GSoCMindblank
| This page is related to Summer of Code 2014 |
| See the list of Summer of Code 2014 Ideas |
| This is a Summer of Code 2014 student page |
Contents
Description
TODO: Copy this page and write "your name - proposal title" in this h4 section
TODO: Write a small (1-4 sentences) description of your proposal here.
TODO: Add more first-level sections to detail your proposal
IRC
TODO: Put only your IRC nickname in there. In case of alternate nicks, separate with commas.
Example contents for this section (without the quotes): "user" "user1, user2"
Questionnaire
1) Basics
1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.
1.2) State your preferred email address.
andrew20878@gmail.com
1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?
mindblank
1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?
1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?
I am a first-year student pursuing a double degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer science at the University of Maryland.
1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?
I live in the US, EST. Over the summer I will be able to join IRC at any time during the day.
1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.
I will not be going on any long-term vacations that would inhibit my ability to work on this project, but will often take weekend-long or so trips.
2) Experience
2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?
I've been developing software since I was 11, where I took my first programming course in True BASIC. Since then I've received both formal and self-education in programming.
2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)
No, but I am familiar with product development in a team environment from my engineering background.
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?
I have never participated in Google Summer of Code before.
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, but I am familiar with the open source development communities of projects such as Wesnoth, HabitRPG, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, etc.
2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?
Yep; I've been playing video games forever.
2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?
I play a wide variety of PC games. How much I enjoy a game is independent of its genre: its design and enjoyability are what matter. I consider myself a "recreational" gamer: I enjoy playing hardcore games and competing, but often enjoy sitting back and enjoying a nice casual game like Bastion.
2.5.2) What type of games?
The games I tend to enjoy most are either competitive games, such as Starcraft or League, or single player games with a focus on technical and strategic depth, such as most roguelikes.
2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?
Ruthless competitors; as in any competition, it's no fun unless both sides are trying their hardest.
2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?
Gameplay. If a game is designed to deliver an experience focused on story it has the potential to be an enjoyable casual experience, and many games have succeeded at this: Bastion, The Last of Us, etc. However, I believe a game lives or dies based on its mechanics. Games focused on story, such as Bastion and the Last of Us, often deliver passable, run-of-the-mill mechanics. Games with a focus on delivering excellent and unique gameplay are ones I more often enjoy: roguelikes, Starcraft, etc.
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 first played Wesnoth 6 years ago and have played irregularly since. I played singeplay almost exclusively. I did not enjoy Wesnoth as a competitive game.
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.
I have neither contributed nor gained commit access.
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.
Native speaker born and raised in US.
3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?
English, Spanish
3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.
As a member of the player community of many types of games, I am intimately familiar with player communities. The Wesnoth forums are civil and enjoyable compared to the Battle.net or League of Legends forums.
3.4) Do you give constructive advice?
Coming from a strong team sports and product development background, yes.
3.5) Do you receive advice well?
Coming from a strong team sports and product development background, yes.
3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?
Yes
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 am more the latter: I like immediately testing out new ideas and seeing how they pan out. However, given my inexperience with working on an open source project I would exercise more caution with "lone wolf"ing it.
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? 4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope. 4.3) Why did you choose this project? 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". 4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can
4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?
4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?
I have always been interested in contributing to an open source project but have found it difficult to initially "sign on" to the project. SOC would be the "sign on," after which I would intend to stay on the project.
5) Practical considerations
5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?
Git (used for all commits)
C++ (language used for all the normal source code)
STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)
Python (optional, mainly used for tools)
build environments (eg cmake/scons)
WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)
Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)
5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them? 5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in? 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! In general, students should be as verbose as possible in their answers and feel free to elaborate.