undershot

About this time last week, Jodie and I were arriving in Singapore after a trip to India.

The whole country is just incredible. The Indian government gives plenty of warning of this – their advertising campaign is titled “Incredible !ndia” – but still I wasn’t prepared for just how incredible it is. That word ran through my mind in almost every situation we found ourselves in. I’ll spice things up a bit here by using various adjectives, but keep in mind that in most cases I was really thinking “incredible”.

But first, I must apologise for not writing earlier. Internet access was difficult or expensive to obtain, so I left all my blogging until we got back. I wish that hadn’t been the case: I am sure I have forgotten a lot, and now I can’t bring myself to write more than one post. I’ll try to be brief :)

We landed in Mumbai (formerly Bombay – but we were told you must not call it that when you’re there, or the hard-core Bombayites will get upset) at about 2am. They are pretty stressed about the terror threats, so I got to see my first machine gun (an AK-47, I think). Our driver was waiting for us. The roads were shockingly-potholed, even very close to the airport, but they were no match for him. He darted around them and the busy traffic, all the way to Pune, about three hours away.

It turned out that the roads are ridiculous everywhere. It looks like it should be a traffic jam, but somehow everyone keeps moving, the cars and tuktuks (rickshaws with 2-stroke engines) narrowly missing each other and barely slowing down. There is only one road rule: stop when the traffic lights are red. But the lights are sparse, and everywhere else the drivers just go for it, keeping to the left only when it is convenient. We were often challenged by oncoming traffic, but a quick exchange of honks and flashing lights got us through safely.

Pune was good fun. We were actually there for my sister Ceridwen’s wedding, which was a terrific collection of ceremonies and feasts. I drew some lousy henna on Jodie’s hand and she drew an excellent triforce on my arm.

An insane taxi ride and short plane flight later and we were down south in tropical Kerala. We stayed in a lovely resort – the kind of place where you are presented with a coconut with a straw in the top on arrival. It was very peaceful there; such a contrast from the buzz of Pune and Mumbai. The resort had a meandering pool that I used to visit my German brother Florian in his villa. It had been about seven years since we saw each other last, and it was great to catch up.

The best thing about the resort was probably the houseboat. At first I didn’t want to go, because the resort was so nice, but it was well worth it. We spent an afternoon cruising around the backwaters of Kerala before mooring at the edge of a river for dinner. We saw lots of farm land, most of which is artificially below the water level – especially good for growing rice. The fields were separated from the river by a low wall of earth along which children were running home from school. The rivers seem to be used extensively for trade; bullocks are herded (swimming) along them, and cattle feed river sand (for building) are shipped from place to place on canoes with barge poles.

We didn’t want to leave but our trip had already been planned. We jumped on a plane again and bounced up to Jaipur. Sadly we went via Delhi: we were only there for 12 hours and I still managed to get Delhi belly. I even had to see a doctor because I started to get pins and needles in my fingers and toes. I was worried about the cost of calling a doctor to our hotel room, but we paid less than half of what it would be in Australia – and still our driver said that we paid too much. The sickness didn’t last long, but I missed out on an elephant ride up to a nearby fort.

After Jaipur we drove to Ranthambore to search for a tiger. We stayed at Khem Villas, an awesome resort that was run by the son of the man who established the tiger park. It was luxurious at the same time as being down to earth: our spacious tents had showers in them, we were served drinks as we sat around the camp fire with the owners and the other guests, and they grow most of their own food on-site. I would definitely recommend Khem Villas to anyone visiting northern India (really, you should go out of your way to stay there).

We spent three hours on tiger safari on two separate occasions. There are 40 of them in the park (up from 17 a few years ago), but the park is large and they are difficult to find. There is a lot of other beautiful wildlife, though, and great views besides. Especially after running around the busy cities, it was terrific to stand on top of a mountain and breathe in the silent air. We did see a tiger in the end, ten minutes before the end of our six hours. It was nice to have seen one – and the search was fun – but it was also a little over-hyped. The rest of the park was worth it regardless (and I was secretly more interested in seeing a sloth bear!)

Next we went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal with everyone else. I was sceptical about the value of going there; after all, I have seen it a thousand times in photos. But it really is special to see it up close. Everything about the building is awesome – the design, the workmanship, the materials, and the sheer size of it. Taj Mahal must have been an amazing woman. We also went to Agra Fort, from which you can see the Taj Mahal further down the river. The Fort is where the rulers used to live, including the man who had the Taj Mahal built. Even the fort was elaborate, with the most intricate carvings in the stonework. Because I was sick earlier it was the only fort I saw in India, but there are several and I assume they are all beautiful. If you are thinking of going to one, I recommend hiring a guide. There is a lot of history behind them and we got much more out of the experience than we would have otherwise. Also, if you are going to the Taj Mahal, get there early: we arrived before sunset but the line was long. By the time we got inside the building it was dark, and everyone was getting impatient.

It was a great trip, but I was glad to come home again. It would be interesting to go back in about 20 years to see how things change.

Edit: More photos from our trip.

Tonight I went to see Caley in a show with the Travel Art Dance Company. It was brilliant! The whole thing was completely improvised, with each performance inspired by a request from the audience. They obviously know each other very well: even with no time to prepare, their dances were engaging and cohesive.

I took in two photos as requests:

Apartments and hospital in Japan

The lighting in this shot always felt quite mellow to me. But the director chose a very dark song to play with it: Tom Waits’ What’s he Building in There? The dancers skulked around in the shadows, making angular shapes and, at the end, working together to form steps. It worked very well, but I will never be able to look at the photo in the same way again!

Anti-Frost Fans over a Japanese Tea Field

This one was accompanied by an earthy Japanese song. At first no one moved and I thought it was going to bomb. Then one dancer got up and held his arm up straight, to be joined by another to form a shape similar to the fan on the right. Others then joined in with interesting mechanical movements.

Other requests included pieces of music, animations, and props. The props were often interpreted without any music, and were the most interesting: a pile of polished pebbles became the obsession of an oriental gardener; a bunch of flexible straws were exulted. A member of the audience even offered herself as a prop, and she was bent into all sorts of interesting shapes by the dancers.

I made the mistake of ordering a trio of dips, even though I was there alone. Never again! I felt like a fool eating them, and no one would help me – or even make eye contact. “Who is that weirdo eating a trio of dips by himself,” they said.

Is it OK for a man to admit that he loves his phone?

… Let’s pretend I didn’t say that. But it is awesome. My last phone was a Nokia 3100. I stuck with it because couldn’t justify getting a new one. But I couldn’t resist the HTC Magic.

Both Android and the phone itself rock. Due to incompetence from various telecommunication companies, the phone is not connected yet. Even so I have found great use for it. In the five days I have had it, I have used it to take reference photos for a project at work, read news, email and chatted on it (over wifi), and played DOOM (haha :). This morning I downloaded a GPL sound recording app called Rehearsal Assistant. The sound quality is good*, even when using the standard USB mic that comes with the phone. Now I have a little recording studio in my pocket, and I intend to use it to sample sounds for my game. I have been thinking about getting a recording device for a long time, but again, I couldn’t justify it. Now I don’t need to.

If you are thinking about getting one of these but aren’t sure, I say go for it: you will find plenty of use for it.

* Just remember to set it to record WAV: the compressed format is quite low-quality.

I finally added grass to Cargo. It took a long time to do!

I have been wanting to do this for ages. The island looked quite bare without it, but I knew that it would be a hard task to render the blades in real time. A couple of tests showed that the blades could be rendered if they were all part of one big object, but as individual objects it was too slow. Individual objects is what I need though: it’s the only way to have each blade react when touched.

I ended up doing both: blades far from the snail are drawn in large clusters, while the near blades are drawn individually, and will wobble about when bumped into. Clusters are determined by putting the blades into a KD-tree. I hope to have time to write about this in detail later.

This took such a long time (about three months of my spare time). I am really glad that it ended up working. It was a big risk, and I felt bad about not making more progress on the story-side of the game, but the grass adds so much. Now I can get back to those parts that I have neglected.

Edit: Some rough statistics: There are more than 2000 blades of grass in the level, and it now runs at a frame rate of more than 40fps on my aged laptop. Drawing every blade individually (though without any dynamics) drops the frame rate below 20fps.

For the past year or so I’ve been working on making a video game. Actually that’s a lie: I made the first prototype for this game seven years ago. Back then I got the basic mechanics working for the player character, but I had no story to go along with it, and therefore no game.

This time I made exactly the same mistake, spending a few months getting the character’s motion working well before I had any idea where the game would go. But it has worked out well: the game play was interesting enough to inspire a friend to help with the script (hi Lara :) and now it’s well on the way. It’s being created in Blender.

In-game screenshot of Cargo

Cargo is a 3D adventure game. You play a snail who is on a mission to whoa! No spoilers just yet. But you can get an idea of the basic game play from the screenshot above: Cargo (the snail) can crawl on almost any surface and wraps around objects. The motion is fluid and quite engaging. A little too engaging: development is slow because I spend half of my time just playing the game. In fact, I think I might have a go now.