I am a professional software developer, but I am not a professional XNA or game developer. I just do this as a hobby on nights and weekends. I would really like to contribute to the project in some meaningful way. The problem is that I just don’t know how XNA worked under the hood. So I am really limited in what I could actually do. As an example; issue #3572 seems pretty straightforward. But not knowing exactly how XNA implemented this makes it hard to be sure that simply adding a call is the correct thing to do.
In short I guess I want to know how a guy with no real XNA background and help?
For me it’s a nights and weekend spare time thing as well.
There are many areas where you don’t need any prior knowledge of XNA, such as #3530 which just deals with loading various file types using FreeImage.
If you are using a platform such as OS X or Linux, then there are also some platform-specific issues that don’t get as much attention because the core team primarily use Windows as a dev platform.
@KonajuGames Could you explain the steps(or link me somewhere if they have already been posted somewhere I am having truoble finding a layout of somekind with procedures if one exists) on basicly how to get involved with contributing fixes to MonoDevelop? I personally have Linux and Windows and even though I dont use it the most for actual stuff, it is a high priority to support for me. One of my main issues is Im not familiar with how teams work together on GitHub either.
I got no life so I code nearly all day every day Id love to help out!
For me I can work on gamedev stuff full-time. I’m currently on disability because I have some issues that make it difficult for me to hold down a traditional day job, but that affords me the freedom and opportunity to only really spend time on stuff that is interesting to me. I’ve spent the last 2.5 years teaching myself music production and not really doing much programming, but the programming bug has bit me again so I’m pursuing gamedev as my primary focus now.
Probably my main technical skill is in systems integration, which I picked up as a result of doing web development for many years. I’m good at making things talk to each other; for example I did a huge project that involved getting an old IBM System/32 to communicate securely online through web and mobile interfaces using C# and asp.net. I also spent a few years doing enterprise mobile development with WinCE and .NET Compact Framework.
Besides that I ran Xubuntu on the desktop for a few years, and know quite a bit about sysadmin stuff, so I’m really comfortable with Linux. I just bought a Mac Mini yesterday; although I have only really used OS X for A/V editing, I specifically bought this system to use for testing and deployment purposes since I feel passionate about supporting the major desktop platforms. So I’m really interested in improving support for these platforms.
I ran my own company for many years and based on my experiences I largely feel that success in indie game dev has more to do with game design and marketing than it does with the technical stuff. Which is why Unity is so popular and successful and why more stuff like RPG Maker is popping up. Frankly, I’m of the opinion that lowering the barriers to entry as much as possible will have a net positive effect on humanity. I don’t see new developers as potential competitors, I see them as potential creators of fun games I’d enjoy playing. As such I’m really happy to open-source like 90% of all my code. I’d much rather have people focused on game design and story-boarding and mechanics and art and music than on spending hours trying to figure out how to code some basic UI functionality or whatever.
I just have been looking for areas where I can contribute to the cause while also building up my skills and I don’t see those as being mutually exclusive activities. The more I contribute to open source projects and tutorials and documenting and such the more freedom and flexibility I’ll gain by having a larger arsenal of creative tools at my disposal. I also feel like the feedback I receive from the code and tutorials I put out there will give me insights I may have missed if I kept everything proprietary.
Anyway I’m rambling on too much at this point. I’ll check out the github for this project and see if there are any open help wanted issues that I can tackle.
I hope to be a useful asset to you all soon!