the rant

Learning to code, the interactive way

yadurajiv — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:58:51 +0000

I was looking around for the easiest way to pick up a new language and the first thing that popped into my head was the way Codeacademy had things going when it came to javascript. On the search for some more tools I bumped into a couple of more I thought I’d share.

Codeacademy
http://www.codecademy.com
Learn javascript, the most effective and entertaining way I’ve discovered so far.

Codeacademy Labs
http://labs.codecademy.com/
They are coming up with Ruby and Python courses as well.

Hackety Hack!
http://hackety.com/
If you can’t wait around for Codeacademy to add Ruby, you can try this; which needs a tiny download :)

TryRuby – Code School
http://tryruby.org
TryRuby has a beautiful interface that teaches you Ruby step by step. Check it out, its absolutely brilliant

Code School
http://www.codeschool.com/
Speaking of TryRuby, check out Code School for more similar and brilliant stuff.

Try Python
http://www.trypython.org
Try Python is an interactive Python tutorial which sticks to the tutorials in the Python documentation. This makes things a bit easier for you by providing a button to copy over solutions to problems.

Learn Python
http://www.learnpython.org/
Is an awesome free interactive Python tutorial with a big list of topics which is also available in different languages. Works quite nicely too :)

CodePupil
http://codepupil.com/
Well, there is nothing to see, but something along the lines of the rest… there is a blog and a newsletter subscription option :3

Thats about it for now, I think I will be playing around with learnpython for some time :) till Codeacademy comes up with something :3

Can has more? Plskthx.

yadurajiv — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:30:41 +0000

To be very to the point, its just that; these are a some games from the room jam which I really liked and some others I would like to see a bit more of :)

Golden Boy vs. Lasers by Devin & Calin Reimer
In this game, you control Golden Boy who needs to avoid the lasers and get to the exit. What I would love to see is more puzzles, more objects that we can interact with, like switches, objects that can be pushed and maybe more :)

Ditto Lake by Jeremias Babini
In ditto lake, you control your character through a maze to reach the exit; you simultaneously control the character’s reflection on the lake near by, traversing through a similar maze. More mazes please :)

The Ascent by Zachary Lewis & Christer Sydhagen & Hyperduck Sound Works
The Ascent is a very nicely made platformer. You guide your player with his tiny wings through a circular pyramid like structure. A set of circular saws grind up behind you gunning for your life. If the saws doesn’t get you, the spikes on your way up probably will.

Find the Wheat to Leave by Tim Crook @birdsigh
This game was very crisp and wheaty :P and yeah, it was nice. Simple enough, you have to collect all the wheat! so as to exit through the, well exit. The presentation was really nice and the graphics really neat, I wish there were more in some form :)

How The World Ends by Terry Cavanagh
A strange (pseudo?)3D world after an apocalypse that involves a strange G-lette corporation and a 7blade razor incident; you are left to traverse the right path to the exit, in between you meet a man who has survived the strange incident 6 years ago to receive a unique gift. Reminded me of the dream sequence in Max Payne and the Utima series :P Felt like there were some more possibilities to explore.

Lava Temple by StabAlarash
Lava + Spikes!! RUN damnnit!! The artwork in this game is actually really nice and has this mysterious depth which I feel has some story to tell, at the same time the character feels so jovial that he seems to have fallen out of the wrong side of his bed into lava filled cave chased by spikes!

Crawl Of Shame by Matthew Klundt and Terrance Kritmen
Reminiscent of point and click adventures and with witty dialogues to boot this is a 60 second crawl to the other door with enough distractions to keep you busy for the next, well three times the time you have. Fun!

Strike! – The Bonus Round by Ryan Hill
Beat a bus up! hell yeah!! moar!!

Gem Of Flying Wonders by Noel Berry
The game starts with you walking up to a crystal and then taking off swoosh! The flying bit; which is the game, was awesome and you have flying polar bears, I think :P

Brownian Motion by Switchbreak & pneuman
This game is a clever little puzzle game where you are supposed to jump and cling on to balls and use different actions to move through sections to the end. The music was nice too.

Heliphant Flight by Tamper + YellowAfterLife
A flying elicopter!! <3 This just gets a lot my bonus points; behaves well like a Heliphant too :)

Well, what else? all the games were good! some just stuck on that's all :) So go to rooms page - http://somanyrooms.com/rooms and pick each room; or should I say each game and give it the play through they deserve.

(images taken from the room jam website :)

The ‘Room Jam’ aftermath

yadurajiv — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:34:44 +0000

Krishna Israney over at YellowMonkeyStudios.com and I got together yet one more time after that much crazy night & day compo in november last year to make a small puzzle game for the room jam happening at Winnipeg. Hope it gets noticed and liked over with all the other great games made over the weekend(add that too with the 7000devs churning out games at the GGJ).

Things learned
Got much more intimate with flixel yet again, and did a ton of coding. Most of all the art was done by Krishna along with the design for the game. The game, even if it was one “room”, came out to be pretty close to its initial design(of course i’m being blamed for aborting on unborn weight parasite among other things). Apart from new tricks, cutting things apart, and not brooding over things; 48 hours has been about managing time, 20minute sleep-thought-sessions, pushing on through, solving problems and not giving in.

It was strangely not about sloppy code or being frustrated with being stuck. Of course, there were times when I was stuck, which just meant that we had to push on through and be realistic about things.

And yes, it is only a room, since it was designed to be part of a single game experience in a way. Even while it was just a room, it was made well enough to be easily edited and changed to make more and even add more. The initial one I sent over, actually had a different set of puzzles, no instructions, two possible end games, no pick ups(so to speak) which was added over in the last two hours after the person who played it mailed back telling me it took him an hour to beat and that some instructions might be nice.

All level editing, so to speak, was done using paint. Everything except for the background and an overlay for the level is being loaded from the bitmap yay :) that includes, windows, doors, pickups, enemies, objects et al :P Thanks largely to flixel.

oh and I made a bit of a strange background music with using musagi and audacity <3

The room will soon be part of a single experience over at http://somanyrooms.com/ which hopefully will rock :) Do go there and check it out when you get time too :)

that’s about it for this weekend :)

Drawing concave shapes with Box2D in flash

yadurajiv — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:53:17 +0000

After being stuck at using box2d, drawing clockwise polygons and concave shapes came a small break through when I bumped into an article and code by Paul Bourke, which was quickly ported over to ActionScript to solve two of my problems, which was to find if the vertices were ordered clockwise or counter-clockwise; and also if my polygon was convex or concave.
Original C source and explanation here: http://debian.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/~sergei/cgsr/docs/clockwise.htm

My second problem was actually drawing those concave shapes. The concave shapes are actually triangular fixtures grouped together in a body. The code for triangulation actually came from Zevan Rosser
actionsnippet.com – http://actionsnippet.com/?p=1462. Armed with all these and some more digging, through changes in the new box2d and it was done ‘~_~ *phew*

Its still not perfect, there are bugs and you still can’t draw very complex shapes which overlap and possibly look like a meaning less scribble :B But as far as I wanted, it can draw closed shapes :)

Click and drag to draw, D to toggle Debugdraw

~~The current version has a lot of Flixel code in it, I’ll post the code as soon as I clean it up and make it more generic. More soon ^_^~~
Ok, so done with the clean up, plain flash and as3, box2d included as well, and removed all the Flixel dependencies, hope it helps :)

Download code here: https://github.com/yadurajiv/concaveShapes

Box2D, Flixel and concave hulls

yadurajiv — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:23:49 +0000

The code in this article is old, new follow up article here – http://chronosign.com/rant/yadurajiv/2011/01/694

I have been trying all weekend to try and build up a physics based game using Box2D and Flixel. I went ahead and was prototyping till I hit a wall. Before I try to climb a hill which seems to be really high and vertical, I wonder if anyone has hit the same ones that I have.

Since the polygons are drawn much like in crayon physics, how do you avoid or solve the problem of concave polygons. I’m about to look up on how to do polygon triangulation, hoping that its the right thing to do.

The other two problems are, Box2D ignoring all CCW Polygons and Polygons with holes in them.

test, just click and drag to draw a polygon(D toggles bounds): http://chronosign.com/yadu/experiments/flbox/1

The prototype has been there since the time I was trying out the b2FlxSprite and b2FlxTilemap classes from the dojo. Later on when a game idea hit me recently, I kinda dug a bit and did some more. Everything from Emanuele Feronato is always a help :) and so was his experiments with Box2D and flash. Using multiple shapes to plot out bigger or connected shapes would be something I should try out as well.

Wrote up an FlxPolygon class that would take in vertices as an array and draw them out. Extended it to an b2FlxPolygon which worked more or less like the b2FlxSprite and b2FlxTilemap classes. More on what happens to this later as things happen.

FlxPolygon class to be used with Flixel.

package
{
	import flash.display.BitmapData;
	import flash.display.GradientType;
	import flash.display.InterpolationMethod;
	import flash.display.SpreadMethod;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.geom.Matrix;
	import flash.geom.Point;
	import flash.geom.Rectangle;
	import org.flixel.FlxSprite;
 
	/**
	 * ...
	 * @author Yadu Rajiv
	 */
	public class FlxPolygon extends FlxSprite
	{
		public var points:Array;
 
		public var pointsRelative:Array;
 
		public var pointsRelativeCn:Array;
 
		private var _currentInk:uint;
		private var _drawAlpha:Number;
		private var _borderSize:Number;
		private var _borderColor:uint
 
		private var _redraw:Boolean;
 
		private var _fillGradType:String;
		private var _fillGradColors:Array;
		private var _fillGradAlphas:Array;
		private var _fillGradRatios:Array;
 
		public var cx:Number;
		public var cy:Number;
 
		/**
		 *
		 * Constructor for FlxPolygon, creates a draws a polygon
		 * @param	X position of the Polygon
		 * @param	Y position of the Polygon
		 * @param	W width of the polygon
		 * @param	H height of the polygon
		 * @param	Points an array of objects of the type flash.geom.Point, where each point is an absolute position of each vertex in the world and *NOT* relative to the X and Y of the object itself
		 */
		public function FlxPolygon(X:Number,Y:Number,W:Number,H:Number,Points:Array) {
 
			super(X, Y);
			width = W;
			height = H;
			cx = x + (W / 2);
			cy = y +  (H / 2);
 
			/**
			 * stores points in an array as Points locally
			 */
			points = new Array();
			pointsRelative = new Array();
			pointsRelativeCn = new Array();
 
			for (var i:int = 0; i &lt; Points.length; i++) {
 
				points.push(new Point(Points[i].x,Points[i].y));
				pointsRelative.push(new Point(Points[i].x,Points[i].y));
				pointsRelativeCn.push(new Point(Points[i].x,Points[i].y));
 
				pointsRelative[i].x = pointsRelative[i].x - X;
				pointsRelative[i].y = pointsRelative[i].y - Y;
				pointsRelativeCn[i].x = pointsRelativeCn[i].x - cx;
				pointsRelativeCn[i].y = pointsRelativeCn[i].y - cy;
 
				/*
				trace("--[" + i + "]----");
				trace("Points[i]: "+ Points[i] );
				trace("points[i]: " + points[i] );
				trace("pointsRelative[i]: " + X +"/"+Y+" - " + pointsRelative[i] );
				trace("pointsRelativeCn[i]: " + cx +"/"+cy+" - " + pointsRelativeCn[i] );
				*/
			}
 
			/**
			 * default line and fill settings
			 */
			setFormat();
 
			/**
			 * not used
			 */
			_fillGradType = GradientType.RADIAL;
			_fillGradColors = [0x222222, 0x000000];
			_fillGradAlphas = [1, 1];
			_fillGradRatios = [127, 255];
 
			/**
			 * redraw is a flag set when we want to redraw the polygon again to the sprites BitmapData object
			 */
			_redraw = true;
 
		}
 
		/**
		 * * sets redraw to true
		 * @param	b Boolean if you want to redraw or not. True by default
		 */
		public function setRedrawFlag(b:Boolean = true):void {
			this._redraw = b;
		}
 
		public function setFormat(Ink:uint = 0x000000, BorderSize:int = 4, BorderColor:uint = 0x333333):void {
			_currentInk = Ink;
			_borderSize = BorderSize;
			_borderColor = BorderColor;
		}
 
		override public function update():void
		{
			super.update();
 
			if(this._redraw) {
 
				/**
				 * Create a new Sprite to draw on
				 */
				var _gfx:Sprite = new Sprite();
 
				/**
				 * Srart the fill
				 */
				_gfx.graphics.beginFill(_currentInk, alpha);
				//_gfx.graphics.beginGradientFill(_fillGradType, _fillGradColors, _fillGradAlphas, _fillGradRatios, null, SpreadMethod.PAD, InterpolationMethod.RGB, 0.5);
				_gfx.graphics.lineStyle(_borderSize, _borderColor, alpha);
				_gfx.graphics.moveTo( pointsRelative[0].x - _borderSize/2, pointsRelative[0].y - _borderSize/2);
 
				for (var i:int = 1; i &lt; pointsRelative.length; i++) {
					_gfx.graphics.lineTo( pointsRelative[i].x - _borderSize/2, pointsRelative[i].y - _borderSize/2);
				}
 
				_gfx.graphics.endFill();
 
				var tmpBMP:BitmapData = new BitmapData(_gfx.width, _gfx.height,true,0x00ffffff);
				var transMat:Matrix = new Matrix();
				transMat.translate(Math.abs(_gfx.getRect(_gfx).x) + _borderSize/2, Math.abs(_gfx.getRect(_gfx).y) + _borderSize/2);
				tmpBMP.draw(_gfx, transMat);
 
				var tmpBMP2:BitmapData = new BitmapData(_gfx.width,_gfx.height,true,0x00ffffff);
				tmpBMP2.copyPixels(tmpBMP, new Rectangle(0,0, _gfx.width, _gfx.height), new Point());
 
				this.pixels = tmpBMP2;
				this.refreshHulls();
 
				this._redraw = false;
			}
		}
 
	}
 
}

b2FlxPolygon class which extends the FlxPolygon class above, works only with concave shapes draw CW

package
{
	import flash.geom.Point;
	import org.flixel.*;
 
	import Box2D.Dynamics.*
	import Box2D.Collision.*;
	import Box2D.Collision.Shapes.*;
	import Box2D.Common.Math.*;
 
	/**
	 * ...
	 * @author Yadu Rajiv
	 */
	public class b2FlxPolygon extends FlxPolygon
	{
		private var ratio:Number = 30; //1m : 30px
 
		public var _fixDef:b2FixtureDef;
		public var _bodyDef:b2BodyDef;
		public var _obj:b2Body;
 
		private var _world:b2World;
 
		public var _friction:Number = 0.8;
		public var _restitution:Number = 0.2;
		public var _density:Number = 0.7;
 
		public var _type:uint = b2Body.b2_dynamicBody;
 
		public var scaledPoints:Array;
 
		public function b2FlxPolygon(X:int, Y:int, Width:uint, Height:uint, Points:Array, w:b2World) {
 
			super(X, Y, Width, Height, Points);
			scaledPoints = new Array();
			for (var i:int = 0; i &lt; pointsRelativeCn.length; i++) {
				scaledPoints.push(new b2Vec2(pointsRelativeCn[i].x / ratio, pointsRelativeCn[i].y / ratio));
			}
 
			_world = w;
		}
 
		override public function update():void
		{
			try {
				cx = _obj.GetPosition().x * ratio;
				cy = _obj.GetPosition().y * ratio;
 
				x = (_obj.GetPosition().x * ratio) - width / 2;
				y = (_obj.GetPosition().y * ratio) - height / 2;
				angle = _obj.GetAngle() * (180 / Math.PI);
 
				super.update();
			} catch (err:Error) {
				trace(err.message);
				kill();
			}
		}
 
		public function createBody():Boolean {
			try {
				var boxShape:b2PolygonShape = new b2PolygonShape();
 
				boxShape.SetAsArray(this.scaledPoints,this.scaledPoints.length)
 
				_fixDef = new b2FixtureDef();
				_fixDef.density = _density;
				_fixDef.restitution = _restitution;
				_fixDef.friction = _friction;
				_fixDef.shape = boxShape;
 
				_bodyDef = new b2BodyDef();
				_bodyDef.position.Set((x + (width / 2)) / ratio, (y + (height / 2)) / ratio);
				_bodyDef.angle = angle * (Math.PI / 180);
				_bodyDef.type = _type;
 
				_obj = _world.CreateBody(_bodyDef);
				_obj.CreateFixture(_fixDef);
 
				return true;
			} catch (err:Error) {
				trace(err.message);
				kill();
				return false
			}
 
			return false;
		}
 
	}
 
}

random sketch-a-thon

yadurajiv — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 08:20:19 +0000

I knew bibi-san was going back to Qatar soon; It was sad that we were not able to do anything together during the time that we were here; I’m not so sure when he is coming back now. Well.. do your best bibisan! =^_^=

We did a random 10 minute per picture sketching spree for almost an hour yesterday; I hope he doesn’t mind me posting them here. I’m kinda sad that I’m not going to have him around to do stuff like this at a moments notice :( Extremely rough stuff ahead.

Bibi. Me.

finding time

yadurajiv — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:38:48 +0000

I’ve been reading for the last couple of days and its been good :) I guess this is the time of the year when I restock on some knowledge. I got back into really reading blogs; completely cut off Facebook and twitter, emails are now twice a day and so are chats. So far it has been really wonderful, of course there are these times when you get these sensational stuff you just have to tweet/facebook about, but then again its not a big deal. The thing that I know will suffer the most is the Ingdin Facebook page, which I really used to take care of; for now, I’m pushing all my links to Kinshuk hoping that he will find some time to post them there.

The reading list is only 2 books long right now, and a lot of blogs. The first is the recent Ogre book and the second is on Blender 2.5. I’ve been away from Ogre for quite sometime now, and I really felt disconnected, and this book seems like what the doctor ordered. The pace of the book is really good, you do things hands on in simple steps and then break down what just happened.

The last time did anything 3D was in Maya and of course Blender was always around to help you with an odd job or two. 2.5 is very awesome and I’m really excited about its release as well.

I was checking out Rainmeter the other day and I was really glad to see that it was open source. Rainmeter is a desktop customization tool, like samurize in a way. What I really liked about it was how simple it was, even the code was not crazy. There are ‘measure’s(for example, a measure might measure and report system temperature or used hard disk space on a drive) that provide values and ‘meter’s(text output or a graph) to display them, you configure your skin using an ini file and bam! you are done. The skinning part is documented very well and if you are a designer, its worth taking a look at. The code though is not really documented anywhere, but once you plough through it, you will see that it makes sense. You can write your custom ‘measure’ plug-ins that provide data for the end user as well. Unlike the ‘measure’, ‘meter’s I guess are hard-wired into the system. I actually wanted to write a meter that would display a nice 3D graph sort of thing, but that will have to wait since I suck at 3D math. Rainmeter uses GDI+ to do all its display work, so all you need to do is draw(using code:).

I have about 160 subscriptions to different feeds online, and they push in a huge chunk of things to read, most of which I just run through very fast, but some I take the time to read. So yes, a lot of time these days is spend reading and experimenting. Speaking of experiments, Do check out some of the things I’ve been working on recently; fallen::Code Screensaver for windows, Blanket of Relief Project, InGDIn logo makeover to name a few.

Hush

yadurajiv — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 07:28:39 +0000

I just got my hands on Hush, a fresh new graphic novel by Pratheek Thomas and Rajiv Eipe, published by Manta Ray.

I remember having a very animated argument with a couple of my friends on the subject of remaining silent. Remaining silent, as they said, helped in the normalcy of things; in other words, it was simply troublesome to tackle the truth. Troublesome is one of my favourite words, I generally use it before I fold my sleeves up and jump into a problem (borrowed it from someone else of course). Hush deals with things that are all too well known to us, and presents it in a way that pushes you to voice them out. They decided to leave the words out of this one, and let your head deal with the images. It is in your face, leaving you with room enough for your eyes to focus on the terrible detail. Hush is not trying to be controversial, and it is not the first time that we handled dark stories of man and his deeds, but the way its told this time around might be very different from what you are usually used to. Hush is a very short, compelling and tragic story of a little girl. I recommend it to every mature reader who is ready to tackle some realities.

Hush also happens to be Manta Ray’s debut publication. Its very nicely printed and laid out and worth the money. You might be in for some surprises too(which I’m not going to spoil). I wish Manta Ray all the best and hope to see many more awesome stuff coming from them real soon. You can grab a copy of Hush on Flipkart.com

The Humble Bundle #2 goes live

yadurajiv — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:13:32 +0000

…and not to mention, all hell breaks loose!

The much awaited Humble Bundle #2 is live! This time around we have Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos and Revenge of the Titans. Very much like the last time, the Bundle will be up for grabs for any prize you want to offer them for the next seven days. Usually if you were to buy these games together, you would need to shell out around $85, but now you get to decide what to pay.

The amount collected can be distributed between the five developers and two charities(Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play Charity). The difference this time is that you could share a bit of that into a Humble fund which will be used for future humble bundle packs.

All games are cross platform(available on Mac, Windows and Linux) and are DRM free(no restrictions to back them up, copy and install anywhere). You can also download them as many times as you want as well.

Two of the games are under active development, but they are awesome none the less! Braid is a must have, Machinarium another classic, Osmos a game you would’nt want to miss. Don’t take my word for it, watch the videos, visit each game websites and I’m pretty sure you would be convinced about what I’m ranting here! :)

Who knows what the new year has in store for us. Four games in the old bundle became open source, a sixth additional game was added to the pack later, earlier last month the pack was released on Steam. For now we dream about the awesome extensions and packs that this baby has to offer.

Jack of many trades

yadurajiv — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:52:34 +0000

During school, and later in college, I was a Jack of all trades; at least the ones that seemed to be hot and happening. I knew my technology, I knew my Art, I knew my literature, I knew my music, I knew everything I needed to know to move around without being told otherwise about the things I knew, I was on top of eveything, I was very book-smart as someone aptly put it once, though I liked to think of myself as street-smart. That was a long time ago. Its not that you cannot remain one, but it is more of a conscious choice as to what you really want to do. I know that many of my friends, brothers and sisters all are stuck with the same kind of a question. Let me give you a slight autobiographical detour that might give you some insight or at least entertain you for the next ten minutes of your life.

When I was in Std 5th, around 10 years of age, I joined a school in Trivandrum called Christ Nagar. It was in Kowdiar and we used to live in PTP Nagar. I never really had friends in that school, except for a very few, some whom I’ve met randomly in school and others who used to take the bus with me to school. It was around this time that I got my introduction to video games. I found myself playing Tetris,which also had a racing mode on it. I’m not sure how it ended up with me; it was most probably my brother borrowing it from some friend of his. The game was called ‘Brick game’ back then. With some persuasion, I finally managed to get myself a video game console. My first ever console was an 8bit Nintendo Famicom Clone from Russia called Dendy :D I didn’t know it was a clone from Russia till very recently.

Image source : http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~pinwhiz/famicom.htm

Exchanging books and comics happened a lot. I was talking to my friend Nithin, who used to take the bus with me to school, about video games and he apparently had one too!! So we decided to exchange cartridges, swapping my 24-in-1 with his awesome 16-in-1 or a 4-in-1 thrown in and what not. We were constantly looking for anyone in the neighbourhood who had a kid and had video games. I mean, anyone! we would try to exchange stuff with almost anyone! even people who we’ve just met. My friend had an 8bit console like mine, it said it was from Nintendo, but I doubted it. We met a lot of people who had many consoles over the next year. One person had an actual NES! another had an Atari 2600(we thought it might have awesome games, which, well, after playing stuff on Dendy, didn’t look so awesome then). My friend’s console had TMNT as a built in game and whenever I used to go to his place, I used to just play it and try to finish it. Once after playing for so long and the having had to stop because it was too late, I asked my friend for his console! :D After a lot of explaining on how important for me it was to finish that game, my friend agreed to give me his console. No one exchanged consoles.. till then. In the days to come I got my hands on the NES, a gameboy, the Atarti 2600 and a Sega Mega Drive 2. We also started a habit of crashing with a lot of consoles and a lot of food(usually cooked by whomever lived wherever we crashed :) and people at someone’s home to just play taking turn after turn.

In the three years of my friendship, we had a community of tiny gamers aged 10 to 13 running around raving about games :) In my hunger for games and gamers, I tried to bump up some friends I had in school to find people who had consoles and wanted to exchange cartridges. This went on for some time and led me to meet someone who’s ideas would fuel many things to come.

A friend of mine introduced me to a group of people which ended up with me meeting someone who would influence me in my life ahead. I met Kishore(chettan – brother in malayalam) and a group of others in the school grounds. They were all seniors(I was 11 and they were 14). We talked games! Mario Andretti racing, Duke Nukem(I got a chance to play it once at a friends place before hand, and of course, computers were the shit!) and what not :) It was really nice.

We kept on playing games; I introduced Nithin to Kishore-chettan, we all partied playing games :D We were hooked on the Mega Drive for so long until one day, Kishore-chettan got a computer :D and of course, more gaming ensued, with parental guidance mostly because we had a reputation of playing till things got fried and also a computer was bloody expensive :D But who no one cared!! we were freaking flying aeroplanes! I got my first real taste of awesome early games from EA like LHX and other games like F29-Retaliator, Prince of Persia, TD2 and Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat :) to name a few. Like most kids my age then, I also wanted to be a pilot too, later when I played Roadrash, I wanted to be a race car driver which I still would love to be :P or make games.

I’m skipping over so many things and games and one day, Kishore-chettan suggested that we make games! We’ve been gaming for almost 3 years now and we all thought why not, lol. Well, I don’t remember how it started out, but it was something like that. We didn’t know any programming, all we knew was some BASIC that we learned in school and we had to just learn the lines of code by-heart since no one explained what the heck or how it worked(BASIC tragically made sense only much much later when I was doing VisualBasic). The idea of making games which we loved so much was so freaking awesome!! So me and Nithin would have these long 4-6 hour telephone conversations into the night about designing puzzles, and enemies and what not after which we went to Kishore-chettan’s place and decided to make a game! He, like us, also knew very little programming. Since we had no idea on how to start working on our platformer, we decided to write up an app that drew stuff on the screen! We copied code from some book and drew a huge blimp! :D The whole idea of writing thousands of lines of code to draw stuff on screen really turned us off; with all those line numbers and GOTOs (Ok! so I added the GOTO now :P but the line numbers were a pain!).

Nothing happened for a while.

It lasted while it lasted, we all drifted apart. I was moving away to another city, Palakkad, where yet another group of crazy people would re-kindle the spirit of games and programming. Kishore-chettan was in Std 10th or passed out and also shifted his house.. strangely I couldn’t find his house as well. Nithin left us when the bike that he was on had an ill fated crash.

The programming bug returned after about two years later when my brother first got a computer and I was in Std 9th. I did not get a computer to work on anything till after two more years. Discovering flash, OpenGL, DirectX and C++, all happened. Without a real sense of direction and with only one thing in my mind I pushed on.

A friend of mine recently told me; that there might be many things you are good at, but be awesome at the things you really love to do and makes you happy. I’m just glad that I knew this earlier on and had a dream to run after :)