Sumit Mehra

Weight Testing

2010-03-01T11:56:00.002+05:30

I’m one of those who have walked this earth carrying different weights at different times.
I was born as a plump kid (8.5 pounds), but was on the lean side all the way till thirteen then tides turned and steadily gaining weight till seventeen. When I finished my school I weighed 88kgs. I’m not tall at all. I’m somewhere between 5 feet 10 inches or 11 and with 88kgs I was nothing less than SUPER FAT.

It was not until I joined college in 1996 where I started losing and went back to 69kgs by 1999. – thanks to basketball and no money to eat food (everything spent on booze, smokes and fun).

But, the weight problem did not leave me, soon after I started earning and spending every second day dining out (off course meals were severed with few pints of beer) and it was not long that I reached my 85kgs mark.

The point is – I never paid attention to either food or the weight. I was too busy enjoying life.

Here is 2010 and I have been gaining weight steadily for the last decade.
With a 1 ½ year old kid and a beautiful wife, I’m not getting any younger and I think It is finally time give it up once in for all (iss dharti pe thoda boj kam ho)
28th of Feb 2010 – I weigh 93Kgs and not happy with my health and I have decided to lose weight, keep an eye on this page for frequent updates and status updates.

1998-1999

2000-2001

2003-2004

2005-2006

2008-2009

2009-2010

Bing Maps - Styles

2010-02-02T01:20:00.000+05:30

My home in Redmond, WA - USA

Random Links

2010-02-01T06:20:00.002+05:30

Random Stuff
1. Hitler on I-pad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4
2. Music Fun: http://www.incredibox.fr/
3. Location based games on your phone: http://www.wherigo.com/
4. East vs. West Myths: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/devdutt_pattanaik.html
5. Hexic Videos : http://www.hexic.info/spotlight.html

All izz well

2010-01-03T15:11:00.003+05:30

2nd Jan 2010. After almost 18 months, living in Redmond, wife and I went out for a Movie in a movie theater. Our 15 month old Aryan behaved well and slept throughout for the 9.30PM show of "3 Idiots".

What can I say, I'm not a big bollywood fan, but of late have been by some good movies. 3 Idiots was simply outstanding, I do not remember when was the last I was so thoroughly entertained by a Hindi movie, maybe it was "Aaj Ki Taaza Khabar".

Probably the first time, I wanted the movie should not end and just carry on. It brought back so many memories of my college days (1997-98-99).

Kudos to the film production team and the actors, you guys deserve a standing ovation.

Welcome back Me,

2010-01-02T06:31:00.005+05:30

After over a year of taking a break from blogging, forum posting, virtual networking etc, I welcome myself back.

Before picking brains on some interesting things, this post is about listing things worth listing that happened to me since last time I blogged. In no particular order:

I gained 12 pounds. (Too much beer and cheese, must cut down on it), I’m now 30 + and time to start taking health a bit more seriously :)

I changed my day job from making and shipping games, called production, to research and prototyping new game ideas, called Incubation.

I drove 1014 miles with 2 friends – from Redmond, Washington to Sacramento, California via Portland (OR), Sisters (OR), Reno (NV), and Lake Tahoe. It was a lifetime worth of a drive. Some snaps: http://picasaweb.google.com/purpleblade/RenoRoadTrip?authkey=Gv1sRgCIGwvfPc4-3gYw&feat=directlink

My son, started to sit, crawl, walk, run, talk and break everything that he can.

Travelled to India and spent time in Jaipur, Delhi, Bhopal, Dibrugarh and Calcutta, celebrated my son’s first birthday with his grandparents (both mines and Tanu’s side of parents)

I played 19 Xbox 360 games and out of that completed 9 of them earning only 1890 gamer score. Batman Arkum Ayslum, Trials HD, Shadow Complex, Forza 3 and COD MF 2 were some of the games that stood out.

Still did not buy a PS3, will wait for God of War 3 to release.

Repaired a broken toilet, a broken tap, a broken door knob and a broken toy

Learnt how to clean the house more effectively, this one deserves a full article for itself. More later

Added 7 new board games to my collection. Stone Age still being my all time favorite.

Formatted and clean installed my laptop with 6 different Win 7 builds, while it was in development. In process became a fan of the OS. “Bagwan ke ghar der hai, andher nahi”, Finally Microsoft shipped an OS (other than XP, SP2) that I think is worth being called an OS.

Did not change my mobile phone, still using Blackjack (Samsung), yes not using an I-Phone :)

Only watched 1 movie in a movie theater.

I'm Dad and It's so much fun

2009-05-03T19:54:00.002+05:30

I have not been blogging for a while, there are many things keeping me happily busy. The greatest of them all : I'm dad now, this is fairly old news. Me and Tanu were blessed with Aryan on Sept 24th 2008.

Aryan turned 7 months and I'm must say "time flies".

Who says creative games are dead?

2008-12-09T05:36:00.002+05:30

Do not blame me if you get hooked onto this and it takes away your work time :)

Simplicity meets music meets puzzle meets great execution

Result : A awesome game :)

http://playauditorium.com/

Root Causes

2008-12-02T11:29:00.004+05:30

After the tragic Mumbai terror attacks, the world is speaking - they are angry, they want to see a change, they want to make a difference. There are blogs, IMs, chats, forum threads on who is to blame, who should own the responsibility, who failed and what should be done to fix the issues. Well to be fair to myself, I do know the answer to "How to stop terrorists now". However I do have a vision of a better future....and this is what I think...

SOCIETY
For any society to be truly successful, it requires the society to be knowledgeable, healthy and peaceful;

Knowledge is infinite (In my opinion, I might we wrong)
Being healthy is a direct by-product of being knowledgeable and is also dependent on resources provided by mother earth which is finite.
Ideally both these should result in being peaceful.

However, unfortunately or fortunately, human society requires a fourth measure and that is being "wealthy". This tricky factor of being wealthy spoils otherwise a perfectly balanced equation.

So let's do this again:

For any society to be successful, it requires the society to be knowledgeable, healthy, wealthy and peaceful; and the success of the society is the collective success of the people who constitute the society.

PEOPLE OF THE SOCIETY
I have used the terms White and Black, but since we humans are so obsessed in taking things out of context and proportion I want to clarify this up front. These have got nothing to with the color of your skin, the country that you live in, and the religion that you preach.

The WHITE Beings
There are few humans who can detach themselves from all materialistic needs and attain a higher level of knowledge, consciousness and peace, but I assume it will be safe to say that neither you nor I are one of them and the number of such people would NOT even be a minutest fraction of the world's population.

The SHADES OF GREY Beings
Human beings require materialistic pleasures in order to believe that they are happy. These " tangible needs" vary from person to person and can be anything from having a two course meal to owning a private jet.
Ironically materialistic wealth has become the single most important unit that defines success in the world today.
When people don't get this wealth, for whatever reason - they tend to act in reactive ways which can be considered unethical, unwise, illogical and often illegal.

The BLACK Beings
BUT, when a normal human does not get his/her basic needs - food, shelter and security of continued existence ; when s/he feels that their own or their loved one's life is in danger, they tend to act in ways which are defined to be more animal like and close to being barbaric. Like a man eating tiger, once they tend to be barbaric, it become near impossible for them to turn back even after they get their stomach full.

Of course there are some people who are born with mental disorders (like Ted Bundy) who are in BLACK category without any logical reasons, these people are ill and require medical assistance. And it is not part of this discussion.

SOCIETY and PEOPLE INTERACTIONS
To generate wealth - as in materialistic wealth that we all know off, requires resources.

However, mother earth provides us with limited resources, ideally the math should work simple – take total available resource and divide it by number of people and you get your share, to keep the sanity off this discussion and from all practical reasoning, the resource cannot be divided equally among every living being.

As the population of the society increases it affects everyone's share of these finite resources, indirectly their capability and capacity to generate wealth, creating a misbalance.
More and more people each year move closer towards the darker side of grey.

Each time the stock market goes up and you think you have made more money, it came at the cost of someone else loosing and being pushed down further. But since this is how god created this world, the more knowledgeable people of the society gave birth to the concept of "giving" - when the “haves” donate time, money and/or hope to the “have not’s”- they are unintentionally trying to help maintain this balance.

--- Top 3 richest people in the world have enough money (~180 billion USD) that can feed the entire population of the world (~7 billion) for one month (@40 INR a day), let me know if this math was confusing, I can provide some more bases to the numbers and calculations. ---

However the rate of population increase is not proportional to what people of the society are “giving back”. We need more “givers” and less “takers” to balance our current world scenario.
For example, if you give 1 hour a day of your precious time to teach a poor kid and at the rate poor kids are born, you will be soon run out of your “give” hours OR if you give INR 20 a day to a hungry, you will not be able to afford your own meals, at the rate the world’s population is exploding.

If EACH person, who can afford more than 3 meals a day for his/her family, can contribute in making sure at least one additional person on this earth does not sleep hungry. This world will be a less dark place. If EACH of you, who can read and write, can teach one person a year to do the same, this world will be a better place.

Let me clarify for all those who are reading this and jumping to negate my statement above.

Yes, there will still be barbarians who will continue to harm the society but each day you succeed in helping one person stand on his feet and have his/her stomach full, YOU WILL reduce the darker side - the folks who are young, prefect recruits for the barbarians.

Your Question might be - "Well the terrorist are not poor they are well educated in some of the best colleges in the world, how can you say helping a poor will solve this problem?"

My answer is – The well educated barbarians are driven by blind faith –imparted by sadistic leaders, who are there because they preach wrong to the illiterate and the needy. If there is a terrorist camp, its lowest level recruit is a needy, is poor and is concerned about his/her family’s safety.

Each day that YOU will make a person feel secure and hopeful - YOU WILL make EARTH a more peaceful place.

Each day that YOU will forgive a man for his sins and give him the guidance for betterment - YOU will make our society healthier.

AND YES, it will come at a price, and the price will be you being less materialistically satisfied.

This world is a very big place; we cannot expect one person or a group of people to fix the world's problems. Even if magically all the politicians (that you speak off) disappear - there will be a new set of such people that will continue doing the ills left behind.

It starts with YOU and nowhere else.

Your Question might be - "If I do this – “give” thing that you speak off, what's the guarantee that everyone else will do it?"

My answer is - You must believe, you must have –hope- that there are many good people on this planet.

To answer your next question - "When will the world be a better place, if we start doing this TODAY and CONTINUE doing it?"

My answer is - Not in your life time, but our kids and their kids will see the difference, they will write in their history books - about us, the society that BELIEVED and brought the change. It has taken us years to ruin the system - It will take us years to FIX it too.

It is your choice to pour a bottle of Milk and make the difference or choose to POUR water instead and think – “well what difference will it make if I alone don't do it.

We come up with a list things that some ELSE should do, we come with ideas that someone ELSE should implement. And we expect the world to change in a blink of an eye.

We try to find the root cause to problems - "Terrorist attacked us - how can we prepare ourselves for the future?"

"Only if we fund more and equip our soldiers with better killing equipments, we can protect ourselves"

"Only if politicians were not corrupt and use this money to buy good killing equipment, we can buy more guns"

"Only if the terrorist training camps in XYZ art of the world can be cleaned"

"Only if we .... The list goes on"

If I can feed a poor kid and impart basic education, If I can make him/her understand that picking up a gun is not the answer, if I can get one less trigger happy terrorist, If I can get 1000 less bullets flying in air, If I can reduce your chances of getting shot by one of these bullets by a 1000th time – I believe that I can help my society.

A great change requires a greater sacrifice - Are you willing to sacrifice?

Are you willing to sacrifice your hunger to buy an HD 50 inch plasma television to fill a plate of rice and a bowl of soup for the needy?

I'm willing to do it and I'm already doing it and I do BELIEVE (the same way I believe in GOD), that if you ask your heart, you are willing to do this as well and you will do it.

It is just that YOU do not BELIEVE in it just yet.

Pure Fun

2008-10-08T11:53:00.003+05:30

I thought i had enough of -crazy machines- type, puzzle casual games but then i stumbled onto this: What a killer game: http://fantasticcontraption.com/.

These are the kinds of games that make me go "I LOVE GAMES"

Right Wright!

2008-09-17T08:37:00.008+05:30

I agree that I can’t create art in any form to save my life, however I do understand art and able to appreciate good art.
I remember painfully trying to create something (for fun) using 3d studio max and I couldn’t even create anything close to what I can now, thanks to Will Wright. Right!!!!!
Spores! Yeah finally I was able to get a copy and get going. As expected I went from single cell organism to a two legged freak in no time.

My starting organism
-----------------------

----------------------
My current P1-100 creature
----------------------

----------------------
I told you i cannot create art to save my life.

Super fun!! I’m expecting lot of my time vanishing, all thanks to SPORES.
I love it.

Uno Rush Announced

2008-07-15T07:30:00.003+05:30

My game (well actually I mean Microsoft’s game ;)) was announced today at E3 by none other than John Schappert himself…..Cannot say much about this game before it actually hits the market….meanwhile here are some links to drop your eyes on:

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39941/Uno-Rush-Screenshots

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/puzzle/unorush/news.html?sid=6193760

http://play.tm/wire/click/2002225

Time - Where has it gone?

2008-06-04T06:30:00.008+05:30

Hi,
It all happens in a flash. Always.

Whenever you are waiting for something to happen, it feels really long, but only till it happens.

After it happens, you go "Hey! That was fast"

Here I'm 8500 miles away from where i was last week. Driving on the other side of the road, sitting in the other side of the car, eating cold food and trying to sleep on top of a sinking bed.

The change is sometimes 0verwhelming .....

On the great side Microsoft has given me a beautiful house overlooking the lake in Kirkland. The view is spectacular. I'm really looking forward for times to come, the start has been great and i wish it continues to be the same. I leave you with some snaps.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/91306143@N00/sets/72157605418434426/

Break after 3108

2008-05-04T19:02:00.004+05:30

Today I completed 3108 days in India, developing games professionally (getting paid for).

Eight and half years is a pretty short span if you really think of it, but starting when there was nothing (near ZERO) related to games development in India and reaching to a point where the likes of EAs, Game lofts, UBI Softs, VMCs, Activisions setting up shop and a new funding happening every day, it does seem like a lifetime.

In my opinion games industry in India is getting to the verge of being recognized as an *Industry and on path of becoming main stream. Still young but promising for sure.

Exciting times lie ahead and I’m convinced that India will become a strong contributor in the world of games development in its own unique way.

My 5 predictions (things that will happen in next 5-6 years in India Gaming Scene)

1. Government of India will recognize this sector and will associate us to either IT Industry or Entertainment Industry.

2. More than 20 new game development companies will start and more than 30 game studios will Tank.

3. Games Education will be recognized by universities and various game engineering programs will start to take shape.

4. Sony Playstation 2 will become even more popular and will be known for games based on Indian Content Games (some of them will be mind bogglingly absurd too)

5. Indian team will not be ranked in the bottom 3 in World Cyber Games at least once in next 6 years.

Unfortunately for me, I will not be around for next couple of years to have all the fun.

I have decided to move.

My new job is with Microsoft Corp. in Seattle (Redmond); I will now be working with Windows Game Experience Group, delivering the most compelling game experiences to Windows gamers.

On 30th of May I will be leaving India, but surely not be leaving my community (Indian Game Developers), I will continue to yap away making new friends and hopefully not many foes.

Cheers and have fun making games.

Mallika Arora - Agni - another one bites the dust....

2008-03-03T17:27:00.004+05:30

I ‘m a passionate Indian Game Developer and I like keeping myself well informed about the recent happenings in the Indian game industry. One week back, I read FXLabs released its action/adventure game Agni: Queen of darkness, published by Zapak and distributed by Sify. It was priced at Rs. 699/-.

I buy almost all (if not all) games (PC) made and released in India.

I went to their website and was not able to find even a single in-game screenshot, no trailers, or in game videos, or concept art. (Now they have them) There were few Mallika Arora Khan’s hot poses with things in her hands which looked like weapons.

I started getting a bad feelings about my money (700 bucks) not being wisely put to use yet again. (I have a habit of buying bad games) Nonetheless, I went ahead and paid the money (Paypal, no credit card option).

Monday first thing I received was an email that I have received a mail from FXLabs (Microsoft Internal mail room is pretty darn efficient).

I opened the package and found the cover to be pretty cool (nice packaging), the installation took 4-5 minutes and then “boom” comes the FX Labs logo.
I am not always so excited about firing up a new game, but this game was done in my country by many people who I know personally.

The main menu looked like a new concept, I know lot of people would say it is horrible, but I kind of found it to be different and not so bad.

The game starts with a cut-scene, which again I thought was pretty okaylyTM done, though I didn’t like the voice over’s but having been there and done that, I know getting a good voice talent is not easy and that too for games. The cut-scene had Agni and Betal (Snake) chatting with Tara on some shit, some magic happens and Tara and Agni become one character with an ability to transform from one to other - the games starts. I see an enemy run towards and he gets stuck in the air under the bridge, I am like "what???" I just started this game, less than 10 seconds in play and I see PRI1 SEV1 bug (FXLabs is AppLabs venture and Applabs is http://www.applabs.com/ (Software testing services company specializing in Software testing, qa testing company, outsourcing software qa testing, quality assurance testing Services)

You got be f***ing kidding me!!!!!

I struggled hard and tried to move Tara in all her seductive positions (none in the game, figurative speech) but nothing happens, then suddenly the alien just falls off the air (Manjit: Yes he really falls off the air, I have a screenshot to prove it and then he probably dies (:))

I continued playing the game for around 5 more minutes and then I end up in a so called boss monster fight, were a sort-o invisible Skelton sitting (paralyzed) on a wheel chair is shooting bullets at me, there are only two positions where the bullets can hit you, no there are no hiding places it is an open area . Dialog in Hindi suggests that I need to do something that kills the monster with his own weapon.

I am stuck here for last 20 minutes; no clue what to do…….

Gamecheats.net does not have a walkthrough for the gameJ, if anyone from FXLabs is reading this can you please provide with a walkthrough of the game?

Well, I have been developing games for last 8 years, I truly know that making a game is a daunting task and making good games is even crazier.

I am not the “cool graphics” nerd who thinks games are all about looks, but Agni’s graphics are horrible, models look less 10 polys, lighting has no sense, texturing is detail less, whatever little effects once sees is probably the engines job. The recommend PC cong is 2.4Ghz Dual core, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia 7800GTX+ cards.

I am not sure what engine they are using, if they have written their own engine, then hats off to them but if not (it looks like Unreal 2 engine), I want to know “What on earth you are trying to do” or did try to do?”
What can I say “a very disappointing effort by the guys at FXLabs”. I thought with the “might and experience” of Tony Garcia, Agni should have been way better.

Another Indian game hits my collection’s bone-yard.

My rating of the game is 1/10 till the time I cannot figure out how to make any progress in the game.

Indian Xena or Indian Jigna

2007-11-18T16:43:00.001+05:30

You must be kidding me, Priyanka Chopra the next Xena warrior?

Virgin comics have been doing some really cool stuff lately from a concept point of view and some low risk mobile games (here) , but hey! Concept is nothing by itself; executing the concept to deliver immersive experience is what makes people consume it.

I am not denying; the concept art here is pretty cool; but Priyanka Chopra????? The only character I see fitting in this role is Rakhee Sawanth J “Watch out you bad ass, otherwise I am going to use my super mouth weapon – Verbalistic Diarrhea to make you suffer”

She in her secret identify can also cause damage to your nervous system by crying your brains out with her Emotional Delusion Weapon.

But this will be another story, coming back to Priyanka Chopra (stop fu**in kidding me), she looks like a nice girl and best fits dancing and singing around trees and being a moral support to the blood fest Indian hero.

So I would really like to be proved wrong here:

They could have chosen anyone who the mass audience relates with. Rani M, Neha D, Lara D, Ash et. al. Anyone could have been made to look cool in a concept art.

They choose Prinkya, randomly? Because singing her on might be cheaper? Or maybe something else, but surely not because of her past work, public image and/or body language.

I do not have issues with such “so called” strategic and creative moves but does it bring real value to your product? Does her inclusion take the experience to a new level? Well if you are a VC or a business man and reading this and believe that brand name makes it easier for the product to be tested by a wider audience? You are right! But a brand name not adding value to your core product and experience is a fad.

Indian Epics - Not just for India but for all?

2007-08-09T13:54:00.000+05:30

Picked-up from Content Sutra -

------------------

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has acquired rights for a videogame based on "Ramayan 3392 AD" from Virgin Comics, a company started by Deepak Chopra, Shekhar Kapur and Richard Branson, reports Variety. SOE is setting up a development team in India, and has planned for a 2010 release for the game. A few of Virgin Comics' stories - on Devi, Ramayan 3392 AD and Sadhu - are being made into mobile games by Jump Games. Seems strange to me that SOE is looking to target India with the Ramayan 3392 AD game - given that it has religious significance in the country, and one never know hows the religious right might react. Also, this reminds me of a PC game being created on another Indian epic: the Mahabharata.
Virgin Comics has big plans for Ramayan 3922 AD, which is being re-launched.

-----------------------

It seems - the Indian Game Development and Indian Gaming Industry Boom Bug is biting everyone. SOE is planning to setup a shop in India to build a game on Ramayana.
Shekhar Kapur has been deeply interested in creating video games based on his stories for a long time now. I met him in 2003-4, while I was working for Paradox Studios in Mumbai and we discussed some cool ideas. But I think it was a bit too early in Indian Gaming Industry to pull off something big, I am still not sure if there is enough expertise and experience to do something on this scale today (There are only handfuls of experienced developers). But with lot of experience coming from west; moving down to India and starting teams is a promising and a healthy sign. Things are getting exciting every day :)

The End Begins - GOW2

2007-06-09T18:57:00.000+05:30

Can’t wait for the End to begin

Yesterday, I finished God Of War 2, the sequel of the acclaimed God of War by David Jaffe, and what can I say, in David’s vocabulary, I would say “Fu**ing AWESOME”.

Although this sequel is designed by Cory Barlog (an art and animation background guy) but I think he did a superb job.

Overall I loved the game, it was nice to see that the designers realized what made GOW1 real cool and they made sure to have lots of it in this game. What are those you may ask?

Illusion of enormous size of the levels and the game world;

The mind blowing Vicious Kill sequences

Athena’s blade are super powerful and especially when you MAX it out.

New cool power-ups - Atlas Quake one my favorites

You can now not only use the blades to climb walls but also to traverse ceilings

The three sisters- boss battles - Lakhesis, Atropos, and Clotho and the whole LOOM story of weaving threads to go back in time.

Well I am not going to write a full review here, there are tons out there, I just wanted to say that after a while I got a game which I couldn’t wait to finish.

This is a cool game, though sometime you feel “come on this is unnecessary you are just trying to increase the length of the game by giving me more stupid little enemies to kill” but then if you are one of those who love hitting hard combos and see dozens of enemy flying all over, then I am sure you will not mind this :)

Also towards the end; one would say it was a bit of an overdose of the female voice saying “Key of this”, “Skull of that”, “This of that and That of this” – too many unnecessary name.

As usual, not to my surprise, there will be a part 3 of this game but I am sure Cory, Jaffe and their team would need to really get something super strong in the design from a game play point of view. Simply extending the story would not suffice.
Hail GOW!!!!!

Microsoft Surface

2007-05-31T07:13:00.000+05:30

Microsoft announced today at the D5 conference that it’s built a new touchscreen computer—a coffee table that will change the world.

This is super cool :)

More Cool Stuff

2007-05-23T20:12:00.000+05:30

My shopping for the Day

Guitar Hero :)
Sing Star :)
God of War 2 :)
Nintendo DS – Mario Cart and Club House Games :)

Tomorrow i want to go and back Dance Dance Revolution.

New Gadgets

2007-04-01T22:41:00.000+05:30

I recently got my house Wire free, got a wireless router installed and now both the lap-tops and one desktop are online. This is super fun.

On another note I got Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Professional from Microsoft Store in Redmond, my PC is running all original and I am very proud of that :)

What else:

Two months back I bought an Xbox 360 Core and scratched a lucky coupon to win a 21 inch Flat TV.
Now my living room is a game station. Three televisions, One Play Station 2, One Xbox 360 and One Nintendo Wii 
I am having the best time, Wii wins my vote for being super social, friends and family are addicted to it, but that does not mean that I don’t power on my MEAN Xbox 360 and play couple of hours of Gears of War.

Q n A: Gaming in India

2007-01-08T21:39:00.000+05:30

Recently a journalist emailed to do a story on gaming as a career for their education supplement, unfortunately I was on vacation and by the time I read his email and sent in the answers they had already done their story. Since I had all this written I though of having this blogged.

Question: Gaming is a multi-billion industry but still India's share is minuscule. Why is that in spite of having being acknowledged as a leading software talent pool, India is lagging behind in gaming industry?

Building fun games is unlike building useful software - where Indian software talent pool lies.

Gaming, where art merges with science, is a perfect blend of artistic excellence, acoustic symphony, engineering excellence topped with great planning and management and thus it requires a collective team work of highly motivated and skilled people in their individual of expertise. This fusion of extreme art forms makes games development very challenging yet fascinating.

Also games development is more of a passionate profession, there can only be two reasons why a great programmer would leave his stable software job to work with a smaller games company; either he gets paid more or love games.

When I got my first games job at the beginning of year 2000, there was not more than couple of dozen people in India who were making games. Today the number has increased reached few thousands yet it is an increase in numbers only otherwise qualitatively we leg behind.

Yet despite the hardships programmers, artist, designers can be trained to develop good games. It is a time consuming training and like any new industry it will take sometime to grow and expand.

I am confident that it is only matter of time when India will become one of the major game development hubs across the globe. India is already very well known for building new as well as porting existing mobile games.

PC and Console games take much longer to build and require bigger budgets and none of the Indian Companies are doing any end-to-end games, but I definitely see this too happening in times to come.

Question. In India, gaming is in nascent stage. What are the challenges in this industry?

Personally I feel that good talent with the right mix of skill and passion is missing. Gamers who are passionate about making games; either don’t have the necessary skills or have misconception that making a game is only about ideas. Good programmers lack the love for games; excellent programmers are not convinced enough to leave their software jobs. I know many friends and acquaintances working in games and they are always on a look out for the right mix.

Secondly, Game development companies in India are not taking aggressive steps in building a healthy ecosystem, where there is a consortium of Game Developers, publishers, educational institutes, who would help train and guide the young talents on to this line. There have been few initiatives like IGita (Indian Games Industry and Trade Association) and IGDA’s (Indian Game Developers Association) Indian Chapter but certainly there is need for more.

Guidance in the right direction by the right people is necessary. A friend on mine who has been working in the games industry for sometime has started a social Meet-up group in Hyderabad, which now has almost 120 members, where like minded youth, interested to learn art of gaming conducts regular meetings, trainings and sessions on various topics on games development. It has yielded results as many members have got the desired jobs. This is a good initiative but a minuscule one, more planned and organized initiatives are needed before the nascent stage starts maturing.

Question. If someone wants to take up gaming as career, then what will be your advice to him/her?

My first advice would be to spend time researching and gathering information on what are the various fields of expertise, what skills are needed and how can you build those skills.

There are many game developers spread across various online forums and communities who are always willing to offer help, there are tons of website which give clear information on various aspects of game development. www.sloperama.com is one of the best websites.

My second advice is to the gamers who want to be game developers - don’t be mislead and think making games will be just fun like playing games and no sweat. Your job is to make a FUN packed game, whether you have fun making them depends on whether you love spending endless hours and sleepless nights working hard to deliver a great experience. Games development will challenge you and push you to your creative and logical limits.

Another advice, think of your life as a series of games and the objective of the first game is to get a job in the games industry.

Like in any good game you will face tough obstacles, have a limited set of resources, a set of rules and multiple ways to reach your goal. You will need to upgrade your skills, overcome challenges and play for long hours though many days to finish this game and …. While doing all this if you are having fun then you are fit and ready for this industry.

Question. What are the various opportunities available for someone who wants to take up gaming as career and what qualities are needed to excel in this field?

Games can be delivered to the end user via mobile phones, PC, Web, Console there are others like interactive TV, kiosks etc. Each of there platforms has its own process of building games.

The future of Mobile games development is bright in India, there are dozens of companies actively and regularly hiring.

There are broadly three areas of expertise to choose from:

– Technical, which requires the candidates to possess strong programming skills (J2ME, BREW are the most commonly used programming languages to make mobile games, Symbian is another interesting platform but can be a bit challenging for a new comer). Your job would be to program the game to behave as per the design specification given by the game designer, which might include writing code for Game Logic, AI, Graphics as well as sound effects.

- Art, requires the candidates to posses strong artistic skills accompanied with knowledge of optimization as there are challenging memory and space restrictions in majority of the mobile phones available.
Artist should be skilled enough to make art by actually moving one pixel at a time, so the name; pixel artist. There is also some room for good low polygon 3d modelers for small but growing 3d mobile games.

- Test, which requires the candidates to posses a strong eye for detail and good memory, some of the good testers I know can find one stray pixel on the screen as well can recollect last 10 buttons they pressed while testing a game. Recording the series of steps to reproduce a glitch is always beneficial.

Console and Pc games development requires bigger teams and take much longer to build, currently most of the Indian game companies are providing services to foreign game development studios. Services come in the form of providing art assets, modules of code and even quality assurance.

- Technical, requires programmer to be fluent in languages like C++, with sound knowledge in APIs like DirectX, OpenGL are norms. Firm grip on topics like Data Structures, Optimization and multi threaded programming are must.

- Art, there are various sub fields within the art domain, you can choose be an Animator, who is responsible for making the characters and objects in the game act and move. Due to the lack of motion capture facilities in India, good animators are in huge demand. If animation is not your cup of tea than you can choose to be a modeler, who is responsible for creating characters and the objects in the game; proficiency in tools like 3DS Max and Maya are essential. There are various other art positions like Level Builder, Texture Artist, Concept Artist and lighting experts.

Online Games and Casual Games market has also become huge and is growing. Macromedia Flash is one of the most popular tool to build causal games, though the programming tasks remain quite the same with network and muti-play programming an added requirement, the artists are required to be proficient in creating Vector art. Lately there has been a huge demand for good vector artist.

There are also positions available in Game Design and requires the candidate to have in-depth knowledge in subjects like Game theory, user interface design and story telling, this may sound like an easy job but game designer is one of the toughest positions to get in. Most of the game designers got into games development as a programmer, artist, tester or manager and then through constant demonstration of passion, creativity and hard work got into the designer’s shoes.

Required qualities differ with the various aspects of game development – programming, art, design, test, audio management. Hence it is essential to find your area of interest or rather I would say passion, followed by your area of skills and accordingly pursue it.

In general, the game development companies are always looking for someone with required above mentioned skills in each field and along with it an eye for detail, a good team player, a creative thinker and who is adaptive to change.

Question. What kinds of a salary can a professional in this filed can expects?

Salaries is something that depends on the skill and experience level – if you are good in what you do then the salaries are as competitive as in any other similar level software workplace.

Though the salaries for entry level positions are a bit lower but this is changing as the industry grows. I know people earning 8k a month as well 150k a month.

---------

Why Blog?

2006-11-12T13:20:00.000+05:30

Every other day I think of writing a blog, but when I sit down my mind is not able to decide what topic to touch and moreover why should I talk about it.

In last few months I have had many interesting stuff nudging my brain. Things from Gandhigiri, Super fast prototyping, pattern recognition, moondust the first trance festival of India, cops and corruption, but whenever I sit down to write about this, I feel a complete lack of motivation. My brain struggles to understand why you would be interested in my yapping.

Let’s be honest here, I write blogs for you. I like when you comment on them, when you praise them and even when you shred them into pieces. I like getting your viewpoints as well as giving you mine.

Few days back I was gulping some pints at a friends place and all three of us had very interesting view points on practically every topic we talked on – Democracy, Genetic hard wiring, Joe Stariani etc. The more I gulped the more I realized that generalization is the mother of all stupidity and that there is no way to convince a drunk. :)

Let’s try few generalizations and see how wrong they are:
1. All shows on Sony Television are crap.
2. Females are horrible drivers.
3. Nokia handsets are the best.
4. Shedding clothes is the only was to break into Bollywood.
5. Bollywood is about movies :)

The point that I am getting too is whatever – really; whatever I write here will be agreed upon, disagreed, liked, hated, shouted, screamed, cheered and commented. (of course unless I am stating scientific facts; in which case it holds true; but hey I know people who are ready to go upto the challenge of proving Einstein wrong but that is a whole different story.)

Therefore all I need to do is initiate any topic, give it a view point, add some facts and garnish it with assumptions and I have a juicy post ready. Gee Sumit Generalization!!!! Oops my bad. Consider the above as my recipe for a blog post 

So what makes you blog, what is your view point on blogging and do you think there are things like good blog and bad blog or maybe a good blog post vs. a bad one?

TRANCING AGAIN

2006-11-02T18:25:00.000+05:30

Hioooo Guys

First time in India, the mother of all festivals....

MOONDUST: 96 hours of Trance Mahem.....(www.moondust.in)

Watch out for a DETAILED REVIEW here soon

Cheers

UNO Released :)

2006-10-19T23:25:00.000+05:30

Would love to hear your comments on the game that i was involved with

http://zone.msn.com/en/uno/default.htm

Absent Without Setting Expectations

2006-09-30T20:39:00.000+05:30

It has been a while since I have blogged.

I will start this post with some news:

Our team has released a new MSN Messenger game. UNO!

This game is currently available to all MSN Messenger users in USA and over a period of time will be available in localized languages in other countries as well.

This is what was keeping me extremely busy and also the reason of me being AWSE.

Over this period of time I have developed a new hobby and that is playing Bridge. I always knew about this game but never really bothered to dig deeper into the Zen of bidding and playing and now I am totally addicted. I can play bridge at any given time of the day or night. Well probably not at night.

I am amazed by the amount of research and data available on bidding, and this is only one part of the game. That being said, I would love to talk to people who are avid bridge players and think Bridge is not just sitting N-E-W-S 

I also came across this extremely funny and gamey flash animation

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jvdkuyp/flash/see.htm

More excitement:

My dear old and good friend Manjit is moving to Hyderabad (you can find a link to his Blogs on the right hand side links set)

Boy it will be fun, though I am sure he will be quite upset seeing the drastic reduction in my Alcohol drinking capacity.

Some more excitement:

I am traveling to Aravalli Hills to visit the FIRST TRANCE FESTIVAL in India. www.moondust.in. I am really excited about this. You need to see the web site and the number of Artist that will be performing. For those who don’t like this music or are simply lazy this festival is open air and will play music for 80 hours NON-Stop. Boom Shanker.

On that note, I will take off, as it is time to play some Bridge with friends.

Dreaming or Reality

2006-06-25T13:36:00.000+05:30

It has been a while!

Here I am in Redmond, Washington, sharing room with Steve Conard.

Yes I sit here all day besides Steve; getting ZERO official work done but yet having the best time of my life.

What I am doing?

Designing Games!! Steve Bleeds Game Design.

After spending something like 3 weeks here I have started to convince myself that I am not abnormal :). I am not alone in this world who goes to buy vegetables and instead buying them just stare at them and think…..is there a game here….

I have spent my last 3 weeks with some of the most creative, intelligent, funny, caring, soulful, friendly and just plain awesome people on the planet.

It has been an overwhelming experience.

My day starts with a cheese sandwich, 5 miles of care free drive to office and then doing nothing else but games for 12 hours straight……by the way it ends with couple of cans of Budweiser.

Today I realized something interesting; Lot of people ask me “I want to be a game designer”, I have a different thought for all of you aspiring game designers and let me try to put it in once sentence. “You don’t want to be game designers, as you are already are game designers, and it’s just that you want to get paid for designing them”.

There is plenty to share, but time is running out right now, day after tomorrow I fly out of here back to Hyderabad…..more enlightened :)

I am on a weeks vaccation, will write a more detailed blog soon.

Till then…happy deisgning.

Freaky Teen Age of Games

2006-06-01T20:37:00.000+05:30

Time for some fun;

So some how I always thought India will go through 3 distinct phases in games development.

Birth, Freaky Teen and Adulthood

I was lucky to get involved with it during its Birth phase. Everyone had the real passion and love for games. We were working day in and day out to achieve our dreams. No one had a clue how-why-what but there was no lack of commitment, it was fantastic.

I think today India has reached the Freaky Teen age, everyone and anyone wants to MAKE A GAME; it’s so funny that you can actually entertain yourself by searching and reading about the companies in India doing games development.

It’s hilarious, so let’s have some fun, below are 2 companies which are just fabulous.

First one on the list is:
Bitscape IT Solutions
http://www.bitscapesolutions.com/game-development.htm

After reading it, go hit yourself with a hammer, maybe you will be able to make some sense out of it all.

Second in the list is

7Seas Technologies Limited

Nothing much about this one, people say “I bitch too much”. So I am just keeping quite, only one thing, they want to make cross platform game engine for PC, Xbox 360 and I guess PS3 as well but their DirectX interview test paper has wrong questions ;)

http://www.7seastech.com/WorkCulture.aspx

Read their corporate work culture, funny for an office fitted into a 3 BHK apartment, shhhuuush did I say anything ;)

I have few more names up my sleeves but no point ripping them without any reason, investigations are on.

If you are getting bored till then, think of opening up a game studio ;)

A Designer's Imagination

2006-05-15T12:00:00.000+05:30

This blog is actually a part of an email that i sent to my dear friend Nick Chionilos.

You asked whether the Microsoft offer was simply too good to pass up, or did I get frustrated with the limits of the handhelds, well to be frank it was both.

Microsoft’s offer was very good, and it gave me the job profile that I always wanted. The handheld games business is also very interesting from a technology point of view but from games and game design I feel it is still a rat race.

Mobile game mantra is “Make a side scroller for every IP in store”.

It will take sometime for the mobile gaming market to mature and realize people are no longer interested in playing Peters’ Jackson’s King Kong, who is barely a inch in height and couple of pixels in width.

I feel mobile is great platform to make games on, I would love to play the turn based Dungeons and Dragons on it; something that excites my imagination but still keeping the game form simple.

Game designers who presume gamers will do a 4 key combo in time on a mobile device TODAY are either not game designers or they are NOT GAME DESIGNERS.

Well I will be lying if I said the same is not true on console and Pc side as well.

As a game designer I feel the strongest, most adaptive and a highly stable tool a designer has is the imagination of the gamer, and we should never fail to let it wander.

People say Immersive is what makes you believe and I think immersive is what makes you imagine.

The former is forced upon your brain but the later is by choice.

Next Gen consoles and games will make you believe what you see; you will see the most realistic bomb explosion, with millions of physics simulated particles taking out a 100 story building in real time physics controlled mesh deformation. It will *watched* with awn.

Not to my surprise as I already imagined this almost 2 decades back while playing super contra.

But it was my imagination, it was pure, not governed and it was mine.

I live in a world which is not made by me, I follow the rules which were not laid down by me and everything looks so real, you damn right it’s just a next generation game.

But well, I guess today’s games industry has become too big too soon. It’s the biggest entertainment with the deepest pockets, but nevertheless there will be some genuine games with a burning core, that will be made off an on.....

....... and for the rest of the games.

I am happy paying $20 per year on Gamespot and *Watching* all of them.

Show me the books

2006-04-24T11:14:00.000+05:30

Lot of my friends and acquaintances often ask me, to name some of the good books on games development and design. I end up answering “Read all of them, but be choosy when it comes to what you learn from them”

Here is the stuff that I have enjoyed reading off late

btw: the beer book takes a place along with others because it helped me design one of my favourtie games (Still under development) Chef Rastogi and Food Stealing Aliens

My Games in Italy

2006-04-14T13:35:00.000+05:30

I just got the news.

While working in Paradox i had developed many game out of those following 3 games;

1. Battledust (Lead Programmer)
2. Bomberbabe (Game Designer)
3. Shatranj (Game Designer)

.. are released in Italy, i can't read Italian, but here are the links:

1. http://www.ludonic.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=36

2. http://www.ludonic.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=34

3. http://www.ludonic.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=37

Royalties would have been great but nevertheless cheers to all

Intention gone bad

2006-03-30T22:19:00.000+05:30

Have you seen the new State Bank of India’s debit card advertisement on the television?

This is what it wants to say

“Welcome to cash less world, its fantastic even pick pockets need to look for jobs”

This is what it says

“See this hard working, under fed, man; “bholu” ( bholu means simple), he is dying to make his ends meet and can barely have dry bread by the end of the day, but hey viewer you don’t need to worry, you can use our debit card for all your lust”

Somwhere on the screen you can read that the guy who is doing all the hard work is actually an ex-pick pocketer.

Actually the “ad” is very S”ad”.

Such ads are the outcome of forced innovation / forced style of a wanna-b- creative director.

SBI being a non private bank, a government property, it’s hard to imagine of what can be the motive to air such an ad.

Broken and Slow

2006-03-28T19:09:00.001+05:30

I FELL

I Broke my knuckle and i broke my wrist.
My typing speed has reduced by 50%, and now i realize the importance of customizing mouse clicks :)

4 weeks to type with both hands again :( hopefully

Will there be an awakening

2006-03-26T02:13:00.000+05:30

Why does it happen, that you believe something is right but you still can’t convince yourself to do it. Does your brain repel the discomfort that the right thing can/will cause if you do it? Is that the reason? Or does the reason lie in a deeper Zen?

My wife was forcing me for more than a month to go and watch “Rang de Basanti”, well I was aware of the reviews that were in the air, some of my so called same bandwidth sharing friends also gave some seriously high ratings and I was very sure of what I would be getting to see on the screen.

So, the day came, today and we went for the movie, this was the second time for my wife (now I know why).

This movie moved me, I felt different. This was not the first time something moved me I have had this feeling many a time, while watching seriously good movies, playing seriously good games, listing seriously good music, but this good feeling also had some not so good about it.

I got the message in the movie loud and clear and I know it’s correct. I consider myself above average in connections, deductions and conclusions. My mind can extrapolate, differentiate and statistical figure out problems. But after watching this movie and giving it some serious thought on the drive back home I cannot stop questioning myself as what can I do as an individual for my country. (Or is it really just about my country, my home, my continent or my earth or my universe, or is it just about me?)

Okay seriously, coming back to the country thing, I am not talking about any killing or going against anything and all that.

I am talking about just myself and my country as a place, what can I do about it?

Do you feel guilty (ever) when you throw an empty Pepsi/coke glass on the road? Well I do feel guilty quite often, but then I think “What the hell”, who cares and why should it matter.

If my grandfather reads this he would say, “Yes it matters, if everyone stops doing this we will have a cleaner place”. My mind computes the logic but does not respond to this statement emotionally well.

When one thinks, “hell no one will stop doing this’ - OR – you might think “most of the people will not stop doing this”. Both of these thoughts are correct but the deduction is wrong.

What deduction?

Hell no one will stop doing this - OR - most of the people will not stop doing this, therefore what difference it makes if I just throw the damn glass here.

Will you see the place cleaner if you don’t, will you see the place dirtier if you do?

The answer is we don’t care, its SEP (Somebody else’s problem). Its invisible to us, till the time it becomes so much that you start noticing it and start hating it and then you say “this place stinks man, is desh ka kuch nahi hosakta hai”

I don’t know what the solution is and neither am I looking for someone to give me a solution. Or for that mater if there is a genuine problem for which I need a solution

All I know that the tag line of the Movie “a Generation awakens”.
…..Is true…It’s true for me.

Genius He Is

2006-02-26T00:53:00.000+05:30

For last one week I was forcing myself and convincing me to do something which I just did not wanted to.

I am not much of a music person, I can say I love trance music (especially psy-trance) as my brain readily understands the underlying pattern. Besides this genre of music I don’t listen much of anything else. I don’t mind if someone is playing the latest bangra tune or the new hindi remix or even pop, rock, blues, jazz, its just that I don’t go out of my way to groove on these.

Coming back to the point, I had promised my mother and my wife that I will take them to the Jagjit Singh Show. When my wife called up a week back that the tickets are available and whether she should pick on extra for me to tag along, I don’t know why I just agreed to it.

Well glad I did, it was one of the most fantastic times I had in a long time. What a voice. Okay, all of you JS fans must be going “You didn’t knew that”, well I knew he is considered a maestro gazal singer but had never really heard his pieces the way I did today.

Genius, he and his team were on fire, speaking and playing their own raga language. I will be lying if I say that I understood the lyrics. But I could clearly see the rhythm, I was able to find the slightest of pres and posts, the ups and downs, the pattern was beautiful.

Today JS has added one more to his fan list of millions.

Gaming Life

2006-02-24T10:28:00.000+05:30

The more and more I think of game design the more I realize how closely it relates to life itself.

Objectives --> Rules --> Obstacles --> Resources --> Actions --> Feedbacks/Results

Objective: Gurus talk about how to live better lives, how to set good targets so that you can achieve them. In Professional life they talk about setting smaller objectives and achieving them instead of the bigger ones where there are higher chances of getting lost. Each smaller objective takes you closer to your bigger one and eventually takes you to your aim.

How about no objective in life? That’s impossible; you will have some objective or the other. Maybe to become a lead programmer for valve or maybe to find the route to the next Rave party, but in either case there will be some objective. Let’s consider the positive case, you know your objectives and you know how all these objective lead to your monster objective. This gives you clarity of thought and focus. You will still need to figure out means to achieve them but you feel confident as you know exactly what you are aiming for.

On the other end, if you have no objective (that’s never true IMHO), or you don’t clearly know what it is - you feel drifting, with nothing to look forward for. (Lazing around in a Goa shack with a beer in hand, also has an objective: Having fun – Its in back of yeah head)

Therefore knowing your objective is very important and Clear Objective is good.

Rules: Everyone’s lives are governed by rules, rules of nature, social rules, rules laid down by self etc. Some rules can be broken and some can’t. When you break a rule to achieve your motive, it gives you instant delight but with a long term insecurity.

How people feel lost in new places, have you ever seen a tourist, holding a notepad and looking hopelessly at a railway station in India, as what to do next? Rules!!! , he has no clue how the rules work. Rules of where to inquire from; rules of where to look for train schedules; rules of how to catch a cab, rules of where to get their tickets from all these make him feel alienated. In this example since the railway system in India is quite different from most of the westerns counterparts, the tourist’s brain is not able to readily match patterns in his head.

Now have you seen a tourist, with a smiling face eating a chicken tikka roll at an Indian Airport? Rules!!!
His mind recognizes the patterns better, he understands the symbols, he understands the rules and he feels in control of the environment. Our mind is continuously recognizing patterns; we try to find order in any chaos. If we are unable to find this order, that thing is useless and the brain rejects it. (Off no interest)

Let’s take a bizarre example.

Imagine yourself meeting a 4 headed alien and being invited to play “HUU-HUU-HUU-BAM-BAM”, you go with him and he puts you in open pink field with purple gates all around you and goes “HUU…aek….HUU duo…HUU…teen”, you are now praying to god of what’s going to happen next.

God is kind! The gate opens and you see 19 aliens coming out with a ball wearing 2 sets of colored clothes. Are you feeling better now? (Does you mind recognize a pattern and gives you a small sub-set to think about)

Not quite; may-be the word BAM-BAM is still making you pray god.

If you build up the story the way you like it, you will notice the more you understand the rules the more comfortable you get.

What if the game was called “MUUAH-MUUAH-HEE-HEE”?? Probably less scary but still alienated.

So knowing rules does not make you feel safe but it does give you a lesser sub-set to worry about, it makes you feel knowledgeable, which is a good feeling. Assuming in our game “HUU-HUU-HUU-BAM-BAM”, the alien friends tells you that the purple gates a permanently locked. This definitely gives you one less thing to worry about.

Being aware of rules is good, learning the rules fast makes you feel knowledgeable and more in control.

Obstacles: Anything that impedes progress; progress in achieving objectives. What kind of obstacles do we get in our lives’?

Dilemmas: Whether to do this or do that?
Human Competition (People): Work front, personal front.
Enforce Rules: You cannot buy booze today as it’s a dry day. (Breaking some rules and achieving objective is always fun, but has its own challenge)
Physical: Damn the Highway No. 6 is jammed; you will need to take the longer route. Or you can’t make it to the final 10 for the finals as you have a sore knee.

The realization that a thing is an obstacle holds true only if you have an objective and the current thing impedes your progress. Otherwise the thing is not an obstacle for you. (Brain is very good in distinguishing things as obstacles or not an obstacle.

Now, which of the following way gives more delight or more feel-good emotion?
Is it?
Achieving your goal with no obstacle at all
Achieving your goal by over coming all the obstacles within the rule set.
Achieving your goal by over coming all the obstacles within and outside the rule set.

Can it be generalized?

My answers are all 3 holds true in different scenarios and it cannot be generalized, but most of the feel-good emotion comes out from point number 2.

(There is another way which results in maximum feel-good emotion – and that is when you create something - will write more on this later)

Why do people give up on something?

The challenge provided by the obstacle is too difficult and the objective you are trying to achieve is not worth it. So you just forget about it and move on to some other objective.

Is it correct to say that the challenge bar can be raised by having the objective more needed? I would say yes, but within a critical limit. After that both the objective and the challenge seems stupid and absurd.

So obstacles are good, in most circumstances, good challenges make achievements feel better.

Resources: Anything that assists or acts as catalyst in achieving objectives or takes you closer to it.

It will be hard to include all kinds of resources available to humans. Various types

Things improving your physical ability.
Things imparting knowledge on subject. (Learning rules). Increases mental ability.
Things improving your social status/standing.

So if on one hand we have obstacles impeding the progress, Resources on the other tries to balance out your ability against the challenges.

Resources are always limited; one can never have an infinite supply of any kind of resource. (No there is no alternative of “give all” in real life)

The existence of resource in itself leads to certain level of challenge or dilemma. Ask yourself when to use the resource. (If money is a resource, should you spend the money now and buy yourself a commodity A or wait for sometime and buy a better commodity B available in time T. If time is a resource, should you spend this time reading this crap or go on and do some real work.)

Resources are useful; it helps you keep up your confidence level and chances for success. If you efficiently utilize the resources it also increases the feel-good emotion.

Actions: Things you do or perform in order to achieve your objective or move closer to your objectives.

Each action comes with a procedure, which explains how to perform that action.
Each action comes with a set of rules, which explains if the action is limited to space, time and/or resource.

Actions are must to achieve your objectives; having a bunch of actions to choose from, choices for actions (Dilemma) always makes you feel safe, even if the action does not lead to your objective.

Feedbacks/Results: For every action performed, their will be a resultant reaction. When you will achieve an objective, it will result in satisfaction-emotion.

Feedbacks are important for us to fathom that we took an action, if there are no feedbacks you will probably try to perform that action again in order to get one. If you don’t get any result or feedback you would probably feel that it was a wasteful action.

Have you ever sent job mails to some pathetic organizations, who don’t respond to your mail? (Not even saying “you pr**k, we don’t want you!”

Action: You start punching in the keys.
Result: you see letters appearing on the screen.

Action: You click browse button to attach you resume.
Result: A window opens for you to locate your document.

Action: you click send button.
Result: Web page shows acknowledgement of message being sent.
Conditional Result 2: A delayed mailed demon mail of failure to deliver message.

At this point you are waiting for a feedback, a result, a reaction.

If you don’t get any response, then the dangerous thing starts to happen. Assumptions (any body a fan of steven segal movie Under siege and the train dialogue “Assumption is the mother of all f*****)

Quick responses, feedbacks are good; it makes you aware of your actions.

Let’s sum it up

Clear Objective is good.
Being aware of rules is good, learning the rules fast makes you feel knowledgeable and more in control.
Obstacles are good, in most circumstances; good challenges make achievements feel better.
Resources are useful; it helps you keep up your confidence level and chances for success. If you efficiently utilize the resources it also increases the feel-good emotion.
Actions are must to achieve your objectives; varied set of allowed actions makes you feel good.
Quick responses, feedbacks are good; it makes you aware of your actions.

Good game are those that uses these points well, so that they fit together in maximizing feel-good emotion.

Games mimic life, they form metaphors.

There is lot one can learn from one and use it in the other.

Sketch

2006-01-25T16:16:00.000+05:30

Highly recommended

http://www.isketch.net/

Beware: Highly addictive.

31 Days Over

2005-12-13T22:03:00.000+05:30

31 days over since my second last blog post.

Today was my second day at Microsoft. I have joined in as Program Manger – HED (Home and Entertainment Division).

So its time to start making GAMES.

It has been fabulous 2 days, I have an excellent team and looking forward for everything.

Elevators

2005-11-10T14:59:00.000+05:30

One of the quietest times during my entire day is when I am in the elevator.

Elevator People Classification:

People looking at the ceiling of the elevator. These are generally standing in the middle.

People looking at the floor of the elevator. Generally these are people at the back side of the elevator, they know they have a long way to go so why bother.

People looking straight at the *closed* slide doors of the elevator.

Well enough of stupid classifications.

This is the time, where you don’t have anything to do, I mean you have nothing to do (physically), besides looking up, looking down or just a blank stare at the sliding door.

If by chance you are in one of those intelligent elevators, probably a good voice will keep you entertained while the sliding doors open and close on floors. (Something to learn from Hitch Hikers Guide To Galaxy)

Then there are people like me, When I am in a lift/elevator I spend my time looking around for something to read, hmm probably the instruction list of the elevator or some scratched graffiti, if you are in India. (“Raju loves basanti” kind of messages).

I can read the instruction list again and over again every time, I just don’t know why?

I know that this elevator cannot carry more than 600 kilos but I still want to read it again.
I know in case of emergency hit the RED button but I still want to read it again.
I guess I am reading it just for the sake of improving my score. The score of how many instructions can i read completely before my floor arrives.

This scoring system will not make sense for people who are from New York or like cities where you have a zillion stories to go, then probably you can try scoring for number of times you can read the entire instruction list :) .

What else one can do in an elevator

1. Talk on your cell phone.
2. Try to be friendly with your neighbor.
3. Try to read graffiti. (Jai Hind)
4. Try to make graffiti. (Jai Hind)
5. Poke your nose.
6. Try to learn voice over acting by mimicking the intelligent voice.
7. Read instruction list, maximize score and try to get you name in Guinness Book.
8. Solo Brainstorm about another point to add to this list.

Enough of wasting your time, reading this.

But before I end.

Don’t you think that intelligent elevators should add another piece of code to its fuzzy logic.

How many times have you seen a person repeatedly pressing the elevator button, he is trying to think that his tap..tap..tap..tap..tap..tapping the button will make the elevator understand….”Some one really wants me fast, and override everything and reach his floor” That would make an intelligent elevator really intelligent.

If you are a hardcore gamer read on otherwise this is the end of post.

Recently I have played lot of games which uses repeated button tapping as a form of game play.

God of war’s repeated tapping to make your killing move
King Kong’s repeated tapping to make the T-Rex not eat your neck.
Prince of persia’s repeated tapping to over power sword battles.

How about an elevator game ? Multiplayer real life elevator game.

One guy on the 10th floor, elevator on the 5th and the opponent on the ground. Ready, steady go..tap..tap..tap..tappp.ttapp..tapp.

Happy tapping and Cheers till next time.

31 days

2005-11-09T14:04:00.000+05:30

31 days to go…..I am all excited, if computers could feel then I am probably feeling just like one fresh installed computer.

I got formatted, re-installed all the software in my brain, properly allocated correct directory structures and all set to test my new graphic card. (duh!)

31 days to go…. For me to start my new job as Program Manager, Microsoft – Games Division, I will be working out at the state of art campus as Gachibowli, Hyderabad.

Its is the largest development center of Microsoft outside of USA.

31 days to go….

I cannot talk much about the nature of my work, as there are bunch of papers stapled to my lip. (NDA) but all I can say I will be making GAMES.

Also wondering if I can get a role in the new upcoming Halo Movie, I was always confident about my acting skills :) , it would be great if I can convince Alex Garland to add a character to his script. Anyways jokes apart, I am really looking forward for my job to start at MS and a new journey into the mysteries of good gameplay.

Other things that i am looking forward for are:

1. Indian Game Developers Guild to start.
2. My sister’s wedding in December.
3. Permanent license plate for my new car that I bought 2 weeks back. (See)
4. My new Nostromo™ SpeedPad n52.
5. Peter Jackson’s King Kong – Both the movie and the game. Demo looked very impressive.
6. Coming weekend’s Italian cooking session with family.

From Vada Pav to Biryaani

2005-10-10T15:55:00.000+05:30

This post has been long over due.

I left Paradox Studios and moved to Hyderabad in persue of my hunger to know more, to make more and to love more games.

Last 2 months was lot of reshuffling and re-settling. Its not easy to switch cities, till now I thought only To-Do lists (Note: Plural) on your desktops and approaching demo deadlines where the stressors, but Boy! Moving cities is a big pain in the *$$. Especially if the city you are leaving is Mumbai (THE CITY of India).

This recent experience made me come up with a To-Do List for moving Cities.

Assuming you know your date or month to relocate.

Finalizing a place to stay in the city you are moving to.

Fire up your internet and Google for the city’s websites
Keywords – City Name – Cost of living – Rentals – Commuting
Nice to have details

City Map
Bookmark Forum’s on rentals/sales.
Telephone number’s of estate agents.

Call up and pretend that you are the richest dude around, make sure you sound as if Bill Gates just applied for a job in your company. This will give you a list and rentals for the best localities around.

Call up another agent and now pretend you just got fired and filed for bankruptcy yesterday. This will either get you nothing or bunch of cold words, in which you should try to figure out the names of the locations and try to remove the (int) part as they are the rental costs.

So now you have yourself a price range.
List of friends or friend’s friends and/or family members. (This might give you a good chance of locating few more in your family tree, the ones you have never heard off).
List of Hotels/Motels/Guest Houses according to your price range.
List out modes of travel to that city from yours.
Optional – List of wine shops J
Your bank Branches.
Your Cooking Gas (LPG) Company’s Dealer.
Your Mobile operator Branches.

Plan a weekend trip to the city (you might want to extend the stay so have leaves applied for)
Reach the city and park your gear at your decided temporary accommodation.
Buy all local news papers having “Classified” section for rental ads, start calling, try getting lucky.
Hook up with an estate agent, but make sure that you tell him your budget which is 20% less than your actual one. My trick: I ask him to show me two sets of apartments:

1^st is for myself and my budget is X (less than my actual budget).
2^nd for my brother (if you don’t have one, create a fictitious one) which is approx. 10% more than my Budget. This because I am a range guy I like things in brackets. That’s just me.

Get lucky – strike the deal –get back home before you leave runs out. I recommend having few days extra, one never knows how much paper work needs to be done and how long it can take.

Finalizing the Packing plan

This can be quite tricky, depends on how much stuff you have, if you are like me, married without kids and with basic house hold stuff and the company is bearing the relocation cost, I strongly suggest hiring a Mover and Packer agent.
Get the list of all the Packers, again I am the brackets guy, inquire the price list from the best to the one with the funniest name, which might sound more like a game studio than a Packer company. Inquire INSURANCE details. Ask details for

Packing material that they will be using.
Transportation vehicle
Packing time
Ask them to show you photographs (They generally have one)
COST.
Hidden cost
INSURANCE (Don’t fail ask what if the good needs to be stored for a day or two at the destination city).

Pay the booking charges and get all contact information.

Finalizing the Travel plan

If you already been to the city once for finalizing your apartment, you know how good or bad the last mode of commuting was? If its good book your tickets if not then choose another mode of transport.
Confirm the dates to

Your current landlord (Notice)
Your new landlord (Inquire for availability of keys et al.)
Your mover and packer agent.
Your maid (Notice period for Mumbai Bai, that’s cool huh!)
Your cable operator.
Your news paper guy.
Your friends and family (This will help them find time for your farewell party)
Yourself (you don’t want to forget it yourself in all the stress and anxiety)

Request Change of Address to:

Your Bank.
Your Telephone/Mobile Operator.
Your Credit Card agencies.
Your Game Developers Magazine Website.
Your Tax agents and Insurance Agents.
Your Cooking Gas (LPG) Company. (Request for transfer as well)
Your internet service provider.

You are all set now.

Packing, Moving, Reaching and Settling.

If you have followed the list above you will be able to ease out Packing, Moving and Reaching.
Settling might take a long time.

It has been over a month here and I am still settling in.

Will talk about my New Job is the next post and man! It will be exciting.

True Spirit

2005-07-28T13:38:00.000+05:30

26th July 2005 – Mumbai, the financial capital of India was hit by a cyclone and the city witnessed almost 944mm of rainfall in less than 24 hours. The city has suffered serious damage both in life and property; army has been called upon for help. Normalcy will take time.

But what makes me write this blog, it’s the true spirit of Mumbai that the world always talked about and yesterday I witnessed it myself.

A time of disaster in India means extra moneymaking time for the corrupt and taking sadist advantage of the situation, but Mumbai witnessed heroes rise.

The rains was so severe that the Local trains stopped (the heart of Mumbai travel), busses stopped, taxis and auto stopped and most of the personal vehicles lay stranded in more than 10s of kilometers of jam. More than 100 of thousands of people took the roads on foot with more than 4 feet of water.

My office is 32 kilometers from my home and it took me 2 auto rickshaws, 1 taxi ride, 2 truck rides and a 10 km walk to reach home in more than 5 hours. But I consider myself lucky as some had to suffer more.

What failed?

Government failed miserably, I would say India should again go back to the status of under developed country. Mumbai had no disaster management service. People lay stranded for more than 36 hours, 1000s become homeless, 100s died and only thing that one got to hear in media was -

Police blames municipal corporation, municipal corporation blames the fire brigade department, fire brigade department blamed it on the Navy and the cost guard, they in turn blamed it on the failure of the mobile networks.

So you can see this is what we are best at, I am sorry not the people, let me rephrase this

“So you can see this is what are MINISTERS and LEADERS are good at, eating away the money and at time of questioning blame it on each other”. It’s so sad.

What did not fail and will never ever fail?

It’s the people. No one was there except the people and citizens of Mumbai for each other. Shopkeepers served tea and gave free food to the stranded; truck drivers and taxis gave free rides to people, travelers held each other and became support for one another. The true spirit of Mumbai and its people filled up the air.

I will never ever in my life will forget this day, as this day I realized the country is not of its leaders but of its people, a company is not of its bosses but of its employees and instead of me wasting time cursing our corrupt leaders, I should utilize it by helping the needy and praising the Heroes, praising all those unknown faces who came to the rescue with a single motive of serving humanity, god bless them all.

Rains, Dishes and Dilemmas

2005-07-07T13:34:00.000+05:30

Rains have started, water level is going up and so is the number of people falling Ill. I am down with fever and a terrible body ache. I am feeling very restless and i have not felt like this in a long time, I am sure it’s the fever and a very dull weather outside that is contributing a lot to this but I guess there is one more thing which in sub conscious state is adding to the misery.

I am stuck with one of the components of the game. Chef Rastogi

I have completed the Level Editor (more or less), its good enough for me to make levels, save them, load them and re-edit them, so that’s good enough for the time being.

When I started the design work for the Restaurant part of the game, in which the player decides what dish he wants to serve to the AIEaters, I landed in a dilemma. The problem is how can a Chunk of Computer Code figure out whether a Dish it just inputted was tasty enough or not.

A Brief on the Dilemma.

In the game dishes can be made up of a finite number of Ingredients (These are fixed).

Ingredients are divided into the following categories (If required these categories can be changed - but will be fixed for the final game)

Non-Veg
Vegetables
Fruits
Spices and Herbs
Pulses and Cereals
Others (Things like salt, Coffee, Milk, oil etc comes here)

So a dish can be made up of

3 ingredients from Non-Veg category
1 ingredient from vegetable category
0 ingredients from fruit category
4 ingredients from spices and herbs category
1 ingredient from pulses and cereal category
2 ingredients from others category

The name of the dish is a Chicken-Ham-Fish Sizzler with Rice and Potatoes

Sounds yummy

What are the various approaches for a Computer controlled entity - AIEater deciding whether it likes this dish or not?

Theory of Taste: There are in all 5 different kinds of taste buds

Saltiness
Sourness
Sweetness
Bitterness
Umami

My Approach:
Each ingredient has 6 properties

Salt Value [0-1-2-3]
Sour Value [0-1-2-3]
Sweet Value [0-1-2-3]
Bitter Value [0-1-2-3]
SPICE Value [0-1-2-3] (Note the difference here, not take Umami)
Non-Veg or Veg Flag (Boolean)

Each AIEater also has his set of taste values besides his living standards, health, thrill of dinning out etc ,which are not required here)

Salt Value [0-1-2-3]
Sour Value [0-1-2-3]
Sweet Value [0-1-2-3]
Bitter Value [0-1-2-3]
SPICE Value [0-1-2-3] (Note the difference here, not take Umami)
Non-Veg or Veg Flag (Boolean)

Computation of a dish

Ingredient A - 1 2 0 1 3 True
Ingredient B - 1 3 1 1 1 False

if you add the above to make a dish, the dish will have
Dish XYZ - 1 3 1 1 3 True (Higher value is taken; note 1 and 1 does not make the dish (2) twice salty as the proportion of food (Quantity) also increases.

Now AIEater will like this dish if the values match his taste buds (with some variance)

PROBLEM WITH THIS APPROACH:

The taste properties of more than 1 dish can be same, despite of being made up of different ingredients.

Therefore,

Chicken ADD SOYA SAUCE - Taste Good to AI
Chicken ADD ICE-CREAM - ADD Salt - ADD Vinegar - Taste Good to AI

But the later is YUCK!

Phew!

What I am looking for is a more practical and sensible (Making Sense out of a dish) approach for the AIEater to enjoy his food.

PS: AIEater are working on a very simple genetic algorithm (right now)
They are born with a set of taste buds and they evolve their taste buds as the game progress.

Any ideas or random thoughts on this can help me out. Please mail me

Chef Rastogi's Development Progress

2005-05-25T13:25:00.000+05:30

A good set of tools is priceless for any game development, it streamlines and eases out the entire process.
So i decided to start off the project by making a level editor for Fight Arena. I am trying to make it as simple as possible for anyone to make good clean levels, place enemies, traps and play test it there and then. The test can be paused, things can be edited at run time and the AI and game codes will update themselves accordingly.

Here is a screenshot of the Chef Builder (Work Under Progress)

(Fullscreen)

Thanks to Amit's Game Programming Pages I also implemented A* algorithm for pathfinding, right now i am using Manhattan distance (Heuristic) for it, this is the simplest of all. Later i will modify it to accomodate moving obsticals and planned huntdowns.

I plan to have a alpha build ready soon, and i will post the executable on the website.

Next Steps for the editor:

Movable Objects in the Editor
Realtime level updation
Power-up/ingredients placements
Some UI thingis
Documentations

Next Steps for the game:

Collecting data on popular dishes and their ingredients.
Designing the FSM for the AIEater

So till the next update, cheers and have a nice time

Food for Aliens

2005-05-05T13:14:00.000+05:30

Food for ~~thought~~ Aliens

Couple of week’s back I was playing a game called Diner Dash. This - a very simple game with cute art and good sounds really kept me engrossed. I always liked the idea of owning a restaurant. I am a food lover, the shear idea of going out to a restaurant makes my mouth water, besides the love for food a lot of time me and my friends have discussed this idea of opening up a restaurant of our own. Every time the discussion starts seriously and after couple of rounds of beer, we end up blowing up the chef and waiters with a bazooka.

But this time, at my friend’s place we landed up talking about how fun will it be to make a game on restaurant simulation with a prospect of some bad guys to be blown away. We all are die hard fans of Bomberman; I even designed and programmed - Bomberbabe a 3d make over of this game for my company around a year back.

Anyways so we decided that I will start putting up a design document on a game which has both the core fun of bomberman and a reasonably extensive toon restaurant simulation.

Chef Rastogi and The Food Stealing Aliens

Story: Aliens from planet ME-HA-RA invade and they steal all the food from planet earth (Dhuh! Don’t ask why please!). A group of earthlings develop a teleporter that can be used to travel back I forth between Earth and ME-HA-RA.

Mr. Rastogi thinks of a bright idea to use this teleporter. Steal back the food ingredients from the Alien planet and set up a restaurant in Khau-Gali (Slang for Eating Lane).

Yeah I know I am terrible story writer :(

So that’s the story for the time being, if you think that you can help me a bit more to develop this story please email me, though this story has nothing in practical to do with how the game will be played. But its always nice to have a good story.

So, what will be the game play you might ask?

Buy space for your restaurant at Khau-Gali.
But tables and chairs to start it all up.
Invade ME-HA-RA, bomb their place to find hidden food ingredients, example find cheese, buns, and chicken.
Unlock dishes from the existing menu, example Chicken Cheese Burger.
Hire Chefs, waiters, bar tenders, valet parkers etc.
Upgrade restaurant for better tables, chairs, lighting, music, ADD interesting DISHES.
Buy bomb powers from the local arms shop.
Control your won money the way you want.
Get more ingredients to unlock different cuisines.
Make your own dishes.

And yes competing with other restaurant owners in matching price, variety and quantity.

Who will come and eat food?

AIEaters – Computer controlled characters, they will have their own set of moods and taste buds.

I can keep on going with lots of crazy ideas, but I think its now time to write up a proper document and start planning and coding.

If you love food or if you love bomberman and would like to comment on this please mail me.