Presentation

Extremely sleepy. Didn't sleep the whole night. Ate breakfast and sat for class. The class was supposed to be a formal presentation of each of our scripts. I nor my group worked one bit on the script cause we went to MIT and other stuff. Well but i gave a presentation of the work i made on the kid and got interesting response. Also we got assigned to the next project of ritualistic art and how it evolved. It soon became a group discussion of various topics as we went on speaking of innocence of the pup in my story to extremists. I had to sleep was just too tired and sleepy. Woke up in the evening didn't do anything as such, watched wwe royal rumble and that's it 4 the day.

First Attempts At Script Writing

Personal work in the morning and art history in the evening. We still haven't finalized the script for our 5 minute short movie. The last time we did we made a lot of changes. The basic story was still the same which was bout a group of college going teenagers getting drunk at a party, having a lot of fun and then the power go off. Madly they wander and that would be the comedy part. Slowly they would come back to their normal senses only to realize that its 6 in the morning and the power is not back and neither is the sun. Its seven and the sun hasn't come up and so on and this was the horror part. The problem was that the movie was drifting into a serious horror end world thing. Its not that we cant showcase it, its just that in case of something like this the change in the movie which is a very short film will be just too dramatic. The next idea i came up with was with the same beginning of a group getting drunk. They joke laugh and drink and when one guy would be drinking, someone cracks a joke and unable to retain the alcohol or whatever in his mouth because of the sudden urge to laugh at the joke, he spits it all over the in front of him. Now this guy is a big hot headed one whose drunk as well. He is really pissed off now, gets up grumbling ready to punch the shit outa this innocent lil guy. He comes close just a sec before he punches this guy just drops off grabbing his own neck. Theres a lot of other drunk people around too and all of them watch this lil guy spit beer or whatever on the big guy. They all see him walk up to him. Nobody sees him hit for real but the next instance, this lil guy is down on the ground and everyone just assumes he hit him bad. Everyone rushes around him, they think he is dying and then add some cut scenes like one of them calling up for the ambulance and someone else calling up the police. One thing everyone decides on was to lift him up and take him to the hospital. They grab his body randomly and try to pull him up when they are shaky themselves. The lil guy was actually choking on the beer and sudden actions like laughing and shock/fear. There was a lil beer stuck in his throat which was clearing up and when he realizes whats going on, he tries saying that he is ok but the crowd isn't ready to believe him (weird?). One of them says "dude your are dying let us take u to the doc" and this guy bursts out laughing. Everyone is just plain confused but act headstrong and force him to go to the doc. This guy realizes that they think he's dying and starts laughing (*high*). Then some added abuse saying "duffer u r dying don't freakin laugh". Then at this point, the power goes off. everyone leaves him... he falls on the floor flat... no body moves. Its dark but still there is dim light. One of them takes out the mobile for some light and the others do the same... this lil guy still doesn't move. In his head he's thinking... if i act dead they might not take me to the doc, but then he thinks if he acts dead they might just as well bury him. So he gets up with a jerk... and in the darkness everyone assumes he is a ghost or something like that and run for their lives. Now while writing these stuff down i got the idea goes something like this... everyone is trying to get away from this guy thinking that he's some phantom or watever. This guy is alone in this room, everybody ran off... now from both points, one from the others angle and the one from this guys angle, I taught it could be intresting to show this guy whos looking for his friends and trying to prove that he's not a ghost and at the same time, his own friends trying to get away from him (possibly get rid of him) while all of them are drunk. Then the end would be how they almost kill him (he survives unlike most horror movies). Well but last week we taught about this and decided that there are a scenarios in movies which are quite similar to this one. Then we taught of how to change, adapt and improve this. Well we got some crazy ideas in the process. A few weeks back there was a lil tension in the air in the middle of the night as a guard just walked into a girls room in the hostel and he was drunk. There was big issue that night but anyway we saw the next day a circular on the notice board that the guard "xyz" has been removed from his position. This guard had only one thing to say in defence which was that he saw a bottle of beer in the room and went in only to investigate. So i wondered if this guard wanted to take revenge and he also knows that there is some alcohol in the room, he might spike it. And lets say he already spiked it and when everyone is drunk, this guard just pops up and taunts them saying that they drank some weird chemicals instead of the normal thing and he runs away. Now watever they drank have effects on these guys. And the effect are not the same to all, infact each of them have a differnet effect, like one of them has to pee every 2 mins, one of them goes crazy if he sees white, one of them starts sweating rapidly or stuff like that. Mariana suggested that it wuld be funny if someones sex organs just keep growing without stopping. Hehe that would be weird but anyway she's just a crazy girl. So the story continues as they begin to search all over the place for this guard to find a cure and how they finally survive from those deadly chemicals. Well thats all the work we did until now, havent worked on it further on. Today we also listend to the stories that the other groups in the class came up with. Pratik's group came up wid the idea of a small kid who has a weird phobia. He has the fear of people. He is gets scared evertime someone comes close to him. In his head he fears people, that people might hurt him. He gets nervos when someone is coming closer. He frets and panics when you continue to go closer and futhermore he can get agressive and hurls objects at the person closing in on him. It was an intresting idea which got my attention. All of us added suggestions and other ideas to this. He said that the kid wouldent let the nurse come close to him. Aman made this nurse into a slutty nurse who wanted to play around a bit with this guy. He also had this idea (not very sure bout this cause everyone contributed but most probably this was Aman's idea) that the would go around treating patients in differnent rooms and this kid would observe from the distance. Although the nurse is healing the patients, from the kids point of view, she is just a person who has fun torturing other people and he was scared she would do the same to him. Well i had my own ideas running in my head thinking of turning this into a full fledged complete 1 hr 30 mins kinda film or maybe even a series or something. Well the result is the next post.

3DS MAX

Woke up a bit early to work on the 3ds max assignment and worked a bit on it, but really messed up and made a bad model. Looked at textures, importing and placing textures on objects and stuff like that. Later we played some DoTA. Watched the movie Billu Barber.

MIT

Got a bit late to class cause i was too sleepy. Gave the final burnt CD - our first project. Had our first 3ds max class this morning. I was finding it quite complicated. Got our first assignment of making a table with a computer on top along with a chair to be finished by tomorrow. After that we were planning to go to MIT college cause there was Quasar - their college fest going on there and we had a video report project to do and this was a chance to interview some gamers there. The place was cool, with a lot of chicks, big lawns and gardens and AC/DC playing at a decent volume from the background. Collected a few guys and filmed a short interactive session from violence to video games and everything in between. Spent some time on their front garden doing nothing. Came back to college and took some time off, desperately need a holiday after that project which was just insanely grueling. But it also taught stuff like planning before hand and expecting the unexpected and listing of tasks and assets and preparing for in-eventualities... was really upset cause one of my best friend is getting married the next day and i couldn't attend... cried a bit and slept off... forget bout the 3ds max assignment for the moment...

The End of The First Game - Computer Invasion

After sleeping late in the night, i didn't manage to wake up by just the alarm. I think i woke up shut it down and slept off but without realizing. Just an hour before class I realize all the stuff I had to do and begin to work very fast on it. We were then told that the deadline to help us has been further pushed till 12:30 noon. I finish my work, my team mates finish theirs too as much as we could. And after lunch we got our game validated and found a long number of remarks. We were again given the job of polishing it by tomorrow morning 9:30. Ohh boy... this didn't begin well...and neither did it end... I continued working on my stuff, got a bit lectured as well. The document was rather tricky cause it had to be made into a booklet and to achieve this we had to print double pages with text placed in a manner that it would be chronological and make sense which u fold it up and make the booklet. Amol was very helpful to make me understand how it is done but i still failed to get it right, the printing was the really the tricky part. The other team in our class already wasted bout 50 copies of their manual to get it right. So they were done with that task, so i could use some of their experience so i took Aman's help in getting the documents printed in the right manner. Well took help would be an understatement. Umm a big understatement in fact... I was just sorta supervising what had to be done and he did the work from editing to polishing and printing and staplering it (staplering his fingers a few times in the process) and after wasting some 20 copies of the manual we just gave up and used the final one which we printed. Finally at 4 in the morning the printing job is done. Now I go looking for Nikil just to find his room open and him sleeping. So i burn the CD up myself re-burn it to make a backup and for a small change which had to be made to make it up as much near to perfection as possible. Well it was a learning experience... showed us the importance of the Game design doc, technical design, art design and planning and the level of detain for each of them...

Supposed to be the last day of Production

Aaaahhh the last day of production. Sweat glands bursting, blood pressure high, things left to do, time dead line and a heck lot of pressure. And fuck! its the end of the day and our game is not ready yet. But no the deadline isn't today, its tomorrow. It buys us some time to finish it up but that also means one more day of annoying work. Damn work. This day didn't end with this. Went into my room at bout 1:30 to sleep cause i had to wake up early to finish some work. But i spent off chating with my room mate Anshuman some 1 hr 30 mins from everything bout gals, relationships, education and friends. Its become more of a habit cause this is the only time we get to talk. While talking he remembered about a gal and upon my insistence to call her up, he realized that he lost her number. And lol at 1:30 in the night he borrows my cell phone to call up his sis to ask her if she has her number. And when her sis asks why he says to make a formal relation proposal!! i mean wtf. First he calls up his sis at that hour and wants her to find him that gals number. He hastily adds at the end to not tell mom and cuts the call. Heheh.... slept off by 3 am.

Carnival-O-French

Was too busy to write a single note on each day, so this note is for the four days 19,20,21,22 of feb. Four days nothing but work to do, listing , updating, meeting and getting shouted at were the words of the day. At the end of the 21 though there was a surprise party. It was carnival time in France and my french friends wanted to celebrate it. So they all dressed up with every kind of weird stuff we could find and went on to shout scream and make some noise. Went to the bar had some beer and bhang and some food too. Danced a bit made a lot of noise... well had fun. 22 Sunday was again work work work but it took me 2 in the after noon to wake up in the first place. Went to big bazaar to do some basic shopping in the college car. Worked till 4 this day :( and tomorrow is the last day of our first production.

Quarantine

Umm woke up... 10 minutes for class to start ... both my roommates in line for the bathroom... no point waiting... took my brush went into the lab and brushed in the lab's bathroom ! hid the brush behind the curtains acting as if nothing has happened at all... Production Management, the class began with a small presentation of the game New York Racing by me and Karl. Then we went on to finish last classes presentation. After that a small course on the basics of flowchart. We were supposed to finish it but cause none could finish it by before lunch we sent in the working progress and had to finish it by next Monday. Next up is English and the previous tests papers were released and i scored the highest 40. Gave one more English test which i did contrastingly bad (mostly guessing). Found out that we are gonna have a test in every class from now on. went to my room cause i was feeling a bit sick. Then called up to class by Pranav as the teachers were looking for me. Got lectured and got my marks cut by 15 outa 20, not really sure why got the 5. Pissed me off quite a bit. Then played some games with Karl, Nikil, Pranav and Sam. Tried a bit of the old Warcraft 3 after a long time. Went to sleep at around 1, but couldn't sleep. Came back up and watched the movie Quarantine which was a horror and I liked it. It ended by 4 and so finally I sleep at 4 in the morning. Not a very good day...

Time

W had to work on Animage 09 today and also a review of what we have finished and what we are yet to do. It went kinda tense cause even though we are working things out, we also need to make documents and update stuff and also with the new marking system. Most of us got their marks reduced with the new system as it penalizes based on your punctuality. Which is 1 mark for every minute absent which is really harsh. I got a 16 which is not too good but Sam who worked really hard on the flash coding got 9 marks reduced outa 20 cause he was 9 minutes late which i think is really really harsh. The next part of the day we continue to work on our project as usual.

Building a Camera and Shooting at the Same Time !

We had project development overview width Philippe Segard. As he said planning on making the game and making the game at the same time is like shooting a movie and building a camera at the same time. The video game industry has a mix of movie/t.v artists and computer programmers/geeks so it has mixed terminology like pre/post - production like in movies and alpha/beta stage like in programming. Again from his career experience we took a example project which was new york racing based on the movie the fifth element, again a license based production without a publisher. This project was co-produced by Kalisto - developer and the license owners. And heard three different stories of three different people in the game industry as examples.

Rest

Best day of the week. Slept all day long and watched harry potter and the philosophers stone and the goblet of fire - extended edition.

Scripts and Movies

Woke up late. Late by an hour to art history class. nevertheless was allwoed to sit it and got my attendance signed as well. mm some brainstorming of ideas for the short film we had to work on. Got my idea and Karls as well selected. Have to work on a basic script for it till next weeks class. The rest of the day was good too, watched the movies speed racer and Okariki Orkaru. There was a small fight between the students and a guard. Allegedly the guard who was drunk went inside one of the girls rooms without knocking or anything claiming to have seen a beer bottle inside.

A lil BooZe wont Hurt

Basic day of work. Worked on the game design. Nikil came up with a new idea to make the game end a lot faster. And although i wasn't very enthusiastic about it , after 3 games of testing i felt it worked out just fine. He also came up with a few good mixes of slagsmalsklubben. Slept off the night in the bar cause Berrie's parents came to meet her from france and after that a lil smoking to end the day.

Forecast-Plan-Prepare-@_@...

Production Management in relevance to our current project. Presentation in the usual format. Also the results of the previous test, got 17.5 outa 20 which i think is okie :), then as the presentation went on, we discussed on how to be prepared in a unpredictable industry like gaming. A quote Philippe presented during this was "Not forecasting is already groaning" which made me think... The second part of the class was a analysis of what we are doing, how its going, how is the planning etc, this was important for me as my new role of production manager. Had a meeting with Lionel, about resource management and milestones and the deadline. Listened to some sound tracks for our game with Nikhil. Discussed with Amol and Siddesh for their next milestones. Just went on, a good day of work.

Bridge outa Sticks

Today we had Project Management again and for this Philippe began with a presentation and Julien was lost in his own thoughts. When he observed this, we began discussing what was in Juliens mind, which was the video report they had and we went on about how to plan a shoot with a person dividing responsibilities and also to have a planed document ready for this post production parts as well. Back to the presentation, more on creativity and and a small exercise to make 3 circles and analysis of how each actually organized these 3 circles reflecting on being creative not when just when asked but being creative all the time, subconsciously in the mind. Then we did another exercise which was to make a bridge in 30 minutes out of 50 wooden sticks without the help of glue or any external material as such. The exerecise was to help us develop team building skills and how to manage time. But most of us were just working on our own idea but somehow accidentally in the end we came up with a good idea and we were able to finish it in about 45 minutes and we won. Then we did a analysis of what we did, what we should have done, what went wrong and comparing it to the other team. And end of the class.

Testing Testing n more Testing

Some mind blowing testing... The guys testing the game were me and Nikil. And it was funny because my style of gameplay and his style of gameplay were completely different. I am a more strategy oriented kinda player and he was more of a FPS stlyle of a player. This contrastiting diffenece helped in fine tuning the gameplay of the game we were working on to suit everyone and to try and get some balance in the game. Finally came up with a fitting idea so working on it...

License

We have project management with Philippe Segard today. We began the day with a test of how much we understood of the previous presentations. Then moved on to a presentation to analyze and understand how licensing works in the video game industry by looking at previous examples from Philippe's career. The second part we continued with the presentation and looked closely at the games tintin and virtual ski break. Some really funny incidents today were the game design document of tintin had something called the jump of joy which became the laughing stock also when Pranav sleepyly murmured something Philippe came and asked what and he said "errr stongly?" and Philippe said yes absolutely correct strongly and we were like WTF! it was a completely random attempt by Pranav and that was somehow realated to the topic we were discussing on and we tried to control laughing during class but as soon as the class finished we were rolling on the floor laughing. For the dinner , it was shit so we went to Ganeshe's bar, had some beer and chicken fried rice.

hammer head

Ahhh.... finally, one day without work. What would have been a nice lazy Sunday otherwise.... WTF am i dreaming!, i m still on campus. Basically translates meaning that the workers had a field day next to my room. The fucking noise of the machines and building their lift made me go crazy. Almost the whole day proved useless as we felt their hammers right next to our head. Finally it stopped and then some good DoTA matches and the end.

5-min-mov

What would have been a lazy Saturday was replaced by work cause of this project. Oh well anyway the day began with art history. We saw two interesting videos. Both were pretty good, some points of which reflected my thinking and others opposing it. After discussion on those videos, we wrote down whose interested in which department in the field of making films cause we are supposed to come up with a short 5 minute film as a assignment. And off to lunch. After lunch some more working and some DoTA after long time.

Marketing jokes

Worked on the game the first part of the morning and for the second part we had a fun art history session. The topic was out of box and Julien wrote a "small" note on this which was read out by Harshal. Following complicated discussions on this lead to various things, several stupid and others even more complicated like the theory of relativity, boxes in boxes concepts, parallel universes and string theory. After this we were given 5 minutes to come up with a commercial for marketing our school. And we had some really funny ones from Harshal, Nikhil, Sam and Mariana. Can't mention them on my blog though, but they were really hilarious :D. Thats it 4 today.

Work

Lot of brainstorming - new ideas - progressive testing and tuning was today's work. Really tired after all this... woke up at 12 again to start working on the art history paper and the game design document.

Shoutings n Coffee

The first part of the day we had a history of video games in the economic point of view presentation and I was almost sleeping in the class. Well not exactly because it was boring, but because I slept at 5 am in the morning the previous night. After this we had a English class, before which I wanted to take a small nap and slept off. When I woke up, I was pretty late already, so I just went to class and everyone else was already done with their test and were getting their papers corrected. I took 2 easy tests and i was free to go. Then... the awakening... we had a meeting to review our progress in the current project. Got a good verbal beating, reviewed at our progress, evaluated a lot of parameters based on it we got actually had to consider killing the project. But after the meeting we were all pumped up and we started working seriously to cover up all the time we lost. Back to my room, stomach growling, really really hungry and no food left. I dozed off during the dinner break, so missed my dinner and we cant get food from the canteen after dinner hours. Similar was the state of my roommate Anshuman, and when i told him that, he said he had some coffee and milk powder left. So we got some cups, got hot water from the water machine, stole Harika's sugar bag and had a coffee party at 1:30 in the night. Almost melted Anshumans plastic bottle of water when I refilled it with water, and were also joined by Rahul and Sachin. Well finally slept at 2.

Beginin of Roi Heenok

Umm work work work for the 2^nd of feb
And for the 3 of feb - Our first production management class with our new teacher who will stay for a limited time of 2 months and teach us intensively*. We redid the introductions like the first time we came to college, and went on to see a presentation which basically covered the 9 major steps from game designing and marketing to retailers and consumer servicing. We continued after lunch, had a chat with each of us individually to know what the role of each of us is in our current project and what our good and bad points in us were. Also my introduction was as Roi Heenok instead of Rohanak and this guy Roi Heenok is some famous drug dealer and rapper. And our teacher Phillipe Segard took it seriously and started calling me Roi Heenok. Followed in the afternoon with more in depth discussion and understanding of the processes involved. umm watched Chris Rocks and episode 12 and 13 of Smallville and its 2 30 already. time to sleep gn :)

dinner dash

One more holiday, nice lazy Sunday. Again a day full of good games and sleep. Went to a nice French/Italian restaurant "la dolche vita" for dinner called . Met up with Karl, Julien and Sam there. Had some interesting food, had a cranberry breezer, salomon and beef. the beef was some kind of french specialty and my friends liked it a lot, but to me who is used up to all the masalas of Indian cuisine, the taste seemed too subtle to the extent i can call bland.