User:Renli3000

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

My name is Li Ren, a MS student at University of Delaware. I’m studying in major of Computer Science and going to graduate in 2014. I love battle chess liked games in my childhood and Wesnoth is one of my best loved games ever played. I started programming in high school and start learn C++ at first year in college. I got a lot of experience in C++ projects in past 4 years. I plan to apply this project not only because I want to gain experience of game development but also impelled by the passion of strategy games.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

renli3000@hotmail.com

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

Yes, my nick name of IRC and forum is Noah.

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

Because I found some project in this summer code is very interesting for me, especially for the project Wesnoth.

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

I’m studying in Computer Science, at level of Master in University of Delaware.

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

I came from China and currently study in USA. In summer term I can join IRC in daytime of EST time.

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

There is no other commitment and vocation plan for this summer period.

2) Experience

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

I did internship in a physical design company of HK in position of Sofrware development Engineer. During that period I developed tools and plugins for Physical Design IDE and a 3D module tools for company based on C++/OpenGL. Besides, during my undergraduate study, I did many coursework projects, such as a 3D face recognition and reconstruction tool, and a simple card game.

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

Yes. I did the IDE tools project with other 2 team member and a supervisor during my internship time.

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 haven’t participate to GSC before and this is the first time I try on this kind of subject. But I have confident in this project for my experience and passion.

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

Not yet. Seriously, I once commented an error for the Craftbukkit project for the game Minecraft on github, though it was not admitted finally and the error was fixed with another feature patch. I always watch their code and update processing.

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes, especially for strategy games.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I don’t understand what exactly this question mean. I like play video games in my free time but not addictive.

2.5.2) What type of games?

Most of games I played was strategy and role play, such as the Sid Meier's Civilization, Flame Emblem and Final Fantasy serious.

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I prefer to play with real player as opponent, since the AI opponents are always not smart enough and the designer always set difficulty by the level of enemy and cheating.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

It’s hard to say what I’m interested more because I think for a good game both of them are quite important. But I think more people might be attracted by the gameplay of a video game.

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 started to play Wesnoth in 2008 and frequently played it in several months after that and rarely play tile now. I played some scenario for single player and spent more time on multiplayer.

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.

There is few patch when I started to play this game.

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.

Although I’m not a native speaker I can speak and write English well. There is no language problem during my past studying and working experience.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

In both Chinese and 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.

Yes. I always interact with other player when I play multiple game or other MMO games.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

Yes. I was used to evaluate the new game I played and consider why I was attracted and what the shortage made feel it was not wonderful. Sometime I would like to search the forum and take the advice though most of them were ignored.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

Yes. I had experience of manage a forum for Chinese student during my undergraduate study. There are quite a lot of advice and criticisms I received during that time. I did my best to receive advices and explain my work.

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

Same as answer 3.5, I received mass of criticisms at beginning of construction of that forum.

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 was trained to do project by plan of everything before start of coding in college. Personally I would like to try some new features if time allowed. But I still think the plan and management are important for a successful project.

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 choose the project of AI:Improve configuration and behavior in mainline campaigns.

I've been learning and watching this project and lua script. The main purpose is to configure the campaign AI to utilize new capabilities of the engine.

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

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

Because the main campaigns is one of the most important part in the game. People who touch this game will first taste the mainline campaigns。 Besides I'm really interested in AI development.

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".

I have no holiday plan during the following three month. The detail of schedule still need to discusses with development team because I'm not clear how much work need to be done yet.

4.5) Include as much technical detail about your implementation as you can.

New features of AI can be improved in each scenario by adding C++ and lua code for events and corresponding behaviors. The strategy of AI engine should be configured as the design of each campaign scenario. Many testing need to be done for each campaign by different user behaviors.

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

Gain the experience of developing large project and skill of coding in lua.

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

Definitely. I love this game and enjoy the development of the game I like.

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)

I familiar with C++ and had experience with a solution of Python. I know something about Lua as well.

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

I used to use C++ because I familiar with it most. Sometime I choose Java if necessary because it’s an easier one for group development.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

C/C++ and 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!

No problem. My phone number is 1-302-268-4347.