Post Uni.

Developed and uploaded my own game!

2011-06-24T04:28:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I developed a game called "Bubble Pop" for the Windows 7 phone. I have uploaded it on the Zune marketplace and it is free to download (for now). I'm going to be working on an update which should polish the game. You can download the game here.

Osama is dead

2011-05-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

What a strange day, quite surreal. My morning habits are quite good, if i may be a little modest, which includes checking the news. You know that you're old if the first thing that you do is to check the news. So today, i checked the news and what do i see? "Osama Bin Laden Dead." Is that not the strangest thing? It's good that he is, but it caught me off guard.

It's hard to believe that what happened actually happened. Shot in the head, no photos or videos, burial at sea?! I believe this could have been averted, especially the last bit. Was Mr Bin Laden a real Muslim, did he have the rights of a real Muslim (i.e. burial within 24 hours of passing away)? I guess I'm just too ignorant to the whole situation, and the religion. The US government must know best, after all it does comprise of ivy league alumni.

Initially I thought that the young (student) population of the US reacted very badly to the news, the street celebrations that is. Doesn't Christianity teach "If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also," is this fair to say? I guess not. I can't say for sure, but there's a good chance that I might have been celebrating on the streets if the war and 9/11 had affected me as much as it has affected them.

CGVI - last day of the 2nd term

2011-04-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

Wow, i haven't updated this in a long time... not that any one cares :P

Well, i got into a masters course at UCL. The course title is "Computer Graphics Vision and Imaging". The course started in September of 2010 and it will end on the 1st of September of 2011.

I'm actually on my Easter Break at the moment, and the first two terms are already over. I've learned a lot and it's been quite fun so far. But the fun ended on the 25th of April, and that was one hell of an amazing way to end the term!

So, the 25th started off with me running in to hand in my last piece of coursework, and then to my last ever lecture. They both went well. After this, a friend and I decided to go to HMV, on Oxford Street in London, to try out the new handheld console by Nintendo, the 3DS; by the way, where's the Gameboy?

I must say the 3DS is a pretty cool little machine; the 3D actually worked! The games on the other hand, weren't so good. We got talking to some guy from Nintendo, who told us that Zelda is definitely on it's way but no release date :( He also told us that GAME had a lot more 3DSs on display, so we made our way to GAME.

At GAME, we had a go of a few more games, the dog pet game (crap), some Augmented Reality games (good) and Street Fighter 4 (good, but works as well without the 3D effect). The best part is that we got free t-shirts :P To most people this isn't a big deal, but to me this was the biggest deal. I've never been lucky enough to get a free t-shirt at some launch event, but then again this was Oxford Street in London!

So, we get back to UCL from our little trip, and by the way the weather is great! We sat in the sun, had some coffee, ice-cream would've been better, and discussed exams issues, argh! At 4pm we went to a talk by an ex-student, who was on the same course a few years back. The interesting thing about this person was that she works at Pixar! She described the research pipeline and some of the past research, which were interesting. She also mentioned that there are only around 5-10 people in the research department!

After that we went to a pub and relaxed with Phd students, lecturers from the CGVI department at UCL and movie SFX industry folks!

So all in all, a good fun way to end the term.

Application for an MSc

2010-01-15T04:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've finally started to apply to post graduate courses. Not really anything else to say. Hopefully I'll know where I'm going before the end of March (just a rough estimate).

19 more days

2009-09-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

I've finally handed my resignation in yesterday and what a day yesterday was.

There are many reactions to an action, and actions are formed from reactions. My resignation was due to many negative feelings towards the company, the management and even Mumbai was burrowing it's way through my head. So this was an action. My reaction was handing in my resignation. This reaction in turn caused a reaction.

Initially my main worry was that they would be very angry about the resignation and tell me to leave straight away, which wouldn't be good for my self confidence and the motivation of the others who would have witnessed this act of unprofessionalism.

My worries actually shifted to the fact that the silly HR manager (who has no idea on how to help the employees but actually does a wonderful job of making lives harder) wasn't in, so i left my letter on her desk and waited. To my annoyance, she wondered in late at around 12pm. This is where the "fun" started. I had told a few of my colleges that i had handed in the letter so they, like me, were taking quick glances at the HR managers cubicle. I got tired of waiting and plus my lunch had arrived in a M branded brown paper bag, yum!

As i left the eating area (pantry as it is called in the office) i was told that the HR manager was looking for me. I went to her office, politely knocked on her door and walked in. What i find sitting opposite the HR manager is the TANK. If you have played Left for Dead then you'll know the TANK as a big, ugly, misshaped triangle who is very annoying. This is the same guy but he likes to dress up to make it seem that he's actually more important then he really is. Honestly, it's horrible! The guy is about 50 and he chats up all the girls in the office, except the fat girl. Anyway, so i was told that she'll ring me when she's free (from this evil abomination).

I waited and waited, then finally i was told to go and see the CEO in his office. Remember when you were a kid and you were told to go and see the headmaster when you were naughty? That's what it felt like; in fact, i've never actually been called into the headmaster's office so it's what i assume it would feel like. I walk into his office and see that the three most senior people in the games division are sitting there waiting for my arrival.

I was nicely asked to sit down on what i must admit was a very comfortable chair. Then he told me that i they had accepted my resignation and that i would have to stay until the 20th of September so that i could be there to help finish the milestone. I agreed, of course. They also asked me what was good and what was bad, which i felt was an odd thing to ask during a meeting like this. I told them that the bad part was the overtime and the good part was the team. The team being mainly the programmers but then i changed to the whole games division team. This was all the truth. If the development people weren't so good with me then i'd have left the next day after arriving in this company!

So i wondered back to my desk and along the way telling the programmers that my final day is the 20th. Then, one by one three programmers get called in to get a nice motivational speech so that the team would work harder and (unfortuneatly longer hours. It worked though but it was unavoidable since we had a large amount of work to do in a very short time.

I'll miss the programming team and many of the other people from the departments who i've talked to. It was a fun, exciting roller coaster of a time but only at office. I didn't travel much because it was a bit of pain to travel on the worlds most crowded trains!

Moving to India?

2008-10-07T15:58:00.000-07:00

Well, there's a very good chance that I’m moving to India to work for a games company. I wonder what gaming will be like over there. I've already checked out the price of X360 games whilst I was there on holiday and they are pretty expensive. I'm only going to get about 30,000 Rps. per month and a game costs around 2500-3000 Rps. (new), that's about £29-£35. Price of living though is low so I should be able to cover my "hobby".

If I do end up moving to India I plan to blog every week or so just to talk about my life in India and gaming in India. Hopefully it will help others who are planning to move to India. The gaming in India will hopefully just be an interesting read.

Ok, so here’s the list of games which I’m currently interested in buying:

- Fable 2 - I really liked the first game, luckily I missed the whole hype machine and bought it the year when the Xbox 360 was released so I could enjoy it in peace.
- Mirror’s Edge – Looks amazing and the idea is very cool. The hard part will be playing that game without shooting one single bullet:P
- Left 4 Dead – I’ve been watching the development of this ever since it was first introduced to the public (before Valve stepped in and bought the company). I am really looking forward to this since I prefer to play with other humans rather than against them i.e. I’m not good against other human opponents :P
- Far Cry 2 – I thought the first far cry was really good but this new one just seems to be better. I just hope that there are no aliens.
- Red Alert 3 – I’ve been a fan of the Red Alert series since the first one. The good thing about this one is the cast... women... hot.
- Dead Space – I like the idea of just floating around space, with the undead. Also the animated comic strip has increased my interest in this game’s storyline.
- Quantum of Solace – A bond game, which is getting a lot of press coverage, it looks good and hopefully I’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed playing Goldeneye.
- Fallout 3 – Not actually too sure about this one. I enjoyed Oblivion’s gameplay and that’s why I’ve put it on my list.
- Gears of War 2 – Hopefully we’ll be able to get more of the storyline, in the last 5 minutes of the game :P
- Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts – Never really a fan of this game, I didn’t play the original games on the N64. In my opinion, Rare haven’t made a really game since the N64. So hopefully this one will be it.
- Metal Gear Solid 4 – I own a PS3 but I’ve only ever played it for about ½ an hour! After that I packed it away. I’m going to wait for the price to come down on MGS4 and then buy it but the thing is I haven’t played the other MGS games so I’m not sure that I’m going to enjoy it much.
- LittleBigPlanet – I’m hoping this game will force me to unpack my PS3 and replace the empty spot where the Nintendo Wii used to be.

That’s a pretty good list. More will be added to this list as time goes on.

Four years of pain equals to...

2008-07-04T02:25:00.000-07:00

... a BSc in Computer with first class honours! Yep, after working hard, stressing and being depressed for four long years I've finally got some good news! It was a real shock when I found out what I got!

The day started as always, me waking up to the alarm and then me turning the damn thing off, this time though I noticed a message on my mobile phone. When I read it I thought "oh crap, the day of my pre mid-age judgment has arrived, this is either going to help me or screw me over!" I got up and ran down to the computer, which was stupidly scanning something and since it is Vista I can't tell it to stop. So I started up Firefox, whilst battling against the computer, and when I looked on the results page I had in red writing "You cannot view your results as you have outstanding payments." It was something along those lines and I was a bit annoyed! I rang the finance office and asked them what the deal is? Found out the Isle of Man Government, who are paying for my fees, haven't paid the last semesters fees. So they said that I'd be able to get me results tomorrow once they've updated my status. I couldn't wait for tomorrow, I checked a few minutes later to find that my results were now available to me. I quickly scrolled down to the bottom of the page where I found this:

The Board of Examiners has confirmed at a meeting held on 19 June 2008 that you be recommended to the Academic Board, via the University's Secretary and Registrar for the award of:

Bachelor Of Science in Computer Studies
With First Class Honours

What I thought next was "WOOHOO!"

Now I'm going to relax and think about where I'm going to go on holiday to with my uni housemates.

Kung Fu Panda... Awesome!

2008-06-17T08:41:00.000-07:00

This movie looks awesome!!! If you haven't seen the trailer then check it out here:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/dreamworks/kungfupanda/

Other than wanting to watch that awesome movie i'm about to properly start to apply for jobs.

More Job stuff

2008-06-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Yo fellow readers,

I've finally uploaded my new website on to the www and so you can all view it at http://www.ankuragarwal.co.uk. It's not quite finished, I still need to add a description for all the recent projects and also need to create and upload videos of the applications; I prefer to make videos as they are a lot smaller than the actual application!

Well i have decided to be a little more flexible in my hunt for a job since I’m only a graduate with a years experience in design. So the companies I’m going to apply to now are the ones which have created games that I’ve played and enjoyed. I didn't think the list was going to be that big but it turned out to be a very long list... so a lot more work to do! This has now widened my search to the whole of the UK, North America and Australia. I might learn Japanese so I can widen my search to Japan too; how long do you think it'll take to learn Japanese, a few months? :P

Well that's all for now

General Hank

P.S. Post a comment if you've read this, even if it's a hearty lol!

My X360 is blogging!

2008-06-08T03:48:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

If you want to know what my Xbox 360 is talking about these days then check out its blog at http://www.360voice.com/tag/General Hank

Still working on my website, it should hopefully be done today. Also I've got to write up my CV and send it off to a few people to get it checked. Hmmm... What else is there? Oh yes I've thought up an awesome idea for a game but i still need to get the other real time graphics techniques done before i start on the game. Also need to get the physics and AI stuff done, looking forward to getting my hands dirty with some AI!

General Hank

The Job

2008-05-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hello, none existent readers.

I've been having some relaxing times with no work, except for a bit of action script for my portfolio website. It's cool to just chillax with Xbox 360 and GTA4 :P.

Had a great time last Friday! It was the final fling at my university... good times... also bad because everyone is now leaving... boo!!!

Anyway, now i need to think about my future. I've decided that i really want to move to the USA, probably somewhere outside Seattle; Bungie, Valve, Microsoft and a few others are there so it seems like the best place to be if you're like me... a software engineer.

That's all for now

General Hank