SoC 2014 Spoffy Finishing and Enhancing the UMCD

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Revision as of 22:22, 12 March 2014 by Spoffy (talk | contribs)


This page is related to Summer of Code 2014
See the list of Summer of Code 2014 Ideas



This is a Summer of Code 2014 student page


Description

To put this briefly until I get time to do a more thorough description: I intend to continue working on the User Made Content Daemon, a project started by Trademark last year.

More to come as I fill this out.

IRC

spoffy

Questionnaire

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself. Heyho! I'm Callum, a 1st year Software Engineering student in Southern England! (Well aware this is a public wiki. This will be updated in the actual application!). I'm an avid hacker and open source supporter, going to FOSDEM in 2014 and trying to use as much free software as possible! I also love Hackathons, having gone to 3 between February and March and organising another for late march! All of the code produced in these is available as free software on my Github page (which I encourage people to look at. Especially the Musical Packets hack, it's awesome IMO!).

1.2) State your preferred email address.

spoffeh@gmail.com

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

Spoffy - This will always be my nickname where I can get it! (See my email for what happens when I can't :( )

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

I want to hack on more open source projects. While I do enjoy making my own from scratch, it'd be nice to actually chip in and get involved with larger projects. Sadly, the entry barrier to some of these can be quite high, between mailing lists, IRC, coding styles, learning the source, etc, and I rarely seem to have time between the other things I'm hacking to justify it! For me, Google Summer of Code really does help make that initial apparent investment seem more than worthwhile! The money also means I can spend my summer hacking awesome open source things, rather than working at a shop or taking an Internship at somewhere boring and/or propietary. That wouldn't be nearly as cool!

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

Software Engineer MEng, 1st year. I'll update the school on the actual application. Again, I'm well aware of the internet's scope.

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

England! I try to be on IRC whenever possible, but naturally I sleep. I aim for at least 7pm - 11pm GMT each day, and I'm usually on and off at various points between 10am and 12am. Soon (Or perhaps already, if I haven't changed this by the time its submitted) I plan on just rigging one up to run permanently on a remote server to log ALL the messages. :)

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

I have a planned vacation abroad for two weeks around June time, however I plan on taking my laptop and a Pi, with the full intention of continuing coding regardless.

2) Experience

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

I spent 2 years or so prior to University working on a game called Space Station 13 on the BYOND platform. I'm the head programmer for one of the game communities there, although I'm trying to phase out my involvement somewhat due to other commitments (such as SoC and Uni :) ).

Since coming to University, I've played with a variety of projects.. if played is the right word. Since Java is the main language used, I've obviously done a lot of work on Courseworks and extra projects in it, though these are minor things, often with quickly hacked code due to one-week deadlines. Unfortunately, this has also meant University has taken up much of my time, and due to the nature of the projects, left me with little to show for it! (I'll note some exceptions later).

I've also been to a number of hackathons and hacked together projects there, including Musical Packets and a few others (with Musical Packets being one I'm working on refining and looking to continue on and off). These are often made up of very quick prototype code, but are almost always working systems.

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

As mentioned above, I've been a part of/head of the SS13 programming team for a good two or three years, which has varied between 2 and 5 active members in that time. I've also had group projects at University, and a number of hackathons, all of which have involved teams of two or more!

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?

Sadly no, this is my first year! Though it should be an exciting one!

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

As above, I'm involved with Musical Packets (ish, it's only done by 3 people. Does that count as involved?), and SS13, with the latter being phased out. I usually only contribute to these when I have free time, with other things such as Uni taking priority.

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Very much so! I have a rather large game collection, though I'm struggling to find time to play them between all the hacking!

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I'm tempted to say casual? I have lots of games, but I don't often play them.,

2.5.2) What type of games?

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

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.

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.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?


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

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

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

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


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?

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? 

   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)

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

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