Hi

You've probably seen me on IRC. Looking forward to being part of this wonderful community.
On a side note, I'm a coder and I'm interested in contributing to the game development. ( Where should I start? )

Hi!

What programming languages are you familiar with? What OS do you use?

The engine is coded in C and the gamecode is coded in QuakeC. There's an introduction to QC here, but the best introduction is the game code itself!

If you're at least a little bit familiar with git, I suggest you work with that. Version control makes things infinitely more convenient. We use a shell script called "all" (I usually refer to it as ./all to avoid confusion) to manage git clones because the project is separated into subrepositories. (That means that using Linux or an other *nix OS is more convenient for xonotic development.) See this page for more info. The windows pages are outdated, if you use Windows you'll have to figure it out based on the outdated information.

You can always ask for help on the irc channels. By the way, there are two #xonotic, the one on freenode is more centered on development.

Thanks for replying.

What programming languages are you familiar with? What OS do you use?

My 'mother' language is C, I'm also familiar with x86 asm.
I'm on a Win7 machine and refuse to install a Linux Distro alongside it on my only HDD. I have an older computer running Ubuntu though.

Where would you suggest I start?
( My skills include cryptography, reverse engineering, bug-fixing, etc )

We have a cryptography specialist on board (divVerent), I don't think there's any TODO there.

I really don't know where you should start... The darkplaces engine is written in C but it's a big, meaty piece of code. I personally think QuakeC is friendlier for a start. I also can't think of any engine bug or feature that wouldn't be quite complex to fix/implement.

If you plan on contributing, you'll have to learn the basics of git. I don't know how it works in Windows; perhaps you can ask MirceaKitsune about this, he does his development work in Windows as far as I know. If you like writing, perhaps you could take notes while setting it up, for reference.

The gamecode is stored in a directory called "qcsrc". The products of compilation are three separate binary blobs: menu.dat, progs.dat (SVQC, server-side gamecode) and csprogs.dat (CSQC, client-side gamecode).

Once you get a copy of the code (through git or from a release/autobuild package), maybe you can try to get an understanding of portions of code that might be bugged. Our bug tracker is at http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/issues.

I can't explain everything, that would take too much time. If you have more specific questions, ask them here or in #xonotic on freenode.

well nice to see another programmer on board. welcome to Xonotic!

Welcome!