Programming student wanting to help

Hello, I'm a third year computer science student and I would like to know if I could be of any use. I've known thrive for a while, but never got interested enough to join until now, so all my knowledge of the project at this moment comes from a couple of introductory threads.

Most of my programming so far has been in C and Python, with some Java and C++, I have no experience in game development or in professional software development, all my experience so far has been in school projects, academic research or just playing around, so I'm not sure at what degree I could be useful., but I'm willing to volunteer.

That's pretty darn close to me when I joined, starting my 10th semester now myself! You could be very helpful indeed! Welcome!

The first step is to learn some basics of git (and version control in general), if you aren't already familiar! It is an absolute must learn for any computer scientist! and then 'fork/clone' our repository here: https://github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive where our code is hosted!

We use C++ and lua (lua being quite similar to python) so that should be no problem!

Feel free to keep posting questions/for continued guidance here or on skype (jjonjex, if you want faster response times)

You've got enough experience. We're as good a place as any to start learning the sorts of programming skills not entirely unlike those you'd need professionally. Game-development is also something you'll be able to learn on the job. Anyway, we can currently build on Windows and Linux. If you're building on windows, crovea will probably give you a copy of his build directory, since apparently the build scripts are on the fritz. If you're building on linux, http://pastebin.com/2e3xAmev is your friend. The only place with incompatibility between distros/versions should be the package install line.

Look through https://github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive/tree/master/doc for soem useful documentation. Good places to start are quicktips and lua_primer, as most of the work we're doing nowadays, and thus most of what you'll do too, involves working in lua.