Interest in becoming an OTTD Dev

[lawton27]

Hi, I'm currently working on a computing course, I'm required to become involved in an open source project, I know about OTTD and have some knowledge of C++ and advanced knowledge of coding in general, I'd be keen to start help on the development of OTTD.

Could you let me know how I can become apart of this project.
and help me set up what programs and setup I need in order to start developing OTTD.

My classmate, who I believe has an account, Robert64 Is also planning to help with the OTTD project and he will be using this topic to help get him started too.

Thanks,

Lawton27

[planetmaker]

One of the first pre-requisites is probably some kind of proficiency with common search functions and their functionality:

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... th+openttd

[Roujin]

Just a little hint: I think project leaders will be rather reluctant to let you join their project if the reason is "I have to do this for a course I'm going to". That kinda sounds like you're forced to do it and have no real spirit for it yourself.


I don't know what your teacher(s) expect when they say "become involved in", but you could just start writing patches for OpenTTD. If they're good, they'll be accepted and included by some dev. That's also how some lines of code I wrote got part of OpenTTD. In that way, you could become "involved" with this project.
If that is not enough for your teacher(s), I honestly advise you to look for another project to join. Maybe a smaller one with only one or few devs, who are happy for any kind of support they can get. Becoming a "real" dev for OpenTTD is rather hard and takes quite some commitment, which I feel you (and your colleague) might not have, if it's "just" for a course.

[lawton27]

This is not something I have been as you say 'forced' into, our teacher knows that me and Robert are more advanced programmers and struggles to give us challenges on the course, he has given us free reign on what to work on, he suggests we become part of an open source project, both me and Robert have worked on projects together, here is an example of our work:
removed link for wip game
This is 100% mine and Roberts work, we are continuing flash game development, but both of us have been interested in the OTTD project for some time and would like to become a part of programming it, we will have considerably more time than usual as I can work on it in my computing study time, Robert is a hard worker he becomes devoted to projects like this, working with other devs will help us both to maximise our potential.

I hope you can consider helping us get started.

[planetmaker]

Contributing to a project does not mean you need to become one of the core devs.

[Roujin]

Well, as I said, you'll start off by writing patches for OpenTTD. Tools needed for that are all listed in the wiki and threads like "how to compile OpenTTD" (or something of the like, it's a sticky).

To sum it up, you'll need your favorite C(++) compiler, your favorite tool for writing code (if you're on windows, MSVC is a good option for these two), a Subversion (SVN) client for obtaining the source code (on windows, there's e.g. TurtoiseSVN). Also, look for the "openttd-useful" package on the OpenTTD homepage, that includes required libraries for OpenTTD.

Start by checking out the newest source and compile it.
If that works, you can go on investigating the source, changing something around, making yourself a bit familiar with the structure of it...
Then you may think of something useful you could code. Most appreciated and always useful is fixing bugs that were reported on the bugtracker. Or, look in the suggestions forum for features someone proposed. However, new features have a much lower chance of being accepted by the devs, because they have to approve of them. In both cases, don't forget to obey the coding style found on the wiki, or your patches will have no chance at all of trunk inclusion.

If you've contributed a lot of fixes and maybe one or two features to OpenTTD via these means, then the devs will maybe consider to give you direct commit rights to the repository.

[Zuu]

Also, don't ask for write access to SVN, the devs will ask you when they think you have fulfilled the requirements of becoming an official dev and are interested to have you on the team. Demanding them to accept you into the team is probably a good way to make sure you do not get accepted.

That said, you can do quite a lot of nice things without having write access to SVN. Check out the many patches Roujin has got processed by the devs (most of them have been accepted). In addition to that I did not check if Roujin has provided patches with any of his bug reports.

Just checked myself and my list (and this) of closed patches/wip is of about the same length.

So you can clearly do a lot without dev access.

[lawton27]

Thanks, I never relay specifically asked about assess to the SVN, Thanks for your tips on setting up the environment, I'll try and set that up, I'll work on that and then have a look at fixing some bugs in the bug tracker, if I have any problems I'll let you know in this thread.

Thanks,

Lawton27

[petert]

Hi, I'm currently working on a computing course, I'm required to become involved in an open source project

OpenTTD is a great project to contribute to, but becoming a dev takes loads of time. I've seen many patches submitted and included, but the author hasn't become a dev yet. May I suggest some offtopic projects? (1 and 2)

[lawton27]

Hi, I'm currently working on a computing course, I'm required to become involved in an open source project

OpenTTD is a great project to contribute to, but becoming a dev takes loads of time. I've seen many patches submitted and included, but the author hasn't become a dev yet. May I suggest some offtopic projects? (1 and 2)

Noting against the founders of them projects but there seams to be no real coding work on them projects, I would like to help out out on an active project, which is why I have chosen OTTD.

[petert]

Good choice, keep writing patches and you will be on your way. When is this whole project due?

[lawton27]

Good choice, keep writing patches and you will be on your way. When is this whole project due?

It's not due, its something we have chosen to get involved with to expand out knowledge of computing, the course is mainly exam based.