SummerOfCodeProposal cjhopman

Basics

1. Write a small introduction to yourself.
   • My name is Chris Hopman, I'm a student of computer science and mathematics. I'm graduating from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in May and will be attending the cs PhD program here in the fall.
2. State your preferred email address.
   • cjhopman@gmail.com
3. If you have chosen a nick for IRC and Wesnoth forums, what is it?
   • My nick is cjhopman pretty much everywhere.
4. Why do you want to participate in summer of code?
5. What are you studying, subject, level and school?
   • I am currently an undergraduate studying mathematics and computer science at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. I will be graduating in May and will be attending the PhD program here in the fall.
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 Wesnoth. If you have gained commit access to our SVN (during the evaluation period or earlier) please state so.
   • I received commit access to the Wesnoth SVN early in 2008. There is a list of some of my contributions below.

Experience

1. What programs/software have you worked on before?
   • The largest program that I have worked on is definitely Wesnoth. Other than that, and other than projects just for classes, I have worked on two other projects. The first is autoscanner. The goal of this program is to do automatic 3d reconstruction of a statue from a short video clip. I did this project with another student for a professor that we worked for. The second project is more of a library of various functions. It can be found here. It is meant primarily to be useful for algorithm competitions (TopCoder, ICPC, etc.) and so is mostly graph theory, computational geometry, linear algebra, and other similar stuff.
2. Have you developed software in a team environment before? (As opposed to hacking on something on your own)
   • Other than Wesnoth, the two projects I just mentioned were both done in groups of 2-3. So, primarily my experience of developing software in a team environment is just that from my contributions to Wesnoth.
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 have not participated in Google Summer of Code before.

Open Source

1. Are you already involved with any open source development projects? If yes, please describe the project and the scope of your involvement.
   • Wesnoth is the only open source project that I am involved in (actually both of my projects on code.google.com are also open source but it's a whole different level). Most of my contribution to Wesnoth has been bug fixes and other minor work, though I have had several larger contributions. There is a list of these below.

Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

1. What type of gamer are you?
   • I am a diverse gamer. I've been playing games for more than 80% of my life (wow, just realized how long it has been)
2. What type of games?
   • I like pretty much all genres. Yet, my favorites tend to be strategy games or rpgs. And those that find a good blend of the two are great. For example, Battle for Wesnoth (some others, too--Final Fantasy Tactics comes to mind).
3. What type of opponents do you prefer?
   • Smart ones. I love the challenge of trying to outplay a smart player.
4. Are you more interested in story or gameplay?
   • It depends. Generally when I am playing single-player games story and gameplay are both important though I am more likely to accept below average gameplay for an above average story than vice-versa. Playing multiplayer, particularly competitive multiplayer, gameplay is much more important.
5. Have you played Wesnoth? If so, tell us roughly for how long and whether you lean towards single player or multiplayer.
   • I have played Wesnoth for a bit over a year. I had focused on single player campaigns but in the last two months have shifted to almost only multiplayer.

Communication skills

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.
   • I am fluent in written English. I had better be as I am definitely not in any others.
2. Are you good at interacting with other players? Our developer community is friendly, but the player community can be a bit rough.
   • Yes, I am good at interacting with other players and with other people in general.
3. Do you give constructive advice?
   • I think that I give constructive advice. I have been a tutor in math and computer science for a couple years and a sailing instructor for longer. Both of these have definitely improved my ability to give constructive advice.
4. Do you receive advice well?
   • Yes, I do. I feel that a factor in this is that I am always interested in learning more and advice often offers an opportunity to do that.
5. Are you good at sorting useful criticisms from useless ones?
   • Yes.

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?

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

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

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?

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

5) Practical considerations

5.1) Are you familiar with any of the following tools or languages? Subversion (used for all commits) C++ (language used for all the normal source code) Python (optional, mainly used for tools) build environments (eg cmake/autotools/scons)

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

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

5.4) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

5.5) At what hours are you awake and when will you be able to be in IRC (please specify in UTC)

5.6) 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.