Google Summer of Code 2012

User Code & Projects
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GSoC 2012 was just announced. Those who have been with us for a couple of years know that we haven’t had a very strong track record with GSoC. That is to say, there is none. Last year we felt somewhat cheated by a seemingly arbitrary application approval process. That said, this is an amazing program and we salute Google for organizing this event with an increasing number of participants every year.



2012 will be the year of the jMonkey!



According to the schedule, our application deadline is March 9. In the meantime we’ll do what we can to round up the troops and see who’s fired up for some intensive coding come summer time.



So who out there could see themselves participating as a student or mentor in GSoC 2012?

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Bump, and reiterating what Erlend said. Any mentors (or students), please start making yourself known!!!

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I would love to be involved in something like this (as a student), but I have a couple of questions that I didn’t feel were clarified by the GSoC site…


  1. How does the whole student/mentor relationship actually work in terms of GSoC? I mean, does the mentor actually guide the student through the work as a normal student/mentor relationship works?


  2. Does the mentor pick the focus of the work, or does the student present a piece of work and a mentor actually chooses to pursue the work with the student as a guide? (NOTE: Indicators from the GSoC site actually make it appear as though the students are paired with mentors, but it still wasn’t quite clear enough so I thought I’d still ask)



    Again, I’d really love to contribute and I feel that this would be a great way to do so. It would also be a great learning experience.



    Oh yeah, one more question…


  3. Who wants to be my mentor? :stuck_out_tongue:



    -Feen
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Disclaimer I don’t know anything about how the jmonkey team is approach this. But I was a participant in GSoC as a student for another project.


  1. Really depends on the mentor. But for the most part you communicated with your mentor about once a week. You mostly worked on your own getting stuff done working towards a goal. Good mentors



    2.) Usually mentors suggest things that they think are good projects but you’re free to submit a proposal for some other idea. No matter if you choose to do one of the proposed ideas or your own, you have to submit a proposal, and it should be a combination of your own stuff and what one of the mentors wants to see.



    It was a really great program and it opened tons of doors for me. Go for it!



    My two cents :slight_smile:
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I think, firstly, a student should describe yourself and describe his skills in java and programming. Secondly, he should propose what he can do for the engine:

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Thanks for the input @sandrob . I’ve followed a great deal of GSoC projects over the years, and your experience seems to match up with what I’ve come to expect from a mentor-student relationship.



Any chance you’ll apply for jMonkeyEngine this year? :wink:

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Last year we did a poll where users could post their ideas and vote for their favorites. It was nice, and some cool ideas poped up.

I guess we’ll do the same this year.

Of course, we (the team) posted our own ideas too.



I would be ok to be a mentor if we are chosen by Google. I would communicate with my student by mail, 2 or 3 times a week, but I think the best way would be chatting with gtalk (or w/e) on almost a daily basis.

Also, I would pick my student very carefully, would choose someone clever, with a big fat motivation and a fair knowledge of JME.

Also my favorite subject last year was the Cinematic Editor for the SDK, i’ll post this idea this year too.

Of course I would mentor any other subject i found interesting.



From what I remember a mentor can only have one student.

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@nehon said:From what I remember a mentor can only have one student.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6gpXiI81U4
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I could be mentoring too.

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Ideas thread is now up: http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/groups/site-project/forum/topic/gsoc-2012-ideas/



If you’d like to mentor, please get in touch! (@normen and @nehon are already on the list)

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I’ll mentor for any core stuff (graphics, animation, assets, app, etc). I can also try for Blender or Android.

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I’ll mentor network and nifty.

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Thanks for standing up guys, keep it coming.



Just as an extra reminder for students, there’s more to this than the money: