SoC2014 Fulcrum SDL2

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See the list of Summer of Code 2014 Ideas

This is a Summer of Code 2014 student page

Description

Fulcrum - SDL2 migration project proposal

I propose to help with migration from SDL 1.2 to SDL 2.

IRC

Fulcrum

Questionnaire

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

I'm second year university student from Serbia. I met with Open Source world before university started, but I started getting more interested into in around two years ago. I like minimalism, technical stuff, control engineering, rock and roll music, aircrafts and pure awesomeness of 64k demos.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

en.encore gmail com

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

It's Fulcrum for both IRC and forums.

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

Because I want to get the experience in team work and sense of how it's like to work on a big project, improve my SDL knowledge, get a good reference and earn money while doing all this of course.

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

I'm doing my second year on Computing and Control Engineering BSc at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad.

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

I'm from Serbia and I'm usually able to join IRC around 20:00 CET.

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 other commitments for the summer period and I don't plan to take any vacations.

2) Experience

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

Pretty much all the programs I've made so far were relatively small ones that I made while learning about some specific area of software development (from an in-game WinAmp plugin for Call of Duty Series using DirectX to a hardware virtualization project based on Intel's VT-X technology).

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

Yes, but the team had three members at maximum. One of the reasons for my participation in GSoC is to get more experience in team work.

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 - this will hopefully be my first time.

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

No, but I was last year when I made a 3D remake of classic snake game for my university project which you can check out here: http://www.acs.uns.ac.rs/sr/node/237/1430152 (it's called snake3D-0.9.1.tar.gz).

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

I can't really call myself a gamer since I don't have the time for that right now due to university obligations. I'll answer following questions as if I still had the time to play games.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

Team player.

2.5.2) What type of games?

First person shooter like Quake 3, Battlefield, etc...

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

Those challenging ones, with a skill level near mine.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

I'm interested in both.

2.5.5) 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 went in game for a few times just to check out if compiling process went as it should.

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.

-

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.

My written English is pretty decent I'd say.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

Serbian, 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 believe I am.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

As a future engineer, I try to give constructive advice whenver possible, since I have learned from personal experience how greatly helpful constructive advices can be.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I try to listen to all the time and absorb as much information as possible and then pick out the things I think are useful/valuable.

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

I like to think I am.

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

That varies on how much time there is to finish the given task. If I can catch up with it and I'm interested enough in subject, sure, I'll try to figure out something on my own.

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?

Yes I did. I selected the SDL 2 transition project and I'd like to concentrate on migrating from surface-based to accelerated 2D drawing.

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 chose this project because I already have some experience with SDL 1.2 from last year (see 2.4) so I think I'll be able to help. I also want to get more familiar with new version of SDL so that I can use it later in my future projects.

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

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

I expect to get to know SDL 2 better and improve my programming skills in general.

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

I don't really know yet.

5) Practical considerations

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

   Git (used for all commits)
   C++ (language used for all the normal source code)
   STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)
   Python (optional, mainly used for tools)
   build environments (eg cmake/scons)
   WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)
   Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios) 

Yes: Git, C++, STL, SDL, build environments

No: Boost, Python, WML, Lua

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

On Windows: Microsoft Visual Studio, OllyDBG, IDA.

On Linux: CodeBlocks, Sublime Text 2.

I use these tools because they make programming easier for me and that way make me more productive.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

C, C++, Java, x86 Assembly

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!