Introducing Serpentine: C++ Coder

[New Horizon]

Hi folks. I have a new coder to introduce to the Dark Radiant family today, Serpentine. He says that the has some experience in C++ and would be interested in helping out.

 

I figure getting Serpentine to help out on DR will allow Greebo more time to work on the main mod and act more as a consultant along with Orbweaver.

 

Serp should drop by fairly soon, so I'll let him do the rest of the talking.

[Serpentine]

Hey there DarkRadiant & The Dark Mod dev's and content people 

 

Lets get down to it (skip this part if you don't care about a brief bio) : 

 

I have no clue what is really wanted from me in a bio - so I'll hit it up AOL style : 

<AOLer> omg hi, asl? 

<Me> 21/m/Cape Town, South Africa 

<AOLer> omg you must be hot, cyb0... 

 

K well we'll leave it there, I'm a student and a gamer - I'm a fairly decent had at anything that involved a PC, been working on them since I was _so_ high and as such I decided to follow it as a career path. I am mostly passionate about what I deem to be "good" software. I have a distinct interest in interfaces and user interaction. 

 

Gaming wise, I enjoy my games quite slow and well thought out, T1/T2 along side SS2 and DE2 would be my most enjoyed games of this action/adventure mix. I enjoy fast games too, with very decent rankings in games like UT2k4, CS:S and SupCom(yes, its a fast damn game... even if its RTS, still one of my fave). I have all the usual draws to Thief and thats the reason that I am here - I want to keep people like me busy with enjoyable gaming   

 

I'm pretty much a typical CompSci student, however I am the geek side and not the nerd side of it. I will take joy at modifying hardware and stuff, tinkering with an OS and generally breaking things to see how it all goes together. That said my academics are shady, I have recently moved Universities and lost two years worth of credits. However the great thing about it is that my new course is C++ based, while for the past two I was working exclusively in Java(Grrr). As you can see, I haven't mentioned being an amazing developer or some project leader or anything - this is the first serious project I have linked to as anything more than a user/contributor. 

 

While I may not have mountains of experience, I am very quick to learn new things, and have no problem reading code and fixing problems in software, I enjoy bug hunting. I have patched a few Miranda-IM plugins when dev's were missing or there were small touch up's's needed, but I pretty much just have academic experience. 

 

I look forward to getting to grips with the DarkRadiant code before actually doing much with it - this is mostly to do with my current situation. I have my exams coming up in October and I haven't really bothered to open a book this year - so for the most of October I will just be focusing on understanding and disassembling the code that is already in place and thinking of ways to help improve it. Over my vacation from November through to February, I will focus on fixing the known bugs and seeing what improvements I can make to it(with loads of feedback hopefully ). 

 

So yeah, that's pretty much it from my side - I don't write the best bio's or stories ever. If I left anything out or you want to know anything about lil ol me, shout. 

 

- Serp

[greebo]

Hi there. Being a quick learner is probably the most important thing on a mod like this, so welcome to the forums, Serpentine.

 

I gather you already had a look at the DarkRadiant codebase, compiled it or played around with the editor?

[sparhawk]

HI. Looking forward to what you can do with us.

[Serpentine]

Yeah - Pretty much played aroudn with it and stuff, I did that ages ago tho because I didnt hear back from some people that dont read inboxes, I didnt go much further with it as I thought I wasnt really required

 

I will be giving it a go at compiling and prelim reading tomorrow, taking the night off for some gaming because my head isnt happy with thinking at the moment

 

greebo - you have a PM

[New Horizon]

Yeah - Pretty much played aroudn with it and stuff, I did that ages ago tho because I didnt hear back from some people that dont read inboxes..

 

Ha ha, that would be me. Sorry.

[Crispy]

Hi Serpentine! Fresh victims new coders are always welcome.

[Ishtvan]

Hi Serpentine, welcome aboard!

[New Horizon]

How are things going Serpentine? Any questions?

[Serpentine]

Hey there,

 

 

No problems my side - I'v co'd the svn from sf. Just taking the time to get comfy with where everything is - and how everything is stuck together and working. Also reading the forums(and bugtracker!) as you will notice my nick chilling at the bottom quite often

 

As I said to greebo, doing a year's worth of uni work in the space on a month (because why work for 9 months of the year when you can cram it into a few weeks and get away with it :/)

 

Today I have looked at maths for about 30 minutes... and then watched about 5 hours of series and movies to avoid looking at it, its now 2am and I feel guilty as hell... so I'm gonna go read astro in bed

[Serpentine]

The bitch is dead!

 

Finished writing my last important paper for the year at about 1pm - Stats is not a fun game for the whole family... heres hoping for that magical 51%

 

Gonna just chill, get my IDE and all hapilly working with the project first, then tinker around and start looking at loose ends I can help tie up - not quite a maths and 3d hero in my spare time, but I'll do my best to help out where I have experience or find things that look interesting to me

 

Anyway - just wanted to say that I'm back to being more than a name giving random replies to your posts

[greebo]

Sounds good.

 

I could successfully keep myself away from writing papers while working on my diploma thesis, otherwise I would still be involved, I guess.