thought++

Synaptic Self

2011-11-25T02:05:00.004+03:30

Some change is necessary .... the weather is changing ... Pearl Jam unplugged show is still magical and inspiring ... it's interesting how the best things and the worst things overlap ... like right now that they can both happen with the exact same probability ... how black and white co-exist on top of each other and an ant's step is the dividing distance ... NBA 2K12 is one of the best pieces of software I have ever seen ... no one will ever be better than MJ ... need to redefine the priorities ... need to reorganize and re-assemble the crew ... authenticity is better than eccentricity ... I'm still alive .... how easily do we not see all that needs to be seen ... how easy can it all slip ... how easy can opportunities fade ... how easy can friends betray without anyone even themselves sensing ... need to get back to workouts ... Eddie is real ... Slayer is on top ... American Music Awards sucks big time ... all winners are in fact winners of the pretending contest ... devoid of meaning ... authenticity lost ... real men are still there ... the pillars to construct on ... Wade's moves have a flow like no one else ... I hate lies ... miss Seattle sound so much ... the attitude mainly ... miss teaching ... Opeth rules ... the AI and animation in NBA 2K12 are unbelievable ... what was pure imagination in the basketball games of yesterday have become the actual concrete reality today ...Whiskey so smooth ... Even Flow ... thoughts arrive like butterflies ... he don't know ....so he chases them away ... should I chase them away? .... oh ... I'm still alive ...

Refactoring

2011-09-12T00:23:00.004+04:30

Refactoring code is like being in the middle of a combat field. You study, change, fix, enhance, test, change, design, observe, reduce, change, optimize, extend, measure, change ... just like you would slash, guard, run, move, stop, breathe, hit, defend, jump, focus, push and attack in the middle of an ancient war.

In both, the outcome is good as long as you are alive, moving, changing, doing and commanding every second. Your failure is the moment you feel secure and satisfied.

Both do not rely on grand design and strategies, both bring out the best out of you, both often require you to do before you think, both show you the meaning of every instant, both value your sub conscious self over your conscious reflection, both need you to hug the opportunities of failure with ultimate courage and both require Real Men!

When no colossal armies are around, waves of uncertainty in the horizon, gotta grab the sharpest blade and dive into the adrenaline pumping moments of life, looking for none but miracles and staying true, every moment.

Just like nature itself, how it continually moves and makes and breaks.

Lets work carefully on good creations, only to watch them shattered to pieces while being done better, all by us, lets embrace the destructive nature of change and look forward to the rising sun...

The Rare Breed

2011-09-06T02:05:00.004+04:30

Looking for a programmer for an upcoming unannounced game project. The ideal candidate should be able to carry a Generalist Programmer title and have:

Mandatory Attributes:
1 - Showing to work on work days.
2 - Being able to self manage.
3 - Honesty.
4 - Willing to learn new things.
5 - Willing to write any code.
6 - Carrying a bigger sign of Pragmatism than Idealism.
7 - Not afraid to fail.
8 - Aware of the concept of self sacrifice for team excellence.
9 - Willing to help the group.
10 - Responsible.
11 - Familiar with the word: Commitment.
12 - Disciplined.
13 - Able to see out of the box.
14 - Brave.
15 - Time conscious.
16 - Creative.
17 - Passionate.
18 - Believer.
19 - Patient.
20 - Good focus abilities.

Optional Attributes:
1 - Good knowledge of Programming.
2 - Good knowledge of c/c++.
3 - Relevant work experience.

Drop me a line if you are one or know one around. (I am aware that this is a rare breed!)

Zen Coding

2011-08-26T00:22:00.003+04:30

You wrote the code, now you have to build it, it takes a while before you can see the results. You see the results, bring down the application, write more code and build again. In most serious applications the build time is something considerable. It is the time the machine needs in order to be prepared for your commands. To you it can feel like a short recess, or is it?

The build time is very clear for the machine but it is a very critical time for the coder. Why you say? Lets see. There is a huge tendency for coders to fly away during this time, which can be sometimes rather long (it can include both the code build time and the application startup and initialization time), it seems to be the best time to check the emails again, read a bit more of that article in the open browser, do a few more clicks on that sporadic junk web MMO, try to be cool in the social net or a million other small time suckers that we are all aware of. Why should it matter anyway, the machine is building and there is nothing else for me to do!

Well, there are three main issues with the above scenario:

1 - A shift of attention during this time is a context switch for the brain which can help you forget all the thought process and data you had regarding your problem in your mind. The longer this break away is, the higher the risk and it is quite easy to completely forget what it was you were working on once the application is up for testing.

2 - The time when you stop coding and wait is the best time to focus more on the problem at hand and even if you stop thinking about anything in particular (a zen state), your subconscious will carry on and try to work on the problem from different aspects. This could increase your problem solving quality and over the course of the day, highly reduce the number of times you would need to follow the code/build process for one specific problem. (Providing you with a lot more free time at the end of the day)

3 - Once you are carried away, there is no guarantee that you will come back and test the application once it is up and ready for you, you might spend a lot more time on the other task you started and who knows, maybe even get involved with the article for more than thirty minutes.

So before jumping out to do something else right after you initiated the build process next time, double check and see whether it is going to really be in your benefit and consider the negative effects it can have to your overall development quality. It is not easy but it could be well worth it.

If the problem at hand is too easy and there is absolutely no need for thinking more on it, you can always think about all the things you can do to reduce the lengthy code build time.

(from http://xkcd.com/303/)

The new Hell

2011-08-03T01:01:00.002+04:30

We recently thought it was a good time to upgrade the tools and library code that we use. So we went on and upgraded to VS 2010, used the latest version of OGRE 1.8 (un-stable), upgraded almost all other dependent libraries like PhysX, NxOgre, OgreVideo, Theora, ogg, vorbis, ...etc. Recompiled all the ones that had the source code available using VS 2010, quickly fixed the errors related to porting and put all where they belonged and tried to run the game with the old levels we had. Guess what, nothing worked!

Serious crashes and hangs everywhere.

Hmm... it might be related to the new OGRE we thought, maybe because of the way we have changed the use of Threading? Maybe an incompatibility with the new OpenAL? Can it be related to VS 2010? So we started.... we started to try out all different permutations possible with the libraries, ... the new code with the old OGRE, the old code with the new OGRE, the new code with VS 2008, OGRE 1.7, ... OGRE 1.6 ... and any other imaginable configuration, hoping to find the exact module causing the new issues. After almost a week, nothing was found! Strange stuff happened with every change.

Now we are back to the old code base that runs perfect on VS 2008 with all the rusty libraries that are rock solid. Will follow the upgrading of the libraries sometime in the future but this time one by one with proper test suites to run after each change.

Lesson learned: Do not upgrade everything possible over NIGHT!

Looking Back

2011-07-27T21:00:00.004+04:30

Captain Gustav stared at the tides ... face looking as dead as death itself ... thinking about how it ended this way ... re-living the events to mark the mistakes with his sharp blade ... givin' it a blow with the revolver attached to his belt ... sipping the Whiskey ... feeling down and strong ... he watched the match go on fire after a seemingly useless attack at the match box ... giving life to his cigar just to watch it die ... his mind wandered everywhere ... remembering the cold storms and the many times he danced with the angel of death while holding stiff to the wheel ... taunting and screaming at the mighty Poseidon with tears merged with the burning storm rain ... inhaling the soul of his cigar while watching the climax at its tip ... reminding him of the god defeating moment while he was one with his ship ... one with his crew ... predicting every motion of the raging sea ... seeing from the eyes of the god of the sea ... exhaling the baptized soul of his cigar while watching the still sea from his motion-less and quiet vessel ... but feeling the storm stronger than ever .... the frightened and shivering smoke moving away from him crying about the storm they saw ... understanding very well how he would like to torture the whole cigar and lett its pure soul experience the most frightening of all storms ... his storm inside ... the one not played by Poseidon ... the one that caused the god to blow the wind of death on the sea ... how he felt the Whiskey running away when vaporized by the heat of this storm ... the illumination of another inhale ending moment calming everything inside him for a moment ... whispering to him how fortunate his lost crew were to not have been by his side in this storm ... Captain Gustav gazed at his revolver ... this time lying innocent ... looking like a savior ... how it might have freed many souls from their inner storms ... the storms with no preparation signs ... his left hand freed the cigar ... threw it in the dead sea ... with a hidden hope that its burning soul might awaken the life sucking waves of the honest storms ... something ... anything to calm the inner chaos ... this .. he had to bare ... this ... had to go away .... this ... should inject more will into his old and tired body ... this ... needed to go away .... dark cold killing storm is in the horizon ... Poseidon shall rise again ... with a confident face and a brittle body ready for handing over the throne ... alas ... no god has fought the inner war!

The End of the Line

2011-07-27T00:59:00.003+04:30

What would have happened next if most of the seven Samurai had not died after trying to defend the village? How would they have felt after the success? Would they have regret the unpaid effort? Would they have extracted meaning from the whole scenario? Would Kyuzo have continued his swordsmanship practices like it was the first time he had the blade in his hands? Would Kikuchiyo have maintained his built up attitude? Would they have stood for the village again? Would they have witnessed their own descent? Would the hunger have fed with greed?

Is death the only option for eternal success? ... maybe yes... maybe not ... probably not for the people raised with Bushido which is said to be the "Way of Dying" or living as though one was already dead!

Californication

2011-07-24T23:53:00.003+04:30

I am not usually very fond of TV and have praised myself often for keeping away from it, even totally without it while living in the Country of the TV. Even the recent surge of TV series seasons on DVD had not caught me. Getting to know Neil Postman and his great books had further strengthened this idea.

However, just very recently, I checked out the first episode of Californication which I accidentally borrowed from yzt and I have to admit that I am blown away by it. Very close the the end of the second season and I have really liked it so far. Great actors, nice pace, wonderful music, good balance and containing good food for the thought below the seemingly hedonistic layers, oh, and nice to see the details of LA one more time. Quite cool.

Master Eddie

2011-05-22T01:15:00.003+04:30

I just had the pleasure to watch Peal Jam Unplugged one more time, thanks to PSJ. It is even more exciting to watch now than 15 years ago, the music is wonderful, improvisations fascinating, all the great songs from the Ten album and Eddie Vedder himself becomes one with the music. Watching him with the mic is a school of life in itself.. so pure ... so strong .. so focused ... so real!

It was also a trip to nostalgia land with memories of great friends around and the "Anything is Possible" days.

Oops.. gotta go since Alice In Chains unplugged is up next :).

The Journey and the Spiral

2011-05-18T23:14:00.004+04:30

It was almost 4.5 years ago that Farshid's brother stepped into our office. I don't even remember why he had come, but from the very first moment, Syros was surrounded with magic. We talked about a dream far far away... a dream as vivid as impossible ... a dream to make video games.... it all happened really quick ... he jumped in the ideas right away and started making 3D models in no time ... models that were exported to be rendered inside the OGRE3D engine... me, being always engaged in little game related projects with no real art couldn't believe how good the fusion of art and code was ... seeing progress every day ... feeling something different this time around ... the enthusiasm of Syros helping us apply a force needed to turn the wheel ... in no time Peyman was around animating the first 3D characters and Soheil joined in and brought excitement with his visualizations ... finding a book called Soshians threw us all in the dream journey of love, achievements, hard days, brotherhood, loss, belief and non stop work.... a journey which reached its destination a few days ago (May 9th) with the international release of Garshasp.

A journey that had many achievements for the team, a team that started from zero literally and had to learn everything from scratch. A journey that seemed endless at many milestones.

As a product, the game was rated mediocre in the international scale among the best in the field, which is quite good considering the journey that has brought it to this point, but what really matters is the process which is in place now and the new journey which is going to take off from this destination or better say this origin.... this is just the beginning .. we're born again ... it all just started!

Seems like a loop at first but its in fact a spiral ... riding the spiral ... gonna end it with Tool:

I embrace my desire to
feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow
to feel inspired to fathom the power, to witness the beauty,
to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on the spiral
to swing on the spiral
to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.

With my feet upon the ground I move myself between the sounds and open wide to suck it in.
I feel it move across my skin.
I'm reaching up and reaching out. I'm reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me.
what ever will bewilder me.
And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been.
We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one's been.
Spiral out. Keep going.
Spiral out. Keep going.
Spiral out. Keep going.
Spiral out. Keep going.
Spiral out. Keep going.

Human Magic

2011-02-23T22:16:00.003+03:30

The magic inside... different methodologies and processes and regulations all try to streamline a development process and reduce the risks hidden throughout the journey which includes creativity and engineering.... However, there lies a magic ingredient which can boost everything or kill all attempts, bring life to all or take all that lives... bring on success or absolute failure ... this magnificent or lethal ingredient is nothing but the human side of things ... the stuff that happens when two collaborate or take sides... this is what can make a team leap a hundred years or crumble all that has been made in a hundred years ... oh how valuable ... oh how the magic lives ... how we still rely on this magic ... how we all need to be magi ....

Black and White

2011-01-30T10:54:00.001+03:30

Black Swan, a perfect movie that defines perfection....

The Book

2011-01-21T22:06:00.003+03:30

"Masters of Doom", this was the book that changed my life in 2003 when I read it for the first time. The life as lived by the creators of the first major 3D First Person Shooter games, id software. The book is wonderfully written and highly inspiring. It was probably the driving force which helped me believe in pursuing an alternate life, following game development as a career. An alternate life which for me included major changes in life.

I had a chance to read this masterpiece again recently and it was even sweeter than the first time I read it. 8 years, drastic changes in life and the first attempt to releasing a game have passed since the first read but it is even more inspiring and adrenaline pumping today.

The book is all about determination, love, passion, problems, reality, sacrifice, success and life in general. Wonderful.

Embracing Failure

2011-01-18T14:48:00.002+03:30

Failure can be valuable if it helps find a better solution for the problem at hand. A very interesting post about the topic here.

Creativity needs deviation and deviation can lead to failures, information gathered from the failure can be used as heuristics necessary for the next search in the problem domain. Elegance can emerge among all the chaos.

Ancient Warriors in the Digital World

2011-01-12T21:10:00.003+03:30

We often called our few and highly talented and motivated developers at our office Samurais. This was a subconscious feeling and an appropriate word for defining the developers who have helped us during the last 8 years that we have established our company. It still feels the best word for describing these guys.

The Samurai were retainers for their masters and aligned their actions in life to be able to support the master in the best way. The masters for our developer samurais have always been the projects. A Samurai would commit seppuku upon losing the master and this is the mindset of a Samurai developer upon failing the project.

There are many attitudes, specifically the mental ones, that can be analyzed and discussed for comparing the legendary warriors with the modern incarnations but I will go for one I recently came across.

I was talking with a few friends recently about how I feel the special developer (coder, designer, artist) here is the one who when has an eye taken, a hand chained, attendance time limited and generally constrained, will do the best possible work and do it with zero complains and with the highest quality possible. Oh this being something doable by the few special ones, the few Samurais around. It turns out that this is what the word "courage" meant for the Samurais as the Book of the Samurai, "Hagakure" says.

..."Young men should discipline themselves rigorously in intention and courage. This will be accomplished if only courage is fixed in one's heart. If one's sword is broken, he will strike with his hands. If his hands are cut off, he will press the enemy down with his shoulders. If his shoulders are cut away, he will bite through ten or fifteen enemy necks with his teeth. Courage is such a thing."

From the 7th Chapter, Hagakure

Courage is indeed such a thing...

Pure Random

2010-12-29T10:16:00.002+03:30

After another night of deep discussions with a couple of friends, it seems that one of the basic questions that still has remained un-answered for me is the existence of pure/real randomness. Is there such a thing as a random behavior which has no scientific explanations? Not something seeming random due to lack of contextual information but something random for god itself.

This question easily leads to the concept of free will and its existence.

Will I ever find the answer?

Eternal Sunshine

2010-10-24T00:23:00.005+03:30

After a long period of not seeing that many movies and watching crappy mediocre ones every once in a while, I enjoyed this movie really a lot, absolutely fantastic : "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind"... phewww...

Thanks to Yaser for providing it and Kasra for recommending it :).

Post Storm

2010-10-01T09:04:00.003+03:30

It sure feels strange ... a project we were engaged with seriously for the past couple of years is out of the door, leaving a mesmerizing calm atmosphere behind for us ... a rather static state, it is, which brings out confusion at times, confused in breaking the symmetry and selecting among the infinite options ... something which was away for a long time ... in times where there was one thing to do every day and every second, and that was to push the whole project into a converging state of acceptable quality ... something which would ride you everyday... a storm that showed you absolute failure inches away a lot of times...it was quite fun... it was quite hard ... it had a world to learn from ... it added a lot more scars ... scars that are seeds to power ...

GDC 2010 Europe

2010-08-15T18:59:00.002+04:30

Getting ready for GDC 2010 in cologne tomorrow. There are quite a few interesting sessions which I've already marked. Lets see how things go.

Game Engine Design Course

2010-08-01T18:42:00.003+04:30

We will be running a Game Engine Design and Implementation course for those interested in knowing more about the topics and gaining some insight into the inner workings of modern Game Engines.
More information can be found here.

Real Men

2010-06-21T23:01:00.003+04:30

Tough times ... really dense ... no chance for under-achieving ... focus necessary ... hard work ... hope ... fighting desperation ... patience ... hanging tight ... patience ... holding together ... believing ... patience ... trying ... ignoring exhaustion ...

All that fuels me in this final path is the real men around me ... oh these are the real warriors ... how rare ... how mighty ... how blessed I must be ...

believing ... patience ...

Sinner

2010-06-10T16:49:00.001+04:30

Oh dear lord ... forgive me for I have sinned ... forgive me for the unforgivable sin ... a sin with deep roots in ignorance ... a sin of not being conscious over memory usage from the first day ... having blind eyes, deaf ears and irresponsible hands...
Upon my forgiveness ... I shall promise thee to be memory conscious from the first line in the next evolution step of the code base ... acceptance of all these sacrifices is all I hope ... every bit will be measured ... I shall tame the beast ...

3D Challenge

2010-05-15T10:39:00.001+04:30

We are holding a 3D modelling challenge with the help of CGArt.ir society and several notable others for aspiring and experienced game artists. You can read every thing about it over here.

Let all the artists know about this event.

To OOP or not to OOP !!

2010-05-07T00:07:00.002+04:30

Object Oriented Programming has been the buzz word for quite a long time in computer programming. The concept has even leaked to higher level issues such as OO Design and OO Analysis.

Just like any other buzz word in the world of information technology, Object Oriented programming has received much more attention than what it deserves.

But what does it really do? We all know that eventually all code written in a programming language needs to be translated into machine code and once in machine code, it is all the same, no matter writing your code in VB or python, it will end up in a unified language of instructions which the target machine knows well.

Object Oriented Design/Programming, is a way of adding a few conceptual layers between the problem domain in our real world and the instructions which need to be run by the target machine, a way of making a smooth transition between the layers of abstraction, a way to help our mind understand the problem and find a proper solution for it. After all, Object Oriented Programming is something to help us human beings overcome our limitations and be able to make better computer programs. Some argue that Object Oriented Programming brings with it new functionality which was not possible to have before such as Inheritance and Polymorphism, however, simple C structs and function pointers are all that you need in a structure programming language such as C to simulate inheritance and polymorphism.

All of these added values toward writing easier code for the programmers come with costs, sometimes huge costs. In other words intellectual manageability which is probably the most important aspect of Object Oriented Design comes with major costs, the most significant side effect is always performance.

Real-time simulation software have usually performance high on their priority list and so Object Oriented Design in such programs, such as games, needs some second thoughts. Such applications usually see their world as groups of data rather than groups of objects which contain data and behavior, unlike the way we see our world.

An example for the above is the way the main loop for a physics simulation engine works, all it cares about is a few data related to the physical properties and for it, other properties of an object such as its visual properties, sound and game related meta data is of no use.

In these cases, when a part of an application needs to work on specific data, in order to best utilize the system cache and increase the performance, it would be best to provide the relevant data to the sub-system rather than pushing in a whole object containing lots of data, just because handling the code in an object oriented manner is easier for us programmers. Multi-Processing can be managed easier once related data is batched together.

Enter Data Oriented Design. A rather harder way to look at the problem domain and to model which is by far easier and more efficient to process by the machine.

A very good article regarding Data Oriented Design can be found here:
Data-Oriented Design (Or Why You Might Be Shooting Yourself in The Foot With OOP)

And another very inspiring article is from Sony Research:
Pitfalls of Object Oriented Programming

Also a very nice presentation by Mike Acton:
Three Big lies: Typical design failures in game programming

Latest Garshasp Trailer

2010-04-26T13:38:00.001+04:30

Hi resolution version of the trailer can be downloaded from:

http://garshasp.com/downloads

New Garshasp Blog

2010-04-26T11:52:00.000+04:30

The Farsi weblog for Garshasp is up:

http://garshasp.ir/blog/

The Sinking Philosopher

2010-04-17T00:20:00.001+04:30

When the black days fill the skies ... when achievement is an unreachable wish ... when nothing works the way it should in a team ... you hear words of wisdom ... words about how all the processes and beings around the individual went wrong ... how everything outside the responsibilities of the individual went wrong ... how they are all right and everything else outside their circle is all wrong ... everyone is a philosopher all of a sudden ... they all know it all ... nothing they could've done ... it all seems so obvious to fail and the individual is so immune ... karma is karma ... millions of reasons pop up for under-achievement ... the blame arrow is spinning like a merry go round ... never ever facing the individual ...

When the storm is away and time allows emotions to sink ... you can focus and look deep into some realities ... looking closely opens your eyes to two realities glowing like gems, lying underneath everything else like the roots of an ancient tree... FEAR and LAZINESS ... the two primal and universal characteristics of human beings ... the source of any under-achievement ... two attributes that sometimes compete and sometimes cooperate ... either way always helping the individual to sink deeper and during this descent, beautifully casting all kinds of layers around them for the individual and helping the disguise ... even transforming the person into the philosopher who knows about all the sources of failure ... the philosopher who assembles the chains of reasons leading to the failure ... the chain which never touches the self ... unconscious that this is not the chain which can be used to climb back up ... how beautiful!

Eternal Leader (of children and leadership)

2010-04-09T01:02:00.002+04:30

Leadership. What a deep word. A leader is usually the person in charge of leading some others towards a specific goal. We all seem to get the basics and it just seems very clear but there seems to be lots of twists and significant details hidden inside the semantics of this simple word.

What is the relationship between management and leadership? Is a teacher a leader? How about a the captain of a ship as the leader? Is the lead programmer really a leader?

At first glance leadership and management might seem the same and all of the above examples be types of leaders but can this be true?

Doing some historical analysis on this important meaning gives us a sense that the definitions of a leader are isolated in a shell which is quite tough to penetrate and perceive and ignoring the details might lead us to believing that any boss or authority figure is simply a leader. How unfair to the true leaders in time.

I have always been really curious about this word and thinking about it felt valuable since the whole idea of some one who can lead others and take them to a place they wish seems really significant and makes the position highly critical and as beautiful as the positive outcomes are, the negative results are scary and have the potential of leading people to failure is a hell of a responsibility. This has been the source of all my excitements for teaching, believing that a teacher needs to be a leader and the leaders role can have huge outcomes in a wide range. A belief that generate euphoric as well as worrying emotions.

A new experience in my life has been an inspiration for delving into the subject and reaching new insights. The experience of becoming a parent.

Being a parent, you are the automatic leader of the child (at least while he/she is a child) and you will try to do all you can to guide the child in the path towards the many short term and long term goals which you believe make the path. One issue is always related to the goals themselves and what goals are right and which are wrong, I am not going to work on this aspect at the moment and my focus is on the other part which is "leading towards the set goals", assuming all parties involved have accepted that as a goal.

Now lets analyze one of the scenarios in this leadership model: The child, still being an infant, crawls towards the electricity socket with a device attached and tries to experiment a little with the stuff over there, what will the leader do? Put the child back probably since that is rather something dangerous. The child repeats, the parent repeats. The next day, the same, next week, same thing... this heroic act of the parent to save the life of the child might repeat for hundreds of times before the neural system of the child learns that something might be really dangerous with this experiment.

The above scenario is just one of the many daily struggles of a parent as a leader, of course the word patience might try to prove itself here as the necessary trait of a leader but as important as patience is for leadership, there is another major characteristic here which is fundamental and that is the bond. The bond between the leader and leading. Can the parent one day say, "hey, you don't get it.. the hell with it ... go ahead and see what happens!". Probably no. The parent feels that he has to remain the leader and he can not run away from the responsibility in the hopes of letting evolution and nature itself do the leadership and training. It is a case for conflict when the leader knows the correct thing to do and the leading person disagrees for any reason. The leader has two options now, try to make the leading do what is right, this can be done by any kind of creative technique (which needs a lot of energy) or he can just say, OK, you don't get it, I am not your leader anymore, I will seek someone who will do it and replace that person with you.

How about your boss? Lets say you have to turn in the report, you don't. He will try to explain to you some important aspects of the report, if he is really nice. You do not hand it to him. He gets a bit mad and warns you, you still won't do it and you end up looking for a job, he delegates the responsibility of leading you to the society and the society might yet transfer this role to other social systems up in the hierarchy and you might end up with mother nature herself after some time. The bond between the boss as the leader and you as leading can easily be broken by the boss (leader?) by the conventional corporate laws.

This is a missing feature for the parental relationship. So when you feel that just giving up is not an option, when "The hell with it!" is not part of your literature, when you and those following you are stuck together with all the adhesives in the world, that is when the leader in you comes out, that is the absolutely necessary trait for a leader. This leader will now use all the forces in the world and all the magic hidden from the world to make the followers succeed. Delegation of responsibility is just not an option.

It seems like a big trap which exists very close to the leaders is "Giving In" and having this option is exactly falling in the trap. A trap which differentiates the leaders from the managers.

A teacher can work hard to educate the students but one day he might think, "... there is nothing more I can do ... they will fail and then they will know .... ", and this is how the devil himself will take away the leadership crown from this hard working teacher which was hunted down by the arrow of desperation. I have to admit that I was hit by this arrow quite a few times during my teaching experiences.

In the case of the lead programmer, if this person has some human resource authorities or office politics to be able to fire those working under him, then the trap of giving in and just hoping to replace the programmers if they don't perform well is all he needs to be reduced to a programmer manager from the Heavenly role of Lead Programmer.

It is a matter of a mental attitude and mental belief, however odd it might seem to the modern culture of efficiency and work habits, a true leader needs to be built on the foundation of that belief. A leader might not be cost effective for a company in the short run but cost effective managers will never really be leaders either.

The leaders have been cursed to remain the leaders of those they lead for EVER and this curse is what shapes their daily courageous journey of truth and makes them loved by their followers. Only those who have been under this curse will ever see the word "Leader" next to their names when they are reviewed in history ...

A leader is always a leader, if not he never was ....

Beware of the trap!

CGS Sharif

2010-03-07T11:13:00.002+03:30

Sharif University is running an event on Game Development this week. Here is more information:

http://cgs.sharif.ir/home

Garshasp developers will be running technical sessions in this event, Soheil will have a talk about game character and environment design also.

The Lost Art of Game Design

2010-02-25T07:24:00.003+03:30

Computer games used to be simple, where the focus was on the design of the game as an interactive media, where the designers were there with no armor on the arena ready to battle the huge magical monsters of making a game fun.

Many layers have been added these days to games including detailed graphics, cinematic sequences, polished music compositions, surround audio effects, physical simulations, visual effects and etc. which are actually armors and weapons that the designers can wear and these all together can help and bury some lack of game design talents deep under. Not to mention marketing hype which is quite influential in itself and can mesmerize a player into thinking that they like something.

Game used to bring the thrilling moments to the players every second but it is quite hard to achieve that in most modern games.

Some recent examples, Darksiders, while great at character design and ok at graphics and wonderful visual effects and sound and very polished game play mechanics, the game design throws you out of the immersed world a lot of times and you feel the silly repetitive tasks they have put in there just to increase the length of the game which becomes offensive sometimes. When a game becomes complex in story and features and visuals, then the game designer needs to be much more committed to issues such as the cohesion of all these elements around the element of fun, which is not quite like balancing the game of pac man but more like understanding user emotions, psychology, gaming history, technical issues and lots more. This should be the modern day game design, a highly evolved task, something much much more than level designing.

Assassin's creed, great technically and wonderful visuals but the wide array of possibilities for the player needs exponential design thoughts as how to bring the non stop fun for the player which clearly this game has not been able to provide.

Prince of Persia 4 is another big failure example for game design in my opinion. If the designers had improved half of what the other departments have achieved, then we would have experienced a breath taking product.

Batman, Arkham Asylum, great in many aspects such as a cinematic experience and animation and physics but a very simple game where you do not sense the challenge you usually expect from games and nothing bold in the area of game design, the feelings experienced are much closer to what you have while watching movies than what you used to feel playing Space Invaders.

There was a time when game designers did not have a position in game development and it was all programmers making games, they showed up and helped make better interactive media, they are gone once again today, although not gone int he credits, but really gone and they need to come back and help the industry, they need to come back many many times stronger than what they were with multi-disciplinary knowledge, talent and courage. They need to take our all the superficial armors and weapons of technology, story and cinematics and show that they can be a warrior without all that and bring the gaming to a newer level.

The event

2010-02-24T11:39:00.006+03:30

The event at Amir Kabir University went quite well.

Here is some more information:

http://cgart.ir/events/gamedeveloping/index.htm

Gang at Polytechnic

2010-02-08T01:36:00.003+03:30

The dev dudes will be at Amir Kabir University (Polytechnic) on 3rd of Esfand. The session will be geared towards the development process of Garshasp inclined towards the technical aspects.

More info can be found here:

http://cgart.ir/events/gamedeveloping/index.htm

24m

2010-02-06T22:49:00.001+03:30

Aldous Huxley:

"Who lives longer: the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or the man who lives on roast beef, water, and potatoes till ninety-five? One passes his twenty-four months in eternity. All the years of the beef-eater are lived only in time."

The roots

2010-01-23T00:03:00.006+03:30

I find myself at the office with only two guys quite often these days. One is Syros and the other Peyman. The same two which helped us start our ambitious project more than 3 years ago. We've come a long way from that time and experienced many many things and a lot of change has occurred, however their determination, attitude, passion and professionalism is exactly today like it was three years ago, they have never let down anything related to this work even once. This project would have never been close to its current status without them. It sure feels wonderful to be working next to these guys...

Within

2010-01-18T01:39:00.001+03:30

.... and a friend says : "... we've got many enemies out there ..." and all I can think of is this great statement:
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." W. Durant

Real coder's arena

2010-01-15T14:24:00.005+03:30

One thing we, a few guys on our tech team, wish we could experience is console development. Being able to make software for one specific hardware platform is quite exciting. The root of this excitement comes from many different factors. All the hardware specification is fixed and known beforehand, unlike PC development where every machine is different, knowing the hardware is fixed, you can try and create the best code possible to run on that machine, you can always compare this with what others are doing and any enhancement in software means something because everybody is running on the same ground. The memory is fixed, and very limited too, and a new dimension of memory consciousness while coding needs to be added to the development process and the art of the coder should come up with elegant memory solutions to support the whole product.
You would need to know the hardware very well in order to utilize it best and the border line between software and hardware really tends to become non existent. The depth of the abstraction layers while doing software engineering is much more in this case, all the way de-abstracting to the hardware itself.
The machine stays the same for a few years, the games enhance, the only way this could happen is by writing better and more efficient code and better using the hardware, unlike the usual trend in PC application development which is to write less efficient bloated code every year and rely on the enhancements in hardware performance.
Modern consoles are all multi-processor machines and they are a great platform for parallel software development which is quite complex and exciting. The best system in this area is the Cell processor on the PS3 with the 8 processing cores.
All of the above is quite a lot of work and needs tremendous amount of work but the whole idea of console development seems to be a fair and well defined game and challenge. Playing in a game where the rules are changed randomly isn't quite fun.
Hope to engage in the real coder's arena one day soon.

Down on the up side

2009-12-24T00:38:00.000+03:30

Garshasp project, the current version, is close to an end, however, I feel very much like its just the beginning and I have a lot of excitement for a lot of basic issues in our work. It all seems to be the beginning one more time, I feel the symmetry in the air. Its our polish time and I read a very nice statement about polish today, "Polish is when you turn something functional into an Art form!".
Our biggest hurdle ahead is losing our super star and Ninja coder (Military Services) but just remembering how he worked for any of our team members in itself can be quite productive for each one of them. We hope the experience of some Military discipline can even further excel this Ninja.
Focus, like always, is the most important thing we need right now.

Magazine Cover

2009-12-16T02:42:00.004+03:30

Garshasp was featured in BaziRayaneh this month. BaziRayaneh is the most significant magazine about computer games in Iran and it has been the first time that an Iranian game will be featured on the cover of this magazine which makes us feel quite proud.

The Garshasp dev team has worked superb recently and such recognitions are well deserved for each one of them. The magazine DVD includes interviews with the guys which are quite fun.

We just got back from Game Connection Lyon and the event was fantastic, we managed to meet many great people in the industry and there was many things for us to learn in the process.

Oh by the way the magazine contains the same illustration as its poster.

Typhoon Ends

2009-12-08T03:00:00.003+03:30

Finally time has stopped a bit and there is a chance to write. The past few weeks have been really intense. Trying to finish the remaining tasks for Garshasp and prepare for the Game Connection event which is going to start tomorrow morning. After wild days and nights of non stop efforts, we are finally here in Lyon and ready to start off the first day of the three days for Game Connection tomorrow morning. We will start with a few meetings with some real big publishers and go all the way until 6pm with meetings every 30 minutes. It is a unique experience and something we are looking forward to very much.

The guys in the team have really done a great job one more time for Garshasp and our hope is to be able to demonstrate this good work to as many publishing companies as possible and find the path for this team to get stronger and do better everyday.

The compact days before our trip was followed by a long stay in the airport at Rome, 9 hours before our connection flight to Lyon and we did experience something quite new for a long time, just waiting and doing nothing.

Lyon is a nice city, 25 years has passed since the last time I was in France and I am seeing the Country from a different perspective this time, either me or the Country has changed a lot, or maybe both :).

Success

2009-11-25T01:22:00.003+03:30

I recently read "Outliers" which was a really interesting book. The author has a very nice point of view towards specific issues related to successful people and generally such out of the box thinking, although not necessarily always to the point, can be quite fun.

The book contains an issue regarding the over-rated respect for IQ numbrs in people and the lack of correlation between success and IQ. I had thought about this many times before and thinking about it too much makes you infer an inverse relationship between the two, anyway.

Another part I really liked was about how math requires intense focus and persistence and patience and there was a hypothesis about the relationships of rice paddies and workers and math, quite insightful.

The 10,000 hours rule is another nice part and it describes how 10,000 hours is needed in order for someone to master a skill and how successful people have all had a chance to pass this 10,000 hours.

I better check out the other books by this author, "Tipping point" is one which should be good to read.

The Torch is Burning

2009-11-09T08:01:00.004+03:30

Torchlight is a wonderful game. Very well polished and fun. Made by the guys who have their roots in the creation of the Diablo series. I really like such RPG styles and I remember the good times with Titan Quest and Dungeon Siege.

It is nice for us to know that Torchlight uses OGRE as its rendering engine.

The new Slayer album is out. It is great, not super great but just great as usual, I wished they had a bit more magical melodies in there. Rammstein, very strong, very nice and artistic ... the track "pussy" should be dedicated to all music video clip directors.

The invisible fire of projects

2009-11-08T09:37:00.002+03:30

Interesting times. It is always nice to know when you can interact and cause certain things to happen, you feel alive and meaningful but only if you have a role in this action that you are going to take. Is it possible to take actions which you do not have a role? Certainly yes and what we are doing most of the time, just reflecting, doing x because of y. Doing x again if we were to take back time and sense y again and again. However, there are times which you have a choice and we talk about selection. The very essence of creativity comes from the deep power of choice. Running into the multiple paths of selection and following one is the core that builds our freedom and this is where we find our meaning, the rest of the times we are just sleep walking with the ghosts.

Such a stage has been reached at this time for Fanafzar Games. Garshasp is coming to an end and a new beginning is on the horizon. We need to select on the next project and plan ahead for our next commitment which will be at least for a 2 year period. Multiple paths lie ahead and I have a feeling that each will have big differences as far as their outcomes. Selecting the platform to develop for, whether sticking to PC or trying ways to enter the Console development is one, planning ahead for the technology and tools we have created so far is two, selecting the game genre and title is three, evaluating different middle-ware technology is four, doing research on some areas to include in the next version of the engine is five, redesigning the development process and methodology is six and finding new talent to work with is choice group number seven.

The above choice groups have options and combining them properly to lay down the path towards our goals is in itself an art form. The big puzzle which needs to be solved with many dead ends and a few paths to higher grounds.

The overall feeling is interesting and the challenge for each choice group is very exciting but there is one which is still quite a mystery for me and that is the last item. We have some ideas about the first six, at least we know ways to try out our ideas and assess and evaluate and decide but regarding the people working on the team or joining the team, there are quite a lot of mysteries. Interestingly enough the issue is not with the technical skills and abilities of these people, it is with their mindsets and attitude. The last thing on earth that anyone trying to assemble a team to work on high tech would ever think of, the last thing I ever thought of when I was trying to form a team to do something which none of them had done before in their areas of expertise and never done by our team or even any team close to us. Something with a lot of technical uncertainties and a process never experienced. People thought it was impossible because we couldn't find the specialists needed, we didn't have technology necessary, we couldn't secure the necessary budget, we lacked the experience and that their would be external pressures to prevent us from finishing a product. No one ever speculated that our biggest problem is going to be from within, inside the simplest behaviors of us human beings, being able to manage the self, being honest, having control, being there and believing. Such issues have been covered very well in books such as "Herding Cats" but in the case of our project, really the best thing that happened was the people and the worst thing that happened was the people again. When people showed to be people by following the internal wave of self management, honesty and believing, they tackled the technical issues and all mission impossibles and did miracles and whenever they lost control of the self and polluted their minds with simple nonesense, all their magic was taken to the point which they could not even deliver the simplest values to the project and became a big burden for the rest of the team to carry on their back with their bleeding bodies. This is the miracle of us human beings, something which has been talked about a little in some books, something never talked about in the Universities, something we had to experience the hard way in our project, something for us to think about every day during the next project and something which makes all the technical risks and unknowns suddenly seem really easy to tackle.

Risk analysis helps project management but the basic elements for risk analysis are the probabilistic variables which model the system and in the case of the above mentioned parameters, no proper mathematical variable or probabilistic distribution can define them and so what we need to rely on in this case is not risk analysis techniques but pure magic.

DWGE 2

2009-10-31T22:37:00.002+03:30

We're back from the second Dubai World Game Expo. The exposition was not very crowded, the same as last year, however we managed to find a few new contacts which should be quite valuable.

The Fanafzar booth was right across from the Crytek booth and we got to know a few of their developers who were quite fun and nice guys.

We came up with a presentation to express the current state of game development in Iran with the help of Puya who is the leader of the Quest of Persia game series. Here is a link to the presentation:

The Rise of Game Development in Iran

Post DMF

2009-10-11T21:15:00.006+03:30

This year's DMF, Tehran went well. The fair is a real marathon, 10 days from 9am to 9pm but being able to have close contact with the potential players is always nice.

We have lots of feedback forms to study, and lots of application forms for jobs, hope to find a few gems among these.

Garshasp at DMF

2009-09-27T08:03:00.003+03:30

Garshasp and the team will be present at the 3rd Digital Media Festival in Tehran this year.
The development team will present a few workshops during the festival, here is the schedule.

Saturday (11 Mehr, 16:00) - Garshasp Development Process, the development team
Sunday (12 Mehr, 10:00) - Debugging Techniques for Games, Faham Negini
Sunday (12 Mehr, 11:00) - Post Processing on the GPU and Real-time GPU programs, Yaser Zhian
Sunday (12 Mehr, 15:00) - The new features of C++0x, Yaser Zhian
Sunday (12 Mehr, 16:00) - AI using HFSM, Amir H. Fassihi
Sunday (12 Mehr, 17:00) - The process of making a game level, Syros Pourlatifi, Hossein Hosseinian, Faham Negini
Sunday (12 Mehr, 19:00) - The process of creating a Game Characters, Syros Pourlatifi, Mohammad Modaress
Sunday (12 Mehr, 20:00) - Game Character Texturing Techniques, Syros Pourlatifi
Monday (13 Mehr, 10:00) - Serialization in C++ with Boost, Yaser Zhian
Monday (13 Mehr, 11:00) - Physics Engines and Nvidia PhysX, Amir H. Fassihi
Tuesday (14 Mehr, 10:00) - Life as a Technical Artist, Aidin Zolghadr
Tuesday (14 Mehr, 11:00) - Techniques for variety in Game Play Design, Hossein Hosseinian, Hadi Eskandari
Tuesday (14 Mehr, 15:00) - ZBrush Workshop
Tuesday (14 Mehr, 16:00) - The Design of a Board Game Workshop

An initial registration (free) for the workshops can be done here: http:://www.ircg.ir

A world of Magnets and Miracles

2009-09-23T00:33:00.004+03:30

Now that is the anniversary, all that can be said is:

"The grass was greener
The light was brighter

With friends surrounded
The night of wonder

The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder"

Alas we did reach the " ..dizzy heights of that dreamed of world" and are "Dragged by the force of some inner tide".

But I shall keep my "High Hopes", my weary eyes still stray to the horizon .. Forever and Ever ...

The good bad thing ...

2009-09-15T01:35:00.004+04:30

A strange thing happened this week, something good and bad. With bad which can be good and bad again. Garshasp's work in progress video trailer was placed up on GameTrailers website. Well this is really good because the website is a really important place in world gaming and it has been where we always got our information regarding the new games and just seeing the name of our game in the list over there brings us some joy.

It was bad because the trailer which has been placed on the website is not what we wished to have there. It is very raw and un-professional, a work in progress video which we were able to put together the night we flew to GamesCom in order to have something up on the LCD's at the exhibition.

Game trailers which are going to be showcased as debut trailers usually need a lot more polish.

Now why did this happen? We don't know exactly either since the last thing we asked the guys from GT when we saw them was about the things we needed to do in order to have a trailer over there and they had told us to email it to them. None of our emails regarding the details for the video were replied until we saw that somehow they have downloaded that work in progress trailer and uploaded it over there.

We are still following the issue and trying to replace the video.

On the other side, there has been a lot of exposure for the videos, along with a lot of negative comments from the users. The good thing is that we agree with most of the negative comments and they are things that we have already fixed or have in our minds to polish. Its also very interesting to get some feedback regarding our work from the highest level, the level of comparison with the AAA titles out there, comparison with titles that spend at least 10 million dollars for their development. This experience is valuable for us since the people around us do not ever judge us on that basis and its always a bottom up approach. We clearly did not expect any comparison at this point in time but it just came to us.

The bad thing about this event is that the raw video from Garshasp is probably bad for the Game reputation in the long run, which we should try really hard to make better with the next trailers we make and the polishing we have planned.

A hard slap in the face is good if you can live more "alive", we have to learn from this opportunity to be evaluated directly with the big guys in the ring. Focus and patience can redirect all the negative comments towards our favor. Lets do it team ... we've got lots to do and need to come back better ...

The Fragile Art of Existence

2009-09-04T10:32:00.003+04:30

The title was a project Chuck Schuldiner once worked on, but also a description for the current state of what we do. It really depends how fragile is defined but in our case, not being able to reach a few of the not very far goals we have can be considered as the result of shattering and hence fragility to be described around that idea.
We are almost at the end of the Garshasp project and there are quite a few options ahead of us as a team and quite a few options ahead for each and everyone on the team. There is only a very little combination of the above options that can lead us to the good goals we are seeking and this is the reason the situation is so fragile.
We have to decide about the level of quality we want to put in the first title, finding the tradeoff point betweeen quality, time and efforts. We have to think about international releases, in which if we are serious, we would neeed to increase the efforts still more.
We have to find new talent, technical or art related. We would need to test and train these new talents.Finding new talent with good experience is quite hard and so the training part is really serious, which again has got its own risks.
We have to think about the next project or next projects, we have to find a way to secure funding for the next project. The genre and type for the next project is very critical, since we need to be able to focus on a specific genre and our team needs to really become experts in a specific type of games and so the next project commitment we enter is really important.
Our team members need to find the path to enhance their skills, they have to find the balance between time for their personal improvements and time for the project.
We need to redesign our technical engine and enhance it and there are areas which we really need to inject into our code base, such as a threading kernel, advanced animation blending and improved shaders. Knowing how to approach the above and how to balance the time is another major decision.
We have to decide about some partnership offers we've had which again can affect our future a lot.
Up to now, our progress was rather linear and we weren't faced with that many decision points, however, we are in a position right now that we need to select an action almost daily for the next couple of months which only a few can take us where we want to go, the situation is fragile. It is fun to exist in a fragile state, maybe because we feel the existence even more...

Enemy

2009-08-31T00:38:00.002+04:30

The Garshasp team puts up good efforts, however there is one big enemy the team can have, a huge monster crawling all over us and haunting the team, waiting for moments to attack, the only enemy that can bring us down and shut down our progress, this enemy is "Ourselves", we can be the monster ...

Garshasp

2009-08-23T05:50:00.002+04:30

Garshasp was displayed at GamesCom 2009. The exhibition was highly valuable for our project.
Work in progress trailer:

The new website is online:
http://www.garshasp.com

Big thanks goes to all of our team members who tried restlessly days and nights to prepare everything for the fair.

One

2009-08-22T14:54:00.001+04:30

There is only one thing on my mind now...

GamesCom 2009

2009-08-19T20:56:00.004+04:30

Ok so I found a chance to write a few words, the past few weeks has been quite strange... the whole Garshasp development team did all they could to prepare something for the GamesCom conference in Cologne, Germany which is where I am currently. All the guys on the team showed one more time that they have the magive in their sleeves, the power in their determination and the skills to make it happen.

Every second was dedicated to the project, we were able to accomplish a lot just before getting on the plane to Germany, we did miss a lot too, but thats what usually happens.

We just went through the fist day of GamesCom, wasn't bad, our booth shows the brutal attitude of this mythological super hero of ours, Garshasp. It has been successful in turning some heads in the business hall.

The last two days were dedicated to the sessions of GDC europe which was quite interesting also. I had the chance to check out the Morpheme Connect tool from Natural Motion in a presentation by their CTO which was quite interesting.

Our goal in the coming days is to evaluate what we have done so far in an international level and learn about the next steps that we need to take. The exhibition will run till the 23rd.

Ok, gotta go now.

Frozen state of life in Fire

2009-08-10T02:44:00.003+04:30

Most of my activities are frozen these days, activities such as reading books, articles, watching movies , etc. Somehow any little time that can be allocated to an activity tends to be dedicated to the Garshasp project.

The project is gong forward well, although lots and lots to do but the team is being exceptional. Each and every one of the guys rolling the Garshasp project forward have proven to be real heroes, working days and nights. The heat of this fire is significant. This is all that is important at this stage, for the team to perform well, get stronger, experience more, become stronger individually and as a team, this is whats valuable for us if we want to do good in the future, much much more important than the result of this project itself is the great guys forming a great team.

So far they've shown the magic and all the vocabulary we need in the coming days is:
try .. focus ... try ... believe ... rebound from failure... learn ... try ... focus ... learn ... help ... believe ... focus ... have fun...

Death of Software Engineering!?

2009-08-10T02:24:00.003+04:30

Ever wondered why so many software development projects fail? Ever wondered why there is so much ambiguity in the field, Tom Demarco who is a major veteran in the field and has authored great books such as Peopleware has some new insights regarding the field of Software Engineering:

http://www2.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/2009/0709/rW_SO_Viewpoints.pdf

Maybe it has died after all, maybe it never was alive...

Third lesson

2009-08-10T01:47:00.006+04:30

What I learn from my 13 months old son.

"The real values are hidden behind the superficial layers we have created on top of objects and the importance of new experiences".

To him, the wrinkled packaging and plastic covers of a toy is as amusing as the toy itself, he finds ultimate joy in watching objects we usually don't care about, such as the cable of an electric device. He shows great effort to seek that which looks new, wasn't there before and is rather unknown. Why don't I pay attention to the aesthetic features of a plastic bag? Because the society has put me in this beautiful mold of definitions and value hierarchies which are not necessarily in line with the human nature.

Change is valuable, its what we feel, its how we perceive being alive. Seeking new experiences is how we are hard wired to take actions. Being able to be new makes us feel the freedom, feel the difference which makes us significant. Stability will be ignored by us really quick, we will not see it, we will not feel it, no change is death even if in Heaven.

Singularity

2009-08-02T01:53:00.001+04:30

5 minutes of love does to our project what months of dull systematic work can never do....

Revive the Blade

2009-07-28T02:28:00.003+04:30

Quest of Persia, Nader's Blade has been released by Puya Arts and it has done very well in the first week of sales. This is the third game released from the reputable game company and is a big leap for Iranian Gaming. Congrats to the guys over at Puya Arts for the consistency and improvements they make in the industry.

Part of Nader's history has been recreated in this exciting 3rd person action adventure game.

You can purchase it from:

http://www.pardisgame.net/

Quote

2009-07-27T17:41:00.002+04:30

My good pal Ghaj sent me a quote from Anatole France today which is quite what we've been struggling with in the past three years:

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe..."

Sacrifice is Pleasure

2009-07-27T01:03:00.004+04:30

When time is fixed, quality can't be lost and resources can not be added to a project because they either do not exist, or there is not enough time for them to get to speed with the project pace, the only valid option in order to meet the deadline would be to sacrifice features.

This is what is happening currently for us in this month, the holy month of SACRIFICE. Killing things can help maintain the quality of the rest of the survivors, the last option in our final crunch.

It is hard, it is really hard, but its got to be done if anything is to be created.

Our only hope is for the Mythic Gods to accept our little gifts.

Sacrifice is Pleasure.

Sporadic Traps

2009-07-26T10:23:00.006+04:30

A new kind of leech for creativity and the generation of value in our society has manifested itself in the form of browser based games.

I am in the business of making games and definitely believe that computer games and any game in general is essential for the balance of the human mind but the new wave of web browser based, sporadic games, are something which is not quite right.

These games, being played by many people on the web using HTML processing browsers have a nature where you would need to take an action, wait, then take another action, maybe wait more and then so on, unlike other game forms where you get engaged in the game, play, focus and after a while stop playing the game, in the browser based games, you would usually want to do something else while playing the game since it would be highly boring to just stare at the monitor while you are waiting for other players around the world to do something while they are doing something else. The nature of the game needs you to take some action during the 24 hours since no presence of you, sporadic presence, might end up costly for you in game. So constant presence is needed but in fact a disconnected presence and this means you would need to have an eye over the screen while you are watching a movie, talking on the phone, working out or most importantly while you are working.

Although our brains are highly parallel machines, on a semantic psychological level, we aren't as parallel as we think and making an action on the screen, getting back to the movie, conversation or what you do at work will for sure have negative effects on the second activity you are following other than the game.

Games should be played in order to take the person's mind somewhere else, provide exciting challenges for individuals in a whole different setting and world and let the person get back to the normal life fully. A great slogan once said: "Work hard, play even harder" but in the case of modern sporadic nonsense, it would be "Work and play at the same time, kill both of them".

Focus is among the most valuable traits of the human race and it is the glue that can bind together intelligence, creativity, determination and passion together and make the magic happen, having any of the other useful characteristics without focus is almost totally useless. Now what has happened in the recent years, specially the current decade is for all the modern technology to creep into new forms that work against the human focus, starting from the busy nature of the city infrastructures to the little devices such as mobile phones, pagers and email alerts, text messages, people popping up on gazillion different messenger services and the general availability and overload of information around us. We just don't need new rookies in this arena.

oh ... you play because your job is boring? ... "spending that time finding a better job would be much more beneficial for you"
... you play because you don't have a job? ... "this is better since its only self destructive ..."
... you play because you can handle it and the job perfect at the same time? ... "I do not buy this at all"

All on board

2009-07-23T01:37:00.004+04:30

Ship is all set once again, crew on board, ready to sail the storm. We've got one month of pure effort ahead of us for realizing the mythological world of Garshasp and his epic journey to redeem his ancestor's critical weapon and avenge Oroxia's death.

These days are packed with events, interactions with team members, production efforts, hope, wishes, determination and love. A few members have been added to help out in the finishing tasks. The crew which are actually all real Ninjas are showing tremendous efforts and focus on the tasks, we are all aiming for the same goal and know about the tough journey ahead in the coming month.

sde is taken back to the mythic world and is visualizing all he sees over there, he occasionally returns back and to our world and interacts with us... spl is re-creating the magical land with his hands, forming space, reversing time ... pms exhales the divine breath and brings the creatures to life ... fhm sacrifices his blood to enable the creation of the world ... yzt is working for the goddess of light to help bring out the magical miracles the light can display to the eyes ... mmd is shaping the symbols of power and grace for the rulers of the kingdom ... hhh is re-living the experiences of the mythic heroes ... hes is fighting the eternal combat with the evil forces ... idn is mesmerized with the soul taking phenomena in the world ... trz is providing the pieces to remake the empire ... fnk is breeding the monsters ... ark hears what they say ... mva is feeling the emotions ...

The experience has been real fun so far, we've learnt a lot, probably the toughest times for all of us, what we need is the highest focus from everyone in the next 30 days. The rise of our hero will only happen upon the rise of the hero inside each and everyone of these guys.

Dark wild storm ... here we come ... the sun shall rise.

Mordad

2009-07-08T09:19:00.003+04:30

The divinity of immortality is whats going to be around in the coming days, that is the time we have to finish up our "Garshasp" tasks. Huge effort is necessary by the team and all the activities and energy so far needs to be integrated and polished in this month.

A month we need to live and breathe again, be conscious on the fractions of seconds passing, show synergy in the rhythm of days.

Only the super heroic efforts of our dev guys can make our super hero become immortal in Amertat.

We had fun for some time ....

2009-07-06T00:59:00.000+04:30

I had always been a Japanese Anime and Manga fan but the recent days life style of mine has diminished the opportunities to catch up with the whole atmosphere. Very recently, a food friend at work brought me the DVDs containing a Japanese Anime series called: "Death Note". I thought that the DVD will be queued like the many movies I've stored, in the hopes of viewing one day, one day which is totally not any of these days. Realizing that these series contained 37 episodes made me sure they'll gather lots of dust before being watched.

Anyway, quite unexpectedly, I decided to watch a portion of the first episode in order to evaluate its art style and see how the Anime scene has progressed, that was it .... I froze like water in absolute zero degree in fron to of the TV ... watched every second ... and by that I literally mean every second... listened to every word spoken on the series... thought about every action ... and whole heartedly enjoyed the whole 37 episodes in quite a few days. Absolute euphoric experience that I had probably never enjoyed before from any entertainment of this form.

This thing is just great, period. Wonderful story with lots of mind twists, good philosophical foundations, excellent directing, art, voice over (had lots of japanese nostalgia run to me by the way) and awesome music, specially the dead metal theme intro from episode 20 on.

The pace started strong and never cooled down afterwards, something usually not experienced in other movies and series.

I gotta find the other story worked on by the author now.

The last statement of the series : " ... we had fun for some time".

the Project

2009-06-25T07:17:00.004+04:30

My soul has been possessed by the Garshasp development process these days. The project is converging and there are millions of little bits and pieces that need to be fit together. Good final assembly is essential for quality.

Guys on the team are doing a good job rolling the specific areas of their responsibilities, although when you live and breathe a project and a few processes in your mind are always occupied by the events surrounding it, you'll always see the inefficiencies with one eye, but this is something we are trying to learn from everyday and are hoping to let it leverage our team abilities for future projects. Seeing every individual effort is my ecstasy and the opposite takes me down.

Life is the toughest and most fun these days. The mind experiences the extremes of new frontiers. The biggest task as usual is being able to find the balance point between the "good enough" for release and the passion for good quality.

There's been needs for expanding the team and making sure we add crew who can maintain the spirit is another big challenge.

One more push of courage, commitment, passion, determination and love from the development team and we should be doing fine.

Couldn't get any lower

2009-06-22T01:36:00.003+04:30

The lowest act of the human race which stems from a frightened, loser, brain twisted, weak state of mind is to shoot at another human being with a gun knowing the other side has no guns and is no threat to your life. Couldn't get any lower. The fact that such brain dead losers are formed in the society is quite thought provoking on its own.

The mysterious human being wannabes, your whole body cells will wish you never pulled the trigger quite soon.

May the soul of the innocent victims of the recent clashes rest in peace.

Shader Sundays

2009-06-11T14:58:00.000+04:30

Efficient use of the GPU is getting more important everyday. The domain of applicability is increasing. We've setup new sessions at Fanafzar,Shader Sundays, where yzt talks about the concepts of GPU programming and the CG coding language. We are looking forward to utilize as much of these processor's potential powers as possible.

Your are welcome to join these sessions.

Finding everything in nothing

2009-05-31T04:50:00.000+04:30

No more voices around .... no more lights.... sounds of nothing .... music is move alive than ever ... you become to know the unknown ... you get a chance to live the unlived .... see things from a different angle ... feel the moment ... freedom approaching ... like a new found smooth sense of sobriety ... giving life a chance of what it needs .... far from the ever reflective reactions ....

.... part of what happens between 2 and 4 am.

The Professional

2009-05-09T02:09:00.000+04:30

This post is not about the movie with that title, it’s about a rare breed of human beings. The word is often used for people who do some work, know how to do something well or often times do something for a living. The word is quite often used as a synonym for “Specialist”. The specialist is a person who masters a technique or craft. A specialist selects a domain, like any domain of knowledge, engineering, arts etc. and excels in it.

A specialist is good at something; can’t we just recall this person as a professional in that domain? This is the point and what a significant point this is, the answer is “No”. For someone to be a professional, the person has to be involved with other human beings. Professionals usually work on their domain as it relates to others, and this is exactly the key point here, relating to others. A professional artist as an example works on art which will eventually be used by others for a reason. A specialist in art, an artist, works on art without considering how it can be beneficial to others. A scientist who is only a specialist works any scientific matter as it pleases him without caring about how it can be used by others and whether it ever will.

The professional specialist would be a much more complex human being. The professional, needing to interact with others, not just the self, would require follow the guidelines of ethics. Ethics being the rules for human to human interactions in this case. In order for the system that the professional works in to succeed, the professional would need to play by the rules of the game. Systems, aka Companies, require a few basic rules for the games they run. These rules include truthfulness, commitment, collaboration and respecting promises/contracts. The professional knows these by heart.
Some people are neither specialists nor professional, well fine, they can just enjoy their time and hopefully try not to get engaged in serious interactions with others.

Some are not specialist but professionals, this is quite ok since the system they work in can very well find out what they are suited for, if they are suited for anything and much time will not be wasted.

Some are specialists but not professionals, now this is where the danger is. People tend to bind professionalism to a specialist by default which is really risky. The specialist can show some sparks, gain attention, make the system rely on her/him and then let the system down just when it is time to deliver something because of lack of professionalism and the absence of the basic traits I named above, the simple rules of the game. These people do excellent things but you see that only as long is every process for creating it is bounded to the individual alone without considering time, as soon as the creation process expands to more than the single self or you try to measure the time, problems start to arise.

The book “Smart and gets things done” by Joel Spolsky is another view for the same issue, it’s one thing to be smart and another to actually do useful things. An interesting negative loop can be observed here and that is a lot of times the more specialist an individual is, the more they feel they do not need to follow the simple rules and act like a professional, a false feeling of feeling special which has a tendency to contaminate their talent and reduce the opportunities that ironically would help them excel in the domain of their specialty.

Some are specialists and professionals, no need to mention that magic occurs around these people, leading to the success of themselves and those around them.

I wish there was at least ways for us to get educated and trained in professionalism, it is even more important than the knowledge and skills in the specific domain of specialty.

Answers.com on Specialist:

"One who is devoted to a particular occupation or branch of study or research"
on Professional:

"One who earns a living in a given or implied occupation"

Haskellers

2009-05-06T00:53:00.003+04:30

Our first Haskell programming session was held this week along with three Fanafzar Ninjas, yzt, fhm and barj. Our goal is to get to know the language and see the world from a different angle. We might not use it eventually for the daily coding tasks but thinking from a Functional Programming aspect should be valuable and help the thinking process in general.

Real World Haskell is a free online book which we follow. Quite a good book.

Go foward in Reverse

2009-05-04T02:10:00.001+04:30

Freedom, oh the sole sensible target for our soul.

This most complicated parameter in human lives. Love, the reality we are hardwired to sense. New experiences, the revolving platform we desire to roll on to feel alive, the gain freedom, to find love. Finding the love that we run away from once found in search of the freedom out there we seek with excitement to experience the rush of love again somewhere in between the lines of becoming and blurred by the reality of being. The everlasting effort to find happiness, guiding us to blame on the dynamics around us, mainly the society, leading us into solitude, only to make us believe that “Happiness is only real when shared!”, shared with others, which will lead to a society again.

Spiral out, keep going, Spiral out. Is there a sign of evil here or is this all that is real? Our quest for beauty, the beauty which is all here, a beauty which was always here. Searching reality, reality which we try our best to hide every second. Entrapped by time, enslaved by the repetitions of actions, actions which follow the pathway of betrayal towards our subconscious, leaving our conscious, moment feeling, life feeling, love sensing, free mind in solitude. Is there an escape strategy from this loop or should we enjoy the moments of this merry-go-round?

"And in my darkest moment, fetal and weeping.
The moon tells me a secret. My confidant.
As full and bright as I am, this light is not my own
A million light reflections pass over me
It's source is bright and endless.
She resuscitates the hopeless
Without her we are lifeless satellites dreaming dreams.
And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt
Don't want to be down here feeding my narcissism
I must crucify the ego before it's far too late
I pray the light lifts me out before I pine away.
before I pine away.
before I pine away.
before I pine away."

Thank you Sean Penn, thanks for making such great movies. “Into the Wild”. Wonderful movie based on a true story, great accompanying sound track by Eddie Vedder. And special thanks to Ash for pointing us to the movie.

I gotta see this again.

The Real Ones

2009-05-03T13:49:00.004+04:30

A real coder once said:

"Of course, none of this would have mattered unless the code could be compiled very quickly, so full-blown traditional compilers were out of the question. Instead, we wrote a streamlined compiler custom designed for the task, which we call the "welder.""

In fact this is how it can be, if the environment isn't what you really need, just BUILD the environment for yourself.

This code was Michael Abrash, talking about the software renderer they made called Pixomatic which performs DX7 level hardware functionality on software.

In fact it's been the work of people like him and Carmack who have worked on Quake that shaped the 3D games world for ever. Magic happens when real people join forces.

Swine Dance

2009-05-02T00:22:00.003+04:30

This time it is called the "Swine Flu". The whole pattern seems to repeat itself, an outbreak, seemingly of a newly heard disease, everyone talks about it, the news show governments and meetings and plans and quarantines, people are afraid, for a few weeks your favorite news channel resembles a lot of Hollywood movies about outbreaks and after a while, everything is under control and you will never hear about it anymore, hmm... was it Mad Cow Disease? Sars Disease? Enter Swine Flu.

The whole thing seems a bit strange. I feel that there are a lot of things unsaid about these stories and the level of reality behind these shows remains a mystery. Whatever is behind all this, I assume that there exists high incentives for many controlling entities.

I wonder how the whole thing might be related to "Economy of Fear", one great article about this subject is here, a little paragraph from it:

"By keeping the population in a state of artificially heightened apprehension, the government-cum-media prepares the ground for planting specific measures of taxation, regulation, surveillance, reporting, and other invasions of the people's wealth, privacy, and freedoms. Left alone for a while, relieved of this ceaseless bombardment of warnings, people would soon come to understand that hardly any of the announced threats has any substance and that they can manage their own affairs quite well without the security-related regimentation and tax-extortion the government seeks to justify."

Or this article, with this excerpt:

"The economy of fear was always used to keep people down, to remind us that there are forces out there bigger than us. But, it seems, the doomsayers try to be bigger than us, try to tell us to change our way of living, our thinking, our whole existence."

In any case, take out the mask, you won't ever get that flu!

Inspirational

2009-04-28T03:22:00.005+04:30

I watched this video on TED from John Wooden, the famous basketball coach, today, highly inspirational. The talk is just great. The main topic revolves around the definitions of success and he describes how he believes in success being defined inside every individuals scope and related to how hard someone tries compared to their potential and the difference between winning and success. He describes how the journeys are more important than the destinations.

John Wooden is currently 98 years old, wow.

Fantasy to Come

2009-04-28T02:04:00.003+04:30

Fantasy Football is a new project which we've started. It will be a Fantasy Football game for the Iranian Football League. Design has just started and the expected due date is in 3 months before the new season starts.

Get ready if you're a Football fan since loads of fun is about to come.

Main development is being carried out by our highly skilled technical guru, Babak Arj. Code base using .net 3.5, DB is SQL Server 2008 and LINQ for DB interactions.

Seminar Done

2009-04-28T01:27:00.005+04:30

The Business Intelligence Seminar went well. Our good friend, Iman Eftekhari opened up the seminar with an introduction to BI, Dr.Abdollah Zadeh from Amir Kabir University expanded the definitions for BI and the program was followed by other professionals talking about problems that can arise in BI implementation projects and an introduction to MS Sharepoint as a front end portal for managing BI Solutions. Iman finished with some demos on Microsoft products for Business Intelligence.

There were a few things we wished could have been handled better but considering the fact that this was our first Seminar experience, it was ok.

We are looking forward to expand the consulting and implementation fields here at Fanafzar to include BI in the near future.

Dev blog

2009-04-27T01:04:00.001+04:30

We've setup a dev blog for Garshasp. Its development can be followed here:

dev.garshasp.ir/blog

The Future

2009-04-25T09:01:00.005+04:30

We went over an interesting presentation from GDC09 regarding parallel coding strategies for game AI which covered a few basic strategies for making the main component interactions parallel to embrace the multi core and many core architectures. These include double buffering, messaging, asynchronous requests and Job scheduling. This is one major area which we'll need to focus on for the very near future of our development. The Zorvan engine is not threaded properly right now(except for resource loading and the potential to run in a different thread for the physics simulation loop) but one of the most important design goals for MAGE is a mutli threaded kernel.

An interesting software engineering concept which I came across to during the presentation that has good use for multi threaded Job scheduling systems is "Futures" and "Promises". These definitions have been thought about for a while now but they are finding practical uses these days with the heightened significance for parallel code. Languages which have supported this feature include Joule and E.

yzt pointed me out to the Boost implementation for the idea.

As always, the engineers rolling the boost library (probably aliens from outer space), are providing c++ implementations for any statement in the form of:" .... but c++ does not support this feature ! ", with Boost it can!

Frame Runners

2009-04-21T01:48:00.000+04:30

I've had a chance to interview a couple guys recently for the open position we have for a 3D Animator. We've been looking for someone to help us mainly in the cut-scene animations. During all the interview sessions, I was shocked with the same question from the animators, they asked me:"What level of quality are you looking for in the animations?" ... hmm... good question... what level am I looking for?? Well... lets put it this way ... I WANT your whole SOUL and BODY transformed into moving characters ... I WANT to see your BLOOD drained totally to create ANIMATIONS that BLOW any living thing into outer SPACE... I WANT YOU to do something so high in quality you will never ever be able to re-create in your whole LIFE... I want all the MAGIC and META Physics in the world to help you CREATE un-believably COOL animations ... I want those DAMN animations to LIVE eternally after you fade ... that's how I want them to be, yes that's the kind of quality we are looking for my dear.

Of course I didn't quite answer them this way, there aren't much talented skills around unfortunately so the words have to be chosen rather carefully, but thinking about the questions, I have come up with some guesses. The animation business around is quite ill unfortunately and the basic mechanism works this way, National TV needs some programs, the Government Agencies in charge with lots of money define projects for smaller companies, since good quality is usually the last focus in these layers and there has to be a measure for project pricing and contracts, the deals are made based on the minutes of produced animations so the smaller studios sign contracts to make x minutes of animations for the price of y per minute. Then its production time, as fast as possible, animators are hired and are paid based on the minutes, or frames, they can produce. The race begins, managers walk all day with their sticks and measure the frames animated at the end of the day by each animator and the grin on their face is proportionate to the size of the output files. The above question completely makes sense in this scenario and the usual answer is probably something to keep the prestige a little but deep down the money chasing manager knows he wants the highest production speed with the lowest quality which will be acceptable by the usually mis-positioned major clients which again will accept the final product based on what they see on their stop watches. Everybody seems to be happy, junk in, junk out, no value generated, ill formed industry, just watch TV to find out.

Now this is not the concept here at Fanafzar dear Frame Runners, we've been on a journey for more than two years now on a boat carried on the waves of love and dedication of every one of the guys, it will remain this way or we'll just let it sink ourselves so please save your questions for the time wasting, useless, cheating jobs with the Frame Runner Seeking managers.

Plane

2009-04-15T09:14:00.002+04:30

Bungie Studio has a nice presentation about production for Halo 3 names, "Building Your Airplane While Flying: production and Bungie".

The title very much suits our current situation in the development process for Garshasp also. We are working on features daily which are necessary for the production phase which we are at right away. Of course this is not an ideal situation for a smooth production stage but hey, I guess when there is loads of uncertainty, building the plane while on the air would be the best you can do, if you want to fly anyway.

Business Intelligence

2009-04-11T17:14:00.003+04:30

BISolutions which is a Fanafzar partner is holding a Seminar on Business Intelligence. More information can be found here:

http://bisolutions.ir/%D8%B3%D9%85%DB%8C%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7/tabid/59/Default.aspx

Rolling on

2009-04-10T03:37:00.004+04:30

These are exciting days for our Garshasp project. On one end after more than two years, we feel a bit more comfortable with the whole development process and the work pipelines which should exist between different members of the disciplines such as art, design and coding. On the other end the level of art assets developed have risen and on the technical end, interesting features are being added to the game engine, Zorvan and the level editor, Iranvij.

All that would be necessary for this team right now is to be able to continue this progress for a few more months. This progress which includes learning new stuff daily for everyone and whole hearted dedication to hard work and focus with the aim of reaching high quality standards which exist on the triple peaks of passion, talent and professional attitude.

On fire for fire

2009-04-10T03:29:00.003+04:30

Firing a football team coach has only one good use, "food for the media", that's it. Its really strange, or maybe not strange at all, that it happens so often lately. A coach for the national team, having so little time to prepare the team, not having most of the players who play abroad most of the time which mostly happen to be ignorant regarding coaches decisions whenever they are present anyway, can't do any magic and changing these coaches with high frequency won't fix anything, well again, except for satisfying the tiny little systems known as the sports media.

Critical Path

2009-03-31T09:57:00.002+04:30

Plans have been laid out for the rest of the task for developing Garshasp. There are a few departments which need linear time for their tasks and it would be hard to cut down the time, animation being one. The animation tasks seem to have become the critical path for our project currently and cutting down the ambitious animations we have dreamed for Garshasp or his enemies would be harder than getting bit by a Cobra for us, we can only hope for the arrival of a talented passionate animator showing up at office one day on a beautiful Spring morning, or a recently found clone of our existing animator would be good too.

The teacher again

2009-03-26T11:18:00.003+04:30

Lessons I learn from my 9 months old kid.

How to put up 100 percent effort.
How to focus.
How Happiness is always "Right Here", "Right Now".

1388

2009-03-26T11:07:00.001+04:30

My motto for starting out 1388, "Back to Basics". In work in life and in what I know.

The "Show" Factor

2009-03-19T02:20:00.007+03:30

I've been thinking about the word "Show" for a while now. The reason being I feel shows are being run a lot these days. In classical dictionaries, the word is usually used as the verb for demonstrating something or as a program such as a TV show. In reality there seems to be new usages for this word, for example when we say:" .. that guys is running a show" or "its just a show, it is not real". Although both statements are based on the same semantic foundations, lets start from the second one. It is "not real" it is a "show". So is a show something which is not real? What is really real? By "not real" it seems that we really mean something which is planned before and is supposed to happen the way it does, something which does not have elements of uncertainty and is absolutely certain. If at least two parties interact, there are three possibilities regarding being pre-planned or pre-scripted. Sometimes both parties have a plan, they both do based on a script, they both run a show, like a movie where the director and the actor are running the show. In some cases one side has a plan the other side doesn't and can be caught be elements of surprise. An example for this could be a game show where the host is acting based on a script and the contestants are experiencing randomness. One side runs the show, the other side is played by the show. In the third case, both sides act without a pre arranged plan when we can say that no one is running a show, like a sports game for example.
So one parameter here which can define whether something is a show is determinism. The more something is a show, the more deterministic it is going to be.
We do watch shows which are of the first kind, like movies, although we know that everybody there in the movie is running a show, we still like to watch it (most of the times), the reason here could be because we feel connected with the chain of events there, we find similar patterns and hence our pattern matching pleasures get satisfied or we admire the aesthetical features of the shots we see on the screen or we just like to watch a specific actress or actor and other reasons... however not all TV programs can be like that and there are the ones which one side or both sides are not running a show, such as game shows, talk shows, reality shows or sports events. In the case of reality shows and talk shows, we usually see normal people, nothing really exciting about that, but we watch them get engaged in stuff we usually do not see in our daily lives and their reactions, being real, becomes very interesting for us and bolts us down to the sofa in front of the TV. The reality factor has a very special excitement in it. So us as the watchers want the program event (contest, talk, competition ...) to be as real as possible in order for us to watch. What about the producers of the program? Assuming we believe it is real, would they rather have determinism in it or randomness? I bet they do not welcome any risks in their program and they would love to be able to control every part of it and make it the way they want, the way they feel the audience want, and this would mean if they can somehow make it into a full show where the other side runs based on a script, then determinism kicks in and they can be sure their investments can pay off big time. So the tendency of such programs is to go towards the full show attractor. And this is what we see. I have yet been able to find one TV reality show which in fact has something real in it. But the magic is to fool the audience and hide this fact that both sides are running a deterministc script, otherwise nobody would want to watch losers act on these programs. Scary part can be when some events which both sides shouldn't run a show, such as sports games lean towards this show factor and fall in its trap. Boxing matches!? Football games? One genre has been rather accepted to fall into this category, Pro Wrestling. Who would want to wait and see what randomness brings us when you can go ahead and make what people want happen? Lets show them what they want, the reality might not really be that interesing. Lets amuse them the way we know. Real life is not amusing 24x7. Lets run the show.
Now this shouldn't happen only on TV. Governments can run a show for their poeple, they can run shows for other Governments which they too take part in the show, parents can run a show for their children, friends can run a show for other friends, its just everywhere, its there to kill the randomness, to force us into the box, we're so afraid of uncertainty and can't stand it even a bit. The society runs a show and we know we are part of it, the rules define this show, all should go according to plans, where is the freedom in a show? Whats the use of freedom when you need to control? The show must go on!

Garshasp

2009-03-16T13:04:00.004+03:30

Our game has a new name "Garshasp". The good news for us is that we now officially have an investor deal for the project. Our release date has to be this Summer which makes us feel and live every second in the new year till mid Summer.

Our plans for the new year (Persian) will be to finish up the remaining art and technical requirements, tweak, polish and optimize the Garshasp game and plan on enhancements for its game engine (Zorvan).

The development team has been fabulous so far, hang on tight guys, we've got to finish this up.

Some information about Garshasp here.
The image above is another wonderful illustration of Garshasp by our art director/concept designer Soheil.

Top 10s

2009-03-10T09:45:00.002+03:30

I ran into these top 10 rankings recently and found them interesting:

Ten papers every programmer should read (at least twice)

Ten papers every software architect should read.

Ten concepts every software engineer should know.

Honor Machine

2009-03-07T00:39:00.003+03:30

This is the first post from a new machine which is going to help me a bit from now on, Wakizashi (脇差). Part of the FW290 family from VAIO. The extra wide screen seems good for handling text and other toolbars on the side of applications, although the full HD resolution which to my surprise can only be reduced one level to 1024 seemed a bit strange, but increasing the OS size will provide smooth curves everywhere which kind of feels nice. The Vista and specially the 64 bit OS is a new experience for me, not that bad so far. Overall I expected a bit more performance from the T9400 CPU and the ATI 3650 graphics card but anyway it is going to save me some valuable minutes or maybe hours everyday. Anyway this little shiny thing at these critical times will either help me find some glory through success or some honor through failure. Refer to the original Wakizashi usage for more information.

Not this time

2009-02-28T19:33:00.006+03:30

Today was the due date for our delivery milestone of the game we are working on and we failed, we failed really huge. We had a lot of plans and at the end could not even deliver ten percent of what we had hoped for. Although a lot of work was done by the whole team, specially the day and night efforts during the last few days, but we just could not put everything together the way they were supposed to be. Another big lesson to learn about our shortcomings for the development process. Although we traversed new paths for this milestone and tried to experience a few things we hadn't before. We'll have to focus more and more. My only plan now is to dissect the experience and find out the avoidable problems. I already feel more strength.

KB

2009-02-17T01:05:00.006+03:30

Kobe is really close to perfection in Basketball. His every move has a lot of "The Master MJ" resemblances in it. It's amusing to watch him on court during the full active 48 minutes, with or without the ball.

Guys like Lebron are really strong and skillful but it seems like its only Kobe who's going the full path towards the perfection peaks, somewhere that MJ is very close to.

It's all about the mindset once the physical attributes are there and the neuro-muscular responses are doing the right job. His love for the game compares with the master now, love for the game, which is quite different from love for personal abilities or trophies.

The Patient

2009-02-13T02:15:00.000+03:30

A groan of tedium escapes me,
Startling the fearful.
Is this a test? It has to be,
Otherwise I can't go on.
Draining patience, drain vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire act's a little old.

But I'm still right here
Giving blood, keeping faith
And I'm still right here.

Wait it out,
Gonna wait it out,
Be patient (wait it out).

If there were no reward to (reap / heal),
(No / A) loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
Gonna wait it out.

If there were no desire to heal
A damaged and broken man along
This tedious path I've chosen here
I certainly would've walked away by now.

And I still may ... [sigh] ... I still may.

Be patient.
I must keep reminding myself of this.

And if there were no rewards to (reap / heal),
(No / A) loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
And I still may.

Gonna wait it out.

Normalized Life

2009-02-13T00:59:00.000+03:30

If we take out the repeating moments of our lives out, then how much life will really remain? Whatever that number is, I guess that should really count as the lifetime of an individual. Although this has to be looked at from a global view and sometimes there are some repeating activities necessary in order to take us to new states in the long run. It seems that for some reason we are willing to find new experiences and flee from rigidity. Repetition in any amusing task will soon make it less amusing. Do we feel the changes only? Does everything have a tendency to get boring when it becomes persistent? Are all people chasing what they do not possess? Will we work on the same solved cross words puzzle twice? Are we hardwired to sense the difference? At least our physiological elements can be proved to react less to repeated stimuli. We want to be able to do something that we can imagine and this is related to our will towards freedom and our tendencies towards power. Power in this sense will be defined as the number of the things we can do divided by the number of things we would like to do. So we understand something, then we want to experience it, we might not be able to right away, then we try, we will be able to do it, hence we have the power which leads us to feel more free and freedom somehow is related to our happiness, or at least part of our happiness. So if we think that we are doing something which we like, and brings us happiness, but that activity is really sending us towards a peak of a local maximum for freedom, then over a longer period, we will feel less free and sad. An example would be anyone baring a hard situation in the hopes of a better situation, also known as "Discipline". To let us past a few local maximum hills and towards higher grounds. Parasites will make us follow the short term path, towards more freedom and good feelings, which will soon prove to have led us to a wrong position which makes it much harder for us to continue to the higher peaks of freedom. These parasites have always been known to biologists on the biological level, there are lots of them in our minds on the psychological level but they also exist on the social level which make societies think they are progressing towards more power and freedom, but leaving them in a hole once a specific amount of time passes by. Cultural parasites work on new meanings, promising more understanding but again proving wrong in the long run. Examples for these four levels of parasites are left as an exercise :), but our will towards change seems to be the root and time seems to be the evil in the whole scope. Time which we try to conquer all our lives but in reality find ourselves enslaved by it.

Compile Time

2009-02-09T19:32:00.001+03:30

If only my compile times were less... a main wish of mine!

It will return

2009-02-08T09:09:00.001+03:30

Bad software design is like a Boomerang. It will get back at you and hit you in the head. It will hit you, unless you throw it and run away and never come back. In case of a major code base which has development that spans in time, better watch for the bad design decisions and short term hacks.

Vitruvian Game Design

2009-02-04T20:14:00.001+03:30

Vitruvius, thinking about building Architecture, came up with his popular triangle. These are 'Firmitas, Utilitas and Venustas' (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio 'The Ten Books of Architecture' 1st C AD).
Which means: Form, Function and Fabric. Applied to all aspects of architecture and design.

Game design is no exception.

Form in game design would be related to the visual representation of the game world and characters. The game graphics in other words. What we see in a screen shot. Audio can be added to this category also since that is about the audio forms.

Function would be related to the actual game play. The game mechanics that make the game play.

Fabric is the quality of building the form and function, in other words the code which is the foundation for the rest and the quality of this code base.

So every game design can be viewed from these three very important aspects and a good design should have high quality in the three words starting with the letter 'F', the Vitruvian Triad.

One interesting reality which we've found out is the challenge to come up with a design that provides high quality for these three aspects since there isn't a linear sequential relationship between these three and they are all inter-connected. Sometimes increasing the quality of the Form will decrease the Function quality or a specific Function might not have the required quality for its Fabric and so on. It is a tough job deciding where to start from. Design can start from any three, and balancing the quality of the three, in the absence of any existing scientific solutions, is where the whole design process leans more towards being an Art form.

Set Sails

2009-02-04T20:00:00.000+03:30

The team is moving forward towards another major milestone. Finishing up level 1 and getting ready for the first official review and showcase.
Lots to do as usual. Less than 4 weeks time remains.

State of Mind

2009-02-02T01:14:00.001+03:30

Trying to guide a game development team which is having the first game development experience, wants to make a high quality action adventure game, compares every feature to be developed with the top selling games in the industry, is under staffed, has a very short time and on top of these, doesn't have funding or publisher deals is a little complex.What helps a lot in this situation is the art and attitude of the great masters from the ancient east.

Fudōshin (不動心): The immovable mind. Necessary to remain in focus among all the problems rising and all the hidden risks jumping out. Whether technical, process or human related. Needed to maintain goals and dreams. Required to keep moving and resist getting shattered in the chaotic winds of obstacles.

Zanshin (残心): The state of awareness. The mind ready for anything. Any new technical strange bug, any hardware crash, any member of the team leaving, any project crusher from the uncertainty ocean surfacing.

Mushin (無心): A mind not fixed or occupied by thougth or emotion. An occupied mind by emotion would break up a lot things in this journey and rational thought would stop this path a million times. No anger, no fear, no ego, just pure intuition.

Shoshin (初心): This one necessary to overcome the technical obstacles. A beginner's mind. Always ready to learn the infinite amount of knowledge needed to be known. Never rely on any achieved stages since a lot needs to be done.

Synaptic Magic

2009-01-22T07:44:00.000+03:30

There are question flying around in life for me, a lot of them are formed into hierarchies, making them related. An answer to one on top of the hierarchy will solve the ones down below. Among the questions at the very top of one of the hierarchies is the main question related to free will. Is everything in this world following a deterministic plan or is there the notion of real randomness existent? Is the brain functioning by pure physical cause and effect relationships or does something special happen in it when we desire. Is there free will or do we just flow in a deterministic ocean? If the neurons in the brain fire upon receiving electric signals and work as physical machines, then every action or thought caused by the communications in our nervous system and brain has a reason which can be traced back in time. If this is not the case, then inside every neuron, in fact inside every synapse, magic should occur, something should happen which has no scientific justification and no science can ever find out about it. Otherwise it will become predictable and there is a reason for it which makes it deterministic and the idea that we can make a choice on our own becomes meaningless since there is this endless chain of reasons trailing back. Whats really going on inside? Randomness, are you real? Is there a first cause?

The way I think and see life, I believe in big magic going on in there.

Second Chance?

2009-01-22T07:24:00.000+03:30

The Samurai never used shields. No shield means no chance for errors. Zero tolerance. Even if they don't make mistakes on the battle grounds by getting killed, on the emergence of other mistakes to lose honor, they do seppuku. Talking about the spirit in modern days, even the Yakuza cut their fingers upon making mistakes. The mass belief is that this reduces security and makes life vulnerable. Is this really so? How about thinking about all the enhanced consciousness and feeling of the "living moments" these beliefs bring with them? Or even the laziness and weak attitudes that knowing you have shields and second chances bring. I've seen a correlation between the amount of time people use the word "sorry" and their weaknesses. The strong do not use this word much, is that because they don't make mistakes for being strong or did they get strong because they hated the word "sorry"?