Difference between revisions of "User:Shuger"

Revision as of 22:12, 16 April 2010

Basics

Write a small introduction to yourself.

I'm computer science student living in Poland. I'm interested generally in game davelopment. I usually focus on graphics.

Email, IRC, Forums

Email - shugerpl@gmail.com
IRC - shuger
Forums - shuger

Why do you want to participate in summer of code?

I' want to improve my skills and i always wanted to get involved with open-source community. GSoC is a great occasion because it allows me to work on a project full time.

What are you studying, subject, level and school?

I'm currently studying Computer Science, year 4, specialty: internet technologies and algorithms. At Gdansk University of Technology; Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics

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

I'm from Poland. I can be on IRC between 8:00 and 22:00 UTC.

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

I will have exams in June 17-28. I have only 3 exams this year so i won't be occupied this entire period. propably a few days. My classes end June 16. I might have some less time so i plan to start working earlier then 24 may and on weekends, to make it event for days when i will have less time. This will be the case quite often since i have many classes this semester.

As for summer i don't have any commitments nor vacation planned, but i would like to go somwhere propably(no longer then two times two days each, and i will do those on weekends if possible).

Experience

What programs/software have you worked on before?

Nothing publicly released, mostly some little projects of my own, games mostly. Also a whole lot of projects for university classes.

Have you developed software in a team environment before?

Yes, most of my university projects are team projects. Team sizes ranged from two to four.

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 didn't.

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

I'm not.

Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Sure.

What type of gamer are you?

I like to play games but not so much as I used too. While I still play i now spend more times working on my own game projects rather then play others.

What type of games?

RPGs, strategies, platformers, sometimes some FPS. I usallt play indie or PS2 games.

What type of opponents do you prefer?

No strong preference here but i favor real people over AI if i know them personally.

Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

Story as a bit more important then gameplay to me. I really enjoy good story and i sometimes can play threw otherwise crappy game if the script is interesting.

Have you played Wesnoth? If so, tell us roughly for how long and whether you lean towards single player or multiplayer.

I played singleplayer since i enjoyed storylines in campaigns. I tried multi too but didn't liked it as much because of different play style and lack of story, also because off skill gap.

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.

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.

My English is pretty fluent, i don't have any problem understanding it in speech or text but i sometimes make mistakes when speaking/writing.

What spoken languages are you fluent in?

Polish, English.

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

Not really sure what you means by "good" but i don't have problem communicating and i'm not easily discouraged. I'm rather calm person.

Do you give constructive advice?

Yes, i do it all the time in discussions with other students in my unverstiy.

Do you receive advice well?

I listen to everyone who tries to give me advice and try to measure it's quality. I'm much more keen to listen people who have experience same/greater than me.

Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?

I think so.

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 would first ask for opinions to see what others think but i'm reluctant to have huge discussions without having at least proof of concept. From my experience sometimes good ideas turn out to ba bad, and bad to be good when you actually start implementing them, so before you try - it's hard to say.

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 sprite sheet implementation, i would like to focus on reducing memory requiements and increasing performace.

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

Why did you choose this project?

Because it fits my area of interest. I am working on my own 2d game which -same as Wesnoth - uses SDL library for graphics. I have been investigating performance issues and this project would allow me to spend a lot of time doing things that greatly interests me. A privilege i don't have, when there are university projects deadlines to meet.

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".

Start right after being accepted. I want to compensate for less time i'll have before my uni classes end.

April 26 - start working
May 26 - prototype of loading spritesheet with manually created wml code
June 16 - end of classes at university, start of exams
June 28 - end of exams, past this date i will have much more time
July 16 - midterm evaluation. Fully working spritesheets and command line program to generate them from images
August 16 - a python gui tool for editing spritesheets and generating wml code; submit evaluation
past August 16 - continue working of wesnoth if i like it :)

Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can

http://wiki.wesnoth.org/GSoC_Sprite_Sheets_Shuger

What do you expect to gain from this project?

Experience and satisfaction. Getting involved wih wesnoth development community.

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

Satisfaction from working on a project and good community. Persective of switching of Wesnoth to OpenGL rendering at some point in the future. I have actually much bigger experience with 2d OpenGL then SDL_blitting(simply because it's faster and just as much cross-platform, i still used SDL for all non-rendering stuff). This actualy interests me and i always liked aspects related to performance. This was one of the things i considered when i chose my major at university.

Practical considerations

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

Subversion (used for all commits) - I used it and i know the basics
C++ (language used for all the normal source code) - 4+ years of experience, my langueage of choice for most of things
STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth):
- STL - i use it all the time
- Boost - never used it
- SDL - i have a lot experience with it, i first used SDL when i started learining C++, been using it ever since. projects i did with it involved mostly event handling and video (both vanilla SDL blitting and using it for creating context and window handling for OpenGL)
Python (optional, mainly used for tools) - i know all the basics needed to write simple windows application and i'm actively learning it now
build environments (eg cmake/autotools/scons) - not much experience here but i know how to create and edit basic makefile
WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language) - not familiar, catching up right now
Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios) - i know the basics

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

Windows: Visual Studio 2010 - because of great code completion, debugging and profiling
Linux: Codeblocks or vim + g++ + make -

On the other note i would like to work using Test Driven Development principles.

What programming languages are you fluent in?

C\C++ - very fluent, i use them all the time
C# and Java - a bit less but still.
Python - not as good as C++ but actively learning (i like the speed of development)

Would you mind talking with your mentor on telephone / internet phone?

I don't mind at all.

@@ Line 112: / Line 112: @@
 ====What would make you stay in the Wesnoth community after the conclusion of SOC?====
-Satisfaction from working on a project and good community. Persective of switching of Wesnoth to OpenGL rendering at some point in the future. I have actually much bigger experience with 2d OpenGL then SDL_blitting(simply because it's faster and just as much cross-platform, i still used SDL for all non-rendering stuff). This actualy interests me and i always liked aspects realted to performance. This was one of the things i considered when i chose my major at university.
+Satisfaction from working on a project and good community. Persective of switching of Wesnoth to OpenGL rendering at some point in the future. I have actually much bigger experience with 2d OpenGL then SDL_blitting(simply because it's faster and just as much cross-platform, i still used SDL for all non-rendering stuff). This actualy interests me and i always liked aspects related to performance. This was one of the things i considered when i chose my major at university.
 ==Practical considerations==