SummerOfCodeProposal Euschn

Euschn's SoC Proposal: Savegame Reorganization

hi, I'm euschn and I would like to contribute to wesnoth via GSoC

real name: Eugen

age: 26

location: Vienna, Austria

occupation: phd student for computer science, Vienna University of Technology

Questionaire

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

My name is Eugen Jiresch, I live in Vienna, Austria, and I am 26 years old. I am a phd student in computer science at the Vienna University of Technology. My phd project is about formal models of computation and theory of programming languages. Despite the theoretic focus of my phd, I like coding a lot, which is one of my reasons for applying for GSoC.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

jiresch_(atsign)_logic_(dot)_at

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

euschn (same as my gna.org account)

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

There are several reasons. First, I would like to take part in an interesting software development project. By doing so, I want to improve my skills and learn new things about programming. Then, being a gamer myself, I am very interested in contributing to the development a computer game, especially one that seems cool and fun to me (Wesnoth falls in that category). I have often dreamed about a job in game development in the future, and this could be a good opportunity to get started. Additionally, if I want a job for the summer, I want it to be something that is meaningful to me and needed/appreciated by others - like adding desired feature to a game. Finally, being a poor student, 4500$ is a lot of money to me.

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

As mentioned above, I am a phd student in computer science, at Vienna University of Technology

1.6) 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. Not yet, but I plan to do so in the course of my application.

2) Experience

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

Most of the software I have done was for university courses. I have done a bit of programming in games that support modding/custom maps like Starcraft of World of Warcraft, but nothing too fancy. Recently, I became a contributor to the inets project (see 2.4.1)

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

Yes, in university courses and the inets project (see 2.4.1)

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.

2.4) Open Source

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

Yes, I recently became contributor to the inets project ( https://gna.org/projects/inets/ ). inets is a compiler from an interaction nets based language to C (for more information, see http://www.interaction-nets.org/) Interaction nets is an innovative formal model of computation, which is also a focus of my phd project. My involvement so far has been the implementation of extended pattern matching for the computational rules of the inets language, and some bug fixing.

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes, since early childhood!

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I am a passionate gamer, maybe even hardcore - allthough the definition of hardcore is quite fuzzy depending on game and community :). In short, I spend a *lot* of my free time playing computer games and checking out their respective communities.

2.5.2) What type of games?

My favorite genres and games include:

Role playing games: Final Fantasy series, Zelda series, Baldurs Gate series, Diablo series,...

Strategy games: Warcraft series, Starcraft, Spellforce, and just recently Wesnoth

Platforming: the usual old school nintendo stuff

Action: Quake series, Metroid series, Portal

singleplayer vs multiplayer:

I enjoy a good singleplayer game a lot. But I also like multiplayer, and I am doing a lot of online multiplayer gaming. For example, a few years ago I was playing Warcraft 3 online a lot, and got to know the online community pretty well. So while I have not played Wesnoth a lot, I have a good feeling for online gaming communities. (if they are comparable at all!)

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I like opponents that can teach me something and help me improve my skills in a game, or just generally make a game fun. To me, playing against a good and fun oponent in a multiplayer game makes winning or losing of secondary importance. Generally, I do not like oponents who are sore losers, and I am doing my best not to be one, either.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

I would say it depends on the game. Awesome gameplay can make a great game even with a lackluster story (or none at all). In my opinion, this is often true for multiplayer games, where most of the fun comes from human oponents (or allies). But singleplayer games with a weak story can be great, too (everyone who has ever enjoyed a Super Mario game has to agree). Then again, I remember many cool games especially for their story (RPGs mostly, but also some strategy games). So all in all, either can make a great game and I am 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.

I only recently got to know Wesnoth. I have played some of the singleplayer campaigns, and I like it a lot so far. It is a nice mix of strategy and roleplaying, and I plan to continue playing it (apart from getting to know it for GSoC!). I understand that being an experienced wesnoth player helps with some projects, I hope this is not so mandatory for savegame reorganization.

//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.

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.

I am a German native speaker, but I feel I can fully express myself in English.

3.2) 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 fine with interacting with other players, even if it is going to be rough. As mentioned in 2.5.2), I have experience with online gaming communities (especially Blizzard games), so I am used to their not so friendly aspects.

3.3) Do you give constructive advice?

Absolutely, I try to keep my advice as constructive as possible.

3.4) Do you receive advice well?

Yes, constructive advice is a chance to improve myself, and I always give my best to take that chance.

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

Yes.

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 selected Savegame reorganization.

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

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

There are several reasons. First, I want to work on a project that is deemed necessary or desired by the wesnoth community. I think redesigning savegames is such a project. I do not want to work on some feature that noone really wants. Second, I like the concept of multiplayer campaigns. Cooperative multiplayer games are good fun (I like them a lot myself), but they are rare. Only few games have coop modes, especially in combination with story-driven game types like a campaign in wesnoth. So if I can help to promote cooperative game types by improving wesnoth's savegame design, I will be very glad to do so. In general, it seems to me that studying a "messy" design (Im quoting the wiki here) and trying to come up with a better one is a good challenge that I would like to take. Also, I am curious how this component works in a project of this size, as I have not yet worked on such a big program and I would like to learn what makes it tick. Finally, I think I have the required skills to succeed at this project (with help from my mentor of course!). I have good C++ skills and I feel up to study the current implementation and develop a deliberate design in cooperation with my mentor.

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".

My estimated timeline is affected by both "special things" mentioned in the question. First, I will have to spend some time on university stuff up to mid June. In this period, I can of course still work on the GSoC project, just not full time. I think that I will be able to work 20-25h a week on wesnoth during that time. To tackle this problem, some people at #wesnoth-dev have suggested that I start early, which is generally possible. I could start on the actual work as soon as May 16th, which is a week earlier than the official date. This could help me to regain the lost time. Note that this estimation is more on the worst-case side. Things may turn out better and I might have more time in June anyways (I will manage 20h a week in any case). Still, if you think this is not feasible, please tell me so I can reconsider my options. Second, I will most likely be on vacation from July 12th to July 19th. I hope this would not be too much of a problem.

as for a tentative timeline: (this will be edited after further discussion with the developers)

april 20th - may 15th: "bonding peroid:" I get accepted and start to read documentation, get familiar with the code.

may 16th - june 15th: the actual start of work: (note: the above mentioned part time period)

* I start on the documentation of the current implementation of savegames
* investigation of WML
* play with different scenarios and their savegames
* start to evaluate the problems with/needs for multiplayer campaigns

june 15th - june 30th:

* finish evaluation of problems
* develop a new design of "unified" savegames
* deliver UML model

july 1st - july 11th:

* start of implementation
* goal: get a part of the implementation done before mid-term evaluation

july 12th - july 19th:

* vacation

july 20th - august 10th:

* finish implementation

august 11th - august 17th:

* testing, bug fixing, documentation

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

The description of the Savegame project in the wiki suggests that several technical details will be unclear until the design, which is a rather large milestone itself, is fleshed out. Concerning the design milestone, I plan to deliver a UML model describing the new savegame organization.

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

I would like to:

* gain insight on the development of large open source projects
* learn more about game design
* improve my coding skills
* last but not least, I want to gain the satisfaction of contributing something worthy to such a big project

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

The success of my project and/or the feeling that I have not completely made a fool of myself :).

5) Practical considerations

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

  * Subversion (used for all commits)

Yes, I have used SVN for university projects and my master thesis.

  * C++ (language used for all the normal source code)

Yes, I think I have good C++ skills. To elaborate with the C++ quiz on http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Hackingwesnoth : I fit in the "can answer most questions" category (I looked up the ones I did not know of course).

  * Python (optional, mainly used for tools)

Sorry, I do not have Python skills.

  * build environments (eg cmake/autotools/scons)

I used autotools in a university project.

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

For larger projects: Eclipse, Netbeans. I use them for their debugging capabilities and for convenience features like code completion for smaller stuff: vi, sometimes jEdit, gdb. I use them for their simplicity and their wide availability.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

Java, C++, Haskell. I have mostly used them in university courses. Additionally, I have been a tutor for undergraduate Java courses and used Haskell for my masters project.

5.4) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

I am a German native speaker and I am fluent in English. I also speak a bit French and Russian

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

Austria is UTC+1, so my usual working/availability hours would be UTC: 8am - 4pm, but its flexible to some degree. On some days, I will most likely be available longer into the evening.

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.

I would mind not at all. I am fine with both phone and voice chat if you can bear with my german accent :).

Ideas on Savegame Reorganization

WML Mapping Redundancies

In general, we can distinguish between two types of redundancies:

A: information is stored in two or more places in a savegame file (WML), but is mapped to the same c++ object.

B: information is stored in two or more places in WML, and is mapped to more than one c++ object.

Both types are worth fixing.

As mentioned on SoC_Ideas_Savegame, WML events can change a lot of information of a scenario, which makes some redundancies, e.g., between [snapshot] and root/[replay_start], necessary. I will list some info in WML that I think is unnecessarily redundant. (and verify my thoughts with a WML expert).

root vs [snapshot] (type A)

serveral fields appear on the root and again under [snapshot]. The following are candidates for redundancy elimination:

* abbrev
* version
* campaign (SP only)
* campaign_type
* campaign_define
* random_seed
* difficulty
* random_calls
* underlying_unit_id (task?)

I think these need to be stored twice:

* label (different in root and [snapshot])
* completion
* end_text_duration (different endings possible)

[player] vs [snapshot.side] (type B)

[player] (SP only) only holds a few items, most of which occur in [snapshot.side]. Additionally, both map to different c++ objects, player_info and team.info_ .

[player] vs [snapshot.player] (type A)

[replay_start] vs [snapshot.side] (type B ?)

Milestones and Timeline

back to: GSoC Ideas