SummerOfCodeProposal gabba

Introduction

I'm a third year student in software engineering at École Polytechnique de Montréal (http://www.polymtl.ca), in Québec, Canada. I've always been passionate about games, and I'm a regular player of Battle for Wesnoth.

You can reach me at: gabrielmorin _-AT-_ gmail _-DOT-_ com

IRC: gabm

Wesnoth forums and GNA!: gabba

I also have a skype account for communicating with my mentor.

I'm awake/available for the project roughly from UTC 14:00 to 22:00. When the SOC starts, I plan to be in IRC around UTC 15:00 for at least one hour everyday, but I'll have to see with my mentor what's most efficient. Until then I'll do my best to show up on IRC so people can get to know me, but university keeps me very busy!

Languages spoken: French, English, Spanish

I've been itching for a long time to contribute something to one of my favorite open-source games, and this program seems like the perfect opportunity. Furthermore, I intend to validate this summer's work as an internship with my university.

Experience

I've dabbled with code since the age of 15 (more or less), where I copied my first Basic program line by line from Science&Vie magazine. It contained a bug, so that was also my first bug fix! I self-learned Java when I was 18 by going through most of the Java Tutorial.

However my first serious programming projects were at my university, where we have a large (5-person, minimum 10 hours a week) team project every year. These projects were:

• 1st year: assemble a robot complete with motor, wheels, microcontroller and sensors, and program it to follow lines traced on the ground and detect and avoid obstacles. This was developed in C/C++ under linux, and cross-compiled for the microcontroller. We used Eclipse as our IDE.

• 2nd year: starting from the given specifications, program a 3D Pinball game and an editor to create different pinball tables. This time they threw everything they could at us, so we could learn to use different technologies and interoperate them efficiently. Therefore, we programmed both in C++ (for the backend) and Java (for the editor's interface), with JNI and JAWT to glue them together. We used XML to save the pinball tables (using the Xerces library), the Box2D engine for the physics simulation, OpenGL for graphics, FMOD for sound, and a couple smaller libraries for things like calculating the convex shell of a 3D model. We modeled our objects in 3d Studio MAX.

I was team leader on this project, as well as the third year one.

I could provide the source of that project to my mentor(s) if they ask for it, so they can see how I work. I would write a lot of that code differently (and hopefully better) today, but it still shows I can code something that works.

• 3rd year: the idea this time (We're in the last stages of this project as I write) was to take the specifications from last year and adapt them to answer an imaginary client's (represented by a teacher) needs. The main change was adding multiplayer gameplay. We chose to implement a client-server architecture where the physics would be calculated on the server; all players share a dome-shaped table and compete for points. This time again we had to use a mix of technologies: the server run under linux, and we have a Windows XP client and a Windows Mobile 5 (Pocket PC) client. We coded in C++ and C# this time, and we used the RakNet (network), Bullet (physics) and Irrlicht (graphics) libraries.

As you can see, I did most of my software development in teams of two to five people. Which doesn't mean I can't work alone, I'm very autonomous.

Open Source Involvement

I got involved mostly in two open source projects: TA Spring and Battle for Wesnoth.

TA Spring (http://spring.clan-sy.com): I became an active participant on the forums (under the nickname 'gabba') since the early days of the project. I contributed a lot of ideas, many of which were implemented; for instance the terrain map that determines regions of the map that hinder or accelerate unit movements. I also did one or two hacks to the source code and posted them on the forum, but I was not much involved with the coding.

Battle for Wesnoth: I was active for a while on the forums under the nickname 'gabba', and again I mainly contributed ideas, especially in the domain of AMLA (units improving beyond their maximum XP level).

Irrlicht, Bullet: This is very light involvement, but I try to contribute back whatever I may need to fix in those open-source engines. For instance, I contributed a small patch (See: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=184440#184440) to Irrlicht to fix a bug in the Windows Mobile version.

Gaming experience

I'm very passionate about games, and I like collecting and playing all the classic games in every genre, be they recent or old. I also love playing and following open-source games. I love strategy games and roguelikes. As far as opponents go, I prefer playing against an AI, however I regularly have LAN parties with my friends (and yes, we play Wesnoth!). I also play online from time to time.

In games, I like a good mix of story and gameplay, but I'm certainly better at creating the gameplay part than the story part of a game.

Wesnoth playing experience

I've played the main campaign (Heir to the Throne) several times, as well as a few others. As said above I regularly have a game of multiplayer Wesnoth with some close friends.

Communication skills

Language

French is my mother tongue, but I'm perfectly fluent in English, both written and spoken (even though there's room for improvement). And I can hold a conversation in Spanish.

Social skills

I'm familiar with forums and the flame wars that can erupt; I generally keep my cool and try to be diplomatic, until people calm down and start reasoning instead of shouting. I give and take constructive advice, but I don't follow every random suggestion that's thrown at me either.

Project

I selected the "Reorganizing the savegame format" idea. It has a pretty clear task definition, and I intend to do the work as described.

I love the idea of multiplayer campaigns, and working on the backend to make it happen seems like a perfect way to contribute. Besides, it covers an area of programmming I'm comfortable with: I like designing an architecture, working with files, defining protocols, and so on.

Timeline

I'll be working on this project from May 1st (or even possibly April 26th) to August 17st, for a total of 15 weeks. I may take one week off for vacations, but the exact date is to be determined. I'll spend 35 hours a week on the project, most of the time working during "business hours". To validate my internship, my university requires me to work at least 35 hours a week, so I won't be cheating on this.

Here's the breakdown by week of how I plan the 15 weeks of this project:

Week 1: Setting up, compilation, technical problems. Explore the Wesnoth source code, hang out on forums and IRC to ask questions (which I'll keep doing the whole summer :P).

Weeks 2-3: Analysis and documentation of current save code.

Weeks 4-6: Design and prototypes; mid-term evaluation

Weeks 7-10: Implement Single and multi-player using the new save code

Weeks 11-14: Implement campaigns and integrate everything.

Week 15: wrap up.

Technical Details

Unfortunately (and I know it's the weak point of my application), I don't have time right now to delve into the savegame code and give specific details. Final exams are approaching, and I have a large project to finish on time. Besides, this project demands careful analysis and planning, and I doubt I could submit coherent technical details by taking a quick look.

However with the experience of last year's and this year's project, I'm confident in my ability to learn to swim by being thrown in the water. As I'll be working on this full-time, I'll catch up quickly with what I need to know to start working. I have allocated time for this in my timeline.

I'll be using the GoF design patterns (with UML diagrams as needed), Boost smart pointers, and good design practices to make sure I submit clean and efficient code. Also, I suppose that my experience with serializing data to write to XML or transmit across the network will come in handy when dealing with WML.

My expectations

I want to acquire more software development experience, and the satisfaction to have contributed to an open-source project, which happens to be a game that I love. Furthermore it will be the perfect jump-start to keep contributing to Wesnoth: once I've dived deep into the codebase, I'll find it much easier to implement other features or keep improving my GSOC work.

I've been lurking and posting on the Wesnoth forums for a while, so I already consider myself a part of the Wesnoth community :).

Practical considerations

I use subversion extensively for all my projects. C++ is my main programming language, wich I used in all three of my major projects. I know Java rather well too. However I never used Python, but I delved in the source of some programs written in Python, such as Wrye Bash, a modding tool for Oblivion.

As far as IDEs go, my favorite C++ development tool is probably Netbeans, but I can be just as efficient under Visual Studio or Eclipse.

Then there are the peripheral tools that I use most of the time: Doxygen for documentation, makefiles or batch files/bash scripts, property sheets under Visual Studio, Dia for UML diagrams, and so on and so forth. I usually try to find the best open-source tool for the job.