STK has applied for Google Summer of Code 2013

[hiker]

Hi,

sorry for being a bit quiet in the last couple of weeks, but behind the scene we have been busy with preparing our first ever application to become a mentoring organisation in Google's
Summer of Code 2013 (GSoC). GSoc is a program where google will pay students to participate in open source projects full-time. This is a great chance for student to get developing experience while being helped by one of our experienced mentors, but also for STK to get new developers to implement new features.

Have a look at our overview page, and especially our list of ideas.

Feedback is always welcome - the application period finishes on 29th March, so there is some time to improve the idea list. On April 8th google will announce which mentoring organisations can participate this year - hopefully we will be accepted.

A special 'thank you' to hedgwars, OpenSUSE, and SourceForge for supporting our application!

Note that even if you don't want to (or can't) participate in GSoC, you can still have a look at our idea list, and contribute to STK's development

Cheers,
Joerg

[bonifarz]

Good luck with the GSoC project, this can be a good opportunity to have some progression with a bigger task.

It would be awesome if this allowed major advances in network/multi player support.

I am sure you will also come up with a nice variety of lesser projects that will certainly have good potential to enhance the game.

[asciimonster]

29 march is tomorrow. I wouldn't say that there is "some time" to improve the list... rather that there is "few time" left.

Anyhow, here are my two cents:
"Improve in-game add-ons interface" -> yes great, but there is place for improvement here:
First, have storymode detect a track isn't there and then jump to that track's add-on page. There it can be downloaded, installed and run in one go. That way you prevent a massive initial download which is prohibitively large for people with slow internet connections. (True, that would make add-ons cease being add-ons, but that's just semantics)
Second. when starting a track or battle arena, or when selecting a kart the game should detect that a new version is available from the add-on server and bring that to your attention. Nothing too intrusive, something like an overlay saying "new" or something. This removes the necessity for checking the add-ons pages all the time.

And something that has often been discussed on the forums:
"leader-boards" -> See how well you did compared to the rest of the world. Optional off course.

[hiker]

29 march is tomorrow. I wouldn't say that there is "some time" to improve the list... rather that there is "few time" left.

Fair enough. But main point is also that we can take any feedback into account when we talk to prospective students. Also, the exact procedure is that students make their own suggestions (potentially based on our ideas), so I hope that we can get some brainstorming happening to improve ideas once we get project suggestions in.
Otherwise: Ideally we would have finished our list two weeks ago ... but in reality it took us much longer than expected to get the list finished (after several big updates based on feedback we had).

"Improve in-game add-ons interface" -> yes great, but there is place for improvement here:
First, have storymode detect a track isn't there and then jump to that track's add-on page. There it can be downloaded, installed and run in one go. That way you prevent a massive initial download which is prohibitively large for people with slow internet connections. (True, that would make add-ons cease being add-ons, but that's just semantics)

You mean like we don't include locked tracks in the initial download? I don't like this idea, it means you wouldn't be able to finish the game without internet connections.

A way of being able to extent the overworld would be nice, and we discussed this, but it's quite difficult

Second. when starting a track or battle arena, or when selecting a kart the game should detect that a new version is available from the add-on server and bring that to your attention. Nothing too intrusive, something like an overlay saying "new" or something. This removes the necessity for checking the add-ons pages all the time.

That's a good idea.

And something that has often been discussed on the forums:
"leader-boards" -> See how well you did compared to the rest of the world. Optional off course.

You might see this in the lobby project for GSoC

Thanks for your feedback!
Joerg

[bonifarz]

I just realized there is a capital O in the link above to the GSoC ideas page:
http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/GSoC_ideas

Those are nice ideas for projects, about what i had expected based on the road map =)

[GunChleoc]

"Improve in-game add-ons interface" -> yes great, but there is place for improvement here:
First, have storymode detect a track isn't there and then jump to that track's add-on page. There it can be downloaded, installed and run in one go. That way you prevent a massive initial download which is prohibitively large for people with slow internet connections. (True, that would make add-ons cease being add-ons, but that's just semantics)

You mean like we don't include locked tracks in the initial download? I don't like this idea, it means you wouldn't be able to finish the game without internet connections.

Maybe this could be an option in the installer? "Download all standard tracks now?/Yes, I want them now/No, download later when I have unlocked the challenges".

Then during gameplay, STK could check if the track is there, and if it's missing do the download then. STK then could also prompt for a download (if needed) whenever a track is unlocked.

[hiker]

I just realized there is a capital O in the link above to the GSoC ideas page:
http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/GSoC_ideas

Thanks, fixed!

Cheers,
Joerg

[hiker]

Maybe this could be an option in the installer? "Download all standard tracks now?/Yes, I want them now/No, download later when I have unlocked the challenges".

Then during gameplay, STK could check if the track is there, and if it's missing do the download then. STK then could also prompt for a download (if needed) whenever a track is unlocked.

I still don't see any advantages of this, just a lot more work for us developers. If you have a slow connection, wouldn't you just leave the download running over night instead of having to wait after most challenges for another 20 minutes(?) waiting for the next track to download before you can continue playing?

Is the download size really an issue? I mean I don't really live in a country with top-notch internet connection, and I don't see this as a problem. If this is an issue, please open a new thread to discuss this in more detail.

Cheers,
Joerg