User:Varunv

This page is related to Summer of Code 2013

See the list of Summer of Code 2013 Ideas

This is a Summer of Code 2013 student page

ATTENTION

This is a draft

Description

TODO: Copy this page and write "your name - proposal title" in this h4 section

TODO: Write a small (1-4 sentences) description of your proposal here.

TODO: Add more first-level sections to detail your proposal

IRC

varunv

Questionnaire

1) Basics

1.1) Write a small introduction to yourself.

I am Varun. I was fascinated by computers and their working as a child. I have been tinkering ever since. I use Linux on a daily basis and all of my development work happens on it. A gamer at heart , I enjoy playing both computer and outdoor games like football. I also go to the gym regularly to keep fit.

1.2) State your preferred email address.

will add later

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

varunv

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

After 3 years of coding and development , I thought it was time to give back to the community. And what better way to accomplish this than to participate in GSoC. Since I have developed a couple of games in college , Wesnoth is the ideal choice.

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

I am a 3rd year Computer Science Engineering student at JIIT Noida , India. Some of the courses that I took are :

• Data Structures (theory and practical)
• Object Oriented Programming (theory and practical)
• Unix Programming (practical)
• Fundamentals of Algorithms (theory and practical)
• Operating Systems (theory and practical)
• Software Engineering (theory and practical)
• Theory of Computation (theory)
• Computer Networks (theory and practical)
• Compiler Design (theory and practical)
• Computer Organisation and Architecture (theory)

These are not the only courses I took. Mathematics , Physics and some Electronics subjects have also been part of my curriculum.

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

I am from India. I will be able to join IRC between 10 am and 8 pm IST (+5:30 GMT).

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

I have no commitments during the summer whatsoever neither will I be going on vacation. My college will remain closed from 1st June to 1st August.

2) Experience

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

I have been developing on Android for quite some time now , using Eclipse. I also have basic knowledge of Qt and GTK.

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

Yes I have. The major projects undertaken by me in college have been in teams of 3 or 4 people.

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 , I have not participated in GSoc before.

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

I am not proactively involved in an open source project at the moment but I like to keep on eye on Firefox for android , gnome and KDE.

2.5) Gaming experience - Are you a gamer?

Yes , I am a passionate gamer.

2.5.1) What type of gamer are you?

I have played almost every popular game. From old DOS games like Doom and Bio-Menace to new ones like crysis

2.5.2) What type of games?

I am a fan of strategy games. I have played Age of Empires , the Command and Conquer series and Roller Coaster Tycoon to name a few. My current favourite is DoTA 2.

2.5.3) What type of opponents do you prefer?

I like challenging opponents who make me concoct and try different methods and strategies to achieve victory. But once in a while I also like playing with opponents with average skill too because , hey , isn't gaming meant to relax you.

2.5.4) Are you more interested in story or gameplay?

I think story and gameplay are cross-cutting components of a game. The story has to be interesting in the first place to attract gamers. The gameplay should be smooth and easily understood so that the gamers spend less time learning and more time having fun playing the game.

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 have only played the tutorial part of Wesnoth at the moment and it is very interesting.

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.

I am fluent in both written and spoken English and have no problems in understanding it.

3.2) What spoken languages are you fluent in?

English and Hindi.

3.3) 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 quite good at interacting with other people. I can formulate my ideas and thoughts into words.

3.4) Do you give constructive advice?

I generally give advice when I know that it would not rub the other person in a wrong way.

3.5) Do you receive advice well?

I am always trying to improve myself. So , I am open to all advice.

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

I would say I am. I know when to take the criticism seriously and improve on it and also to reject any other useless criticism and not take it to heart.

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

I would discuss all prior requirements before doing anything concrete in coding. At the same time , if the project demands a fast protoype , I would take the agile development route.

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?

TODO

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

4.3) Why did you choose this project?

TODO

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".

TODO

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

TODO

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

TODO

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

TODO

5) Practical considerations

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

• Sub­­version (used for all commits)

Yes I am familiar with it having used git and mercurial before.

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

I have good knowledge and experience coding in C++

• STL, Boost, Sdl (C++ libraries used by Wesnoth)

I have used STL before but I am not familiar with Boost and Sdl though I have started researching in Sdl.

• Python (optional, mainly used for tools)

I am not familiar with Python but I am willing to learn.

• build environments (eg cmake/scons)

I have used cmake before in my projects. I am not so familiar with scons but I did use it to build wesnoth 1.11.2 .

• WML (the wesnoth specific scenario language)

I am not familiar with WML but I am willing to learn.

• Lua (used in combination with WML to create scenarios)

I am not familiar with WML but I am willing to learn.

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

I normally use Qt creator for my C and C++ work as it has a really nice auto-complete feature and can push and retrieve from git. I also use Eclipse for developing on the Android mobile platform. For any other work I use vim or any other text editor.

5.3) What programming languages are you fluent in?

C , C++ and Java and XML

5.4) 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. If you are willing to do so, please do list a phone number (including international code) so that we are able to contact you. You should probably *only* add this number in the application for you submit to google since the info in the wiki is available in public. We will *not* make any use of your number unless some case of "there is no way to contact you" does arise!

I am open to talking on the phone.

In general, students should be as verbose as possible in their answers and feel free to elaborate.