While the plugin is still in an early state, and there are a couple of rough edges, this first release gives a glimpse of the many possibilities provided by a web embeddable client.

That’s not all however, since we now also provide builds of Ember 0.6.2 for both Windows and OSX.

Although we’ve previously have provided builds for these platforms, the process of building have always been very time consuming and arcane. Thanks to the work Péter did during Google Summer of Code 2011 we now have a both much more straight forward as well as well documented way of building for both Windows and OSX.

As well as the binaries we also provide instructions for building from source for both Windows and OSX.

Introduction
I was working on Ember’s GUI improvements. I chose this project because I wanted to work on an application and not a library (most of my work is on libraries that are later used by developers to develop end-user apps, I wanted to try to work on the apps for a change) and I felt lack of several GUI dialogs was severally impacting newcomers.

What really slowed my progress as a newcomer at that time was:

• the inability to buy items without manually “giving” coins, and that only if you somehow get to know what the merchant is selling in the first place (I helped in this regard with the Merchant Trading dialog deliverable)
• I accidentally closed my inventory and couldn’t get it back – you can show it again with the /show_inventory command but I suspect most people will just get mad and restart Ember (I helped in this regard by adding an inventory icon that toggles its visibility, Jayr made the icon image)
• Ember started and I could log to any server and start moving around, however the mouse look sensitivity was very low at that time (this was improved by one of Erik’s commits later) and I couldn’t raise it up in any way (this could have been specific to my system). I later learned that I could add this setting to ~/.ember/ember.conf but I am almost sure newcomers won’t be ready to invest into research to find where the config file is and how to change it to make the necessary settings changes work (I generalised this problem and made a Settings dialog with generic representation API to remedy the situation)

So focusing on the GUI felt like an important and fun endeavor despite it not being in the “Ideas list”. I also am in the team behind CEGUI – the library that Ember uses for its GUI, so I felt I could get fairly productive with it.

Progress
I think it’s best to watch a video describing my progress over the summer because most of the deliverables are visual – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N24GVjBojs

Challenges
At the beginning of the program I found it easy to be productive and focused but my progress slowed down considerably when I hit some barrier I couldn’t solve in a matter of hours. Spending time not doing any tangible progress and instead trying to hunt down some strange issue got me of my wind and it took time to accelerate the progress back to it’s former speed. I definitely advice all future GSoC students to keep slightly ahead of the schedule because problems might arise from places they wouldn’t expect, I was 1-2 weeks ahead of schedule and that reserve allowed me to finish the Settings window on time.

New features
As part of my GSoC project I implemented the following features:

• Window activation and deactivation transitions
• Coloured chat (each entity in the chat gets a colour assigned)
• Coloured console (errors, info and warning messages are easier to distinguish)
• Detached entity dialog (with history of conversation with that paricular entity)
• Merchant trading dialog (trading without any typing or manually giving coins)
• Settings window (allows to change various options without having to read manuals and edit configuration files)
• Toggle buttons for inventory and settings window

(+ some minor bugfixes and/or smaller improvements)

Verdict
I found Google Summer of Code one of the best programs I have ever taken part in. I learned a lot (especially about lua and tolua++, though both of these frustrated me a lot over the summer :-D) and of course gained a very nice CV entry and bragging rights ;-) Worldforge was a great organisation to work for, all members were very helpful. My plan is to keep contributing, although not in such a high volume due to time constraints.

Many thanks especially to Erik for awesome mentoring over the summer. He was always on top of what I was doing and saved me many hours by alerting me of mistakes early on or advising me to go another direction when necessary.

The Worldforge projects are:

• Martin Preisler: Ember UI improvements
  Mentored by Erik Hjortsberg
• Peter Szücs: Integrate Ember into the Web Browser
  Mentored by Erik Hjortsberg
• Pronoy Chopra: Porting Wombat to Flask and integrate a 3D model viewer into the system
  Mentored by Kai Blin
• Jekin Trivedi: Develop Mason Game Systems
  Mentored by Alistair Riddoch

If you’re interested in our students’ progress you should subscribe to the general mailing list where they will be posting weekly updates.

We’re all very excited about the coming weeks, and wish our students the best of luck in achieving their project goals.

If you are interested in applying then you should think carefully how to apply. Review the list of ideas we have posted, but don’t feel you must be constrained by it. Applications should demonstrate deeper knowledge of WorldForge, so you will need to look into how the existing system works, and how new ideas might be implemented before writing a convincing application. We are happy to review draft applications, provide feedback and help you improve your application. Post on the WorldForge forums, the mailing list or come and chat to alriddoch or kai in #lounge on WorldForge IRC during the European working day.

Get your applications in quickly as there is not long for reviews and feedback before the deadline. I am really looking forward to getting some great applications, and working with some awesome talented people again this summer.

Looking forward to your applications.

WorldForge was accepted as one of 20 Open Source organizations that take part in Google Code-In 2010. Google Code-In, or GCI in short is a competition aimed at 13-18 year olds who want to get involved in Open Source projects. If you’re interested in participating and want to have a look at what the WorldForge tasks will look like when the contest opens on November 22nd, have a look at our GCI ideas page on the WorldForge wiki.

The tasks range from coding tasks through the creation of video tutorials and other documentation to 3D modeling, and we have given them estimates of difficulty and time required. However, depending on your prior knowledge and skills, your mileage might vary. If you have any questions about a specific task, feel free to ask on the WorldForge general mailing list or on IRC on server irc.worldforge.org channel #lounge.

While student applications won’t open until March 29th (see the GSoC timeline), the sooner you contact us, the better.

We’re looking forward to your project proposals.

If you are a student interested in participating, see our project ideas list, visit us in the #lounge channel on irc.worldforge.org, say hello on the general mailing list or post on the WorldForge forum. We are looking forward to hearing from you.