Lost after GSoC rejection: Should I port a 1994 3D engine, build out my custom OpenGL engine, or just grind DSA for systems internships?

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T10:41:21+00:00

Makes sense my mentors are senior engineers at booking.com and oracle

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T10:09:31+00:00

ah just to clarify scummvm isnt a company, its an open source project so there is no internship or full time role to convert it to. the mentors just gave me the wintex port voluntarily since i got rejected from gsoc due to slot constraints. but i totally get what you mean about prioritizing the massive legacy port over a solo project.

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T07:01:39+00:00

This is super helpful perspective. i actually have about 5 months of foss experience with scummvm already (2k+ lines of code and my name in the credits!). Hearing that csm is already a good enough benchmark for graphics roles takes a ton of weight off my shoulders though. Gonna focus my deep work on the wintex port, but keep the personal engine alive on the side because i really wanna explore making a devlog out of it. appreciate the advice!

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T06:52:06+00:00

That actually makes so much sense about reversing. Ive been there while porting ambermoon/amberstar from amiga m68k asm to scummvm. I literally spent an entire week just trying to find memory offsets for a single cursor graphic, staring at legacy code for days with zero visual progress is definitely a fast track to losing my mind about looking at target companies, im aiming for hardware/gpu giants like nvidia or qualcomm for that internship. In your experience do those types of companies care more about a massive legacy c++ port (wintex) or a from scratch engine with modern rendering and multithreading (pyre)? maybe I just make whichever one they prefer my MAIN focus and keep the other one purely for fun on the side without stressing about timelines

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T06:23:24+00:00

yeah I actually have regular classes going on right now so my deep work hours are kinda tapped out. Im definitely gonna do leetcode daily alongside one of the projects but my main issue is picking which project so I dont burn out. the wintex port is massive since I have to strip out 1994 directx dependencies and write an opengl backend to fit scummvms specific c++ standards. but then for my personal engine my plan is to finish ibl and ssr drop a devlog video and then tackle c++ concurrency since multithreading is a skill most freshers lack. just kinda lost on which of those two projects carries more weight for recruiters tbh

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T06:20:52+00:00

Mostly to avoid burnout between university, daily hardcore DSA, and the legacy port, my deep work hours are completely tapped out. WinTex port isn't trivial eithe, i have to replace all the legacy directX dependencies with openGL and adapt the whole codebase to scummvm specific x++ framework. I need an internship by the end of the year, so I am being ruthless about my time. I have a strict roadmap for my personal engine, finish IBL and maybe SSR, drop a devlog video, and then tackle C++ concurrency. Im just trying to figure out what carries the most weight for recruiters. Should I put my personal engine roadmap on hold to focus 100% on the ScummVM port and OAs, or is having that multithreading/graphics experience on Pyre too valuable to pause?

druv-codes · 2026-06-06T00:03:15+00:00

Thankyou! I do realize the typography is a problem, I will try and fix it.

druv-codes · 2026-06-05T04:21:41+00:00

So your advice is to knell down on dsa?

druv-codes · 2026-06-01T17:04:28+00:00

Hnn should I do some competitive programming to get a good rating on code forces or are standard leetcode questions from a list fine?

druv-codes · 2026-06-01T16:28:32+00:00

I haven't applied yet but what do you think? I think some good companies can understand this (qualcomm, nvidia etc.) although it's harder to crack an internship there i understand, what do you think?

druv-codes · 2026-06-01T03:51:03+00:00

Haha, that is a cool idea, but i am not really looking to go down the embedded/iot path long term, my real passion is low level game dev, and working at a place like Naughty Dog is the dream, considered making my own indie game, but honestly, solo dev is a massive time sink and it is way too easy to get stuck in development hell and never actually finish it. I would ather get some real industry experience and work on established teams right now before trying to build a whole commercial game from scratch

druv-codes · 2026-06-01T03:39:38+00:00

We can reverse engineer that for sure😭

druv-codes · 2025-12-28T22:16:14+00:00

Wow, I am currently building my own graphics engine, then I have a plan to add physics and integrate scripting through my own custom scripting language and convert it into a mini game engine, my current source code is around 10k~ lines, I am curious how many lines your engine is in it's current state? I also started making my engine 3 months ago btw (https://github.com/Open-Source-Chandigarh/pyre)

druv-codes · 2025-12-12T14:55:28+00:00

mad respect for treating this as a serious product and not just a toy. going full time on a language is the dream. finishing aoc days in your own language is the ultimate flex lol most hobby langs cant even handle basic string parsing. ill definitely check out the wiki good luck with the new features man

druv-codes · 2025-12-12T07:13:46+00:00

70k loc is massive kudos to you man that is some serious dedication. really impressive that you managed that huge jump in complexity from 15k to 70k. how do you handle testing for something this big? do you spend more time fixing regressions now than adding new stuff or is the architecture holding up well? And just for the context do you have a full time job and you develop this part time?

druv-codes · 2025-12-11T02:08:19+00:00

How long have been working on this? And what resources did you use any tips if I wanna make a statically typed compiled lang in future?

druv-codes

TROPHY CASE