Old games new engines

Recently, for some reason, I have gotten really interested in many of the old FPSs that I once used to play. I started playing Doom Legacy ... just to kill zounds of monsters over and over again. It is a good mod for Doom 2 and makes many improvements. I wanted to try Doomsday mod too, but could not get it to work.

If you remember, the first FPS in the Star Wars saga was Dark Forces. It came out in the time between Doom 2 and Quake, and had graphics of the Doom era, that is, sprite based. The game was Dos based, so the only way you could play it was using the Dosbox on the latest windows like Vista or XP. But I recetly found out about the DarkXL mod that enhances the graphics of the original game, provides mouse look, makes it look much much better and also provides the functionality to play it in windows.

As I was searching for this mod, I came across the Dark Forces modification. It is actually a modification of the game Jedi Academy and gives you the first 6 levels of the Dark forces game, recreated using the Quake 3 engine. The work done here is quite outstanding and playing this mod is a treat. It is too bad that these guys are not making the complete game for some reason.

Right now I am downloading the Berserker mod for Quake 2 which makes it look as good as Quake 3 and in someplaces even better as it gives per pixel based realtime shadows. I will also install the high resolution textures that I found at a place and then I will check the mods of the games, Blood and Quake, if I get the time. If someone is also having an FPS nostalgia, I will be more than happy to help out.

Algorithms deja vu

I recently decided that I should re-learn the different algorithms that I once knew. There is a great resource here, that I think everyone should try to brush up their skills. The lectures are from an MIT course so they ought to be good. I wanted to start today, but I cleaned the entire apartment and now I am sleepy. Maybe when I'll get up, I'll give it a try. Oh and I also had an interview at game lion recently. Lets see if I get selected or not.

Star Trek

The new Star Trek movie is going to be out this May. It contains the charachters of the original series, which is the best series in my opinion and has me all excited. Do check out the trailer below:

Shadow of Empire

If you have not noticed so far, i have created another blog, Shadow of Empire. I have been hard at work on my mobile game for the past 4 months or so. It is finally taking some shape and the results have been quite good. I think that the demo for it will be ready quite soon, so I thought that I should keep a website to post the latest updates and to remind myself of any new link that I find and which might help in completing the game.

You can go to its site to have a look.

I got engaged!

Although the engagement took place on December 28, 2008, it is only now that I got a chance to write about it. It was held in Karachi at my Fiancee's home. I went there with my father and my uncle and aunt. It was a small ceremony where me and my fiancee sat on a sofa in the middle and I put the ring on her finger. Many people criticised that I put it too quickly ... but all I'll say is that:

1. How long does it take to put on a ring?

2. I must have been told to do the honours in slow motion.

3. I was in a hurry to get engaged finally!

Ever since the pictures have come, everyone says that we two look alike. And not that I see them, I also feel that we do look alike! The picture below is me and Humaira with my Uncle to the left and my father to the right.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

My entire trip to Pakistan went as planned, with everything done on time (more on that later) and it went peachy... Except for the time when I headed back to Finland. And boy! Was it a trip full of unfortunate events!

I took my flight from Karachi on 1st of January and that is where all the misfortunes started. At first, the flight from Karachi got delayed, which made me miss my connection at Abu Dhabi. Once stuck in such a situation, you cannot leave the airport, which meant that I had to wait for 11 hours to get the next flight to Frankfurt from Abu Dhabi. 11 hours at an airport when you cannot sleep on a bench, is nothing less than torture... if you are tired. I was awake the whole time the day before so you have no idea how tough it was. I played Brood, watched TV shows and movies, chatted, went around roaming in the airport etc and yes, ate! when i finally boarded the aircraft that flight got delayed as well, which made me miss my next connection from Frankfurt. 

Finally reaching Frankfurt, I had to do 3 more hours of waiting, I boarded the flight to Helsinki which arrived here at 130 am. I took a taxi and reached home, only to find out that I did not have the correct keys for my apartment! It was 230 am in the morning, -10 C temperature and I had no idea what to do! I did not even have the number in my cell, to call a taxi, but luckily, I had Zakariya's number. I called him up and got the taxi number from him.

The next taxi then took me to the nearest Hotel, where luckily, I found a room.. even though it was expensive ... 88 euros expensive :/. Later in the morning, I went to the apartment again, called the security company and got my apartment opened; which again cost me 60 Euros! 

You would think that my miseries were over then, but when I went to sleep, I got up after 3 hours due to food poisoning :/. I remained bedridden for two days and it was only then that I recovered. That was one of my worst traveling experiences! The only good thing that came out of it all was that, it made me realise that God has blessed me with enough to take care of myself when needed! God has been good to me and I thank Him for it!

Pakistan Blues

it is 14th december and i am sitting in my brother's apartment in Quetta. The room is too darn cold even though I have kept the heater running for the past 1 hour or so. He has some guests over, thus I thought that I should get down to writing a blog. The poor blog has been neglected for quite some time. There was nothing much to write anyway as there was nothing special that I had done, apart from that Heidelgerg trip to Germany, where I met up with Kutts. I should have blogged about that, but I could not find the energy to do that then.

My trip to Pakistan started on 11th of December, when I got up at 340 am and got ready to catch the bus 514, which picked me up from my doorstep (almost) and took me straight to the airport. The first flight was from helsinki to Frankfurt. The second one was from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi and finally the last one was from Abu Dhabi to Karachi. By the time I arrived at Karachi, it was 5 am in the morning and I calculated that I had been travelling for more than 24 hours. I spent 2 days in Karachi and then headed off to Quetta. From here, I will head to Islamabad, where I will meet up with my father and the other brother and also, my nephew Ahmed. 

Speaking of Quetta, the things are really tense. The militants are doing targetted killings. Whenever they see someone who looks to be from the military, they shoot them. They stop a bus, take out people who are from the army and shoot them on road-side. My brother was taking risk just by picking me up from the airport. He will take the same risk when he'll be dropping me off. I do hope that everything goes well then.

I can hear the guests going so it means that we will finally have dinner...yummy! This place is really really cold ... that is the thing to hate about Pakistani homes... no central heating and since these are all brick houses.. they get cold very quickly. Brrr.. I just got a shiver run across my spine. I guess this much blogging should do for now... talk to you guys later!

Fly off! O penguin of the North Pole!

I know that penguins do not fly, but it is I, who is flying off soon to Germany this weekend. It is a trip that was planned last year, but only materialised this year. The whole point of this trip is to meet up with Kutts (Kindly refer to the Kutts Facts to the right) and pigout together in a KFC for old time's sake. It will be a meeting after 3 long years, during which, a lot has changed.

For once, I was a Bachelors then, now I am Masters, he was married then, now he is a dad. If Sameer is reading this then he might remember that the last time all three of us were together was in Islamabad when they treated me at the Cinnamon restaurant. 

The flight is from Tampere as I am going through Ryan Air and will arrive at Hahn Airport in Frankfurt. Then hopefully we will have fun. I will take pictures and maybe put them up here. Otherwise you can check them on facebook.

Then, on 10th of December, I will be heading to Pakistan after a year. It will surely be a quick trip as I need to be at a lot of places and do not have much time. Some important things to do there, which you will get to know soon.

In other news, my job is going well and I am enjoying working here. Gyming is also going well so am currently doing good. Nothing more to say for now, maybe one day when I have something interesting to tell, i'll let you guys know.

Nokia 3110 Evolve

I recently bought Nokia 3110 Evolve as my previous phone, SonyEricsson T230 finally gave up after 5 years of abuse. Since I got that phone for 5000 Rs, it cost me 1000 bucks a year to use it. That is quite an achievement for a low end phone. The reality is that, the phone is still working fine, but its keys cannot be pressed anymore, which is quite problematic if you want to send an SMS.

So I went for some phone searching and got this one from a sale for 99 euros. It also came with a free bluetooth device which I have not used yet. This phone is made up of recycled material, which makes it exceptionally light and the keys are really big and easy to press, which makes it superb for smsing. Its is a series 40 phone but performs much better than some of the earlier series 60 2nd and 3rd edition phones. The best thing is that, its menu isn't cluttered with useless applications, so it is really easy to use.

On top of that it is also an mp3 phone and supports an FM radio with 1.3 megapixel camera. Plays video, browses the net and runs Java games. I test all the java apps that i make on this phone and trust me, they are really easy to install. just put the JAR file anywhere and it runs it. After a full charge, it easily runs for 4 days under normal use, otherwise it has a 370 hours of standby time! And finally, it can be connected to a USB wire and then to your PC for easy data transfer.

I am not too fond of expensive mobiles. I want a good phone that does everything without much fuss and has good voice quality. This phone fits perfectly for all these tasks and I strongly recommend it if someone has similar requirements to that of mine. Otherwise... happy phone hunting!

The new apartment

I just moved into the new apartment with Zac. Things have been going really well and I finally feel that I am at a more permanent place for a change. It is one thing to share an apartment with a total stranger and another to share it with a good friend. We have our long discussions about anime, series and movies and other things in life ... mostly about me missing out on all the 'fun' that I could have.

Yesterday we finished the Gears of War campaign on my xbox and it was a lot of fun. Today we started playing bionic commando, which is turning out to be really tough. I must say that GRIN has done an excellent job in making the remake of this game. It looks good and the controls are quite good and intuitive. We have found some levels to be quite hard though which really pissed us off today.

Anyway, we went out, had a fun time, came back, watched House MD and heroes and now Zac has gone to sleep while I type this blog. One thing that Zac got me into doing is to start relearning all the stuff that I once did during my bachelors. You know, once you are so far ahead in your professional life, you start to think that it will just take a lot of time to learn all that stuff again and that your life has a well defined path. But he got me into thinking that if I keep thinking that way, I will always have that deficiency, and all I have to do is to read a good book to fill that gap. so note to self, "MUST READ A GOOD BOOK!"

on the entertainment side, I vow to read the foundation series by isaac asimov