RujasuScenarioEditor

Basics

My name is Jacob Rudolph. I'm twenty years old and currently reside in Pennsylvania. I'm hoping for a career in software development, though I have not decided my exact ambitions yet. My hobbies include acting, and, well, open source game development.

Email: rujasu@yahoo.com

My nick is "rujasu" on IRC and forums. Generally, if you see "rujasu," it's probably me.

I am hoping that Summer of Code will give me enough income to dedicate more of my time to working on one of my favorite open source games, and less time working at a job that may not relate to my ultimate career path.

I'm a junior (third-year) undergraduate student at York College of Pennsylvania, majoring in Computer Science. I've taken nearly every programming-related course possible.

Experience

I have been a developer for Hero of Allacrost (www.allacrost.org) for about a year now, and was recently named lead of the programming team. Hero of Allacrost is an open source project for a single player RPG with 2D graphics; it draws inspiration from games such as Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. This would be my first Summer of Code experience.

I believe in using a general agile development model. It is clear that the waterfall model does not work in open source development. Documentation is important, but more important is producing readable and flexible code. Creating full prototypes is unnecessary for this project, but it will be helpful to create some interface mockups. For this project, the best method of testing is having people try using the software; I don't feel that automated testing will be useful for this project.

For the Allacrost project, I have worked on bugfixing and extending the functionality of the game's shopping and game menu interfaces. I have also contributed ideas, tested for bugs, and worked with scripting in Lua. More recently, I have been mentoring new contributing programmers for the project and working on battle mode.

I consider myself a pretty serious strategy/RPG gamer, though I haven't been playing as many games as I'd like lately. I play single-player games almost exclusively. I like games that challenge me; great gameplay is always the important factor, but a fantasy game needs a great story to be a true classic. I first learned of Wesnoth from a friend, a little over a year ago. I play single-player campaigns and have not tried multiplayer.

Communication skills

I am a native English speaker. I am an effective communicator and have taken academic writing classes through college. I do my best to help anyone who has questions or problems. I am very patient, and I should be able to interact with players easily. Whenever possible, I give constructive advice. I do not give negative or demeaning feedback. I am always willing to listen to advice and constructive criticisms. I am able to recognize when a criticism is accurate and useful.

Project

I chose the scenario editor project from the list. I chose this project because I would like to create an editor that is more usable and flexible than the out-of-date campgen, and one that will ultimately be more powerful.

During the summer, I expect to build an editor that can produce playable scenarios to be used in full campaigns. The editor will be flexible enough to, at some point, include additional features such as importing scenarios from WML. Additional tools can be developed for unit modification and any other possible campaign considerations; this will not be in the scope of my summer project.

The editor will be written in C++. This is my most proficient language, and it allows better integration with other aspects of Wesnoth. (For one thing, map-viewing code could potentially be re-used.) The editor will use Wesnoth's own GUI toolkit, which Mordante is currently developing. This will help to give the editor a united feel with the game itself.

I believe this project will help me to improve my practical software development abilities while doing something I enjoy. I fully intend to continue improving the editor, and possibly contributing to other areas of Wesnoth, once the SoC period is complete.

Practical considerations

I am very familiar with SVN, mainly from my work on Allacrost. Also, I have been using C++ for about six years. Though I have no experience with Python, I am confident in my ability to learn programming languages quickly when needed.

As a Linux user, my work is mostly done on KDE development tools such as KWrite and KDevelop. I believe these are the most easily usable and visually appealing tools available for Linux. I am fluent in C++, Java, and C, with a working knowledge in Lua and a few others. Unfortunately, I am also fluent in BASIC, though I haven't touched it in years.

My only fluent language is English. My knowledge of Spanish is passable at best. Generally, I am awake from 14:00 to 6:00 UTC. I am able to talk over the phone; haven't really done anything with VOIP before.