Are you also one of those who find setting up multiple displays in KDE workspace is not as good as it could be. The part that handles this is called Kephal, which provides KDE apps with a unified interface to various display configuration backends. On GNU/Linux this means XRandR and if is not available it uses Qt’s QDesktopWidget as a read-only fallback. Currently Kephal doesn’t support all the latest and greatest features available in XRandR and the graphical configuration tool, available in System Settings, is also not so nice to use. More streamlined integration into KDE workspace would also be nice.

And here is where Google Summer of Code comes in. This year I’ve been selected as one of the 50 students who will be working hard on improving various KDE parts. And as you guessed it, I’ll be working on improving Kephal. The main direction I envisioned is that Kephal should become smarter so that it would be able to configure most of the display related settings on its own, in a way a user would expect. This way the need for user intervention would be reduced to a minimum, and only if there is a special configuration needed, user would open the tool to adjust settings (accessible for example from Devices notification widget, in a similar way as actions for storage media). These settings would be saved and then later loaded as needed automatically, depending on the detected display combinations, or maybe even depending on location/activity other KDE services provide. Details about everything will be decided next week when I’ll have my first meeting with my mentor Will "bille" Stephenson,

At this point I also have to thank Gustavo Pichorin Boiko, who was helping me put my GSoC proposal into shape.

BTW, if you have any comments about multi-display support (what you miss, what you don’t like, any nice ideas about improvements) you’re welcome to add them to this blog post.

It’s the fifth year in a row that Google is running their Summer of Code program, and the third time Thousand Parsec is participating as a mentoring organization. We did great last year and we will sure try to do at least as well this time around.

So, if you are into turn-based 4X space strategy games and would like to help in game development, this is your chance. Take a look at our Google Summer of Code and Ideas for Programmers pages and get involved. There is even US$ 4500 to encourage you to take that step into the world of open source software programming.

Interested students now have a few days to get to know us better. You can chat with us on IRC (Freenode network, #tp channel) or write to our development mailing list. After that, starting from March 23 and ending April 3, student applications must be submitted. I’m looking forward to be a mentor again.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

A couple of days have passed since eight students found out they will be hacking on Thousand Parsec as part of Google Summer of Code 2008. All have come to Thousand Parsec IRC channel to say Hi in and all of them posted their introductions to Thousand Parsec Development mailing list. Each and every student now also has a spot on the web where they will blog about their experiences and progress.

I’ve created a Thousand Parsec Blog on Blogger which links to all the blogs of our students. The page will also serve as the blog for everyone who would like to write about Thousand Parsec but doesn’t feel like setting up his or her own blog just for that. So, if you are interested to see what we at Thousand Parsec are up to this summer, this is the place to start. Of course we will also make sure that feeds from our blogs are aggregated on Planet SoC. You will then be able to see all GSoC posts from our blogs in one place and add the feed to your favourite feed reader.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

A couple of hours ago Google published the final list of 1125 students who will be working on free and open source projects as part of Google Summer of Code 2008 program. This year 8 students will work with us at Thousand Parsec project. This is twice the number of students we had last year. Here’s what they will be working on this summer:

• 3D Client for Thousand Parsec - Blog - Eugene Tan Jie Ming
• Tigris and Euprhates Ruleset Adaptation - Blog - Dustin E. White
• Genetic Conquest: An AI Client for Thousand Parsec (RFTS ruleset) - Blog - Victor Ivri
• DroneSec: A simple, one hour game for tpserver-py - Blog - Juan Lafont
• A Modified Risk ruleset for the Thousand Parsec C++ server - Blog - Ryan Neufeld
• Remote Server Configuration Protocol and Single-Player Mode - Blog - Aaron Mavrinac
• AI for RFTS - Blog - Vincent Verhoeven
• Schemepy - Blog - Chiyuan Zhang

You can be sure that all of us, students and mentors, will do our very best to complete these projects successfully. Exciting months for open source 4X games are ahead of us. I hope you look forward to the results as much as we at Thousand Parsec do.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

Google has just published the list of accepted mentoring organizations for Google Summer of Code 2008 and it is great to see that Thousand Parsec has made it once again. We must be doing something right

So, if you are into turn-based 4X space strategy games and would like to help in game development, this is your chance. Take a look at our Google Summer of Code and Ideas for Programmers pages and get involved. There is even US$ 4500 to encourage you to take that step into the world of open source software programming.

Interested students now have about a week to get to know us better. You can chat with us on IRC (Freenode network, #tp channel) or write to our development mailing list. After that, starting from March 24 and ending April 7, student applications must be submitted. I’m looking forward to be a mentor again.

UPDATE: Student application deadline has been extended to Monday, April 7th.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

When I woke up yesterday morning a message from Tim Ansell was waiting for me on Jabber. It was some extremely great news about open source game project Thousand Parsec, which I joined a couple of months ago. Google has just published the list of mentoring organisations for Google Summer of Code 2007. What is so great about it is that Thousand Parsec was one of the selected organisations. This also means that I get to be one of the mentors.

I must say this has surprised me a bit. Thouand Parsec is quite a small project, not that well known and 4X space strategy games are unfortunately not as popular today as they were a few years ago. Who knows, maybe the foundation of existing code base, our plans for the future or some other part from the project description convinced Google to choose Thousand Parsec. Whatever the reason, this is our chance to get some fresh new developers, to get the project to the next level and make it more known and appealing to gamers. We have to make the most out of this chance.

So, if you are a student and would like to work on a task for a vibrant free and open source game project, I encourage you to take a look at Thousand Parsec : Google Summer of Code 2007. Here you will find some instructions and ideas for a project on which you can work during the summer. I’m sure it will be fun, you will learn something new and if you finish your project you will even get 4500$. Our community is waiting for you! And don’t forget that the deadline for submission of student applications is 26^th of March.

Update: The deadline for student applications has been changed to 26^{th of March, So you now have about 4 days left to join the fun.}

Tags: games, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, stars!, galactic civilizations, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc