User:Flixx/GSoC 2013/Questionnaire
1) Basics
1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.
Hi! I'm Felix, 22 and from Germany/Berlin. I'm currently as a exchange student in Amman/Jordan (until June) studying Computer Science at Princess Sumaya University for Technology.
1.2) State your preferred email address.
I will add my address in the google application.
1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?
flix
1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?
I've played with the thought to join a Open Source Community for some time now. And GSoC seems like a great way to to this. I admire the idea of Open Source and the way how international communities can assemble such great software!
1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?
When I'm not in Jordan I study something fancy called "Science in the Information Society" at Technical University in Berlin. I'm currently in my 3rd year. This courses are great because we have over 50% optional courses and we could study nearly anything (Physics, Math, Chemistry, ...) I chose to focus on Computer Science very early (in my first year). So I had a lot courses with the Computer Scientists and consider myself as at the same level as a Computer Scientist in his/her 3rd year.
Here in Jordan I learnt to love MOOCs. I mention this because I also finished the course Artificial Intelligence (BerkeleyX) It was the best course I ever had (online and offline).
1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?
Germany. My favorite time to work is between 4 pm and 2 am. Although I'm quite flexible with times and can try to be online when my mentor is.
1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.
Yes! I'm currently in Amman/Jordan as a exchange student. I will go back to Germany on the 24th of June. And around this date I need some time off. More specific: I'm only partly available from 18th of June to the 1st of July.
Apart from that I have no other commitments and would consider SoC as a full-time job. Also I can start early (before 18th of June) to work on my project.
2) Experience
2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?
- In High-school I started to tweak phpBB for my purposes (don't work on this anymore)
- In my first year in university I developed for a project a AI for the Game Hive (Java).
- I'm currently developing a mobile-tagging software for images in Java (Tomcat Server) and Android.
2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)
Yes, for the AI I mentioned for example (team of 8). I strongly prefer to develop in teams.
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?
No.
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?
I wouldn't consider myself as a gamer...
2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?
...although I love to play once in while. Especially multi-player games with friends. In a month I maybe play 6 nights long ;)
2.5.2) What type of games?
- Turnbased Stategy games like Wesnoth, Civilisations,
- Old-school realtime strategy games like Empire Earth, WarcraftIII
2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?
I prefer AI opponents.
2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?
Definitely gameplay. I'm a story-skipper ;).
2.5.5) Have you played Wesnoth? If so, tell us roughly for how long and whether you lean towards single player or multiplayer.
I started to play Wesnoth half a year ago and have played it with a friend once in a while since. I play the mainline campaigns too. I like both.
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.
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.
Should be more then enough to communicate with the community.
3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?
German, English (Arabic is way to hard ;) )
3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.
Yes, I think so.
3.4) Do you give constructive advice?
When I can, sure!
3.5) Do you receive advice well?
Depends on who want to advice me. But in general of course!
3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?
I think so, 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 think I am the autonomous developer who would code a proof of concept. Although since i'm new to this community I would definitively ask questions and discuss the project goals so the risk of failing them is minimized.
I always try to figure out problems of technical nature myself.
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?
The Project "AI Refactor recruitment algorithm".
4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.
-
4.3) Why did you choose this project?
Basically because Crab_ said so ;). When I first read the project page I first wanted to do the "defensive AI" project. But after some advice I concentrated on the Recruitment Idea. And meanwhile I really like this Idea and prefer it over the others. I would love to improve the AIs recruitment.
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".
See above.
4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can
See above.
4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?
I would finally be part of a Open Source Community. Furthermore I expect to gain experience in C++ (and Lua). I'm quite new to C++ and I think Wesnoth is great for improving C++-skills.
4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC? A failed project would be demotivating, but otherwise I would love to stay in the community if I find some time when university starts again.
5) Practical considerations
5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?
Git (used for all commits) Yes C++ (language used for all the normal source code) I'm new to C++. But since I worked on some patches I've already learned a lot and feel capable to work with Wesnoth's code. STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth) I've heard of it and made use of it in the patches, but without big background knowledge. Python (optional, mainly used for tools) Yes build environments (eg cmake/scons) I know how to build. That's it. WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language) Yes Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios) Not really, but ironically I know how C++ and Lua are communicating through the Lua Stack since I worked on a patch which had to do with this. Lua seems easy enough though.
5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them? I use Eclipse on ubuntu. I am used to it from Java development.
5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in? I list them from most fluent to *I have coded once with it*
Java, Python, PHP, JavaScript, C++, Ruby, Scala, Pearl, Lua.
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 will add my number in the google application.