This week was a special one, I made my first-ever pull request in an open-source project! It also marks my first contribution for Hacktoberfest, which makes it even more exciting. It feels great to finally contribute to a real-world repository after spending so much time learning and exploring.
I chose to work on the NESY-Engine project, and my contribution was focused on improving the HUD (Heads-Up Display) documentation.
Finding the Issue
When I started looking for open-source projects to contribute to, I wanted something small and beginner-friendly to help me get started. I wasn’t specifically looking for a game engine project; I just wanted to make a simple, meaningful contribution that could help me understand the process of submitting a pull request.
While browsing the NESY-Engine repository, I came across an issue mentioning that the HUD didn’t have any documentation at all. That made it hard for developers and contributors to understand how it worked.
That felt like the perfect starting point for me, not too complex, but still useful to the project.
Here’s the issue
Here’s My Pull Request
Understanding the Task
The issue was about creating complete documentation for the HUD (Heads-Up Display) component from scratch. The HUD is an essential part of the game engine. it’s responsible for displaying on-screen information like health, score, and stats during gameplay.
Since there was no existing documentation, my task was to write clear and detailed descriptions for all its properties and explain how they interact with the rest of the system. The goal was to make it easier for new contributors and developers to understand the purpose and usage of each part of the HUD.
Challenges I Faced
The biggest challenge was figuring out how much detail to include. I didn’t want the docs to sound too technical or too vague. To fix this, I looked at how other sections (like UI and GameState) were written and tried to match that tone and depth.
What I Learned
Even though this was just a documentation task, I learned a lot. Writing documentation from scratch taught me how to read and interpret code written by others, and how to explain it in a way that’s simple but informative.
I also got hands-on experience with open-source collaboration, understanding how repositories are structured, how issues are managed, and how contributions are reviewed before being merged.
Interaction with Maintainers
I also interacted with the project maintainers while confirming some details about property definitions. They were really supportive and gave me helpful feedback on keeping the style consistent with the rest of the documentation.
Wrapping Up
This first contribution may not be huge, but it’s something I’m proud of. It helped me build confidence, understand how open-source projects are managed, and encouraged me to keep contributing.
It feels amazing to officially start my Hacktoberfest journey with this PR, and I’m looking forward to more contributions in the coming weeks!
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