strange symphonies

A day at the MIND

Yesterday ( Saturday January 14th 2006 ) was spent at the MIND. For those of you who don’t know the MIND, they are “Malaysia’s Independent Developers“, besides that I don’t really know much else about it, except from what I’ve heard, alot of them are Microsoft sellouts. Funny enough the event was held at Microsoft HQ in the KL Towers. Its very nice place I have to admit.
The day began like any other day. Eggman had invited me to the MIND meetup to see how they handle things, and to participate. So I met up with Eggman at Bangsar LRT, and headed down to KLCC, and into Microsoft HQ.
We were already late to begin with, as the keynote and registration was at 2:00pm, but we did manage to arrive at KLCC by 2:30pm. Oh well, so by the time we got pass security, went through the lifts, and then into Microsft HQ we had already missed the first presentation on the “ClickOnce” Deployment, shucks. When signing the visitor sheet at the security counter, I noticed alot of people were from APIIT. Quite interesting. The hall was filled with people, at least 100+. Honestly this was quite an amazing site for me as MyOSS max was like 35+. There was so many people that some had to stand, and other wait outside. Filled to the brink. Besides these 100+ people, a good number of them were female. I think this visit solved the mystery of where the female developers are.
Before the second presentation began, some chairs were pulled inside, so wohoo! I got a front row seat of the action. Fun fun. The second presentation was about an approach on how to design games. The methodology the person was talking about was “Soft System Approach”. Actually I don’t remember much of what the guy said, as none of it seemed so “revolutionary” or “interesting” to me. Basically it was “Defining your problems, solutions, etc”, which somehow should be pretty obvious to anyone. Or maybe I was just bored to death, and alot of it went by me.
The third presentation for the day was from Sherman3D, a game development company in Malaysia. Overall it was just a demonstration on their game, and not much else.Though I did learn a new term, “Quaterion” or maybe it was something else, though I also did forget what it meant. shucks. The game that was being demonstrated was nothing too revolutionary, or eye catching, and is in fact anime inspired ( nothing wrong about that ). Nothing really wanted me to play the game, but then again it is a technical demo, and still in the works. Hopefully when they work out the kinks, and get everything working, it’ll be heaps better. The program was programmed using DirectX, but I was happy that the presentor mentioned OpenGL, and was making a ( yes singlular ) comparison between them, at least he knew alternatives existed. Interestingly enough we noticed they were using Python for their MMORPG. Eggman questioned them “Why Python”, but they didn’t give a good reply, and also said they were planning to use a different language. But for asking the question, Eggman received a voucher for 50% discount on a “ASP Programming Workship”. Yes you may burst into laughter now.
By now we were allowed a break, and guess what! Microsoft had ordered 40 boxes of pizzas for us, woohoo! There was also free drinks: Coke, Pepsi, Lipton, etc. Wow man, free drinks, free food, and a nice view of KL while your at it. Though the place we were allowed to eat was a bit cramped ( diffinetly not meant for 100 people ). We enquired how we can perhaps present.
After finishing up the food, we continued on to the “Open Forum”. The Forum. Overall I got a small look into the Malaysian Game Industry, but from what I gather, it is pretty much the same as the Software Industry. During the presentation, Eggman and I fired up our laptops and tried searching for open wifi spots, to no avail. Don’t know how wise it was for us to pull up our consoles in the Microsoft HQ. hehe .
The next MIND meetup will be on Windows Vista. Somehow expect me to be there. Anyone else willing to join? Overall I enjoyed the MIND Meetup, free food, drinks, prizes, but damnit no free parking ( alright asking too much ). Though they have corporate sponsors. Overall it gives a really good impression on the people. At least I guess I an say I have learnt something through all this. Well hopefully.