SoC2014 RiftWalker Unify SP MP

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

RiftWalker - Game Engine: Unify SP and MP

Currently, certain add-on content works only in single- or multi-player games. The purpose of this project is to ensure that all user-made content works across game modes by unifying and extending the code paths that handle configs for single- and multi-player games.

Classes

Our classes of interest begin with playmp_controller, which extends playsingle_controller. playsingle_controller extends play_controller play_controller extends controller_base, which extends command_executor

Play_controller and its subclasses are responsible for handling input, events, and configs for a given game. In order to ensure compatibility, I will start by implementing all unique functions of playmp_controller in playsingle_controller so that playsingle_controller will have some way of handling everything that playmp_controller can. These functions will be virtual so that we can ultimately abstract away the type of controller in most code.

IRC

RiftWalker

Questionnaire

Basics

Write a small introduction to yourself.

My name is Nathan Walker. I'm an undergraduate Computer Science major at Vanderbilt University.

State your preferred email address.

nathan.b.walker@vanderbilt.edu

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

RiftWalker

Why do you want to participate in summer of code?

My primary motivation is that I wan to gain experience working on a large project, especially one that I'm interested in. I decided a while ago that I wanted to spend my summer contributing to an open source project. When I recently learned about GSoC, it seemed perfect. I can earn a little money and reputation doing what I was planning to do for free.

What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I am a Junior studying Computer Science at Vanderbilt University.

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

I am from the United States. I will most likely be online from noon to midnight CST.

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

I have no other plans or commitments.

Experience

What programs/software have you worked on before? I have worked on various projects for classes. Programming classes I have taken or am currently taking include:

• CS 101 - Intro to Programming and Problem Solving
  • Basic Java
• CS 201 - Program Design and Data Structures
  • C++, pointers, recursion, data structures, object-oriented programming
• CS 231 - Computer Organization
  • MIPS assembly
• CS 251 - Intermediate Software Design
  • STL iterators, algorithms, containers, and allocators. Exception safety.
  • Software design patterns. Implementing templatized vector, list, and a pattern-based expression tree.
• CS 270 - Programming Languages
  • Writing Sudoku solvers in C++, Lisp, Prolog, Ruby, and F#.
  • Programming language paradigms and design considerations
• CS 281 - Operating Systems
  • Linux C API's: POSIX message queues, semaphores, shared memory, threads, pthreads
  • More design patterns - wrapping ugly C API's into nice C++ classes
• CS 292 - Big Data
  • SQL, NoSQL: MariaDB, Cassandra, HBase, BigTable

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

No.

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.

Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement. No.

Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes.

What type of gamer are you?

I can be casual or competitive, depending on the game and mood.

What type of games?

My favorite types of games are RTS, MOBA, and RPG, but I also enjoy some turn-based strategy and FPS.

What type of opponents do you prefer?

I prefer human opponents, ideally who are sportsmanlike.

Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

I am more interested in the gameplay.

Have you played Wesnoth? If so, tell us roughly for how long and whether you lean towards single player or multiplayer. We do not plan to favor Wesnoth players as such, but some particular projects require a good feeling for the game which is hard to get without having played intensively.

I have not played Wesnoth. I just finished the tutorial. I'll most likely pick it up pretty hard though, once I have more free time.

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 do not have commit access, but I've submitted one pull request here: https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/pull/122

Communication skills

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 primary language. I write it rather well.

What spoken languages are you fluent in?

I'm fluent only in English.

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

I've gotten used to interacting with players who can be less than polite. If they're being obnoxious, I prefer to mute them.

Do you give constructive advice?

I try to give constructive advice where I can.

Do you receive advice well?

I strive to be as open as possible.

Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?

Unless someone knows more about something than I do, I trust my own judgement first. That being said, I'm always open to the possibility that I'm wrong.

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 wants?

Having tried both approaches, I think that if you're going to spend any significant amount of time on something, it's better to win people over to your idea first. For smaller changes, I think it's less of an issue.

Project

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 chose to unify and extend single-player and multi-player code paths so that user made content will work across game modes.

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

See [Description].

Why did you choose this project?

I chose this project in particular because it seems like a good opportunity to contribute to the project and community. I like the idea of making things run more smoothly. Also, I believe that this project will provide a good challenge for me without being outside my skill set.

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".

Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can

What do you expect to gain from this project?

Mostly experience, and of course some money from Google.

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

As long as there's more

Practical considerations

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

• Git (used for all commits)

Yes, and much more so now that I've gone through the process of submitting my first pull request.

• C++ (language used for all the normal source code)

Fluent. The majority of my programming courses have been taught in C++.

• STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)

I know the STL fluently, Boost not as well, and I have no experience with Sdl.

• Python (optional, mainly used for tools)

I'm not very familiar with python. Most scripting I've done has been in Bash.

• build environments (eg cmake/scons)

I'm familiar with cmake.

• WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)

No experience.

• Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)

No experience.

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

For small projects I use vim, gcc, and git. I like vim because I've gotten used to it and it's intuitive for me. For something as large as Wesnoth, I've been using Code::Blocks so far, and It's worked out well. I may switch back to vim once I figure out a good way to manage large numbers of files.

What programming languages are you fluent in?

C++, C, Lisp, and Java.

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.

I don't mind talking on the phone.