"Go to Hell"

This is one of the final mission objectives in Doom3 Resurrection of Evil expansion.
I have been there once already in the first version and now I went there again - and kicked Maledict's butt :)
Yep , completed the game finally - as can be expected , the verdict is : Totally Awesome !
They manage to keep the taut feeling throughout the game - sometimes I almost quit it 'cos I could not take it anymore ... naw ;-)
But it is pretty amazing piece of work and considering the legacy it had to live upto - it manages it brilliantly !

Ok , now some nags about the game - which I think are totally justified !

1) Too short - I want more !
It took me just under a week to finish this one - while I also had deliverables at work and other projects I am working on.

2) Bad lighting in level design ?
I know that they use lighting very effectively to in this game ... but in some places I got the feeling that it was plain not done well.

3) Too GPU intensive.
I had to kick out _all_ effects to play it reasonably well ... and mine is a card which is in the supported list !
Ok , ok , it is almost 2 years old - and I will change it soon ... but then it would be cool if they did not mention my card in list of supoprted h/w !

4) Disproportionate difficulties.
I had easier time killing the level bosses than clearing some of the intermediate stages where they totally fill it up with monsters.
Took me under 10 mins to kill most of the level bosses (except Hunter Invul - the son of a bitch : too bloody tough to kill him x-( ) and took me awesome amount of careful planning/artifact use/save-load cycles to clear some of the areas in between !

Whatever be the niggling problems , this is one heck of a software !
Hats off (again) to John Carmack and team - our gods :)

The trip that was

I had a total blast in Bangalore !

Work was great , it was wonderful meeting my team finally !
My manager was down there last week - and he is this uber cool geek who just happens to be a manager (till about last year end, he was a senior staff engineer - he coded most of the server !)
We were discussing the specs of the next release - and some of those meetings were awesome fun : learned in bucket loads !
I think I should seriously reconsider my decision to continue in Bombay , not only did I not have any problems with food (hmm , maybe Mohanettan was more responsible for this than my stomach's resilience) , but the amount of work that I could get done was huge ... So maybe this is the time to consider shifting back. (In case anyone comes across a nice small house near Sun office in Bangalore , please let me know :D)

On personal front , met up with most of my friends ... except for very few (for various reasons , including mismatch of when either of us were free , some goofy animal messing up/not arranging a potential meeting ;-) , etc ) - will try to meet them on my next visit if possible (which might be when I relocate back , or around July 31st - Aparup's wedding).

Caught up with Anoop and Pandi after like ages ! Both are doing great !!
By the way , Anoop is rumoured to have a blog (he told me the url too ... but I forgot) , someone let me know if you find it.
Considering the opinions and "vision" he expressed for his blog to me, it is going to be something worth reading :-)

Books - what is a visit without buying books !
Bought heaploads of them. Ok , ok , wont exagerrate , got some nice ones - some of which I wanted to buy for a while.
* Raided Blossom's (in Church st) and bought all the "Doctor Who" books there that I have not read.
* Got a couple of nice old chess books also from there - Blossoms is a veritable gold mine people, maybe someday soon it will rival Premier !
* Bought all three volumes of "The Art of Computer Programming" ... if only finishing them was as easy as paying for it *sigh* - focus man , focus ! (I have this fantasy that I will finish all three in about a year , atleast basic concepts expressed in them .....).
* Got "Design Patterns" by GoF ... finally I own it , my preciouusss ! I have read it in parts from various places , but I will revisit the book as a whole ... maybe it will give me better/newer insights !
* I found Tanenbaum's "Distributed Operating Systems" ... I have read it a while ago (really long time ago !) , it will make better sense to me now , more so since I was looking at ExOS and similar ideas a few weeks back and my semi-serious forays into OS design in general sometime back - this will be a right time to revisit the concepts.

I am a sucker for games , and when I saw Doom 3 expansion pack , just could not resist ... initial 10 mins of play was promising (too tired today to play much) , will update as it proceeds :) Any opinions about the exp pack?

Went for Alok's wedding reception , It was really great being there !
My best wishes to both Alok and Jenny - will definitely cash in on the Scrabble invitation that Jenny gave to me next time I am in blr :-)


In short , 2 weeks of extreme action I say !
I did not get time to post anything here , neither did I get time to visit most of the blogs and sites I normally visit ... busy couple of days coming up for that !

Not elaborating on more stuff like NY's visit to blr , Rai's "camera tricks" , etc .... too sleepy to put all those into coherent sentences :)

PS : This post became a pseudo personal post , not something I wanted it to become ... but kinda grew into one so leaving it as that.

Visiting Bangalore

Will be in Bangalore this friday night ... tickets - check , accomadation - check (staying with Manoj) , office - check (conf room booked) .

Will be there for 2 + weeks ... so will try to meet some of you !
Considering how hectic the visit is going to be , the coming friday to sunday might be my only "free" time there ...

Now , where did my umbrella go ...

While we are at it , if you are interested , read up on whySingleton is an antipattern (google it) , I just had this question by mail today :-)