GSoC 2009: Gnome-games + Telepathy

[Zhang Sen <zh jesse gmail com>]

Hi list,

I am preparing for GSoC 2009, specifically the idea [Gnome-games +
Telepathy: convert one (or many) of the Gnome Games to be playable with
your contacts through Telepathy Tubes]. But first I want to talk about
it with the community. Any help you offer is greatly  appreciated.

About myself
================
My name is Zhang Sen (aka. jesse/jessezh on irc), an undergraduate from
Beihang University, which is in Bejing, China. I like this idea of
Gnome-Games and Telepathy, because it combines what attracts me most
about open source: have fun and communicate. So I think the project is
really great: you can play AND you play with your buddies.

My thinking on the project
================
I have an idea that, gnome-sudoku can be made into double-player, i.e.
two friends play together on one puzzle. Each side's filling are sent
though telepathy tubes. So basically the two player have identical game,
just like two copy, but is fillable by two sides at the same time.

The advantage of this idea is that, it takes collaboration and
communication into gnome-sudoku, which is now a loner's game (kind of).
This can possibly bring some other interesting things, e.g. it can be
used to show sudoku to others.
For me, it will be in python, which seems a little smoother than C (eg
with GTK). And I have been looking into sudoku for a while, I know the
big picture of the game.

My question is that, this may require a big modification to the original
game, to add networking support, and I also need more study with GTK,
DBus and Telepathy (which lacks documentation). Besides, it's mentioned
before that Sudoku needs some rewriting. So is it proper to bring in
network before this rewriting, and will the project size suitable for
GSoC?

The advantage with other games is that, some are smaller than sudoku,
and can be kept as single-player. We can just show two games and see who
finishes first. So the work maybe less than sudoku.

Thanks!

Regards,
Jesse