FreedroidRPG

Web Page: http://www.freedroid.org/developer-area/contribute/

Mailing List:

See http://www.freedroid.org/information/introduction/

FreedroidRPG aims to provide a popular reference game in the open-source world. Our goal is to do so through the implementation of an immersive world with distinctive dialog and graphical styles in a format that is friendly to all ages while providing a fair amount of choice to the player. In view of this, we rely on high quality literary content to provide entertainment and emotional investment as well as educational benefits.

FreedroidRPG is an open source sci-fi isometric role playing game. It strives at providing an immersive ambience backed by refined graphics and music tracks. Besides the hack'n'slash action phases, dialogs with dozens of characters take care of storytelling. The player can fight with melee or ranged weapons, take control of his enemies by hacking, and remotely execute code on enemy robots. We have a storyline strong enough to be appealing to people who are more after roleplaying than hack'n'slash.

The development team is currently made of around six people - four coders, and two people taking care of game content, and we get many contributions from other people, for a total of about 10 people active at a given time. Those contributions notably include music tracks, levels, and graphics. All of us are volunteers.

A demonstration video of the game is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGBQ2MjtgFo

We gave a lightning talk at FOSDEM 2009 that can be found at http://video.fosdem.org/2009/lightningtalks/freedroidrpg.xvid.avi The game has evolved since then, but the general presentation remains accurate.

Application requirements and template

Before applying:

• You need to get in touch with us before applying. E-mail (to the mailing list), and the forum are available options, but IRC is mandatory. Presence on IRC throughout the summer will be required.
• Read the "contribution information" page at http://www.freedroid.org/developer-area/contribute/
• As part of the application process we require a first patch to be contributed. This enables you to get acquainted with the codebase and with our development processes a little bit. In your application, mention what revision your patch was committed as.

For your application, please use the following template:

• Personal information: please state your full name, university you attend, indicate an e-mail address you can be reached at, as well as the time zone you reside in and your current occupation (where do you study, when does it end). Mention any planned summer activities (holidays, when, how much, where, ...). Specify a telephone number where you can be reached (we will not call you unless necessary). Indicate your Freenode IRC nickname.

• Using a maximum of 50 words, describe a project you have realized that you are proud of. Pick any kind of project, not necessarily computer-related.

• Please explain your Summer of Code proposal with your own words, as if it was going to be read by people who are not aware of previous discussions with you. Explain things from the beginning, in a synthetic but complete manner. Prepend it with a small abstract.

• Tell us how you heard about FreedroidRPG, why you chose us and what you expect to learn from your project. Tell us why you like programming.

• Describe any previous experience and current involvment on open source projects, and mention what you like and don't like about open source.

• Why must we pick you? Let us know who you are!

• Describe the breakdown of your project in tasks and give an estimated timeline.

• State your goals. Define precisely what you think will be a successful project (which tasks have to be accomplished and how you think your work should be evaluated in the end).

Projects

• Leveleditor overhaul This project contains details on the ideas and implementations of the Leveleditor
• Multi-resolution support for the user interface FreedroidRPG's user interface is designed for a single resolution(640x480). This project aims at implementing a new resolution independent system that will scale properly on any given display and improve the general look and "feel" of the gameplay.
• Scripting Improvements Currently, FreedroidRPG provides Lua scripting support for dialog and ingame events. However the scripting support is limited. There are places where some hacks are used to realize the needs of people writing dialogs. In other places there is lack of means to match the needs. The goal of this project is to expand and improve scripting support in FreedroidRPG. The people writing dialogs will receive new tools and theirs work will become more convenient.
• Scripting improvements Adds some scripting features, like enter level event hook, support for enemies spawning from script, ingame and real video cutscenes and others.