SoC Ideas Whiteboard 2011

This page is related to Summer of Code 2011

See the list of Summer of Code 2011 Ideas

This is a Summer of Code 2011 Idea

Description

Improve Wesnoth's Whiteboard

More info at SoC_Ideas_Whiteboard_2011

A whiteboard planning UI was implemented last year for GSoC

This years project would be to continue the work by polishing what was done last year and making it network aware so allies can see each other's plan

There are 2 submitted student proposals for this idea

Bacon - Implement networking such that allies can allow their plans to become visible to each other.

See Bacon for more information.

Tommy Schmitz - Whiteboard Improvements

The Wesnoth whiteboard system is the mechanism by which players can plan their strategies in-game. The whiteboard is currently unfinished and requires both debugging and additional features. The proposed project will address these, with the focus on allowing allied players to view each others' plans over the network.
See Tschmitz for more information.

Implement the networked part of the Whiteboard

The Whiteboard is an interface project that was started during GSoC 2010. It has several goals:

1. Provide players a means to visually test out sequences of actions, especially for those which can't be undone such as attacks, or for moves which uncover shroud and thereby prevent undos.

2. Allow players to plan out recruits, recalls and even attacks and moves, while they are waiting for their turn.

3. Replace features such as waypoints (still present) and Delay Shroud Updates (present in 1.8, disabled but not removed from the code in 1.9). DSU in particular complicates life a lot for WML developers.

4. Allow allies to see each other's plans in multiplayer (and possibly to suggest moves to each other and to the AI).

5. Provide advanced interface features building on the work above, such as chance to kill calculations taking into account several attacks on the same unit planned through the whiteboard.

1 and 2 as well as the DSU part of 3 were finished during GSoC 2010, even though they need a lot of tweaking and bugfixing. 4 is the focus of this project.

Specifications

The plans for the networked part are laid out in this part of the Whiteboard GSoC 2010 page. Regarding last year's GSoC page, be aware that there are differences between those initial plans and the implementation currently in Wesnoth's code. This calendar will help you understand what was implemented and what was left out.

Additional Information

• The whiteboard interface is not set in stone and might still undergo some important changes; the network part should therefore be decoupled from the UI and visuals as much as possible.

Resources

• The devs who know the whiteboard best are Gabba (wrote most/all of it during GSoC 2010) and Boucman (mentored the GSoC project).

• Gabba will be very sparingly available during april, but should be generally available to answer questions for most of the summer. Plan accordingly.

• A good way of getting aquainted with the code is to fix some of the whiteboard bugs.

• Feedback and ongoing discussion of the whiteboard's future goes on in this thread.

Whom to ask about this

Gabba and Boucman on #wesnoth-dev

Possible pre-soc tasks

• Provide a way for WML to set and remove arrows using the arrow framework used in the whiteboard.
• Provide a way for the AI to set and remove arrows using the framework used by whiteboard.
• Add a new "assume dead" action that designates an enemy unit as inexistant as far as the whiteboard is concerned, allowing planning moves through it, etc.