SoC2014 arveanor ai

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

Description

Arveanor Global AI

Give an ai player a set of potential objectives to pursue such as taking a village, killing an enemy, defending a village etc. Also give each ai different behavior modes based on the information they have access to. i.e. fight aggressively, fight defensively, fight cautiously etc. The ai would, depending on it's current behavior mode pursue the objectives more or less rigorously depending on how they align with the current behavior.

The behaviors and objectives would not necessarily mix strongly with recruitment, however a similar system to what would analyze which behavior to be used would also be able to inform recruiting patterns. Obviously certain unit types and a large amount of certain terrain hexes give good reason to favor certain units in recruitment, of course gaining vision and taking outlying villages (i.e. AI global objectives) would play into recruitment in terms of recruiting faster units.

IRC

arveanor

Questionnaire

TODO: fill out the questionnaire, on your copy of this page. The questions are provided in the SoC Information for Google page.

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

My name is Peter Keyser and I am a second year computer science student at Clemson University in the US. I have always been a gamer but throughout highschool and now college I have become much more interested in making games rather than just playing them. I've kicked around some of my own ideas in my free time but am excited for an opportunity to work on a larger better put together project.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

pkeyser@clemson.edu

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

arveanor

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

I hope to do game development after I graduate from college, and GSoC would be a great opportunity to get hands on experience with coding as a part of a team which is valuable to me in my own growth as a programmer but also as a valuable addition to my resume. Also to be honest as I've grown as a programmer, jobs like working in food services or retail become much less satisfying, and I'd love to actually put the skills I'm learning to the test.

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

I am studying Computer Science at Clemson University. I am in my second year and have been learning Algorithms & data Structures, discreet math, calculus, linear algebra, software development and computer organization.

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

I am from the United States, and am most likely able to join IRC at various times from noon til midnight EST (GMT - 5). I give a wide range because my class schedule is a bit weird for the rest of this semester, but over the summer I'll be available during that same time range, just much more frequently

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

I don't have any other commitments, but I may go on a vacation with my family one week (not sure when) but if I do that I will have internet access still and can continue to work on wesnoth during that time.

2) Experience

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

I have worked with C, C++, C#, Objective C, Java, HTML & ActionScript and have worked with Unity3d, Eclipse, other IDE's and tortoise svn.

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

I have worked with a partner before but have mostly just worked on my own.

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 not participated in GSoC 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.

I am not involved with any open source development projects.

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

Pretty Hardcore

2.5.2) What type of games?

RTS/RPG/FPS/Indie I try not to discriminate by genre too much, I just try to find what I like and play that.

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I can get pretty chatty in multiplayer matches, so I often like to find other people to talk to, but I also really enjoy finding people that are about my skill level, so that the matches are hard fought and barely won.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

Probably more interested in gameplay, but I think a great story can really add something awesome and unique to a games experience. Bioshock, for example.

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 did not start playing wesnoth until I found out about the project through GSoC, and as such have not played it a great deal. I have not yet played multiplayer, as I've spent most of my time in Single Player trying to get a feel for the ai and various strategies.

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 repository (during the evaluation period or earlier) please state so.

I have not contributed any patches to Wesnoth.

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 native language.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

not fluent in other spoken languages

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

Yep, I've found myself pretty good at navigating the internet's sometimes frightful flaming and other rough spots.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

Whenever I can, I try to.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I usually need a bit of time to take it in, especially if it hits close to home so to speak, but I think I usually take it pretty well, yes.

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

Yes although truthfully I think even most "useless" criticisms have something valuable that can be gleaned from them if you look carefully.

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'd like to make sure, at least on a higher level, that I'm working in the right direction before I do too much coding -- enough time is spent refactoring and rewriting code as is.

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 the AI improvement project. I want to concentrate on ensuring that the AI is always working towards a goal, but also able to change it's strategy to avoid being exploited too easily. I find that in my own experiences, once I learn how to exploit a game's AI I've lost a lot of the challenge and fun.

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

I did not invent my own project.

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

Conceptually this proposal is relatively simple and could be implemented effectively with a variety of approaches, but since I am only passingly familiar with the code of wesnoth at present I haven't decided how I want to implement it, and would need to spend some time iterating over the best possible solutions if I am accepted.

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

Experience with coding as well as working on a project and working with github.

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

I didn't know about Wesnoth before SoC, but now that I've found it, I think it's really great, and even if I don't get accepted for SoC I would love to support the project with bug fixes etc, so I doubt I'm going away whatever else happens.

5) Practical considerations

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

• Git (used for all commits) have used other vcs but not git
• C++ (language used for all the normal source code) very familiar
• STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth) familiar with STL
• Python (optional, mainly used for tools) not familiar
• build environments (eg cmake/scons) not familiar
• WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language) not familiar
• Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios) not familiar

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

Unity3d/mono develop lately for unity projects of course. also use eclipse and notepad++ for writing code. and of course google/stackoverflow to help me get through problems and find new ways to do things.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

C++ & Java

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 would be fine with talking with my mentor on the phone.