Technical stuff

2010-02-22T07:45:00.000-08:00

It is interesting to learn about development of facebook app "Farmville" and other Zynga games. I personally liked farmville because it always came up with new stuff to interest and retain players. Just when I would think that clicking each tree to harvest was kind of a cumbersome task, farmville team would launch a new cool feature like adopt a lonely reindeer, or christmas tree, or pet cats and gain ribbons to keep me hooked on to the game. It is refreshing to hear the same thought from the Chief-game-designer of farmville: Brian Reynolds. Please watch the video below to learn more about farmville-behind the scenes information.

Game Reviews - E3 2010

Usability: the least you can do

2010-02-07T23:34:00.001-08:00

The following is a video that I found interesting on common simple things to do about website usability that could possibly increase market value and viewer rate of a website. Here goes the video of Steve Krug's presentation

2.5D

2009-09-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

learn a technical term:

what is 2.5D?
2.5 D means 2D graphics manipulated to provide 3D effect. the graphics is not actual 3D but 2D, programmed in such a way to make the user think the scene is in 3D

Examples:
increasing the size of an object makes it look like the camera is moving towards the object

placing billboards of texture at different sizes gives a feeling of depth. for e.g placing grass blades at different sizes give a feel of whole grass plains

why 2.5D?
3D graphics computation is expensive in terms of time and memory. hence create 2.5D to give cheap 3D effects, and making the human brain think that the scene is 3D

games using 2.5D:
Outrun (1986), the car moves in a single direction, while palm trees on left and right side of road are placed at different sizes to simulate depth.

Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis in the US) uses parallax scrolling (placing different 2d background images as different layers, to create 3d effects)

Nvidia's PhysX

2009-09-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

I am developing a game for one of my courses, and for that I am planning to create a physics world. Well why? you may ask. i dint come across a game that did not use any sort of physics engine especially when it is a physics based tower building game.

So I am researching different physics engines like box2D, bullet and Nvidia's Physx.
Here is what should be done to install and use Physx in Windows Vista from scratch. I have sequenced the steps after many trial and error operation on my computer as decribed after this section.

1. update drivers through laptop manufacturer, as folows:
computer->properties->device manager->display adapter->update driver.
Mine was Dell with windows vista

2.nvidia does not seem to give drivers for laptops, it provides drivers only for desktop, or so i heard. Scan your system for nvidia recommended driver by going to nvidia download driver home page, and using option 2. This option works only in IE/firefox. Download and install whatever driver package that nvidia suggests for your computer.

3.installing the nvidia driver automatically installs physx system software, so no need to do it seperately. however if you still want to manually install it for some reason, then go to http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_9.09.0814.html to install physx system software

4. install physx sdk from http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx_downloads.html

5.goto programs->nvidia corporation ->physics control panel, and see if demo works fine on your system. or run physx viewer to see if it runs properly on your system.

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

Here is what i did to install and try out the Physx sdk 2.8.1 in Windows Vista.

1. install physics system software v9.09

2. install phsyx sdk v 2.8.1

after installing both softwares, I went to Physx control panel only to see the following screen.
Demo:

which should look something like this

The settings tab looked like this

which should have looked something like this since i have Geforce 8400 MX video card

hence i went to http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us to install nvidia drivers for vista v190.62, since obviously they are missing in my system.
But during setup the following problem occurred

After researching the net, i found out that the drivers first has to be installed through Dell's website for some weird reason. Hence went to computer->properties->device manager, and right clicked display card to select "update device driver"

after the driver got updated through Dell, i restarted my system, and ran nvidia driver installation package again to get the same error, but this time after the setup exited, it gave me option to "install using recommended settings" which i selected. It gave me the following error.

researching the net, i found that nvidia drivers are for desktop machines, and not for laptops. for laptops, the drivers has to be installed through manufacturers, which i already did. so why did it not give me support for physx yet?
I did a system scan from the driver download page of nvidia, to see what it suggests for my system, and if it is different from the one i tried to install.
the results as shown in image below

image

indicate that my system needs version 186.81 drivers. I downloaded the exe file (which took more than 30 mins to get downloaded), and ran it. luckily it did not give any error, and installed required drivers on my machine. Then i restarted the system, and ran physx control panel to see Nvidia's control panel working properly. Then i ran physxviewer and it also ran properly. yay. now i can play with my physx.

Mingw + DirectX

2009-08-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

I am currently a student at University of Illinois, Chicago doing masters in Computer Science with focus on graphics programming. I decided to learn directx and what could be a better way to do that other than programming it?. I have microsoft Visual c++ installed on my system. But I am a big fan of g++. Hence I decided to do a small project with directx graphics and mingw compiler.

Trouble starts here. There is very little information on the internet about combining directX and mingw. Most of the users seem to use DevCPP or visual c++. Anyways without losing hope, I searched and found this useful website by link. Having this page as foundation I started the installation process. I thought to myself "what if there is little or no information about this topic on the net? I will experiment and write a blog about it" and here it goes.

I already have mingw's latest version. To learn more about Mingw with Opengl please visit my "Mingw + glsl" blog. I also have mingw utilities to use the reimp tool. Now reimp tool is used to convert *.lib files to Mingw compatible *.a files.

Next I downloaded directx sdk for windows Vista ( And yeah I have Vista) . Installed directx to C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (March 2009). Now to make directx libraries compatible with Mingw, I used reimp tool to convert all the *.lib files of C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (March 2009)\Lib\x64 to *.a files. I moved those reimp'ed files from to C:\MinGW\lib\directx. Created a new folder directx under lib for directx libraries.

Then I moved header files (*.h) files from C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (March 2009)\Include to C:\MinGW\include\directx. Directx folder will not be there under include, so created one.

Now in the program, include the header file as #include and while running compile command include the library as -ld3d9 for e.g:
g++ demo.cpp -ld3d9

I ran my first directX "hello world" sorta program from http://www.directxtutorial.com/ and it compiled and ran successfully. looking forward to learn more about DirectX

hope this piece of information helps you with g++ and DirecX combination.

slist: No such file or directory

2009-07-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

Error:
slist: No such file or directory

code:
#include

Environment:
Mingw’s g++ compiler

Solution:
Copy slist file from C:\MinGW\include\c++\3.4.5\ext to C:\MinGW\include\c++\3.4.5

Explanation:
Slist belong to extension, if you want to use slist in your program, you have to have the file in your include directory. Otherwise in the program you might have to give #include .

Galaxy commander game

2009-03-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

As a part of video game course, we (team of 4) are developing a video game for multi touch table. this game is similar to galcon: galaxy conquest. fast action packed game now available for iPhone also.

To know more about our game development, please visit http://sites.google.com/site/tuffpanda

btw our game company of 4 is named as Tuffpanda Games :)

here is a video of our finished game displayed at Tactile - a multi-touch multi-user table built at Electronic Visualization lab at UIC, chicago

My Projects

2008-12-15T13:14:00.000-08:00

Hi,

this is a link to a website, where i have uploaded my recent projects and relevant codes and project description. please view them if you are interested

http://suja.synthasite.com/index.php

glsl with mingw

2008-10-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

GLSL Installation on windows vista (32bit)

This installation direction is for installing opengl shading language with windows vista using mingw

opengl support for vista

1)download the current drivers for your graphics card from www.support.dell.com, to fully use the hardware acceleration of your graphics card.

2)check in c:/windows/system32/ for opengl32.dll, glut32.dll. They will be automatically installed in vista. If not, install the driver from support.dell.com.

mingw installation

3)install mingw (if u dont want to go through the trouble of visual studio usage, or you are comfortable with command line usage, like me :) ) from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435 (automated mingw installer). run the file, and it will do the work for you.

4)from the same url, install mingw utilities. it has reimp command which is used to convert *.lib files to *.a files. tar.gz files can be extracted in windows using a freeware 7-zip which could be installed from http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/1072

glut installation

5)http://mywebpage.netscape.com/PtrPck/glut.htm install glut from this page, and use reimp to convert glut32.lib to libglut32.a.
Command: /mingw-utils/bin>> reimp.exe glut32.lib
copy this libglut32.a file to mingw/lib directory, and replace the old libglu32.a file. The old files gives out some "undefined reference to `__glutInitWithExit@12'" errors, which the new file eliminates.Copy the dll file to c:\windows\system32 and .h files from GL/ to c:/mingw/include/GL/

msys installation

6)run msys.exe file from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.10.exe?download to install msys. msys is used to build glew from the source, since using glew binaries for windows gives out errors of the form "undefined reference to `_imp____glewGetShaderiv'". installation process will ask for mingw path. give the full path c:\mingw or whichever path mingw is installed in. msys will get installed into path/msys/1.0. Run the msys batch file. this is a shell program.

glew installation

7)download glew source file,(latest:1.5.0, has support for opengl 2.0, which inturn as support for glsl 1.2) zip file from http://glew.sourceforge.net/, and extract the folder to somewhere inside /msys/1.0. open msys shell program (batch file), and Go to the folder where the makefile in glew directory is present. cd /home/glew. Run the command: make

now copy the GL/glew.h, glxew.h, wglew.h to mingw/include/GL/ folder. copy lib/libglew32.a, libglew32.dll.a files to mingw/lib. copy glew32.dll to c:/windows/system32 folder.

thats all folks. your opengl shader program should compile and execute beautifully in windows vista.

other links

for furthur information please go through the following links

about opengl installation: http://www.opengl.org/wiki/index.php/Getting_started
about opengl usage: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~mjmcguff/learn/opengl/
about mingw setup: http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/info/mingw_setup_guide.html

Wubi review . part 2

2008-02-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

continued from review part1
The most awaited 1gb ram came home in a nice package. I was very excited to experience fast performance, that I forgot one simple detail. Screwdriver to open the computer module. The screw is very small that none of my screwdrivers would fit. So I had to wait until yesterday to purchase a precision screwdriver set from walmart for 5$. Today morning, I opened the module at the back of my dell inspiron 600m laptop, and installed the new 1gb ram. starting windows showed me 1.5 gb of total RAM. "whew". Now I can continue the wubi ubuntu installation.

For the past few days, my windows client could not detect any wireless networks in range, and was asking me to switch on my radio, I tried to troubleshoot this for some time, but none worked. So I took my other laptop and searched in the net for ubuntu offline installation proceedure. I searched on my laptop and found the offline installation file, saved the exe file, and this offline iso file in the same folder, and started installing in 6gb space.

As the system rebooted, I went inside ubuntu, and the installation started. Last time the system hung when it was trying to install softwares for ubuntu. So I was biting my fingernails when the system started "installing softwares" proceedure.

1% completed
2%
3%
4%
6%
.
"Please God, dont let it fail"
.
.
8%
9%
"I will come to temple this weekend, if the installation goes smoothly"
10%
11%
I am praying with mumbled sound
12%
.
.
.
.
.
25%
"whew 25% completed, plz God take this through 100%."
.
.
.
.
.
.
30%
"It is in your hands God. plz plz plz dont fail me"
.
.
.
.
.
40%
I had a bit of relief, since I thought the rest will go on smoothly..
.
.
.
.
50%
still praying. Half completed. rest has to go
51%
52%
53%
beep
beep
Oh no, what now?
"SYSTEM IS IN CRITICAL TEMPERATURE. PROCEEDING TO SHUT DOWN. TERMINATING PROCESSES"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

my mom comes out of the other room "what happened? did u fall down?"

I google on my other laptop to do something about this temperature and could not find anything relevant, so I use the old age method. Turning on fan-only on my A/C.

So, I tell my mom to take my kid Sanjay and go to the other room where it is warmer.
my mom asks me " are you feeling ok dear? because I see that you have gone crazy putting the A/C on when outside temperature is -22F

You see, I live in westmont, Illinois and the temperature outside is -1F and feels like -22F. Who in their senses will turn the A/C on in this weather?. I did .... for my laptop and love of linux.

Anyways, now I uninstalled again, and installed with 4gb space, because I dint want anything to go wrong now. I decided this is going to be the last try. If my stupid system cant install ubuntu this time? after all these work of adding more memory, putting the A/C on, and using the least memory possible 4gb, if it still cant install, then probably my system does not have the right to have ubuntu. yes, thats right, Oh system, you deserve this punishment. hahaha (villaneous laughter).

What else do you expect me to say? I have uninstalled and installed about 25 times. If it still doesnt make it, I will have to live with windows, and find another way to use linux.

Ok, so I threaten my lappy, pray to God, touch my lucky charm, and reboot.

installing softwares
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
.
.
.
.
.
20%
good until now. last time, it went off at 53 % when it was installing telnet. Let me wait until 53%
.
.
25%
I touch the base to see if it gets heated up. no. still warm only
.
30%
laptop still warm. good.
.
.
.
.
40%
laptop still warm. still praying
.
.
.
.
50%
here it comes
51$
52%
53%
.
.
.
54%
55%
whew. Good going
.
.
.
.
60%
.
.
.
.
70%
I take the laptop from the table and hold it in my hands careful so that its base is not touching anything. hehe I just wanted the cpu not to overheat.
.
.
.
.
80%
plz God install this successfully
.
.
.
.
90%
.
.
.
.
98%
99%
just one more to go
100%

yuppie... hurray
oh no what is this? another bar
ok finishing installation. good good

1%
.
50%
.
.
83%
why is this pausing at 83% for a long time.?
Still holding the laptop in my hands.
oh no
System proceeding to shut down
GREAT JUST GREAT.

I gave you my ultimatum, and this is your choice. thats it. no more wubi for you. bad lappy.

When the system rebotted, it directly went into windows os. I went to the drive and placed my mouse over the uninstall icon.

wait a minute. it said finishing installation. may be it finished and restarted. ok let me give this a try. I rebooted and clicked ubuntu this time.

HURRAY.. GREAT GOD. THANK YOU THANK YOU

kubuntu started and asked for user name password. and it went in. I was so happy that I shouted again YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, and my mom came out from the otehr room and asked again " are you alright?"

So I explored kubuntu for a while, and found that internet was not working, since it was a problem in windows os itself. I tested hello world in c++, python, perl and found them running.

After 3 hours of struggle, I finally installed kubuntu, and it is now up and running.

PC Restore in DELL inspiron 600m

2008-01-30T15:41:00.001-08:00

I wanted to improve performance on my laptop, so I decided to do PC Restore in my dell laptop. My system was damn slow, and I got fedup with all the hangings and the end nows.

So It took me a whole day to convert my data into winrar, and move it to another laptop using my 512 mb flash drive. Now you might ask, why in God's name would i want to move it to another laptop, when I have cd burner on this one itself. well, when I checked with the cd burner of the second laptop, I found out that it has dvd burner too. Now, I dont know fully about this system, because it is my husband's office laptop, given to continue his office work at home.

Anyways, I found out that the seond system has dvd burner in it, and each dvd can hold 4.7 gig of data. So I winrared my important data and copied it to the second system. After every data was safely secured, I added the folder to dvd burner, and clicked "RECORD". This error message popped up on the screen. "NO SUITABLE SOFTWARE FOUND FOR BURNING DVD."

Great just great. I had to save all the data in six 700mb-cds, which took about another four hours.

Now that all my data is safe on cds, I prayed to God, and rebooted the laptop, entered ctrl+f11 when it was booting. Seems I dint hit the keys at the appropriate time. So the system went straight to user login screen, and I had to reboot again.
Finally the PC Restore screen came up. I prayed once again that the system shouldnt mess up, and confirmed the restore.

It took about 10 minutes only for the whole process. The system rebooted, and went through some basic formalities. Lo and presto my lappy is fast again. *whew*.

I should have stopped there. But I dint. I want to install freebsd as the second operating system. So I installed partion magic, and tried to partition the disk from only c: to c:, e:, f: g: with g: for freebsd.

But as I was partioning, I found out, that only c: could be primary partition in my drive. The others became logical drives. I read online that freebsd could be installed only on a primary partition. So I was trying different techniques to bring about atleast one extra partition as primary. But in vain.

Finally I thought If I could first bring down the size of c:, then I could later partion the rest using windows disk management. So unfortunately, I reduced the size of C: to 7gb, and rebooted as asked by the disk manager.

The lappy rebooted, and proceeded to resize c:. As it was proceeding, I had an instinct to cancel, and go back. If humans start listening to their instincts, then half of their problems will be solved. As humans err, I too failed to listen to my inner voice, and waited until the resizing became 100%.

Then started my problems. After resizing, I went back, and after trial and error, found out that
i could not create another primary partion,
could not increase the c: size because it cant be done in NTFS,
and could not hence install freebsd.

Depressed, I switched off my system with a small hope that there might be an online shell available to work on unix commands, atleast. Instead I found wubi ubuntu installer

Memory upgrade for my inspiron 600m.

2008-01-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

My inspiron 600m is painstakingly slow. It has 512 mb RAM, 1.6mhz processor,, and 60 GB hard drive. My hard drive light will flicker like crazy. The system was good for ordinary stuff like browsing the web, checking mail, and stuff. But if I want to do serious stuff like programming, whoosh, it will hang up on my face. So I decided to upgrade my system. First I thought I will do a complete sweep, format the drive and install the windows xp. I called up dell customer service and told them i lost the Windows XP CD while changing house (seriously i did lose it ;) ). The cutomer service person first told me that our warranty has expired (obviously), and so we have to pay for the cd. But then after serious negotiation, he told he will ask his manager and put me on hold. I started reading a book since i know it ll take time when a customer service person puts u on hold.

Surprisingly , he came back soon, and told me, that they would post the cd and the general drive's cd (since system specific driver cd is not available for inspiron 600m. It seems they have stopped production of this system. Yes I am still having this out-of-production lappy).

While talking to him, he mentioned a technique called PC Restore in dell systems manufactured after april 2004. It will convert your system to the stage in which it was shipped. Yes, no windows cd required, no painstaking process of installing drivers, and downloading more from the internet. Just do PC Restore and have your shipped in system in 10 minutes.

So I asked this customer representative about the process, and he reminded me that my laptop's warranty expired, and i would have to pay for this type of customer service. Yeah right, I would pay 100$ to dell for telling me how to press ctrl + f11 during bootup. In his dreams!!!!!

I thanked him for his valuable time, and browsed the net for "pc restore dell", and immediately found the proceedure to do PC Restore. I backed up my important data, and did PC Restore. When I rebooted my system, to my bliss it worked at a speed i havenet experienced in a long run. Still it is 512 mb only, but working at a faster rate. Even my husband was surprised at the speed of this new system.

Now as my next step, I thought about ordering more memory to my system to increase its performance. Atleast 100 bucks is better than buiying a new system for 700$ rite?. So I searched the internet and found that there are two slots for inspiron 600m, and a maximum memory of 2 gb here. I even watched a video that explained how to install more memory in a laptop.

Hence I ordered 1 gb RAM, and eagerly am waiting for its arrival through fed-ex. After I clicked confirm, I realised, I dint open my laptop and see my laptop's architechture (though, i know there is nothing new in my out-of-production laptop). I switched off my laptop, removed the power cable, inverted it. I took out a small star screwdriver out of my 2-month kid's bassinet kit, and tried to unscrew my memory slot. Not useful. Then I climbed the two step ladder, blew the dust out of our toolkit box, and opened it to find a useless set of 10 removable tips, none of which was useful for my purpose. Then I heard some noise outside. The maintainance guy was working with something outside my apartment. My mom suggested that he might have such small driver. So I took up courage of not seeming stupid, went to him, and asked if he had a screwdriver smaller than mine. He said he has it at home, and not now. He even offered to bring it tomorrow. Whew. I was relieved. Got his name, Thanked him, and came back to install Ubuntu on my laptop.

After a few days I got my 1 GB RAM in mail, but realised that I dont have that small screwdriver for my laptop. So had to wait until we went to walmart to get the precision set. Today morning I installed the extra memory, and my system started running fast and I installed kubuntu without out of memory shut downs.

I dont know how or when I opened the pandora box, because now my wireless is not working. I am using microsoft client, and the radio is not working. I am discussing about it soon in my blog.

Wubi review . part 1

2008-01-30T15:11:00.001-08:00

I wanted linux on my system for a long time, and was trying to install freebsd, since it is obviously FREE FREE FREE and quite simple for my necessities. But then as I was using Partition magic, i realised, i cant have freebsd installed on my system because freebsd required a primary partition to be installed on, and my system had c: and extended memory as primary partitions. I couldnt create more primar partitions.

So I left it there itself and browsed the net. I remember that there might be an interface on teh internet that gave the shell environment, without installing anything. It is like practising unix commands on the net, without the burden of installing or uninstalling. As I was searching for this online shell, i stumbled upon Wubi. I read its reciews and found that it is relatively easy to install and uninstall if anythign goes wrong. Doesnt take up much space and detects network card automatically.

I was very eager to give it a try. I recently backed up my data, and pc restored my dell system. So I dint have anythign else to backup. If you have any important data, i suggest u back it up before trying this. So I downloaded the installer which took some 5 mins. Then I ran the installer. It took about 1.5 hours in my laptop (512 RAM, 1.6 ghz processor, and 60 gb harddrive). After successfully completing 100%, the screen stood still without much progress. I could move my mouse, so i knew the system did not hung up on me. I waited for few minutes before the error message came up. It dint specify any particular error, but said i need to install again. Oh God, I dont have another 1.5 hours for it. So i clicked the installer again, thinking, if the estimated time says 1.5 hours, then i ll do it again sometime later. But fortunately, it checked the checksums and then rebooted. Great. I entered into ubuntu during the dual boot up options.

The settings started taking place. It detected the hardware, found floppy drive, autoconfigured the network drive, installed packages and softwares. Everythign went fine until this stage. Then it started doing setup, and before it could finish 5%, my laptop hung up.

So I rebooted, went into ubuntu. the boot up proceedure cant take place because of some error, and the screen asked me to run the installer again. So i rebooted again, went into windows xp, and clicked the installer. It said, i have to uninstall first. So i uninstalled. Fortunately for me, it saves some backup files. So when i clicked the installer again, the installation was smooth and quick. Now i rebooted again, and went into ubuntu. Again it went into settings mode, and did everything like the previous try, including the system hanging ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

It is getting on my nerves so bad, i want to hit my laptop, abandon the whole process, and go to sleep. But I want to work on ubuntu and I, that is my laptop, just have to pass the setup proceedure. I guess it is the memory insufficiency that is causing the problem. My system hangs up so often earlier. If i run yahoo messenger with webcam, and open firefox, the system will hang up. That is the main reason i did pc restore, to clear off the junks and have a clean start.

So now iam waiting for that 1gb i ordered online. will update once i resume the process of ubuntu installation.
continued in review part2 ...

tech term -dec 25th

2007-12-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

SHOCKWAVE

Shockwave like Flash, displays graphical content on web and allows user interaction. But unlike Flash, Shockwave displays 3d images also. The user interaction involves moving the camera angle and position, zooming, etc. The 3d image is transferred from server to the client. Remaining user interaction actions are executed in the client itself thus increasing speed and efficiency. Shockwave content is created as follows.
3d content is created using any related software. The image is imported into Director for shockwave software, and user interaction features are added. The output file is transmitted from the server.

tech term -dec 24th

2007-12-26T15:05:00.000-08:00

WIMAX
wimax combines the speed of broadband network connection and the portability of WiFi.
WiMax concept is like the mobile technology. Towers, covering wide area, transmit signal and data. Each tower can transmit signal within 3000 miles radius. The person carrying laptop can connect to internet from car, coffee shop, virtually anywhere.

ref: wikipedia.org, howstuffworks.com

Mr Iwata's insights on game developement.

2007-09-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

September 05 2007

Today I read an article which posts the conversation of Mr. Iwata of Nintendo Wii during one of his visits to the office. He talks about the reasons behind creation of world famous games. The little chat is segmented into eleven sections, three of which was posted online, and the rest are expected soon.

You can read the conversation here, before reading my blog, because I am not going to talk about what he says during that supper time. Well actually I am going to write about that only, but from a different perspective. His little talk is pretty clear by itself. But the analysis of Mr. Itoi's and Mr. Iwata's actions and the reasons behind them are discussed here.

Disclaimer: This is my first blog on net. So if it has any information that is not intended to be published online, then I ask for forgiveness of my ignorance. (i hope to laugh at this line when I come back after few years of experience in blogging.)

With all due respect to Mr. Iwata, I start my first blog.

In the first section, Mr. Iwata talks about Mr. Miyamoto's definition of "ideas". It is something which solved multiple issues at once. The former goes on an elaborate discussion explaining what the definition means. During the conversation, Mr. Shigesato Itoi, explains the concept to his staff, with a simple yet effective example. This showcases the great dedication Mr. Itoi has, in keeping his staff inline with the concept, to make it interesting to the listeners, and to grab their undivided attention. He wishes his staff members to learn from Mr. Iwata's words, and as a manager, is concerned about his team's interests too. This is an industrial management lesson to be learnt from Mr. Itoi, for those who aspire to become great managers themselves.

In the next section, Mr. Iwata talks about viewing things over someone else's shoulder, which is known to me as "third person's point of view", which I heard for the first time from my Mother's brother-in-law Mr. Swaminathan, when I was in my childhood days. I call him periappa (note: I am from Tamil Nadu, India). I remember him sitting on our living room floor, and explaining the concept to me. Ever since I have tried to master that quality, and even after nearly 8 years, I am still on the process. I guess some things take longer time than you expect.

Anyways coming back to Mr. Iwata's insight, as he was clarifying the notion, he has said that during early times, when he was a game programmer, his games were less popular than that of Mr. Miyamoto's games, and he proceeded to find out the reason behind his "low-selling-games" and to make his games as popular as Mr. Miyamoto's. The important thing to notice here is Mr. Iwata's attitude about his failures. It is remarkable that instead of going down the drains, thinking " ya My Miyamoto's games are popular, he is a great person, I can't think like him, I can not reach his level, " and other similar negative thoughts, he actually was eager to fill the gap, and to make his games as successful as Mr. Miyamoto's. This kind of thinking reminds me of Steve Pavlina's blog the abundance mindset

In this blog, Pavlina has dealt with the mindset of abundance. Instead of seeing someone spending $10k on a hotel as an "outrageous act", if a person starts to see that, as a possibility of them rising to that level of spending, then he would move up from his position. Similar kind of mindset can be seen with Mr. Iwata's action of reasoning out his failure, and moving towards success. He started analyzing Mr. Miyamoto's reasons behind success, and succeeded in his attempt. The trigger for such action is his frustration, frustration that his game did not sell out as expected.

In the same section, Mr. Iwata had talked about Mr. Miyamoto's strategy of letting a novice user play his game and watching his actions and reactions from the back. This aspect is highly important for a product company, whose final aim is to make the product popular among the users. No use in creating a product for the developer's satisfaction right? It is the end users who are going to use the product in the end. This concept is the core one in the User Interface Design class, which I took during spring semester. The one thing to keep in mind throughout the software cycle of development is "users, users, users". Mr. Itoi has expressed that Mr. Miyamoto was making use of what he studied in college in developing great games.

It is not the subject matter that Mr. Miyamoto was implementing, for he did industrial design degree in his college, but the basic concept of observation, users' point of view, and picking the correct answers from the user's response. Many of us, including me are under the notion that what we learnt in college has no relevance to what we do for living. This is true especially for Indians like me who do MS in USA and then get a job here. It is true to some extent, in that we might not use all the technology that we learnt, or we might be using an altogether different platform or technology in the company. But that doesn’t mean that our college education is mere waste or just a portal to enter the US corporate section. Certain technologies that we learn in college might not be used in our career. But the cognitive thinking behind it, the approach, reasoning, and observation that we subconsciously learn at the college goes a long way with our career and personal life. Many of us fail to recognize these gems of education. If we realize these intricate qualities and consciously nourish them, the probability of success is more.

More to come as the talk gets updated.

how video games are created

2006-11-14T19:06:00.000-08:00

This post is especially about how 3do game company creates video games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3do
Since I am a amateur in multimedia and graphics, I was interested in knowing how the system works. The information in the website http://computer.howstuffworks.com/3do.htm provides a limpid explanation of the rudimentary steps in games creation.

check it out.