SummerOfCodeIdeas

This page is related to Summer of Code 2010

See the list of Summer of Code 2010 Ideas

This is a compilation of ideas from ML. Needs to be refined (more detailed description, deliverables, workload estimation?):

I want to be one of your Google Summer of Code students, what should I do...

Here is a quick list of things to do to get you started

MOST IMPORTANT Join the irc channel (#wesnoth-dev on irc.freenode.net) and introduce yourself. We will not give formal interviews, but we will clearly favor people we have learned to know during the selection process (basically communication via IRC is mandatory for our project! it is the main way of "every day communication" for Wesnoth. For the same reason, it's also a good idea to regularly read the IRC logs.).
Create an account on gna.org (required for committing later on)
Create an account on the wesnoth forum, and tell an admin of the forum or leader of the group on the IRC channel to mark it as a GSoC Student account (admins/group leaders are: Boucman, Ivanovic, Mordante, shadowmaster, Sirp, Soliton, YogiHH)

Start a wiki page about your idea:
- base (just copy-paste) your wiki page on SOC_Template_of_Student_Page. Your page will be included in the 'Summer of Code 2010 Student Page' category, and, your page will appear in the list of student pages at the end of this page.
- List your account names (gna, forum, irc nick) so that we can recognize you
- Fill the questionnaire on this page: List of questions to answer
- Detail your idea as much as possible, look at other students pages, and please give milestones and studies you've done
- Add a link to the page at the bottom of this page

Though not mandatory, it is highly advisable to go to the EasyCoding and NotSoEasyCoding pages and implement one of these ideas (or any idea of similar scope) so we have an idea how you work. Be sure to use your gna account when submitting these patches so we know who it is coming from. You can also implement some features from our feature request database at gna. When you implement something, also list it on your own page with a reference to the patch. This should give you a good idea what the Wesnoth sourcecode is like and will provide a good start to getting used to our coding style, too.

For working on Wesnoth you have to be able to compile trunk. To do so you should have a look at the page about svn and afterwards compile Wesnoth svn.

Once you have everything done here and think your idea is okay, go to page at google to submit your application. You have to submit it before April 9th at 19:00 UTC (12:00 noon PDT) or you have no chance to get in!

List of Ideas for the Project (Suggestions from the wesnoth developers)

Extend Wesnoth Lua AI support

Proposed by developer: Crab

Description: Lua AI support was recently added to wesnoth. Expose c++ AI support functions that wesnoth has, to Lua.

Definition of Done: all information that is possible to use in c++ AI, is possible to use in Lua AI with relatively same level of complexity for AI author.

Difficulty: Easy

Allow to store persistent gameworld information for SP and MP games

Proposed by developer: Crab

Description: Allow WML authors to store/access persistent data 'in context' of a specific campaign/add-on/group of addons/ group of games. This will allow things like 'achievements' or 'massive multiplayer campaigns' to work.

Definition of Done: WML authors are able to store and load WML snippets in their core campaigns/addons/groups of addons/groups of games. It is possible to use this system for displaying per-addon 'Achievements'. 'massive multiplayer' games with persistent gameworld are possible to code using WML and possible to host using stock wesnoth multiplayer server.

Difficulty: Hard

Read more at SoC_Ideas_Persistent_Gameworld

Rewrite wesnoth network stack using boost::asio

Description: Rewrite wesnoth network stack using boost::asio

Definition of Done: Wesnoth network stack is rewritten using boost::asio.

Difficulty: Medium

New Alliance system

Proposed by developer: Boucman

Description: Wesnoth currently has a very simple alliance system, players are either allied, neutral, or ennemies. The idea is to replace this with a system of privilege granting. Each player can grant privileges to other players but can't force other to grant the corresponding privilege. Thus it's only through diplomacy and trust that you can build an alliance.

Read more at SoC_Ideas_New_Alliance_System

Addon server

Description: Wesnoth has an addon server which offers users to upload user made content (UMC). This allows all other users of Wesnoth to easily download and install this content. The server was originally written for user-made campaigns but contains a lot more types of addons nowadays. Both the server side and the client side need to be improved.

Spritesheet support

Description: Wesnoth units are made of thousands of small png files, each containing the image of the unit in a given stance. This has the advantage of (arguably) being easier for artists. However this has a huge cost in term of memory usage. The point of this SoC would be to allow wesnoth to support spritesheets : huge images containing a mosaic of all images and related tools/code support

Generic Input Support

Description': Since 2008, Wesnoth has been rewriting its GUI system with a more flexible system allowing all user interface aspect to be specified through WML. One of the areas that hasn't been ported to the new system yet is the input subsystem. The point of this SoC would be to make Wesnoth use the new framework for input, keeping in mind different input types than the usual keyboard+mouse (console type pads or phone touchscreens for example)

Make your own ideas

If you have your own idea the best thing is to join IRC wesnoth-dev at irc.freenode.net and discuss the idea with the developers there. If the developers think your idea is interesting and like the feature you can start to turn it into a full proposal. Once done discuss it again on IRC so the developers can accept your idea.

Information about our Project

The information we provided google with about our project can be looked up at the site SoC Information for Google.

Also see the DeveloperResources link (from the Project page).

People to bug on IRC

We have prepared a list of people with their "area of competence". This is to give you an idea on which areas those people can be of help for you. Of course you should always just ask in the IRC chan, but those are the most likely ones to answer questions in the respective area. And here is the list:

SoC People to bug on IRC

Student pages