The Battle for Wesnoth Wiki - User contributions [en]

SoC2012 Tyrannodogg Make lua AI developement easier

2012-04-29T19:35:27Z

Tyrannodogg: /* Questionnaire */

SoC2012 Tyrannodogg Make lua AI developement easier

2012-04-06T19:54:45Z

Tyrannodogg:

{{SoC2012Student}}
[[Category:SoC_Ideas_AI_Lua_AI_Usage_2012]]

=Description=
<h4>Tyrannodogg - Make lua AI development and usage easier</h4>
At the moment the parts, which make a lua AI, are scattered around several WML Entities, resulting in a load of boilerplate code.

My approach is to shift more parts of the functionality into lua code, in a way that simple scripts can handle all steps necessary.

This includes wrapping the current default AI for lua usage.

I will also provide scripts for logging and further debugging.

=IRC=
Tyrannodogg,tyrannodogg
=SoC Application=
Submitted to google
=gna.org=
tyrannodogg

In order to get familiar with the codebase i am working on the following patch:
https://gna.org/patch/?3240

=Further explanation=
In the end I'd like to have a luaAI look like the following example and have at least the described capabilities or similar ones

[ai]
engine = "lua"
code = <<
-- make all print calls chat messages instead
require("wesnoth_debug.chatting_ai")
--could also be default_ai.no_actions
ai = require("default_ai.all_actions")

--add a new action
ai.beserk = {}
function ai.beserk.evaluation() return 50000 end
ai.beserk.execution = require("my_clever_script")

--delete a action
ai.ca_villages=nil

--modify an action
local move_eval = ai.ca_move.evaluation
function ai.ca_move.evaluation(...)
--make move less important
local result = move_eval(...)
return result / 2
end

--for a whole new ai approach even the main loop may be interchangeable
ai:register_main_loop(require("default_ai.default_main_loop"))
>>
[/ai]

=Questionnaire=

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

Hi, my name is Tilo Fischer. I am a graduate student at Universität zu Lübeck, Germany.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

tyrannodogg /at/ googlemail /dot/ com

1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?

Tyrannodogg

1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?

I was looking for a interesting project, to get involved before I finish my studies and start working.
Honestly publicity and pay are a nice bonus.

1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I am studying computer science at Universität zu Lübeck and got my bachelor's degree last year.
My areas of specialisation are robotics and software systems engineering.

1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?

I am from Germany. So I'll be online mostly between 20:00 and 24:00 CEST, respectively 18:00 to 22:00 UTC.

1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.

No other commitments are planned for now. Depending on the weather I may do a few weekend trips to the beach.

2) Experience

2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?

My study included a few projects, each lasting for half a year:

# A skat game, implemented in Java including an AI, which I was in charge of
# Developing an AI for sailing robots
# Developing a moodle clone
# Developing a Runtime Verification Framework for Java using AspectJ to add events to the tested code

My bachelor thesis included modifying a remote control software for EPucks.

2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)

Except for my bachelor thesis the projects named above were handled in small 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, I haven't participated yet.

2.4) Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.

Unfortunately not

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes, I am.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I rarely play something unless my schedule allows it and I need some recreation.

2.5.2) What type of games?

RPGs, RTS and round based Strategy

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I like opponents, whose weakness has to be figured out and exploited in order to win.
This mainly includes AI opponents and sometimes human ones.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

Gameplay is more important to me.

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 occasionally played Wesnoth and quit due to a lack of time. I never got good enough to attempt a multiplayer game.

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.

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 SVN (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.

English is my first foreign language. I learned it in school for 9 years and was in Australia for a student exchange.
I seamlessly understand English, but my writing may contain a few grammatical errors.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

German and English

3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.

I haven't done much of support yet or wesnoth online. Usually I stay calm even if I am insulted.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

This depends on whether I have a good understanding of the subject and the feedback I get.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I think so.

3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?

At least I should be able to recognize obviously useless comments on my work.

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 like to discuss architectural decisions, which affect others, too.
I want to avoid rendering related tasks impossible, gather suggestions and communicate the changes.
On the other hand I can handle isolated tasks autonomously.

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?

I selected "AI: Make lua AI development and usage easier". Adding a debug framework seems to be an interesting task.
But in order to implement it extending the luaai engine ( and make it easier to configure ) is necessary.

4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

I am particularly interested in projects involving language design and the interaction of several languages.
Lua is also my favorite programming language.
So I think this project fits best to my experiences from past projects and my interests.

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".

The first half of the time should be dedicated to reducing the boilerplate code and wrapping the RCA CAs into the lua engine.
In the second part I will implement as much requested debugging features as possible.

4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can

I plan either to implement the RCA main_loop in lua or to register the candidate actions automatically to it.
Therefore it would be reasonable to wrap the RCA candidate actions into lua, so they can be imported, registered, used directly or indirectly or overwritten in lua with minimal effort.
Since some other proposal also include this, it could be done in collaboration, but does not need to be done so.
Meanwhile a survey could take place asking the AI developers what kind of debugging features they request.

To improve debugging capabilities a set functions to handle logging or to register callbacks could be predefined. In order to (de)activate these features the user can choose from different implementations at the beginning of his/her AI code by loading it.
The most interesting callback would connect to another process, which then controls the AI to work stepwise and prints out the values of a variable.
This step also seems to be the most difficult one and depends on the previous steps and other issues. Whether it is possible or not has to be evaluated during the process.
Further steps include the handling of behavior candidate actions.

4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?

I hope for an interesting task and getting in touch with the Open Source Community.

4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?

If my project is considered useful and my schedule allows it, I will gladly come back and help with further development.

5) Practical considerations

5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?

* Subversion (used for all commits)
SVN is the most common versioning system at my university.
* C++ (language used for all the normal source code)
A few of the university projects not named above were written in C++
* STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)
No, I never used this libraries directly.
* Python (optional, mainly used for tools)
I use Python occasionally, but prefer to solve most problems in Lua
* build environments (eg cmake/scons)
I have no problem compiling projects with cmake. For my projects I prefer to write makefiles or similar buildscripts directly.
* WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)
Not yet, but seems to be easy understandable, although it's quite extensive.
* Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)
I've been using Lua for 3 years for all kinds of prototypes.

5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them?

I am a minimalist and feel most comfortly developing with Lua and vim, but depending on the scope and language of the project I add a few other tools.
Eg. for Java projects I prefer Eclipse.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

Java, Lua, C, Shell-Script, LaTeX

also familiar with

C++, MATLAB ,SML ,Erlang, Python, AspectJ, Prolog

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!

If I am accepted, I will add some more contact information.

In general, students should be as verbose as possible in their answers and feel free to elaborate.

SoC2012 Tyrannodogg Make lua AI developement easier

2012-04-06T13:37:25Z

Tyrannodogg: /* gna.org */

{{SoC2012Student}}
[[Category:SoC_Ideas_AI_Lua_AI_Usage_2012]]

=Description=
<h4>Tyrannodogg - Make lua AI development and usage easier</h4>
At the moment the parts, which make a lua AI, are scattered around several WML Entities, resulting in a load of boilerplate code.

My approach is to shift more parts of the functionality into lua code, in a way that simple scripts can handle all steps necessary.

This includes wrapping the current default AI for lua usage.

I will also provide scripts for logging and further debugging.

=IRC=
Tyrannodogg,tyrannodogg
=SoC Application=
Submitted to google
=gna.org=
tyrannodogg

In order to get familiar with the codebase i am working on the following patch:
https://gna.org/patch/?3240

=Questionnaire=

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

Hi, my name is Tilo Fischer. I am a graduate student at Universität zu Lübeck, Germany.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

tyrannodogg /at/ googlemail /dot/ com

1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?

Tyrannodogg

1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?

I was looking for a interesting project, to get involved before I finish my studies and start working.
Honestly publicity and pay are a nice bonus.

1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I am studying computer science at Universität zu Lübeck and got my bachelor's degree last year.
My areas of specialisation are robotics and software systems engineering.

1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?

I am from Germany. So I'll be online mostly between 20:00 and 24:00 CEST, respectively 18:00 to 22:00 UTC.

1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.

No other commitments are planned for now. Depending on the weather I may do a few weekend trips to the beach.

2) Experience

2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?

My study included a few projects, each lasting for half a year:

# A skat game, implemented in Java including an AI, which I was in charge of
# Developing an AI for sailing robots
# Developing a moodle clone
# Developing a Runtime Verification Framework for Java using AspectJ to add events to the tested code

My bachelor thesis included modifying a remote control software for EPucks.

2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)

Except for my bachelor thesis the projects named above were handled in small 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, I haven't participated yet.

2.4) Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.

Unfortunately not

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes, I am.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I rarely play something unless my schedule allows it and I need some recreation.

2.5.2) What type of games?

RPGs, RTS and round based Strategy

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I like opponents, whose weakness has to be figured out and exploited in order to win.
This mainly includes AI opponents and sometimes human ones.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

Gameplay is more important to me.

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 occasionally played Wesnoth and quit due to a lack of time. I never got good enough to attempt a multiplayer game.

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.

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 SVN (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.

English is my first foreign language. I learned it in school for 9 years and was in Australia for a student exchange.
I seamlessly understand English, but my writing may contain a few grammatical errors.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

German and English

3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.

I haven't done much of support yet or wesnoth online. Usually I stay calm even if I am insulted.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

This depends on whether I have a good understanding of the subject and the feedback I get.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I think so.

3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?

At least I should be able to recognize obviously useless comments on my work.

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 like to discuss architectural decisions, which affect others, too.
I want to avoid rendering related tasks impossible, gather suggestions and communicate the changes.
On the other hand I can handle isolated tasks autonomously.

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?

I selected "AI: Make lua AI development and usage easier". Adding a debug framework seems to be an interesting task.
But in order to implement it extending the luaai engine ( and make it easier to configure ) is necessary.

4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

I am particularly interested in projects involving language design and the interaction of several languages.
Lua is also my favorite programming language.
So I think this project fits best to my experiences from past projects and my interests.

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".

The first half of the time should be dedicated to reducing the boilerplate code and wrapping the RCA CAs into the lua engine.
In the second part I will implement as much requested debugging features as possible.

4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can

I plan either to implement the RCA main_loop in lua or to register the candidate actions automatically to it.
Therefore it would be reasonable to wrap the RCA candidate actions into lua, so they can be imported, registered, used directly or indirectly or overwritten in lua with minimal effort.
Since some other proposal also include this, it could be done in collaboration, but does not need to be done so.
Meanwhile a survey could take place asking the AI developers what kind of debugging features they request.

To improve debugging capabilities a set functions to handle logging or to register callbacks could be predefined. In order to (de)activate these features the user can choose from different implementations at the beginning of his/her AI code by loading it.
The most interesting callback would connect to another process, which then controls the AI to work stepwise and prints out the values of a variable.
This step also seems to be the most difficult one and depends on the previous steps and other issues. Whether it is possible or not has to be evaluated during the process.
Further steps include the handling of behavior candidate actions.

4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?

I hope for an interesting task and getting in touch with the Open Source Community.

4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?

If my project is considered useful and my schedule allows it, I will gladly come back and help with further development.

5) Practical considerations

5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?

* Subversion (used for all commits)
SVN is the most common versioning system at my university.
* C++ (language used for all the normal source code)
A few of the university projects not named above were written in C++
* STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)
No, I never used this libraries directly.
* Python (optional, mainly used for tools)
I use Python occasionally, but prefer to solve most problems in Lua
* build environments (eg cmake/scons)
I have no problem compiling projects with cmake. For my projects I prefer to write makefiles or similar buildscripts directly.
* WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)
Not yet, but seems to be easy understandable, although it's quite extensive.
* Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)
I've been using Lua for 3 years for all kinds of prototypes.

5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them?

I am a minimalist and feel most comfortly developing with Lua and vim, but depending on the scope and language of the project I add a few other tools.
Eg. for Java projects I prefer Eclipse.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

Java, Lua, C, Shell-Script, LaTeX

also familiar with

C++, MATLAB ,SML ,Erlang, Python, AspectJ, Prolog

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!

If I am accepted, I will add some more contact information.

In general, students should be as verbose as possible in their answers and feel free to elaborate.

SoC2012 Tyrannodogg Make lua AI developement easier

2012-04-06T13:36:28Z

Tyrannodogg:

{{SoC2012Student}}
[[Category:SoC_Ideas_AI_Lua_AI_Usage_2012]]

=Description=
<h4>Tyrannodogg - Make lua AI development and usage easier</h4>
At the moment the parts, which make a lua AI, are scattered around several WML Entities, resulting in a load of boilerplate code.

My approach is to shift more parts of the functionality into lua code, in a way that simple scripts can handle all steps necessary.

This includes wrapping the current default AI for lua usage.

I will also provide scripts for logging and further debugging.

=IRC=
Tyrannodogg,tyrannodogg
=SoC Application=
Submitted to google
=gna.org=
tyrannodogg

In order to get familiar with the codebase i am working on the folnowing patch:
https://gna.org/patch/?3240

=Questionnaire=

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

Hi, my name is Tilo Fischer. I am a graduate student at Universität zu Lübeck, Germany.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

tyrannodogg /at/ googlemail /dot/ com

1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?

Tyrannodogg

1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?

I was looking for a interesting project, to get involved before I finish my studies and start working.
Honestly publicity and pay are a nice bonus.

1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I am studying computer science at Universität zu Lübeck and got my bachelor's degree last year.
My areas of specialisation are robotics and software systems engineering.

1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?

I am from Germany. So I'll be online mostly between 20:00 and 24:00 CEST, respectively 18:00 to 22:00 UTC.

1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.

No other commitments are planned for now. Depending on the weather I may do a few weekend trips to the beach.

2) Experience

2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?

My study included a few projects, each lasting for half a year:

# A skat game, implemented in Java including an AI, which I was in charge of
# Developing an AI for sailing robots
# Developing a moodle clone
# Developing a Runtime Verification Framework for Java using AspectJ to add events to the tested code

My bachelor thesis included modifying a remote control software for EPucks.

2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)

Except for my bachelor thesis the projects named above were handled in small 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, I haven't participated yet.

2.4) Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.

Unfortunately not

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes, I am.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I rarely play something unless my schedule allows it and I need some recreation.

2.5.2) What type of games?

RPGs, RTS and round based Strategy

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I like opponents, whose weakness has to be figured out and exploited in order to win.
This mainly includes AI opponents and sometimes human ones.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

Gameplay is more important to me.

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 occasionally played Wesnoth and quit due to a lack of time. I never got good enough to attempt a multiplayer game.

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.

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 SVN (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.

English is my first foreign language. I learned it in school for 9 years and was in Australia for a student exchange.
I seamlessly understand English, but my writing may contain a few grammatical errors.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

German and English

3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.

I haven't done much of support yet or wesnoth online. Usually I stay calm even if I am insulted.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

This depends on whether I have a good understanding of the subject and the feedback I get.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I think so.

3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?

At least I should be able to recognize obviously useless comments on my work.

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 like to discuss architectural decisions, which affect others, too.
I want to avoid rendering related tasks impossible, gather suggestions and communicate the changes.
On the other hand I can handle isolated tasks autonomously.

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?

I selected "AI: Make lua AI development and usage easier". Adding a debug framework seems to be an interesting task.
But in order to implement it extending the luaai engine ( and make it easier to configure ) is necessary.

4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

I am particularly interested in projects involving language design and the interaction of several languages.
Lua is also my favorite programming language.
So I think this project fits best to my experiences from past projects and my interests.

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".

The first half of the time should be dedicated to reducing the boilerplate code and wrapping the RCA CAs into the lua engine.
In the second part I will implement as much requested debugging features as possible.

4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can

I plan either to implement the RCA main_loop in lua or to register the candidate actions automatically to it.
Therefore it would be reasonable to wrap the RCA candidate actions into lua, so they can be imported, registered, used directly or indirectly or overwritten in lua with minimal effort.
Since some other proposal also include this, it could be done in collaboration, but does not need to be done so.
Meanwhile a survey could take place asking the AI developers what kind of debugging features they request.

To improve debugging capabilities a set functions to handle logging or to register callbacks could be predefined. In order to (de)activate these features the user can choose from different implementations at the beginning of his/her AI code by loading it.
The most interesting callback would connect to another process, which then controls the AI to work stepwise and prints out the values of a variable.
This step also seems to be the most difficult one and depends on the previous steps and other issues. Whether it is possible or not has to be evaluated during the process.
Further steps include the handling of behavior candidate actions.

4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?

I hope for an interesting task and getting in touch with the Open Source Community.

4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?

If my project is considered useful and my schedule allows it, I will gladly come back and help with further development.

5) Practical considerations

5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?

* Subversion (used for all commits)
SVN is the most common versioning system at my university.
* C++ (language used for all the normal source code)
A few of the university projects not named above were written in C++
* STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)
No, I never used this libraries directly.
* Python (optional, mainly used for tools)
I use Python occasionally, but prefer to solve most problems in Lua
* build environments (eg cmake/scons)
I have no problem compiling projects with cmake. For my projects I prefer to write makefiles or similar buildscripts directly.
* WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)
Not yet, but seems to be easy understandable, although it's quite extensive.
* Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)
I've been using Lua for 3 years for all kinds of prototypes.

5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them?

I am a minimalist and feel most comfortly developing with Lua and vim, but depending on the scope and language of the project I add a few other tools.
Eg. for Java projects I prefer Eclipse.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

Java, Lua, C, Shell-Script, LaTeX

also familiar with

C++, MATLAB ,SML ,Erlang, Python, AspectJ, Prolog

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!

If I am accepted, I will add some more contact information.

In general, students should be as verbose as possible in their answers and feel free to elaborate.

SoC2012 Tyrannodogg Make lua AI developement easier

2012-04-06T13:12:31Z

Tyrannodogg:

{{SoC2012Student}}
[[Category:SoC_Ideas_AI_Lua_AI_Usage_2012]]

=Description=
<h4>Tyrannodogg - Make lua AI development and usage easier</h4>
At the moment the parts, which make a lua AI, are scattered around several WML Entities, resulting in a load of boilerplate code.

My approach is to shift more parts of the functionality into lua code, in a way that simple scripts can handle all steps necessary.

This includes wrapping the current default AI for lua usage.

I will also provide scripts for logging and further debugging.

=IRC=
Tyrannodogg,tyrannodogg
=SoC Application=
Submitted to google
=gna.org=
tyrannodogg
=Questionnaire=

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

Hi, my name is Tilo Fischer. I am a graduate student at Universität zu Lübeck, Germany.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

tyrannodogg /at/ googlemail /dot/ com

1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?

Tyrannodogg

1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?

I was looking for a interesting project, to get involved before I finish my studies and start working.
Honestly publicity and pay are a nice bonus.

1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I am studying computer science at Universität zu Lübeck and got my bachelor's degree last year.
My areas of specialisation are robotics and software systems engineering.

1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?

I am from Germany. So I'll be online mostly between 20:00 and 24:00 CEST, respectively 18:00 to 22:00 UTC.

1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.

No other commitments are planned for now. Depending on the weather I may do a few weekend trips to the beach.

2) Experience

2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?

My study included a few projects, each lasting for half a year:

# A skat game, implemented in Java including an AI, which I was in charge of
# Developing an AI for sailing robots
# Developing a moodle clone
# Developing a Runtime Verification Framework for Java using AspectJ to add events to the tested code

My bachelor thesis included modifying a remote control software for EPucks.

2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)

Except for my bachelor thesis the projects named above were handled in small 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, I haven't participated yet.

2.4) Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.

Unfortunately not

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes, I am.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I rarely play something unless my schedule allows it and I need some recreation.

2.5.2) What type of games?

RPGs, RTS and round based Strategy

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I like opponents, whose weakness has to be figured out and exploited in order to win.
This mainly includes AI opponents and sometimes human ones.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

Gameplay is more important to me.

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 occasionally played Wesnoth and quit due to a lack of time. I never got good enough to attempt a multiplayer game.

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.

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 SVN (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.

English is my first foreign language. I learned it in school for 9 years and was in Australia for a student exchange.
I seamlessly understand English, but my writing may contain a few grammatical errors.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

German and English

3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.

I haven't done much of support yet or wesnoth online. Usually I stay calm even if I am insulted.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

This depends on whether I have a good understanding of the subject and the feedback I get.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I think so.

3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?

At least I should be able to recognize obviously useless comments on my work.

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 like to discuss architectural decisions, which affect others, too.
I want to avoid rendering related tasks impossible, gather suggestions and communicate the changes.
On the other hand I can handle isolated tasks autonomously.

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?

I selected "AI: Make lua AI development and usage easier". Adding a debug framework seems to be an interesting task.
But in order to implement it extending the luaai engine ( and make it easier to configure ) is necessary.

4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

I am particularly interested in projects involving language design and the interaction of several languages.
Lua is also my favorite programming language.
So I think this project fits best to my experiences from past projects and my interests.

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".

The first half of the time should be dedicated to reducing the boilerplate code and wrapping the RCA CAs into the lua engine.
In the second part I will implement as much requested debugging features as possible.

4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can

I plan either to implement the RCA main_loop in lua or to register the candidate actions automatically to it.
Therefore it would be reasonable to wrap the RCA candidate actions into lua, so they can be imported, registered, used directly or indirectly or overwritten in lua with minimal effort.
Since some other proposal also include this, it could be done in collaboration, but does not need to be done so.
Meanwhile a survey could take place asking the AI developers what kind of debugging features they request.

To improve debugging capabilities a set functions to handle logging or to register callbacks could be predefined. In order to (de)activate these features the user can choose from different implementations at the beginning of his/her AI code by loading it.
The most interesting callback would connect to another process, which then controls the AI to work stepwise and prints out the values of a variable.
This step also seems to be the most difficult one and depends on the previous steps and other issues. Whether it is possible or not has to be evaluated during the process.
Further steps include the handling of behavior candidate actions.

4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?

I hope for an interesting task and getting in touch with the Open Source Community.

4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?

If my project is considered useful and my schedule allows it, I will gladly come back and help with further development.

5) Practical considerations

5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?

* Subversion (used for all commits)
SVN is the most common versioning system at my university.
* C++ (language used for all the normal source code)
A few of the university projects not named above were written in C++
* STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)
No, I never used this libraries directly.
* Python (optional, mainly used for tools)
I use Python occasionally, but prefer to solve most problems in Lua
* build environments (eg cmake/scons)
I have no problem compiling projects with cmake. For my projects I prefer to write makefiles or similar buildscripts directly.
* WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)
Not yet, but seems to be easy understandable, although it's quite extensive.
* Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)
I've been using Lua for 3 years for all kinds of prototypes.

5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them?

I am a minimalist and feel most comfortly developing with Lua and vim, but depending on the scope and language of the project I add a few other tools.
Eg. for Java projects I prefer Eclipse.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

Java, Lua, C, Shell-Script, LaTeX

also familiar with

C++, MATLAB ,SML ,Erlang, Python, AspectJ, Prolog

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!

If I am accepted, I will add some more contact information.

In general, students should be as verbose as possible in their answers and feel free to elaborate.

SoC2012 Tyrannodogg Make lua AI developement easier

2012-04-06T00:29:11Z

Tyrannodogg:

{{SoC2012Student}}
[[Category:SoC_Ideas_AI_Lua_AI_Usage_2012]]

=Description=
<h4>Tyrannodogg - Make lua AI development and usage easier</h4>
At the moment the parts, which make a lua AI, are scattered around several WML Entities, resulting in a load of boilerplate code.

My approach is to shift more parts of the functionality into lua code, in a way that simple scripts can handle all steps necessary.

This includes wrapping the current default AI for lua usage.

I will also provide scripts for logging and further debugging.

=IRC=
Tyrannodogg,tyrannodogg
=SoC Application=
Submitted to google
=gna.org=
tyrannodogg
=Questionnaire=

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

Hi, my name is Tilo Fischer. I am a graduate student at Universität zu Lübeck, Germany.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

tyrannodogg /at/ googlemail /dot/ com

1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?

Tyrannodogg

1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?

I was looking for a interesting project, to get involved before I finish my studies and start working.
Honestly publicity and pay are a nice bonus.

1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I am studying computer science at Universität zu Lübeck and got my bachelor's degree last year.
My areas of specialisation are robotics and software systems engineering.

1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?

I am from Germany. So I'll be online mostly between 20:00 and 24:00 CEST, respectively 18:00 to 22:00 UTC.

1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.

No other commitments are planned for now. Depending on the weather I may do a few weekend trips to the beach.

2) Experience

2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?

My study included a few projects, each lasting for half a year:

# A skat game, implemented in Java including an AI, which I was in charge of
# Developing an AI for sailing robots
# Developing a moodle clone
# Developing a Runtime Verification Framework for Java using AspectJ to add events to the tested code

My bachelor thesis included modifying a remote control software for EPucks.

2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)

Except for my bachelor thesis the projects named above were handled in small 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, I haven't participated yet.

2.4) Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.

Unfortunately not

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes, I am.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I rarely play something unless my schedule allows it and I need some recreation.

2.5.2) What type of games?

RPGs, RTS and round based Strategy

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I like opponents, whose weakness has to be figured out and exploited in order to win.
This mainly includes AI opponents and sometimes human ones.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

Gameplay is more important to me.

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 occasionally played Wesnoth and quit due to a lack of time. I never got good enough to attempt a multiplayer game.

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.

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 SVN (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.

English is my first foreign language. I learned it in school for 9 years and was in Australia for a student exchange.
I seamlessly understand English, but my writing may contain a few grammatical errors.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

German and English

3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.

I haven't done much of support yet or wesnoth online. Usually I stay calm even if I am insulted.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

This depends on whether I have a good understanding of the subject and the feedback I get.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I think so.

3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?

At least I should be able to recognize obviously useless comments on my work.

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 like to discuss architectural decisions, which affect others, too.
I want to avoid rendering related tasks impossible, gather suggestions and communicate the changes.
On the other hand I can handle isolated tasks autonomously.

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?

I selected "AI: Make lua AI development and usage easier". Adding a debug framework seems to be an interesting task.
But in order to implement it extending the luaai engine ( and make it easier to configure ) is necessary.

4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

I am particularly interested in projects involving language design and the interaction of several languages.
Lua is also my favorite programming language.
So I think this project fits best to my experiences from past projects and my interests.

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".

The first half of the time should be dedicated to reducing the boilerplate code and wrapping the RCA CAs into the lua engine.
In the second part I will implement as much requested debugging features as possible.

4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can

I plan either to implement the RCA main_loop in lua or to register the candidate actions automatically to it.
Therefore it would be reasonable to wrap the RCA candidate actions into lua, so they can be imported, registered, used directly or indirectly or overwritten in lua with minimal effort.
Since some other proposal also include this, it could be done in collaboration.
Meanwhile a survey could take place asking the AI developers what kind of debugging features they request.

To improve debugging capabilities a set functions to handle logging or to register callbacks could be predefined. In order to (de)activate these features the user can choose from different implementations at the beginning of his/her AI code by loading it.
The most interesting callback would connect to another process, which then controls the AI to work stepwise and prints out the values of a variable.
This step also seems to be the most difficult one and depends on the previous steps and other issues. Whether it is possible or not has to be evaluated during the process.
Further steps include the handling of behavior candidate actions.

4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?

I hope for an interesting task and getting in touch with the Open Source Community.

4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?

If my project is considered useful and my schedule allows it, I will gladly come back and help with further development.

5) Practical considerations

5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?

* Subversion (used for all commits)
SVN is the most common versioning system at my university.
* C++ (language used for all the normal source code)
A few of the university projects not named above were written in C++
* STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)
No, I never used this libraries directly.
* Python (optional, mainly used for tools)
I use Python occasionally, but prefer to solve most problems in Lua
* build environments (eg cmake/scons)
I have no problem compiling projects with cmake. For my projects I prefer to write makefiles or similar buildscripts directly.
* WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)
Not yet, but seems to be easy understandable, although it's quite extensive.
* Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)
I've been using Lua for 3 years for all kinds of prototypes.

5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them?

I am a minimalist and feel most comfortly developing with Lua and vim, but depending on the scope and language of the project I add a few other tools.
Eg. for Java projects I prefer Eclipse.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

Java, Lua, C, Shell-Script, LaTeX

also familiar with

C++, MATLAB ,SML ,Erlang, Python, AspectJ, Prolog

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!

If I am accepted, I will add some more contact information.

In general, students should be as verbose as possible in their answers and feel free to elaborate.

EasyCoding

2012-04-05T23:49:30Z

Tyrannodogg: /* Add more ai actions */

== Foreword ==
This page is here to document easy to do coding tasks. It is not here to double the feature request database, and should only be filled by people that know the code well enough to judge the difficulty of a given task.

If you are such a person, you should feel free to edit this page.

If you're not, you should post a feature request and discuss your idea on the forum or IRC. A coder with better knowledge of the code might give you the green light to add your feature here.

Anybody should feel free to add "clues" to any tasks, that is entry points, traps to avoid, person to contact to discuss and so on.

If you plan to work on a feature, write your name at the bottom of the feature, with the date. Note that if you are too long at working on a feature I'll "free" it back (that is if you're not working on it. If you have problems implementing it, just tell us....)

--[[User:Boucman|Boucman]] 20:48, 3 October 2006 (CEST)

Since bugs are sometimes a good opportunity to get a first idea of the code, i will add some here that are easy to fix as soon as i stumble upon them (the one i had in mind is fixed already ;-).

--Yogi Bear, 28 February 2008

== MP related features ==
=== Add possibility to give reason for "ignore" ===
As per FR #16001 [https://gna.org/bugs/?16001]

on it - uzyszkodnik 31.03.2012

== WML related features ==

=== WML configurable village income / upkeep ===
Preferably as a [scenario], [side] or [campaign] keys. As per FR #6301 [https://gna.org/bugs/?6301].

--[[User:Gabba|Gabba]] 19 March 2012 : This is currently assigned to me, but as I lack time and interest to finish integrating this, GSoC students or other interested coders are welcome to take up the current patch and finish the job: https://gna.org/patch/?1381

=== Add support of [if] for [scenario] ===
As per FR #4539 [https://gna.org/bugs/?4539]

=== Side-specific results ===
Giving result=defeat or result=victory for specific sides. ([http://gna.org/bugs/index.php?4960 FR #4960]) -- [[User:dlr365|dlr365]] -- patch submitted [https://gna.org/bugs/index.php?4960]

--[[User:Boucman|Boucman]] 08:58, 28 February 2010 (UTC) Patch seems abandonned, but can be used for further work feel free to take over the FR

=== Support for leaderless multiplayergames ===
Add support for the WML key victory_when_enemies_defeated= in the scenario tag during multiplayergames. ([https://gna.org/bugs/index.php?8106 FR #8106])
--[[User:Endercoaster|endercoaster]] 30, March 2010. I'm gonna give this one a try.

=== Support for standalone multiplayer scenarios ===
There used to be support for standalone scenarios in the userdata tree, in reorganising the trees this feature got lost and an add-on is now required to add a scenario.
Re-add this feature. It is probably a good idea to mirror the mainline multiplayer tree.

=== Support variable recall cost in wml ===
see https://gna.org/bugs/?16538

the syntax needs to be discussed and refined, but the overall idea is good

make sure to update whiteboard to handle this correctly

Ask Boucman

=== Other Ideas ===
See [[FutureWML]]; some ideas there are easier than others.

== Improvements to AI ==

Fix some todos, add new formula functions, or do minor improvements to the formula language. Make it easier to debug the formula language, add more ai components.

Please discuss these with Crab, Dragonking, Sirp or Boucman

=== Add more ai actions ===

Add an ai action (and add lua function to do that) to set a goto on a unit

--[[User:Teugon|Teugon]] 00:32, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Add an ai action (and add lua function to do that) to send a chat message to a player

--[[User:Tyrannodogg|Tyrannodogg]] 11:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Add an ai action (and add lua function to do that) to use a right-click menu item.

There is also [[Practical_Guide_to_Modifying_AI_Behavior#Ideas_for_Potentially_Easy_AI_Patches|this list]] of (unapproved) and (potentially) easy AI feature requests.

=== write a (fai or c++ or lua) candidate action for leader control ===

== GUI related features ==
-------------------

Note at the moment Mordante is working on a new GUI system, these
changes will probably affect the way these items need to be implemented.
Contact Mordante on IRC before starting to work on these.

--[[User:SkeletonCrew|SkeletonCrew]] 14:04, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

=== Theme Changes ===

* allow custom themes to display values of WML variables ([http://gna.org/bugs/index.php?6209 FR #6209])
* hide the hourglass item from the statusbar when there is no timer

=== Widget Changes ===
* show side number, name and team association information in the status table
* make games sortable in the lobby (open slots, total number of players, era, XP modifier, gold per village, fog/shroud)
* input history (chat, commands, ..) - note: rujasu is working on this feature
=== Story Screen improvements ===
see http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=439346#p439346 for the suggestion and https://gna.org/patch/?1587 for a patch that already touched that area heavily

== GUI2 related features ==
GUI2 is the new gui engine Mordante/SkeletonCrew is working on.
* Information on the wiki can be found here http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/GUIToolkit
* The source code is under src/gui/
* The configuration config files are under data/gui/default

Some tasks need the --new-widgets since the code is only shown in the experimental mode. Tasks which need this switch have the * in the title.

At the moment there are no easy tasks available.

== Miscellaneous ==

=== More powerful village naming ===
'''Adding mountain names and other features to village names, having a second random name in village names'''

Currently the village naming engine has a very good structure that could allow
more powerfull names to be generated.
Understanding how it works should be quite easy, and a few usefull improvements could be added.

* Currently villages can use lake names and river names, this should be extended to other features like bridges, swamps, mountains etc...
* It would be nice to have a separate list of "first sylabus" and "last sylabus" for naming. That's not really needed in english, but some translations could use it
* Again, it is common to have villages with more than one "random" word in them. having a $name2 variable would be nice

Euschn 24/03/2009

=== Debug Mode ===
* New debug command functionality (setting additional status.variables, possibly terrain)
=== Option to disable terrain animations globally ===
see https://gna.org/bugs/?15976

please think a little about use cases (editor, game etc...)

ask boucman for details

=== Add a cycle parameter to the unit animation WML ===

Animations have a "cycle" internal parameter that decides if the animation loops when it finishes.

Right now that parameter is decided purely by the engine depending on the circumstances, but it would make sense to move it to a frame paramter.

This task is mainly to add a new boolean parameter in the particle class and using/exposing it to WML in a way similar to a unit_frame

ask boucman for details

== Bugs ==

== See Also ==

[[NotSoEasyCoding]]

[[Category:Development]]
[[Category:Future]]

SoC2012 Tyrannodogg Make lua AI developement easier

2012-04-02T06:44:20Z

Tyrannodogg: Created page with '{{SoC2012Student}} Category:SoC_Ideas_AI_Lua_AI_Usage_2012 =Description= <h4>Tyrannodogg - Make lua AI development and usage easier</h4> At the moment the parts, which make…'

{{SoC2012Student}}
[[Category:SoC_Ideas_AI_Lua_AI_Usage_2012]]

=Description=
<h4>Tyrannodogg - Make lua AI development and usage easier</h4>
At the moment the parts, which make a lua AI, are scattered around several WML Entities, resulting in a load of boilerplate code.

My approach is to shift more parts of the functionality into lua code, in a way that simple scripts can handle all steps necessary.

This includes wrapping the current default AI for lua usage.

I will also provide scripts for logging and further debugging.

=IRC=
Tyrannodogg

=Questionnaire=

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

Hi, my name is Tilo Fischer. I am a graduate student at Universität zu Lübeck, Germany.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

tyrannodogg /at/ googlemail /dot/ com

1.3) If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?

Tyrannodogg

1.4) Why do you want to participate in summer of code?

I was looking for a interesting project, to get involved before I finish my studies and start working.
Honestly publicity and pay are a nice bonus.

1.5) What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I am studying computer science at Universität zu Lübeck and got my bachelor's degree last year.
My areas of specialisation are robotics and software systems engineering.

1.6) What country are you from, at what time are you most likely to be able to join IRC?

I am from Germany. So I'll be online mostly between 20:00 and 24:00 CEST, respectively 18:00 to 22:00 UTC.

1.7) Do you have other commitments for the summer period ? Do you plan to take any vacations ? If yes, when.

No other commitments are planned for now. Depending on the weather I may do a few weekend trips to the beach.

2) Experience

2.1) What programs/software have you worked on before?

My study included a few projects, each lasting for half a year:

# A skat game, implemented in Java including an AI, which I was in charge of
# Developing an AI for sailing robots
# Developing a moodle clone
# Developing a Runtime Verification Framework for Java using AspectJ to add events to the tested code

My bachelor thesis included modifying a remote control software for EPucks.

2.2) Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)

Except for my bachelor thesis the projects named above were handled in small 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, I haven't participated yet.

2.4) Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.

Unfortunately not

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes, I am.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I rarely play something unless my schedule allows it and I need some recreation.

2.5.2) What type of games?

RPGs, RTS and round based Strategy

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I like opponents, whose weakness has to be figured out and exploited in order to win.
This mainly includes AI opponents and sometimes human ones.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

Gameplay is more important to me.

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 occasionally played Wesnoth and quit due to a lack of time. I never got good enough to attempt a multiplayer game.

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.

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 SVN (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.

English is my first foreign language. I learned it in school for 9 years and was in Australia for a student exchange.
I seamlessly understand English, but my writing may contain a few grammatical errors.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

German and English

3.3) Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.

I haven't done much of support yet or wesnoth online. Usually I stay calm even if I am insulted.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

This depends on whether I have a good understanding of the subject and the feedback I get.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I think so.

3.6) Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?

At least I should be able to recognize obviously useless comments on my work.

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 like to discuss architectural decisions, which affect others, too.
I want to avoid rendering related tasks impossible, gather suggestions and communicate the changes.
On the other hand I can handle isolated tasks autonomously.

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?

I selected "AI: Make lua AI development and usage easier". Adding a debug framework seems to be an interesting task.
But in order to implement it extending the luaai engine ( and make it easier to configure ) is necessary.

4.2) If you have invented your own project, please describe the project and the scope.

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

I am particularly interested in projects involving language design and the interaction of several languages.
Lua is also my favorite programming language.
So I think this project fits best to my experiences from past projects and my interests.

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".

The first half of the time should be dedicated to reducing the boilerplate code and wrapping the RCA CAs into the lua engine.
In the second part I will implement as much requested debugging features as possible.

4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can

I plan either to implement the RCA main_loop in lua or to register the candidate actions automatically to it.
Therefore it would be reasonable to wrap the RCA candidate actions into lua, so they can be imported, registered, used directly or indirectly or overwritten in lua with minimal effort.
Since some other proposal also include this, it could be done in collaboration.
Meanwhile a survey could take place asking the AI developers what kind of debugging features they request.

To improve debugging capabilities a set functions to handle logging or to register callbacks could be predefined. In order to (de)activate these features the user can choose from different implementations at the beginning of his/her AI code by loading it.
The most interesting callback would connect to another process, which then controls the AI to work stepwise and prints out the values of a variable.
This step also seems to be the most difficult one and depends on the previous steps and other issues. Whether it is possible or not has to be evaluated during the process.
Further steps include the handling of behavior candidate actions.

4.6) What do you expect to gain from this project?

I hope for an interesting task and getting in touch with the Open Source Community.

4.7) What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?

If my project is considered useful and my schedule allows it, I will gladly come back and help with further development.

5) Practical considerations

5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages?

* Subversion (used for all commits)
SVN is the most common versioning system at my university.
* C++ (language used for all the normal source code)
A few of the university projects not named above were written in C++
* STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)
No, I never used this libraries directly.
* Python (optional, mainly used for tools)
I use Python occasionally, but prefer to solve most problems in Lua
* build environments (eg cmake/scons)
I have no problem compiling projects with cmake. For my projects I prefer to write makefiles or similar buildscripts directly.
* WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)
Not yet, but seems to be easy understandable, although it's quite extensive.
* Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)
I've been using Lua for 3 years for all kinds of prototypes.

5.2) Which tools do you normally use for development? Why do you use them?

I am a minimalist and feel most comfortly developing with Lua and vim, but depending on the scope and language of the project I add a few other tools.
Eg. for Java projects I prefer Eclipse.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

Java, Lua, C, Shell-Script, LaTeX

also familiar with

C++, MATLAB ,SML ,Erlang, Python, AspectJ, Prolog

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!

If I am accepted, I will add some more contact information.

In general, students should be as verbose as possible in their answers and feel free to elaborate.