User:Gil4
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Contents
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Description
Gil Ford: Implement a 'total defense' strategy
In my opinion defensive strategies require less accurate predictions than the offensive, risky ones, however, positioning and stalling need a lot more consideration. Obviously I'm not going to neglect working on next-turn predicting stuff, but concentrating on making impenetrable defense styles is my goal.
IRC
Gil4
Questionnaire
1) Basics
1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.
I'm a simple ukrainian student with a goal of making gamedev closer to being considered a true art.
1.2) State your preferred email address.
Gil44liG@gmail.com
1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?
Gil4
1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?
It's a great opportunity to get some real experience, while having fun with stuff I like.
1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?
Software Engineering at one of the best universities out here, finishing my second year.
1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?
Ukraine, most of the time GMT+2.
1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.
Yeah, but not for a long time. Don't know the exact dates for now.
2) Experience
2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?
Aside from different uni stuff some personal projects only. Corona SDK (lua) for mobile apps, Visual Studio and Codeblocks for messing with graphics for a bit.
2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)
Yes, I have. Can't say my experience is all that grand though.
2.3) Have you participated to the Google Summer of Code before? As a mentor or a student? In what project? Were you successful? If not, why?
Nah, I haven't. Turned 18 less than a year ago.
2.4) Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.
No, I'm not.
2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?
Oh yeah, I truly am.
2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?
Console gamer most of the time, but obviously I can't overlook some great PC projects as well. Nintendo forever.
2.5.2) What type of games?
Main genre - RPGs. All kinds of them, jrpg, trpg, action rpg and so on. Interested in working on BfW as such. Fire Emblem is one of the favorites when we talk about any tactic games.
2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?
The stronger the better.
2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?
Can't say. Gameplay is important, without it most players just won't get to experience the story even if it's great. Likewise, nobody'd like playing some boring game with no meaning. I prefer balance, and any gamedev masterpiece needs both, of course.
2.5.5) Have you played Wesnoth? If so, tell us roughly for how long and whether you lean towards single player or multiplayer.
We do not plan to favor Wesnoth players as such, but some particular projects require a good feeling for the game which is hard to get without having played intensively.
I have, but not much, basically I downloaded it, passed the tutorial and started the campaign exactly to get a feeling of the game. Can't really work on a game I don't like with an inspiration, you know. And yeah, I did like it. Reminds me of classical Fire Emblem games.
2.6) If you have contributed any patches to Wesnoth, please list them below. You can also list patches that have been submitted but not committed yet and patches that have not been specifically written for GSoC. If you have gained commit access to our repository (during the evaluation period or earlier) please state so.
No, I haven't.
3) Communication skills
3.1) Though most of our developers are not native English speakers, English is the project's working language. Describe your fluency level in written English.
I'm sure my fluency level is enough for the project.
3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?
English, Russian, Ukrainian.
3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.
MMO experience will surely be a good help. WoW, for example. Besides, I'm pretty sure that some communities like Smogon (competitive pokemon battling) are at least as rough.
3.4) Do you give constructive advice?
Yeah, I think so. At least I'm not a fan of criticizing just for the sake of criticism.
3.5) Do you receive advice well?
Yep, I do. Actually, wise advice is always great.
3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?
Of course I am, that's what I was talking about in 3.4.
3.7) How autonomous are you when developing ? Would you rather discuss intensively changes and not start coding until you know what you want to do or would you rather code a proof of concept to "see how it turn out", taking the risk of having it thrown away if it doesn't match what the project want
I don't like intensive discussions, but I do like task details being stated clear enough.
4) Project
4.1) Did you select a project from our list? If that is the case, what project did you select? What do you want to especially concentrate on?
AI, defensive strategy. Actually, I'm an all-out offense player, but that'll make things even more fun for me. Perfect experience to level up as an all-around tactician.
4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.
I haven't.
4.3) Why did you choose this project?
4.1 tells you my main reason, basically. Can also add that AI is an interesting topic for any game developer to begin with.
4.4) Include an estimated timeline for your work on the project. Don't forget to mention special things like "I booked holidays between A and B" and "I got an exam at ABC and won't be doing much then".
Don't really have a deadline as of now, but I'm interested in finishing it earlier than the end of summer. Intense working all the way, inspiration is the key and all that.
4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can
I've browsed through the source files and found the code readability pretty good, there should be no problems with implementations of my ideas. And about the latter - there's a lot to invent here: better synergy of the units, terrain usage, formations with bulky units covering the glass cannons, dynamic re-evaluation of the optimal positioning, maybe even calculating the moment to switch from defensive to offensive style - total defense is great, but there's nothing bad in being able to switch to offense rapidly. Basically, that's what makes a commander great.
4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?
Most of all - experience as both developer and competitive player.
4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?
Desire to work on a great open-source game as a developer or to play it as a gamer.
5) Practical considerations
5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?
- Git (used for all commits) - fine with that;
- C++ (language used for all the normal source code) - same;
- STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth) - STL - fine, others - just basic;
- Python (optional, mainly used for tools) - have little trouble reading and writing it;
- build environments (eg cmake/scons) - familiar with cmake;
- WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language) - not familiar at all;
- Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios) - fine with it, using for my mobile apps projects as I mentioned above.
5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them?
Codeblocks, Notepad++, GDB are main tools of mine.
5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?
C++, Lua, Ruby.
5.4) Would you mind talking with your mentor on telephone / internet phone? We would like to have a backup way for communications for the case that somehow emails and IRC do fail. If you are willing to do so, please do list a phone number (including international code) so that we are able to contact you. You should probably *only* add this number in the application for you submit to google since the info in the wiki is available in public. We will *not* make any use of your number unless some case of "there is no way to contact you" does arise!
I wouldn't mind at all, but I do prefer non-voice communication. The introvert in me prefers, I'd say.