Hammer of Code

Well things have finally come to an end. As my time with GSoC wraps up I look back and realize how quickly the summer came to an end, and how much fun I had. After my short trip out of province to visit family and friends I arrived home yesterday to finish off the last of my emails and correspondences. Today I exported my screencasts in a higher resolution for the TP media server, and got a few last minute bugs resolved. While I won’t quit working on Risk I am drawing the line between GSoC and personal work today.

This whole experience has been a real eye opener for me. I’ve become a lot more confident about my current skill as a programmer, and have also come to see more of the “big picture” and where I fit in. While I am still no where near being an expert I think I will now be able to recognize when I get there :P. I’m very excited to see the effect all this learning has had on me when I return to school this fall; Hopefully I won’t be butting my head with professors and the like too often, but it is now very clear to me how much my Computer Science training will/has failed me and my fellow students. If only everyone could have to opportunity to work with GSoC and extend themselves as I have. If I were to just complete my degree without GSoC or personal projects I am sure I would be an atrocious programmer.

As time permits I will continue to work on Thousand Parsec and Risk, but I cannot guarantee the same level of commitment as I have put in this summer. My first orders of business will be increased stability (mainly via upcoming AI’s and their development), improved audio and video (so like everything) for the screencasts, particularly “basic”, and in general just being available to help with the ruleset and improve upon it.

As far as I can see (and hope) this summer has been a success and if finances aren’t a problem I would hope to participate again next summer. If anyone has any issues with Risk don’t hesitate to email me, as I will never ignore a TP related email.

Well as far as actual working days goes today was my last “pencil up” day of work. Tomorrow I will be starting a short holiday out of province to visit friends and attend a wedding.

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Well having gotten back into the swing of things and well on my way to getting my screencasts done I’m starting to feel much better. I (think I) have finished my first screencast; having learnt very quickly that a good script is a huge part of successfully taping a good screencast. Second to that is practicing a few times. I managed rewrite a good part of my Advanced screencast script and record and edit the screencast again. I just today hashed out almost all of the map making script and should be recording that some time this weekend. Here is a link to the youtube upload (I’ve noticed it gets rather fuzzy on the upload, but I believe I haven’t left any crucial things out of the voicework. I can always reproduce at a higher resolution if anyone has a better place to post to):

This week also saw the introduction of wormhole support (commit) which has vastly improved the playability of the ruleset. Other than that this week has been technically quite uneventful; I’ve learned very quickly how hard screencasting really is. Things still look and feel like they will be on time, but I can definitely say I won’t have as much time left over as I thought I would.