The Last Presentation

Well, I open my eyes and Aman is trying to wake me up. I get myself together cause its 9:35 and the class usually begins at 9:30. I quickly dress up and go to class, well lucky the teachers were late by 30 minutes so its not a problem. Begin with our presentation with Alexi, Lionel along with Sophie and Kevin from ISD. I taught personally that ours was the best presentation, we put lots of pictures (nostalgic memories - had to have them there) along with a lot of humor and made it very entertaining for our audience. Felt Great after finishing the presentation with very few remarks. Went to Lunch when it was 10 more mins left for lunch time to get over. Continued with the presentation for the intensive week and I dozed off. Aman again woke me up (for the second time in the same day) and by the time I reached class the presentation already began. I made my way silently into the group talking cause the intensive week was a group excersice and started talking randomly out of no where. Well that went okay too. Later in the day after class, me Aman and Urvashi left to buy swimming trunks.

Midnight Snacks

We were supposed to have a guest from Ubisoft company to talk to us - future game designing students but unfortunately it got canceled and got rescheduled to Wednesday instead. Did basically nothing the whole day, the same download frenzy continued and did zero preparation for the presentation for the next day. Later at the night after all the free time in the morning did we realize that we had to give a presentation for the very first project we worked on when we began college at Supinfogame - creating a board game. And so we begin at 11 in the night and make one of the best presentations we ever made and worked on it till 4 am in the morning. The reason for working so hard on this presentation considering that it wasnt even being marked is that, this was our very first project and with this we all got to know each other, became friends and basically the beggining of everything so it is important. We ate some smith and jones instant noodles in the raw form with out the boiling in the water, broken into smaller parts and tossed inside the packaging along with the masala :| , also had some apple juice all thanks to Harika - the food bank. Some chocolate chip cookies and a pista kulfi in the same night. Finally slept at 4 am in the morning.

Download Mania Begins

Most of my friends were having a hang over cause of last night, hmm nothing important today, just that Deekshith gave me his megaupload account and I going insane downloading loads and loads of stuff.

Mariana's Bday

The only important event today was Mariana's birthday and her dad flew over from Venezuela and we had a big party at Ganesh's place. The theme for the event was 'Indian' so the rule was to wear traditional clothes and she threatened everyone who did not wear traditional Indian clothing will not be allowed into the party. Well, I almost never wear traditional and had nothing but jeans to wear so anyways she didn't throw us outta the party. We had a good time, drank a lot of beer with Soumya, Ankit and Akshata. It was fun to see all the foreingers wearing Indian clothes while a lot of Indians came in casual wear. The party continued upstarits but I didnt go anyways, got too drunk and tired already..

Exams - 21, 22, 23, 24

Kevin asked us to choose a chit of paper each from a bunch of them and we had to model and texture whatever we got within 5:30. I got a sub woofer and well i didn't do a great job with it. The effects of not sleeping the previous night were evident and I was drowsy for most part of the exam except the end when I had to finish it up. The texture was taking a long time and there was very little time left. So i created a texture with just black and white and therefore my whole model was just in black and white. Well.. just hope Kevin likes it... had to get some sleep, woke up around mid night to study a little for the next days exam on production management. All my classmates gathered some information and put it under the common directory so that all of us have access to the same resources which was just what I wanted cause all my notes were scattered due to my bad organization.. Didnt sleep this night either and gave my exam. The exam was intended to be 4 hrs but due to some misunderstanding, we had only 3 hrs for it which is the first half of the day. Wrote it well except the math part of it... which was 9 marks outta the 20 :| so gonna lose a chunk there. Then Alexis gave us a shock by casually saying that... I have all of you have made something intresting for the jury after lunch... And we were like WTF. None of us made any presentation or anything like that and we didn't have any time left either. Had a really quick lunch to begin work on the presentation and slept half of the lunch working on it. The jury had Alexis and Lionel as usual along with Jersey, Matthew and Kevin from animation as well. Sadly Philip was in France at this time so he wasn't around for the jury. We were really worried how this would go but once we started, it all seemed natural and me, Aman and Karl handled it well. It also gave rise to a lot of argument and debate as we had a controversial topic which was Violence in Video Games and as Alexi said in a 10 minute video, we just scratched the cover of the real issue, but everyone was happy over the job we did and we were really happy ourselves cause we prepared and managed a complete presentation in just 30 minutes. Next day was game design exam and cause we didn't know the topic there wasn't much we could have done to prepare. And the exam topic was to create a game design - version 1 with the basic idea of making a game based on the Dhoom series. We had 3 hours to think and come up with the design of the game. I made a game which had elements of racing, role playing and first person shooter mixed in. The rest of the day was just spent playing and doing time pass. Got "I am a perv! and Chankanako" written on my t-shirt by Urvashi cause I wrote some funny stuff behind her dress. Aman and me also went to buy a External Hard Drive and I bought a 1 TB maxtor hdd. Also a funny incident happend at the counter which I wont talk about, Aman got a stuffed toy for Urvashi and also picked up some chicken friend rice and chilli chicken on the way.The last exam was the viva exam of art history. After asking some basic questions on the work I did on The Gupta Art, The Evolution Of Knife And Its Connection With Rituals and a script for a short video. That it, end of exams... The rest of the day we found all of us completely bored for the first time, we have work all the time and now we find ourselves jobless for once and it was weird to handle. Also I began backing up all the personal data on my new HDD which I love :D. Also watched the movie 'L: Change The World' which is based on the Japanese anime series Death Note.

Sunday n Monday

The Sunday went by really quickly.... spent most of the time playing and reading the book Frankenstein cause I have to return it to the college library before college ends which is soon just 2 more weeks left. The whole of next week we have exams and tomorrow is game analysis exam. Thought I would get a proper night of sleep before the exam so slept soon. But as it happens... we've gotten so used to the current lifestyle which involves sleeping quite late at night and waking up just before class and now, even though I tried I couldn't get any sleep :( Don't know when I finally fell asleep but my guess is over 3 am and I never woke up for class ! Pranav came and woke me up and I finally left for the exam. As it happens we had to analyze the game 'Little Big Adventure 2' and the game just wouldent run on my PC. And cause there wasnt any spare PC around, Alexi let me use his laptop and I played the game or tried playing that game half asleep. Took some shady notes and wrote my analysis. Had to print it and... just my luck, the damn printer wouldent print more than 2 pages. And there were others who had to print too like Julian, Pranav, Amol and Siddesh. Finally gave the printed version of my document to Alexi at 5:34 which is 34 minutes late, just before he was leaving back to his apartment ! #:-S Played more, slept a little and began to try out stuff on 3ds max cause the next is the 3ds max exam. I mean tried to practice but most of the night went off in playing DotA and doing timepass on Facebook and Orkut. It morning already and the exam is going to start soon :( I suck at using softwares effeciently and at 3d stuff. Mix them up and you got 3ds Max... which I hate !

Workin n Watching

Okay this post is for 15, 16, 17 and 18 together. So it all began with Phillipe's sound design class. We were made to pick chits from a cap and all of us got different chits which had names of different topics in it and we all had 2 days to compose at least 2 minutes and 30 secs of audio based on your topic. I got psychosis and did some research on that subject and began to work on it. The whole day went like this. Took a small nap and began to work again and basically worked till morning, took a break, got a couple of hours of sleep and back to class again. Worked whole day again on the same sound design stuff and just at the last minute, I over wrote my own files !! Just 30 minutes before we had to submit it, I basically deleted all my work. Whoa showed me the importance of backing up your work man. But luckily I had a backup of an older version and cause I wasn't willing to work on it anymore, I submitted that version. Then caught up with a couple of hours of sleep and work all night again on my Art History project. Finished it by 3 in the morning or so and then watched the movie Baraka which is special cause it had no story, no character or any plot. Just some amazing visuals and well those visuals had a silent story to tell. I was finding the movie long cause there was no story or twists to keep me engaged. Slept off in the morning, skipped of the morning class of Art History, woke up for lunch, met up wid the sir for the afternoon session, went well and spent the rest of the day playing and other stuff. Watched the movie The Exorcist (1973) with Aman and Urvashi. And the last day which is saturday was just awesome. Had no big submissions left, nothing to work on so we had a great time the whole day. Watched the movies Changeling, The Wrestler, The Reader and the korean movie Time all in the same day. Played some great games too. Oh well, one more sunday and the next week is full of exams :| good night :)

11:30 WTF

Today was crazy cause... after sleeping late in the morning yesterday, no one actually woke up for class. Sachin woke me up and the time was 11:30 already, the class started at 9:30! and we woke up at 11:30 almost everyone who was having fun and working last night woke up at the exact same time. Then the industrial design teach Thomas walk in to take a look why their students didnt turn up for class. After that embarrassing incident we all got readied up and went for lunch. Found out that the head of Supinfogame France had come to visit (*damn* just when I am absent), then we had a big group submission for tomorrow which is to write the scenario and events happening in the paper rpg game we are working on. Played some good DotA games with Karl. Played more missions in Company of Heroes. Slept. Woke up at 12. met up with Aman and Julian in the lab. Apparently there was a lot of work left on the rpg story and so I wrote a chapter too. Then discussed some random bullshit like harassment issues (lol) and had a good laugh about it. After that we had a maggie party at 3 in the morning, stole plates and forks from the canteen, made up some maggie and Aman, me, Urvashi and Julian ate up, did more timepass, taught of watching a movie but finally slept.

RPG Storyline

I woke up surprisingly after last nights party. Didn't think I would get up at all. Today was RPG analysis with Alexi and we worked on the storyline of our universe. The universe although the same for all, everyone had a different angle of looking at it. So to clear things up we made a storyline along with a timeline and to get the base right we began with real world events and twisting them and modifying them to make a different situation which was the current time line position of our universe. We began with Iraq's invasion of the US and went on with that. The later part of the day went into making the classes for the game and further into their abilities. Had to e-mail the list by the end of the day and the rest of it was spent playing Company of Heroes and reading Naruto Manga. Also did some basic shopping for the room today. And when I finally go back to my room at about 3 in the morning, it is full of my friends from ISD who are working on their sail boat project. They built up some stuff, put plaster all over the floor on the size and structure of the boat etc. and I came in, donned the role of a photographer, clicked a ton of pics, then put them up on the PC and laughed at them. And in the process spent one more hour. So its 4 am in the morning now and I finally sleep.

Suday n Sameer's bday

The day went by pretty fast, if you ask me and i was sleeping most part of it. Already 1 pm lunch time by the time I woke up and after lunch I slept again. So basically slept the whole day. The only other two things I did was working seriously and finishing my art history project and going to Sameer's bday party in Ankits - Nikhils room and getting drunk and dancing the time off. It began at about 12 I guess but I came in only at 1 and stayed up till 3. Spend some more time here and there and finally slept at 4 in the morning.

Hard Rock

Ahh the long cherished holiday ! Finally we have a Saturday on which we are not working in he lab for another big submission. The day was pretty chilled out. Woke up as usual, just up for lunch, then did nothing much but time pass for some more time in the lab. Aman and Urvashi morphed my picture into female bodies :| then we all went to pune. Sam had to buy helmet and some other bike gear, then off to hard rock cafe. This was the first time I came to this place and it was quite chilled out. The music was a bit too loud though, we had a awesome huge legendary burger with fries. Later joined in by Aman and Urvashi, dono where they disappeared to... had some coke and also a mocktail which i think was rum + sprite + lemon + mint leaves. Left back to campus, had some vodka and watched the movie Rachel Getting Married in the gaming room.

Company of Heroes and La Confidential

Woke up 1 hr after the class actually began. Woke up at 10:30 in the morning and hurried to the Art History class. Umm we had a brief down on all the assignments we had to finish and outa them I finished none. Philip gave me a small lecture to be on time to class but let me sign the attendance sheet anyway. After the lunch I dozed off and again was late but 30 mins late this time. I asked Philip if I could sign but :( he wouldent allow me to. Well i was late so... Hmm the rest of the day was spent in playing Company of Heroes which I am a total noob at. Watched the movie LA Confidential with Julian, which was a movie released back in 1997 and was pretty good.

Pet Shop Hop

Today was Lionel's class on Interactive DVD. We analyzed the gameplays that can be adapted to the remote controller of DVD player. Then we had to take any game and make a document showing the different load screens and how the story would evolve if played on a DVD player. Also there is no save system on a DVD player so we had to mention that it requires password based progression. I tried to adapt the game Pet Shop Hop to the DVD player but found it very difficult to make. Anyhow, i sent off the document to Lionel on e-mail. Then worked on Art History assignment on the evolution of the shape of knife. Watched the movie 8 Mile and finally slept at 5 in the morning.

Sound Design

Today was sound design after a long gap. The last time we had sound design, we recorded some sounds which we made outta random objects. Today we had to compose a small audio file using those sounds in Adobe Audition. The whole day was fun as we spent time listening to the sounds we recorded and inverting them, stretching them and giving all sorts of effects and making them into completely different sounds. We were supposed to make it 2 minutes 30 seconds at max, but most of us made mixes lasting less than one minute. I was too tired so i dozed off after class and skipped dinner again and by the time I woke up it was 10:30. Got myself two Mango Kulfis cause i was starving and began to work on my Audio file again. Also wrote the scenario setting for the Rpg game and e-mailed it to Alexi before 12 as usual.

More Analysis

As I said, after working for 29 hrs continuously yesterday I finally slept at around 7 in the evening and after that it was complete blackout. I woke up again at 4:30 in the morning cause I remembered to set the alarm on my cell phone yesterday as I still had work to finish on my MMORPG game analysis and also the AC was making the room freeze so I snapped out of sleep. Then when I came up to class I found that 5 out of 6 of my class mates were working all night long and were still in the lab. Aman went to sleep then and I began to work then. Worked on it till morning and then 9:30 again no food and today class begins, which again is about game analysis and this time, the work is supposed to be submitted by the end of the day itself and the game we are given is the demo of the original Company of Heroes which released back in 2006. Well the game was pretty awesome and I loved it. The problem was I spent too much time playing it and not working on the analysis... At the end of the day I had something far from a finished document. At request, Lionel agreed that the max deadline for the submission of this would be 12 mid night and that was the end of class. After that, I was supposed to work on it but again, the the amount of time left made me relax and before I know it, it is 11 in the night. Been playing DoTA all along with my friends and still havent worked on the analysis. I begin to work again at 11 and do some last minute additions and send off the document at 11:56, four minutes before deadline. I just hope it shows the right time in Lionels PC so that I am within the 12 o clock limit. Watched a movie called 'Tandoori Love' and also put my clothes in the washing machine after about 1 month or so...

29 Hrs

We had RPG analysis. RPG analysis doesn't mean the RPG video games but the old paper RPG games. In the morning we did a brainstorming session of ideas and each of us came up with something that we will be working as a team to make. We all came up with some ideas and then shortlisted it to fit into the required RPG game we are gonna make. Then we worked on the story, its time period and world conditions. That's it for today's work. Have to sleep as soon as this class gets over. Almost feeling like fainting... We also have to work on the MMORPG genre case study which we need to submit tomorrow. So now that it is the end of the class, it is 29 hrs of continuos working!

Humid Night Out with the Masquitoes

One of the most insane days of my life... worked the whole day on Abode Audition on reworking audios and cleaning them. Then the rest of the time on more research on the MMORPG Case Study. As evening drew close we all began working on the video report of violence in video games which went on and on and on till 9:30 in the morning. Been surviving through the night on bits of chocolate and little redbull from Sam cause I skipped Dinner. Hungry, sleepless, tired and working in a frenzy with sarcastic hysterical laughter to feel lighter. Finally we do something which we can show as our work and the class for the next day begins while I still in the lab with the same clothes, without brushing my teeth or anything else for the next day.

Audio Work

The whole day consisted of a lot work, on a lot of different things. To begin with, I had to clean up the audio files and reduce the noise in the background, so I was working with Adobe Audition for most of the day. Also got my fifth Sim card, don't know the reason my last Sim card got fucked, so got a new one again.

Fast and Furious

Today is Art History, which i conveniently didn't wake up for. By the time I woke up, It was already 12 noon. Spent the rest of the day doing time pass, tried to work on audition a bit. Then me, Aman, Inder, Soumya, Sameer, Anshuman, Karan, Rahul and Urvashi squeezed into Alexi's car so that we can get a lift to the movie theater. We were going to watch Fast and Furious 4. Reached the place, watched the movie, had a good time, wandered on the streets which felt like forever, had cheese dosa at a dosa on wheels place, ran crazyly on the roads with Soumya for no apparent reason and finally caught a autorickshaw. Came back to college by 11 which was soon enough.

Study Case

Today is case study with Alexi. The last time we had a case study class, we did a presentation by the end of the day on your favorite genre of video games. So similarly I was expecting to be asked to make another presentation by the end of the day. But no, that wasn't the case. We had to research and make a file with everything related to MMORPG back from Its history to its current state today, how it works, its economics and the market for it. So we began researching about it. Consumed the whole day but my work is not done yet, it isn't my work if it wasn't done at the last moment so gonna be working before its submission as usual i guess.

Report

Woke up and began to work on the Game Analysis Report which I haven't worked on since Monday. Started from scratch and listed out everything i had to write. The rest of the day went in similarly too. Everyone was just working on the report. I finished at 4 which and was the first to e-mail it off to Alexi. The rest finished after about 1 and a half hour and i chatted this time off. Also watched the movie 'The Corpse Bride' today.