http://www.bhasker.net/blog/ My life as it happens when it happens ! Nothing more nothing less! en Copyright 2008 Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:37:42 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss here to read up on the trip. For more snaps from our europe trip go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gromhellscream/collections/72157605716301730/ ]]> http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2008/08/europe_trip_2008.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2008/08/europe_trip_2008.html Personal Europe Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:37:42 -0800 Though this snap doesn't do justice to the view but it should give an idea. We stepped out for a couple of snaps and realized how cold it really was! My sneakers were no protection against the cold and within minutes we could feel the cold seeping through. We quickly took a couple of snaps and jumped right back into the car and drove on towards Tahoe. By now the traffic was increasing too and we didn't want to get caught in a long train of cars heading into Tahoe. After checking into our motel sometime later we all headed out to rent our ski gear and hit the slopes at sierra. I was kind of skeptical about my skiing abilities after last time's disaster but as it happens I was comfortable right off the bat and was able to ski without any major problems. Preparing to ski :) What came next I was completely unprepared for :) Trying to teach Aruna how to ski!. Now that was an adventure. We got to the beginner area slope and I started teaching Aruna how to put on her skis. For about 10 minutes I struggled to get her left foot onto the ski and lock and as soon as I would ask her to put on her right ski she would start losing balance and fall. Soon for some reason she was not even able to her ski boot to lock on the ski. This was really frustrating and as we came to know later her boot for some reason kept collecting a lot of snow on the sole and hence making it very difficult for her to lock her boots onto the ski. Only snap of mine on skis I think! The beautiful sierra slopes!. After spending about 15-20 minutes trying to teach Aruna we both decided it would be better if she signed up for learner lessons. After we signed her up for beginner lessons I decided to hit the slopes and I was surprised how comfortable I felt and was able to come down the slopes without falling!. Skiing becomes so much more fun when you don't fall!. I pretty much spent the day coming down the slope multiple times and watching wifey learn skiing. I must say its pretty entertaining to watch people who are learning to ski:) Especially my wifey who managed to fall in every possible angle! But at the end of the day she finally did manage to learn skiing and was able to ski a bit without fallling! I managed to capture the attempt in a video :-> ]]> http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2008/01/tahoe_skiing.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2008/01/tahoe_skiing.html Personal skiing tahoe Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:17:48 -0800 As I had mentioned earlier after I quit WOW I was trying to find a game that would hold my interest beyond a few days. About 2 months back I bought Supreme Commander and though it was nice too look at and had good gameplay it was not much fun. It seemed like a souped up TA with pretty graphics. The sides were not distinctive enough the economic model was still the same etc and somehow I didnt like the fact that your units had no character. It felt like playing a board game and as a result I soon got bored of it and didnt play it much. Enter Universe at War: Earth Assault This has got be the most fun RTS I have seen since WC3. Warcraft 3 set the level for the RTS genre and I think UAW has borrowed the best from WC3 and Starcraft and then enhanced it more. The heroes concept from WC3 and the distinctive units from Starcraft. There are 3 sides namely Novus,Masari and the Hierarchy. The hierarchy are the evil race that invade earth to harvest it for resources and the Novus are a race of sentient machines who oppose hierarchy and come to earth to stop hierarchy. Masari are a race that at one time saved hierarchy but later were betrayed and the remanants of Masari were slumbering in earth and the coming of hierarchy has awakened them. Humanity sadly has little to no role in the game!. Each side has a unique economic model and resource costs. Where hierarchy sports Giant walkers which serve as garangutan war machines as well as production centers, the novus build flow networks and their units can flow along these networks to redeploy rapidly across the maps. Masari are the slow bloomers in the game and are like the protoss in Starcraft. They have incredibly hard to kill units but are expensive. Each side sports different super weapons and different heroes. Where novus relies on viral attacks to shut down enemy machines/take control etc the masari hero can teleport units around the map. The campaign is average in quality but the mulitplayer gameplay is just superb. I have been playing online on live though the population at this time is minimal the games are a lot of fun. 5 minute rushes that made warcraft/starcraft fun can happen as well as superb end game if you do survive the rushes. Overall a must play for any RTS fan!. http://petroglyphgames.com for more information http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/12/the_next_game.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/12/the_next_game.html Gaming Gaming UAW Sat, 29 Dec 2007 10:41:52 -0800 We hit toulumne meadows by noon or so. The meadows look pretty though I hear during spring it looks amazing when the plants here flower for a short time. We spent some time hiking around and climbing up the small hilltop in the meadows. Its a beautiful place and the views from there are just amazing. After Toulumne meadows we decided to drive upto to tioga pass and beyond into the Sierra Nevada. I am so happy we decided to do that ... As we drove past tioga we came across a frozen lake and much fun was had at the banks of the lake playing on the ice. After the lake we drove up a little more into the sierra nevada and saw some sights like the following before we decided to turn back and head to the valley. Someday we hope to do a drive down the Sierra nevada. It has some of the most amazing sights. The next day was a drive upto glacier point for breathtaking views of the valley and Half dome. We spent a good amount of time there taking snaps from various angles before heading out. A couple of snaps of the famous Ahawanee hotel one from right next to the hotel and the other as seen from glacier point. Next stop was Mariposa grove near wawona. The grove has about 500 Giant Sequoias these are the largest living things on the planet and can live for about 3200 years. The trees just look fantastic and are about as huge as a small trailer at the base. A few snaps of the sequoias to give a perspective :) This last snap was Aruna's idea and it cleary gives one an idea of the size of these trees. Spot us if you can:). Overall a really wonderful and amazing trip. We got to see more of the beautiful Yosemite National park but a lot more remains to be seen. Next trip shall be in early spring/summer to see the falls in full flow and the tuolumne meadows. ]]> http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/12/thanksgiving_and_yosemite.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/12/thanksgiving_and_yosemite.html Personal glacier point thanksgiving tuolumne meadows yosemite Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:45:11 -0800 Wishing all of you a very Happy Diwali from our side! My wife made some super badam burfi and now its payasam time tomorrow ! We even had some nice baby corn manchurian which my wife made in the evening.. We managed to get a few decorative lights and have put it up in the patio and it looks very pretty. Once again Wishing you all a very happy diwali! http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/11/happy_diwali_everyone.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/11/happy_diwali_everyone.html Personal Diwali Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:35:03 -0800 here . I am skipping on the description and you can find that on my wife's blog . Also in other news the bay area was hit by a quake of the magnitude of 5.6 on Richter scale yesterday and a 3.7 quake today. We felt both and it was I must say an interesting experience:).]]> http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/10/big_sur_drive.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/10/big_sur_drive.html Personal Big Sur Earthquake Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:39:35 -0800 Its been over 6 months since I quit World of Warcraft and I am still to find a game that can hold my interest. A factor to contribute to it is also the fact that I have been mostly stuck with Ubuntu:) and no windows but still. Over the last 6 months I have been thinking of what made me play WOW for over 2 yrs whereas no other game in the past has ever managed to hold my interest for so long. I have played various RPG's and even bought guild wars about the same time as I bought WOW. But my guild wars copy has hardly been played heck I still have my guild wars and it runs under linux too ( via wine ) but somehow i still can't get myself to play it more than an hour before I get bored of it. What I have realized is - Wow was fun. Questing in wow/guilds/pvp everything about the game was fun. Heck even farming/finding friends to quest with everything about the game rocked. What wow got right was the community features in the game. Guild wars chat channel is crappy no linking/no auction house/no in game e-mail etc makes the game rather boring. - Wow had all the features superbly implemented. More importantly the cities were superb hubs to hang around, the characters had well Character..Guild wars characters look lame...all human is so boring! The mobs in WOW were fun, its certainly fun to kill a 2 headed Ogre than a stupid scorpion or something named Charr or a centaur all of them making the same sounds. - The regions were gorgeous, the shared world was amazing... running around in stranglethorn vale randomly running into enemy faction characters and deciding whether to be nice or gank the guy had a rush of its own or not knowing if you were the one going to get ganked. - Essentially I am still to find another game that had the capability to involve a player so much as WOW did. I guess thats why its also known as World of Wowcrack! Enough about wow now to the new games to look forward to! http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/10/search_for_the_elusive_next_ga.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/10/search_for_the_elusive_next_ga.html Gaming Gaming Reviews Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:29:36 -0800 Back in San diego within a month but this time on work!. Will be here till tomorrow and will try to upload a couple of snaps of the yahoo musicmatch office!. The office is in like this beautiful spanish villa. First look at the office and I was like "wth! this is like a resort ". Snaps coming soon! http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/10/san_diego.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/10/san_diego.html Work Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:48:12 -0800 A forward I came across on bangaloreshutterbugs rather hilarious:) more behind the cut. http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/09/ken_rockwell_aka_chuck_norris.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/09/ken_rockwell_aka_chuck_norris.html photography humour photography Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:02:36 -0800 here. Also while trying to install my new motherboard/graphics card I managed to slice my finger badly which converted me into a one hand typist for a week or so and still a 9 finger typist. Will take a couple more days before my finger heals fully!. In the meanwhile I am being pampered and spoilt by my wife:)). But I did manage to get the motherboard/graphics card installed and now I have a brand new flashy ATI 2600 XT 512 MB graphics card on my machine. But the reward for the effort of building a new box( playing Supreme Commander) will have to wait as I am still trying to get a cheap copy of windows:)...I am not willing to pay 200$ for Windows! especially when ubuntu works for almost everything else that I do and is free!. The only reason to use windows for me is to play games:p and use the damn webcam as enabling video4linux requires a kernel rebuild which I am lazy to do. But in the meantime, I have explored a lot of linux gaming options and may I say linux as a platform is ready! its the damn game developers who need to get their act together and release linux clients. Guild Wars runs smoothly under wine except for the fact that it has to be run in DirectX8 mode and with no shaders. The other free games that I explored include Regnum Online , Planeshift and recently Savage: The battle for Newerth. The problem with all the free games is as always content. Technologically they are close to commercial games but the gameplay gets boring really fast due to lack of interesting content. As a result I am just going to play a bit of Guildwars till I can get a windows license. On the War of the cubes:) I haven't made much progress. I need to get back to it and now that my new box is ready and I still don't have any games to play so its time to get back to development. Also I have been meaning to process more of our San Diego trip pictures and hopefully I will get around to it now and upload more of them. Thats about it for now! hopefully I will update this blog soon with some War of the cubes news:) ]]> http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/09/a_life_update.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/09/a_life_update.html Personal San Diego Tech War of the Cubes Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:52:07 -0800 blog :) ]]> http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/09/san_diego_trip.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/09/san_diego_trip.html Personal San Diego Sea World Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:59:28 -0800 Over the last week I have been busy trying to integrate a few more things into the game. I am happy that I have managed to now integrate ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) into my game and now the cubes obey the laws of physics! They fall more realistically, handle collisions and also orient themselves correctly along the terrain. Further I have also done some internal cleanups to allow me to use level definition files to load/unload levels dynamically. I will upload a few more screenshots later which show collision handling and physics in action. The next stage is going to be writing an unit loader allowing me to describe physical attributes of objects in config files and later to see how I can make the whole thing scriptable. Essentially providing hooks into the unit AI's via Lua or python. This would allow me to expand Simutron AI without having to constantly recompile the game source code and also allow me to model complex AI behaviour and test it out in realtime. http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/08/war_of_the_cubesupdate.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/08/war_of_the_cubesupdate.html Game Development Game Development War of the Cubes Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:01:29 -0800 Download file and a few screenshots
]]> http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/08/war_of_the_cubes_code.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/08/war_of_the_cubes_code.html Game Development Game Development War of the cubes Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:38:57 -0800 CREATED ->ACTIVE -> DEAD->DESTROYED -CREATED - The simutron is growing to life and won't process any events in this state( useful or doing a creation animation) -ACTIVE - Simutron is ready and will process events now as well as fire off events based on certain conditions being met. -SLUMBERING (not shown will update diagram later)- Simutron will process incoming events but will not trigger any events by itself nor do any checks. Its like a sleep state for the simutron. -DEAD - Simutron is dead and will not process any more events. Useful to start playing a death animation. -DESTROYED- Simutron is done dying! release all resources now. I will expand this state machine as the game develops but for now its sufficient. Now the code I have implemented allows me to just add a seed population of simutrons and just watch them kill/clone other simutrons. As of now I have the flexibility to easily change the simulation logic and try out different simulations. The current simulation is a variant of Conway's Game of Life but there are a few bugs I need to fix with it:) Mainly, the creation rate of simutrons is far higher than their death rate leading to a few thousand of them on screen and bringing the simulation to a halt! What I would like to achieve is a stable population of simutrons using simple rules. Screenshots/video to come! ]]> http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/08/war_of_the_cubesupdate_warning.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/08/war_of_the_cubesupdate_warning.html Game Development AI Game Development Simutrons War of the Cubes Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:12:20 -0800 Mostly a game dev rant and a collection of my thoughts on dealing with some Game Dev issues :) My previous post talked about how I intended to start writing a game and use that to explore different aspect of game development. Over the last two weeks I have spent quite a bit of time coding. The focus of the program has been to develop the basic framework for a game/simulation. I can say that I am 15% there now:p. What do I have in place, - Integration with CEGUI for GUI elements, - Integration with OIS for handling events from keyboard/mouse ( sorry no joystick support:p) - Integration with State Threads for unit AI. The first two are fairly standard stuff and was mostly figuring out the API calls etc. The game isnt much right now it just loads up a terrain and allows you to use a free look camera to explore the terrain. The camera can't roll though for obvious reasons as its not a flight simulator that I am designing. Also I dont allow the camera to go below the terrain again for obvious reason, but I am yet to limit it on the sides which I will do soon. I decided that I wanted to write some kind of simulation/strategy game. One thing I have always wondered is how does one control a few thousand entities on screen at the same time and I thought this will be a good chance to understand a bit about AI programming. Most games can be modelled as glorified state machines, with each unit in the game running its own little state machine. The only difference between a game and a simulation is the human input which allows modification of simulated behaviour. Now instead of modelling each entity's state machine and running through them in a loop every step, I thought why not try something different. Enter StateThreads :) http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/08/war_of_the_cubes.html http://www.bhasker.net/blog/2007/08/war_of_the_cubes.html Game Development AI Game Development. War of the Cubes Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:30:00 -0800