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WiHackTwentyTen

WiHack 2010

Changes made during WiHack

  • improvements to the AI behaviour
  • improved UI and graphics
  • multi-player game UI improvements
  • preliminary support for scouts!
  • preliminary support for donkeys!
  • locale improvements
  • bug fixes
  • lua support in the DebugConsole (basic infrastructure support for scripting in scenarios and conf files)
  • cmake build support
  • easier installation of the homepage for local development
  • many bug fixes and improvements to the homepage

Well done to everyone involved!

Last updates

SirVer held a talk about the WiHack. Find the slides here:

http://www.widelands.org/~sirver/wihack2010/WiHack2010Talk.pdf

There is also a code swarm video, here:

http://www.widelands.org/~sirver/wihack2010/codeswarm.mp4

General information

What it is

Widelands will be 9 years in the public in 2010. But the faces behind Widelands have never been together once. We want to fix this; therefore we proudly announce the first WiHack. This stands for either of the following:

  • Widelands International Hacking and Coding (in) Karlsruhe 2010
  • Widelands' International House of Affiliates Conference Karlsruhe 2010
  • Widelands: Intense Hours of Advancement Conference Karlsruhe 2010.

The idea is that players and developers can meet to play and advance Widelands together. Players of all ages/experience are welcome. The same for developers: experienced developers will be present at the meeting that have worked a lot on Widelands but complete newcomers are also very welcome to join in and we will help them to get up to speed quickly. See below for some projects that we plan to advance at WiHack 2010.

Participating in the WiHack is free and everybody is welcome!

When/Where does it take place

The WiHack 2010 will take place from the 2.-5. of January 2010 at the rooms of the Entropia Karlsruhe e.V, Karlsruhe Germany:

Entropia e.V. Gewerbehof Steinstraße 23 76133 Karlsruhe Germany

You can find directions to the rooms here. There's also a link to Google Maps and Open StreetMap.

Accommodation

You can sleep at the entropia if you bring sleeping pads/bags, there is (at least) one shower available for participants. There is also (limited) room provided by the local participants (still sleeping bags and sleeping pads are required):

  • Holger (SirVer) 5-6 places

@Karlsruhe: If you have places available, add yourself here.

Travel information

Karlsruhe is easily reachable by train. From the Hauptbahnhof, you can take nearly all S-Bahns (at least S1, S4, S11 and the 2) to the Marktplatz/Pyramide. From there, you go straightly east into the Zähringerstraße, two roads later, you turn right into the Adlerstraße. The next crossroad, you will be on a small plaza with a fountain (without water face-wink.png ). Cross this plaza; there is a big gate which already has some signs leading to the Entropia and the Café Palaver (and other stuff). Enter this gate and you come into a small courtyard, enter the house on the left and you are at the WiHack 2010.

Traveling together?

  • Peter (Nasenbaer) will travel from Kaiserslautern via train. (anyone wants to join in / meet in the train?)

Feel free to add yourself to the list.

Projects

Here we list some of the projects we want to tackle. If you are interested in any of the following, please add yourself to the list or contact one of the developers. Or just come to the WiHack and we will sort you in.

Organizational tasks

Google Summer of Code

We want to form a mentoring organization for Widelands that can participate in Google Summer of Code, preferably already 2010. To achieve that, we need to gather enough people that can be mentors, so that Google sees us as a stable and reliable part. We also need to write an application and prepare a list of suggested projects. See our Googlesummerofcode wiki page.

Participants:

Please add yourself to the list if you are interested.

Widelands itself

These are the projects in advancing Widelands itself. Widelands is written in C++, so knowledge of C++ is useful, but also beginners can participate.

cmake build system

The current Widelands build system is using SCons. SCons proved to be very slow and very hard to extend. Also building on windows with SCons never worked. We want to try building up a CMake Build system and investigate it for speed and cross platform compatibility.

Useful skills/Stuff you could learn by helping out:

Participants:

Please add yourself to the list if you are interested.

Bug fixing/unifying in code checkers

Widelands is trying to guarantee code quality by using code style checkers. Currently we use two different systems with overlapping functionality: one written in Ada and one written in python. This project will try to incorporate the current functionality of the Ada version into the python version in a way that satisfies all developers.

Useful skills/Stuff you could learn by helping out:

Participants:

Please add yourself to the list if you are interested.

Donkeys/Oxen

Adding Donkeys to the game has been a big request for a while. We will do it!

Useful skills/Stuff you could learn by helping out:

Participants:

Please add yourself to the list if you are interested.

More messages for more events

Widelands got an internal notification system lately: The player is now notified of important events in the game. Some important messages are still missing though. We want to make this better.

Useful skills/Stuff you could learn by helping out:

Participants:

Please add yourself to the list if you are interested.

Improvements of the network code

We want to add

  • improvements of GGZ Lobby + Add log-in / register pop-up
  • support for savegame / map exchange between host an clients

Useful skills/Stuff you could learn by helping out:

  • C++
  • GGZ Library
  • Network coding

Participants:

Please add yourself to the list if you are interested.

Animation of fighting soldiers

Fights still look a bit boring in Widelands. We need animations for fighting soldiers.

Useful skills/Stuff you could learn by helping out:

  • 3D Modelling and animating in Blender

Participants:

  • None yet

Please add yourself to the list if you are interested.

Bug hunt

The usual stuff: find the bugs, identify the errors, squash it, repeat.

Useful skills/Stuff you could learn by helping out:

  • C++
  • many more...

Participants:

Please add yourself to the list if you are interested.

Widelands Homepage

The Widelands homepage is written in the Django web framework. You should have a little knowledge about it to help out here. If you are interested in helping out with the homepage, contact SirVer (Holger).

Better help system

p We are off on a good start with the automatic help system ; but this feature needs some work.

Map uploading/downloading

There is some stuff missing in the map uploading and downloading. Also there seems to be a bug or two lurking somewhere in the code.

Investigating possibilities to get the issue tracker on the homepage

It is very inconvenient that users who want to send in bug reports need a sf.net account to do so. We should investigate if it is easily possible to get a feature tracker onto the homepage while also impor the tickets from sf.net.

Design

The current homepage design is hackish CSS and HTML. Someone with true web design skills is very welcome to propose an overhaul.

Bug hunt

We will track bugs and hunt them down. There are some in the bug tracker:

I will show up:

Please add yourself to the list, if you are coming to WiHack:

  • Holger (SirVer)
  • Peter (Nasenbaer) - from 2nd to 4th of January
  • Erik (sigra) - arrives at 1st (evening) and departures at 5th (morning)
  • Timo (timowi)
  • Max (mavo) - 2nd to 4th of January, coming from Schwäbisch Gmünd by car
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