Celestia development volunteers?

hank · Post #1by **hank** » 08.10.2007, 00:11

Just out of curiosity... how many people here might be willing to volunteer to assist with Celestia development? Note that you don't necessarily need programming skills to help (as with testing or documentation, for example).

- Hank

NOTE: I've created a wiki at WikiSpaces where you can register your interest: Celestians WikiSpace

Cham · Post #2by **Cham** » 08.10.2007, 01:40

Why are you asking that question ? You'll get the same people as before.

I'm still interested in developments myself, until the end of this year, approximately. If nothing serious is getting done up that time, I'll leave the community.

rthorvald · Post #3by **rthorvald** » 08.10.2007, 01:51

Will help, but i have no programming skills. You all know what i can do, and i can contribute that - graphics work, testing, etc...

- rthorvald

Post #4by **ElChristou** » 08.10.2007, 10:56

I'm in of course...

phoenix · Post #5by **phoenix** » 08.10.2007, 14:31

me too

my c++ skills are limited to some networking-code experiments last year which worked quite well.

other than that I'm a newbie - but learning quickly depending how much free time I can spare.

Hungry4info · Post #6by **Hungry4info** » 08.10.2007, 17:54

I haven't any programming knowledge, but I'll gladly help wherever possible.

yeus · Post #7by **yeus** » 09.10.2007, 14:17

here Add me to the list

! I have a pretty profound knowledge of C++. But I was not able to compile Celestia, yet, since I only have Visual studio 2005 installed.. I am gonna have to try it with code::blocks some time...

But I would be glad, if some developer could make a code::blocks project, to work with...

Greetings, Tom

EDIT: I just realized there is a new sticky in the dev-forum.. So, I followed the instructions and managed to compile Celestia So -Yes I am definitly in the game

Give me a programming task, I'll do it... (though because I am not very familiar with the ceelstia code, yet... plz don't give me that "think around 1000 corners to realize what#s going wrong-bug"

.

Greetings, Tom

Rassilon · Post #8by **Rassilon** » 09.10.2007, 17:38

Well I have the experience with OpenGL and C++ but I dont have the time to do little more than testing when releases are present... I can help to that capacity and we will see as time progresses...

Post #9by **ElChristou** » 09.10.2007, 20:07

yeus wrote:...Give me a programming task, I'll do it... (though because I am not very familiar with the ceelstia code, yet... plz don't give me that "think around 1000 corners to realize what#s going wrong-bug" .

Hey Yeus, what about debugging Chris last patch? you can find it at the dev mailing list; some buggs are already been pointed out by Dirkpitt and I, so why not try here?

Post #10by **chris** » 09.10.2007, 20:30

ElChristou wrote:
yeus wrote:...Give me a programming task, I'll do it... (though because I am not very familiar with the ceelstia code, yet... plz don't give me that "think around 1000 corners to realize what#s going wrong-bug" .

Hey Yeus, what about debugging Chris last patch? you can find it at the dev mailing list; some buggs are already been pointed out by Dirkpitt and I, so why not try here?

Yeus, thanks for offering to help out!

I've already got a fix for the bug in the labelcolor patch. But here's a bug that might be interesting to work on:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=121302

When clicking on the Sun and the camera is at a a large distance from the Sun (say 0.1 light years), the body that's selected is often something other than the Sun. I don't think that the picking code is correctly ignoring objects below the threshold of visibility. It should just be a matter of adding some extra checks to the picking functions in universe.cpp.

--Chris

MKruer · Post #11by **MKruer** » 09.10.2007, 21:56

Chris, I was looking at that bug while reviewing bugs that should be squashed before the 1.5 final. I think I might have a better more final solution. Instead of simply selecting the object, It might be better to generate a popup list of object based upon distance for everything with a certain radius of the click. I know that when trying to select some stars I get a whole bunch of other stuff that I was not expecting.

yeus · Post #12by **yeus** » 09.10.2007, 22:41

hey cool... Everything comes to life here

. Last time I have been visiting this forum (like 6 months ao or so...) there was some deadly silence...

Btw: I forgot to Mention: I am an aerospace engineer (specialized in sattelites...). So don't hesitate giving me tasks, which involve some heavy mathematics/physics stuff.
I would just appreciate, since I am new to the celestia code, if you gave me some tasks that helped me understanding quickly the structure of celestia code.
Too bad those bugs from above have already been solved. Is there anything else which would be easy for me to solve as a "celestia-newby"....

? (

Greetings, Tom

Post #13by **ElChristou** » 09.10.2007, 23:09

yeus wrote:hey cool... Everything comes to life here . Last time I have been visiting this forum (like 6 months ao or so...) there was some deadly silence...

Btw: I forgot to Mention: I am an aerospace engineer (specialized in sattelites...). So don't hesitate giving me tasks, which involve some heavy mathematics/physics stuff...

Cool! You should perhaps edit your profile, like this everybody can check quickly your skills!

yeus wrote:I would just appreciate, since I am new to the celestia code, if you gave me some tasks that helped me understanding quickly the structure of celestia code.
Too bad those bugs from above have already been solved. Is there anything else which would be easy for me to solve as a "celestia-newby".... ?

What about the bug pointed out by Chris just above? too narrowed? Consulting the CVS files cannot help to get an idea of the structure?

hank · Post #14by **hank** » 09.10.2007, 23:32

I think it would be helpful if we could set up a Celestia development wiki somewhere that we could use to keep track of what needs to be done, who's doing what, and generally coordinate our development efforts going forward.

- Hank

Post #15by **selden** » 10.10.2007, 00:14

Why not use a Wiki on SourceForge?

Although the Celestia project itself does not currently have a Wiki, it seems reasonable to me that a separate project be created for this.

hank · Post #16by **hank** » 10.10.2007, 01:06

selden wrote:Why not use a Wiki on SourceForge?

Although the Celestia project itself does not currently have a Wiki, it seems reasonable to me that a separate project be created for this.

Can a wiki be added to the Celestia project at Sourceforge? What would be the advantage of creating a separate project?

- Hank

Post #17by **selden** » 10.10.2007, 02:37

The admin of a SourceForge project has to configure and manage its Wiki. i.e. Chris for Celestia.

A separate project would have a different admin.

I was just thinking that having a different project with its own Wiki would avoid adding more administrative burden to Chris, leaving him more time for Celestia itself.

And I'm not interested in the job, either.

Post #18by **chris** » 10.10.2007, 18:07

selden wrote:The admin of a SourceForge project has to configure and manage its Wiki. i.e. Chris for Celestia.

A separate project would have a different admin.

I was just thinking that having a different project with its own Wiki would avoid adding more administrative burden to Chris, leaving him more time for Celestia itself.

And I'm not interested in the job, either.

I just created a wiki for Celestia on SourceForge:

http://celestia.wiki.sourceforge.net/

Currently, the permissions are set so that anyone member of the Celestia project on SourceForge can edit the Wiki, and the anyone in the world can view it. There's already a Celestia WikiBook; I'm not sure what the overlap between the two should be. Maybe the SourceForge Wiki should focus on developer info, while the WikiBook should be more of a user's guide? Either that, or we should consolidate everything in one place or the other.

--Chris

hank · Post #19by **hank** » 10.10.2007, 18:09

selden wrote:The admin of a SourceForge project has to configure and manage its Wiki. i.e. Chris for Celestia.

A separate project would have a different admin.

I was just thinking that having a different project with its own Wiki would avoid adding more administrative burden to Chris, leaving him more time for Celestia itself.

And I'm not interested in the job, either.

I'm not sure how much would be involved in admin duties for the wiki. I don't know that it would be reasonable to create a separate Sourceforge project just for a wiki. Of course it is not a good idea to add admin burden to Chris. Perhaps he could authorize someone else to admin the wiki for Celestia at Sourceforge. It might be a good idea to have a backup admin for the Celestia project at Sourceforge in any case.

- Hank

Post #20by **selden** » 10.10.2007, 18:26

Chris,

Hank suggested a Wiki for the following reason:

hank wrote:I think it would be helpful if we could set up a Celestia development wiki somewhere that we could use to keep track of what needs to be done, who's doing what, and generally coordinate our development efforts going forward.

- Hank

The "we" he's referring to are people who are not members of the official development group, but who are interested in coding new functionality which eventually may be incorporated into the official release.

In other words, it needs to be a public wiki, writable by people who are not members of Celestia's official development group.

The WikiBook is for documenting Celestia. The Wiki is for coordinating the (unofficial) development effort -- quite different goals.

Hank,

Public Wikis need a lot of administration. They're subject to a significant amout of vandalism due to individuals and spambots. If they aren't kept clean, they quickly become unusable.