go wrong

• Students. (Q14)

Communication breakdown seldom occurs abruptly. Usually, a student losing interest will keep an ever lowering profile. The mentors will regularly query for status (at least once a week). When the student is in trouble, the mentros will go to lengths to support the student actively. The tasks will be planned ahead by the mentor, with informal interim reports (maybe) and milestones. Of course there may be RL problems prohibiting the continuation of the task (unpredictable).

• Mentors. (Q15)

There may be unforeseen difficulties for a mentor, leading to unavailability for some periods of time. The students can always turn to the very active irc channel for both general and specific inquiries. Mentors will update their status between them, so no students get left alone if a mentor drops out.

Data

• table for Q5,6,7,8,9,11,12

Student application template

• TBD