Gamer to Making one

The weekend before the one before the last might have witnessed the wisest thing I've done in a long, long time.
I've said it time and again that I'm interested in making computer games, but that is all I have ever done. Talk, blabber, give gyaan and preach on why I wanna make games.. but apart from a tic-tac-toe back in school, I've never done anything close to a game. Who am I kidding, I suck at coding. The very thought of coding makes me feel low. I don't know where it all went wrong. I loved to code back in school. Watching your code do even the simplest thing brought a great deal of happiness and amazement!
But, somehow, undergrad changed it all. I love to brag about my sucky coding skills, I don't know why :-/ Its so easy to prove the whole thing. The first time I encountered a Segmentation fault was in my internship at Cisco, which would be the 7th semester in an undergrad curriculum. Yeah, true story. They even hired me after that. If you don't know stuff, use humor to fake your way out or get a good looking number as your gpa. The latter is the most over-rated shit ever.

Anyways, coding isn't a big deal. Its just like anything else in life.. if you wanna get better at it, keep doing it more often! As usual, I've blabbered enough unnecessary content. I'll try to stop digressing from the topic for once. I signed up for this Global Game Jam thingy, which is a 48 hour marathon during which the participants (form teams) and attempt to make a game on a theme that is unveiled at the start of the event. It was to start Friday 1700 hours and go on till Sunday 1700. I knew I would be a misfit there among the artists and coders, and given that Friday night had a DJ with a huge ABCD gathering, there were definitely much better things to do in life!

But no, not this time.. I couldn't let go of this rare opportunity. So, I reached the venue and it had the most amazing facilities ever. After all, it was a research center for Educational Games and any department in Madison would offer better facilities than the Computer Science building.
Just 8 participants. That was kinda lame, but then I didn't really care. Soon, teams were formed and various suggestions around the theme 'deception' were offered. I hated almost all of them :-/.
Four hours passed quickly and I was like WTF, mebbe I should have just gone to the DJ. The organizers made me feel a lot better though and I was still searching for an innovative game theme. Nothing good yet :(

I've never really brain-stormed in a group ever before.. well actually, I take that back. I've brainstormed hell a lot, and with a lot of people as well, but its always been about making cool strategies in those addictive computer games. And thus, the white board has always been more of an can-you-draw board for me. Its amazing what ideas come out if you just attempt to write your thoughts out.

In 15 minutes, the whole scenario changed. Some random stream of thoughts were manipulated into what I felt was an awesome game idea. There was consensus in the team, and with two artists, two programmers and one joker (yours truly), things were looking good! After a good nights sleep and a sumptuous breakfast of bagels and donuts, we got to work. The next twelve hours were just fantastic. The artists Raffi and James were coming up with brilliant stuff and Ryan, Will and I were getting some chunks of code to do stuff with the art. It wasn't complicated at all, but then C# and XNA were alien to me a day back. There were lots of design changes as some of the initial ideas were just too complicated to implement in such a short time. We settled for something simpler and with the artists coming up with neat lookin' stuff, we just needed a working game. At 1500 hours on Sunday, we were finally done and pretty satisfied with the outcome. A very very simple game, that looked kinda nice coz of the neat art, called Hare-y Care-y (harey = rabbit, carey = carrot).
If you're so jobless, you can check out the game here. (there is a problem with the source code zip though..)

Looking back at some of the games made at GGJ 2010, ours is nothing. Just check out this and also this. You'll be shocked with the creativity people possess. This is the icing on the cake for me (so far), though this wasn't made at the GGJ.
I've been postponing both this post and a link to the installer version of the game for a while.
Hopefully, I'll do the latter by the next weekend. Sionara!

The real meaning of Bazzinga

I've finally accomplished something in life, however fleeting it might be. To be ranked 1 against the billions of web pages google indexes for 'The meaning of Bazzinga' is quite shocking and flattering, more so, because the post it appeared on had only the individual words in a completely different context.
The attention seems to stem from the Latin/South American countries and from Southern Europe. I guess those who searched for it were interested in knowing the etymology of Bazzinga.
Poor souls, redirected by the wise sage Google to this blog containing kilotons of crap.
For the uninitiated, anything that sounds like Bazzinga (or Bazinga or the most recent mod, BUZZinga..) had its roots in the awesome sitcom 'The Big Bang Theory' wherein Sheldon Cooper uses it to add the icing on the cake to his 'pranks' or 'successful attempts at fooling others'. I wonder how the last sentence will translate into other languages, with all the added complications. It might sound like a cake recipe. Oh well :-/

Apart from cementing my place as the world's renowned scholar on this post's title, its just unbelievable where we're headed to. Information at the click of a mouse, at the touch of a screen, available to anyone. Its been there for almost a decade now, but it struck me only recently on how different things are. The web has changed everything, EVERYTHING! 15 years back, having those hefty encyclopedia's at home was the ultimate knowledge base. Anything you wanted to know back then was surely listed in those limited books and I used to be quite shocked on how almost everything could be condensed into a bookshelf. Cisco's Viking Router advertisement strikes me as I typed that. Quoting from their site, "400 gigabits capability that is akin to sustain a flow of 20 Niagara Falls passing through it every second or downloading a digital library of every book ever written in any language in a single hour." Sure, it makes a great advertisement, but then the magnitude is VERY shocking!

We have all the entertainment we need at the push of a few buttons, access to anything we'd like to know more about via a simple Internet connection. Where do we go from here? I remember an article in Gamasutra that listed the top entries for 'What games would be like in 10 years' which just blew me away. There were such insane stories, so out-of-this-world, brilliantly creative to say the very least.
Though the question has been posed several times, I never bothered to think about it. I seemed to have lost my 'thinking cap' and a lot of hair with it when the dot-com bubble burst :x
I'm sure there are many others, who'd agree that they've almost stopped thinking after the advent of the search engine. What could be more easier than typing a query and allowing electrons to figure out everything for you? If within a decade of web explosion, this is the state, I wonder what it would be like in the future. May be, the future isn't far away or in other words, the end is near. December 2012. The End.

First US concert

Finally, I can cross out Goto a metal concert in US from my long TODO list. It took place right at Madison, so commuting wasn't a problem. There were 3 bands playing that night, and I really liked their music back when I was at BITS. Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace and Flyleaf! I still remember Chaitu loving the female vocals of Flyleaf :-) Personally, I like BB the most among them, but apparently TDG is so big here that they were the highlight of the night.
I would have absolutely loved the show, but for what happened the day after Valentines Day in 2009. Something that just blew you away.. a stage presence that IMHO is tough to beat and metal music at its brilliant best. It was all about Iron Maiden at Bangalore on Feb15th '09 and they played hit after hit to leave you baffled to the point you knew that this was going to be your greatest evening in a long time.

Comparing what I saw the other night to that at Bangalore would be a sin in hell itself. The organizers added all the spice they could to make it special. A rotating platform for TDG's very talented drummer, lights shaped as cannons and fireworks! The crowd was ecstatic and loved every bit of it. Hell, the bands put on a great show. Whatever few songs I had heard of TDG and BB were dished out and I enjoyed every bit of it. But its just nothing compared to Iron Maiden. TDG's lyrics revolve around teenage love/breakup and being lonely. Song after song, its the same thing and still the band is so huge over here! :-/ Breaking Benjamin were brilliant, and I was waiting to hear the Diary of Jane which was their last track of the night. There's something about that song that is so refreshing!

Anyways, Feb 19th is gonna be much bigger than what I've just witnessed. Dark Tranquillity, one of my favorite bands is playing (you can check the melodeath post for my recommendations :D) and there's Killswitch Engage too, so I'm sure its gonna be a treasured experience. I've finally ordered a cam (am so pathetic at decision making :'( .. ) so I'll try to get some pics with DT after the show if all goes well! Damn, this semester is gonna be so screwed up!~!

3i, 3 times the imaginary crap

I speak for a lot of people when I say "3idiots is simply amplified bullshit". I guess all the 'Aal eez well' shit on facebook raised my expectations, but even if it wasn't for that, I'm sure I would be writing this post here, albeit without this line. Lets start with the biggest nab of the film, Silencer. WTF man?! Are you such a sad actor or did the director actually think portraying the bookish college goer that way would leave the audience in splits? Total retarded crap! Here I am, having traveled 45 mins hoping to enjoy a movie and here you are, screwing the whole thing up.
And then there is the principal or dean or whatever his role was. The acting during the 'comic(?)' scenes was just yuck. If you have to act stupid, don't overdo it then for fcuks sake.
How many times will you drop your pants in a movie? Good Lord, thankfully, they didn't make Kareena do that, or I might have puked. 


Whats with using all the e-mail forwards as jokes? Seriously, is it so tough to come up with funny stuff or have script-writers just stopped thinking? The million$ pen v/s pencil, putting your exam paper randomly in a pile coz the prof doesn't know your name (duh..), the crap just kept piling on. The speech modification was nice, but then over-repetition killed it. I have to admit, I absolutely despise Kareena which becomes yet another reason to dislike this movie. Her 'sister' in the movie was way hotter :-/
Oh yeah, what's with the baby kicking every goddamn time someone says 'Aal eez well'? They just overdid it the whole time.
The job interview, Oh c'mon! Seriously, give some practicality to it.
The songs weren't that good either barring the first one. The only thing I liked about the movie was the scenic pics during the journey :-/ College stories might have become a good selling point, but this one was utter fail in my opinion. Many people might say, you shouldn't try to focus on the stupidity in the movie. If they wanted to make a hilariously stupid movie, why try to depict it with seriousness then?

I expected a much better movie, especially given the amount of earned-hype Aamir gets. 
Happy Days, a telugu movie was way better. That at least brought back college memories :-/

3i = intolerably idiotic iMovie

Reminiscences

The good ol' days. How I wish I could get back to my first day as an undergrad! Flocks of students from across India (ok little exaggeration here, purely gults + illads population :P), who mugged the living hell out of their 12th standard textbooks, with big dreams in 180 acres of land. Here I am, more than five years later, realizing that those big dreams were just dreams at the end of the day. One of my best friends describes the BITS saga as a four year vacation. How true! After a decade of being the sincere school going student, its amazing how you can change before you even realize it. I lol at myself when I think back to the day I got the MSc Chemistry admit. Chemistry was my pet subject in school and though I loved computers, I'd always thought about inventing a way to dispose plastic in an 'earthly manner'. This is what happens when you're slogging your rear off for so many entrance exams at such a tender age. You lose sight of reality. To hell with the education system.
Anyways, the reason I got into writing this post was the new feeling towards holidays. Back in school, summer holidays were the most awaited thing. No more classes yipee! In college, any day of the year was a holiday. Speaking to the same fun loving people now, either working or in grad skool, there is a new found essence in holidays. There is a new meaning in going back home and staying with family, meeting old friends and reliving some of the past. A week back, I went to a guitar shop for the obvious, and ended up chatting with the owner. He mentioned his brother being senior VP of a big corporation, earning truck loads of money, wanting to quit because of the sheer work stress, and himself, earning a middle class income with a lot more freedom in life.
Its something that keeps coming back to my mind every now and then.
Why does work life have to be so hectic or so mundane and boring?
Why can't we try to enjoy everything we do or do what we enjoy for a living?
Why is it so difficult to find what you like?











   Comic pic taken from jessieleeblogs.blogspot.com/

Part 2 - Lessons from Amrika

My first semester as a graduate student has ended. One of the most important things I've learned after coming here is the true depiction of the word 'HYPE'. From the amount a grad student has to toil to the winter weather, its pure unadulterated hype. Yes, grad students have to work much harder, especially if you led a carefree lifestyle in your undergrad. But its not like you've no time to catch up with old buddies, or watch your favorite sitcoms and movies, or game a bit, or freak out, as some people portray it to be. And the winter isn't a bitch, really. Its white and serene, making you feel some kind of emptiness inside (I know, I've started looking at things differently after melodic death/doom metal..). -20ºC can be very pissing and a major barrier to venture outside though. But then, there really isn't anything like a long winter walk to refresh you, apart from an ice-cold shower.
The Black Friday sale after Thanksgiving in the mid-west isn't anywhere near a 'must-experience' thing. We were expecting huge queues in the chill weather, but ended up walking directly into the mall at 4 AM :-/ One thing that did live up to the hype is the academic competition. The final was worth just 15%, so that should give you the picture.

Something very evident here, which we could use in India, is the fact that you get to choose what you study as an undergrad. You don't need to declare your major until a few weeks before you graduate. So instead of being forced to study stuff you disgust (which happens even in the very best institutes in India), there is that freedom which reflects in the performance in class. You'll find some of the most nerdy and geeky people who come up with fascinating stuff in the projects, and many-a-time, they're undergrads. I really like the whole concept of part-time jobs and funding your education/monthly expenses to a certain extent. Over here, I kinda feel responsible for the first time in my life. BITS was more of a nice long dream, the feeling that whatever happens, your friends were always there to help you out. Here, you see the stark reality. Sure, you meet a lotta nice, new people, but its everyone for his/herself. You meet students from horticulture, music, tourism management, etc., which is kinda refreshing as they look at things is such a different way than engineers.

On a completely different note, I've found some inspiration finally =]
Come to think of it, I've never really idolized someone at anytime in my life. I might have cooked up some stuff for the english essays in school, but I never really found anyone so inspiring. Sure, sportsmen do make you feel wtf-am-i-doing-in-my-life, but it kinda dies out after a while.
So what is my current inspiration?! Lesser known music artists, who work for a living and create breathtaking music in their spare time. As you might have guesssed, a major example is Insomnium. The lead and main composer is working his way to a PhD in evolution sciences, the other guitarist is a surgeon, the vocalist/bassist is a truck driver (its a respectable job unlike in India) and the drummer is studying environmental technology.. and after all this, they create such magnificent music. Since I'm a biiiiiiiiiiig fan of theirs, I follow this blog, where they kinda document the whole touring life. Its so much different from what you'd think it would be. Its a whole new way to think about life, very non-Indian to say the least. Geez, have I become philosophical or what :-o?!

P.S: No offence to Indian culture, lifestyle, etc. Just my thoughts on some differences.

Intermission - Lessons from Amrika

Being my extremely innovative self, I'm proposing having intermissions in blogging as well. As if Google Adsense wasn't enough..! This post is going to be all about promoting Insomnium.
.............................. I N S O M N I U M ........................
In case you didn't close the window (which I know you didn't as you just love Insomnium and hate to admit it as it makes me feel good about myself :P), I caught you with my classic joke. As Sheldon says, "BAZZINGA"!
So now that the ever-so-funny prank is over, let me resume from where I left off last time.
The first week I was here, I couldn't help but admire the greenery all around. So many freaking trees. It makes up for the global warming caused by the obscene size of the cars (?) people drive around here. Actually, I'll deviate a bit here since this is to be some kind of intermission.

I don't quite believe in this 'global warming'. I'm heavily influenced by the capitalistic nature of US, wherein the hype created upon some new tragedy to me is more to do with the green bills (read money) than anything else. I don't know why I'm like this, but then that is me, and Insomnium is just awesome, and nothing else matters in life, does it :P? [muahaha, u wish u cud kill me don'ya?]
So, what I feel is, like some people who oppose the whole global warming thingy, that the 'polar ice caps' melting, the sea level increasing has been happening all the while the earth has existed. We just never noticed it because we didn't have the technology and devices to measure all this a century back. And its just that some people have such great insight into making this a new technology called 'Go Green', where green stands for the US $ bill. Sure, our fossil fuels are getting over slowly and the ozone layer is finally seeking a divorce with Earth for farting so badly, but what is this new green technology doing about it? You were asked to celebrate 'Earth Hour' and switch off your lights to show you 'truly' realize this impending disaster, but what happened after that? You got back to your normal life and stopped thinking about it till your read this (ok a little exaggeration at times..)? The best thing that came out of it was some cool photography, showing the lights slowly go off and come on. That is about it!
Bloody hell, over here, frugality in switching off lights manually doesn't exist. You need sensor networks to do all this stuff for you. Its just become a new industry to fool more people! The progress is so slim, yet new products claiming all sorts of stuff keep coming out.

I admit, there are some nice things, like increased recycling importance in manufacturing that have become more prevalent, but what is the magnitude of money that has gone into research in this direction? All just because people in the developed countries fear that their place will become another Chennai (i'm so dead, all you chennai folks are gonna thrash me for this :| ).
Anyways, this was quite a long intermission and my Insomnium playlist has just gotten over, so adios, stay metal, promote bands like Insomnium instead of worry about your weather becoming a little warmer.

Part 1 - Lessons from Amrika

This is the first in a series of posts of my learning's from this country (which will continue until they deport me) very similar to how Borat expressed his views in the movie with the longest name ever... so uhm... boratically.
First thing you will notice when you land in an airport, anywhere en route, is that it isn't India. You won't find people when you need them, you'll need to figure of things yourself, rather than just ask the nearest person. And all this will make sense when you try to call home. They charge you 1$ for 2minutes if I remember right, and at Frankfurt, it gets worse. You need to get a calling card which is the shittiest thing ever for what its worth.
Once you step out of the airport, if its your first time abroad, you'll be startled by the cleanliness and the wide roads and the size of the four-wheelers that more often than not, carry just one person. What the hell are they talking about global warming for? Shops are powered all the time, as though electricity is ubiquitous. Oh wait, in this part of the world, it is :-/
As computers love binary and excel at such computations, an Indian in Amrika will excel at multiplying by 50. But after a while, you tend to realize that it isn't all that costly for the amount you can make over here, with a part-time job, if you're lucky to get one that is.
The transportation system and the amount of planning that has gone into a city is just :-O
The number of people jogging is insane, its like some race to be fit and makes you feel completely out of shape :-x.. and every jogger has a few wires attached to some apple product.

After a few months of graduate skool (its kewl 2 type school dis way), you will figure out just why very few Amrikans choose the graduate path. With the amount of distraction they have, its quite impossible to focus on academics. The beauty that you see around during the Fall is just unbelievable. The colorful flora and the oh-so-many-hot girls make for a deadly eye straining combo. Hence, it is highly advised to bring an extra pair of spectacles or contact lenses with a higher power index when you come here. If your hostel life wasn't enough to make you miss Mummy's cooking (like atish's mess), then living abroad definitely will. I'm really glad I took some lessons in culinary before coming. Not only is my capsicum curry the talk of Madison, I've actually started to like cooking :-~~
You also learn that some guys are really good at cooking, and its good to learn new recipes now and then.
And graduate life isn't really as hard as others tell it is. At least if you're in Computer Science, where life is always easy and binary. Don't have your hopes set too high for funding before you come, like me, else you'll feel pretty bad after a while :-/ You're bound to meet some characters when you come here, and that adds to all the fun :-D
Okay, time to watch big bang theory now :D Geeky humor is something graduate students can associate to really well! More on the weather, wal-mart, etc next time around.

What should i get kod on ..?

It has come to my attention that this very question haunts many of you, be it thanksgiving, x-mas, 23/05, new years, diwali, brothers day, gamers day, metal heads day, any day in May, 23rd of any month, etc.
I thought being my philanthropic self, I would compile a top 10 things to get me list.

1> A ticket to Wacken Open Air for August 2010 [ and may be the flight ticket as well..]
2> An all expenses paid trip to watch Insomnium/Dark Tranquillity/In Flames/AmonAmarth/Eluveitie LIVE [ I give so many sub-options, the generosity is everywhere..]
3> A BOSE home theater system
4> A BOSE noise cancellation headset
5> Canon DSLR
6> Mclaren Mercedes F1 [Tip : you could start a 'Fund KoD his Mclaren' NGO]
7> Ticket to Federer v/s Nadal game
8> A job with Blizzard to work on Warcraft4
9> Teach him how to play Insomnium's tracks on guitar [not guitar hero for the puritans]
10> Make a time machine to make him go back to BITS.

So there you have it. A very feasible, simple and down to earth list of stuff to gift me.

Why play DotA?

Ok this is gonna be a short post. A question that many people ask, for which even a Googling results in

Did you mean "The dumb equivalent of asking why you should use Google to search the web"?

Let me try to help a poor soul asking this.

Top 11 reasons to play DotA
----------------------------------
- Counter Strike started to get boring [actually means you are a noob in CS and will always be]
- The guys in that wing play it all the time, its gotta be good.
- I don't want to have/have a girlfriend yet.
- I hate friendly fire in CS.
- I've played Warcraft 3 and it was freaking awesome
- Its the best game ever! At least that is what the others say.
- I love hearing Holy Shit! all the time (and thats why I want to play with KiSSofdeAtH :P)
- I want my CG to fall so much that others will notice me.
- DotA makes you more of a man [Based on a research at MIT, 2006]
- The girls in my college have a mush, need I say more?
- Nothing beats stress like pwning nOObs.