Create an icy glass silhouette with Gimp.

Hey folks!

I came up with a nice effect which I thought was really worth sharing. Refer to the following image for a clear picture (pun intended) of what we are trying to achieve.

Note that I am using Gimp 2.6.1 on Windows. Gimp is free software and can be downloaded from www.gimp.org. Since I don't want to end up with an extremely long-winded post, I'll just assume that you can find your way around Gimp. If you do find yourself stuck at some point, feel free to comment on this post and I will gladly help you along.

Step 1: Begin with an empty canvas size of 640 x 480.

Step 2: Set the foreground color palette to the following shade of Blue - 80c0ff and bucket fill the background layer.

Step 3: Create a new background layer and name it 'Noise'. Bucket fill this layer with the following shade of Blue: 386597.

Step 4: Go to Filters->Noise->Hurl and use the settings in the image below.

Step 5: Go to Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur and apply horizontal and vertical blur radius of 25.

Step 6: Set the opacity of the Noise layer to 70 and the blend mode to Value. Your image at this point should look similar to this.

Step 7. Now, create a new layer with a white background. Go to Filters->Noise->RGB Noise and use settings of 0.2 for Red, 0.2 for Green, 0.2 for Blue and 0.0 for Alpha.

Step 8: Set the opacity of the White layer to 30 and the blend mode to Grain Extract.

Step 9: Create a new transparent layer on top. Name it 'Silhouette'.

Step 10: Set the foreground color to full white and paint haphazardly inside this layer. See the picture below for the kind of painting you should do.

A real piece of art, huh? You don't need to precisely follow this painting but try to concentrate on the center of the picture since that is where we will ultimately end up placing our silhouette.

Step 11: Gaussian blur the layer with horizontal and vertical blur radius of 100. Change the blend mode of the layer to Value. Your image should now look similar to this.

Step 12: Now, its time for us to put in our silhouette! Make a heart shaped cut-out in the center of the 'Silhouette' layer. You can easily make the top part of the heart with two circles and then use the free select tool for the bottom portion of the heart. Then just delete the area within the selection. Alternatively, you can use the eraser tool and erase in the shape of a heart. No need to be totally meticulous about the shape of the silhouette since we will be blurring it anyway. I've chosen to go with the selection method and if you did the same, you should end up with an image similar to the one below.

Step 13: Select the entire 'Silhouette' layer (Ctrl + A) and Gaussian Blur it with horizontal and vertical radius of 30.

Step 14: There is no Step 15!

Here is another variant of the effect. I just played with the colors, opacities and of course did a completely new silhouette.

Enjoy!

Create a simple vintage photo effect with Gimp

Hey folks!

Sometimes you might want to take a recent photo and make it look like it was taken with a vintage camera. Here's one easy way to do this. Note that the image processing software that I am using here is Gimp 2.6.1. Gimp is free software and can be downloaded from http://www.gimp.org/

Alright, just to give you guys a feel of what we're trying to accomplish, here are before and after shots of a photo that I took when visiting the Chinese Gardens in Singapore.

Before:

After:

Step 1: Open the image of your choice in Gimp.

Step 2: Duplicate the image layer one time. You can duplicate a layer by clicking on the duplicate button at the bottom of the layers panel window or pressing Shift + Ctrl + D (in Windows).

Step 3: With the new layer selected, go to Colors->Desaturate. Pick 'Luminosity' among the options presented and then click OK. Your image should now look Black and White.

Step 4: Change the blend mode of the Black and White Layer to 'Overlay'. The blend mode can be changed from the drop-down menu at the top of the Layers panel.

Step 5: Change the foreground color to the following shade of Yellow: fbf2a3

Step 6: Go to Layer->New Layer (or press Shift + Ctrl + N). Among the Layer Fill type options, select 'Foreground color'. Leave everything else as is and click OK.

Step 7: Change the blend mode of the new layer to 'Multiply' and set its Opacity to 60. Your image should now have a yellowish tinge.

Step 8: Change the foreground color to the following shade of Magenta: e865b3. Once again, add a new layer with Layer Fill type as 'Foreground color'. Change the blend mode of the new layer to 'Screen' and set its Opacity to 20.

Step 9: Change the foreground color to the following shade of Blue: 0949e9. Again, add a new layer with Layer Fill type as 'Foreground color'. Change the blend mode of the new layer to 'Screen' and set its Opacity to 17.

Step 10: That's it! We're done. You may tweak the opacities of the Yellow, Magenta and Blue layers to make your particular image seem more authentic.

Enjoy!

Light Snake for HTML5!

I have had the good fortune to explore a bit of HTML5, an emerging web standard that is poised to take the online world by storm. The technology isn't quite there yet. Current browser vendors offer differing or incomplete implementations of the standard and it's a bit of a pain to ensure that whatever you write works generically. Still, this is one of those lemons that bears watching...

The first thing that crossed my mind was to port LightSnake. Its a simple and fun game of snake and requires very minimal player input. And so, I did manage to port the game from C++ to Javascript and get it running acceptably well on most of the major browsers. One notable exception is that dinosaur of all browsers, the one that exists simply to torment all web-developers. Yes, Internet Explorer!

The project has been hosted on Google App Engine and can be accessed from the following URL: lightsnakegame.appspot.com (I wanted to get the app name 'lightsnake', but someone seems to be squatting on it).

Enjoy!

EDIT: The source of the project can be forked on github at: http://github.com/angelorohit/lightsnake

Light Snake

While listening to some really cool music on soundcloud, an image of the old-school Snake game popped up in my head. A game of Snake with neon lights. So, I thought to myself - "Heck, I should make this!" And so I did...

Needless to say, I didn't sleep that night.

Want to play? Get it from:

1. My Microsoft Skydrive

2. indiePub Games

How to erase specific elements from an STL container - the C++ way.

STL iterators are tricky little fellows. One moment they act clean and the very next, they throw their hands up and say something cryptic. Consider this snippet that erases all elements whose values are 20 from a vector of integers.

typedef std::vector<int> IntVectorType;
IntVectorType vInt;

for(IntVectorType::const_iterator iter = vInt.begin();
iter != vInt.end(); ++iter)
{
 if( *iter == 20 )
 {
     vInt.erase(iter);
 }
}

Lo and behold! The program crashes! This is because when you erase an element from a container all iterators to its position are invalidated. This just happens to be our loop iterator. So, what is an innocent programmer to do?

Well, there are two ways to erase individual elements in an STL container.

Method 1: The crude way ( recommended for cavemen/barbarians/C -programmers ;) )

IntVectorType::iterator iter = vInt.begin();
while(iter != vInt.end())
{
 if( *iter == 20 )
 {
     iter = vInt.erase(iter);  // Get iterator to next element.
 }
 else
 {
     ++iter;  // Increment if not erased.
 }
}

The method vector::erase() returns an iterator to the element that subsequently follows the last element that was erased. So, we just use that iterator to continue looping. Good! Problem solved! Is there a better way?

Method 2: The modern C++ way (recommended for rockstars/you/me)

struct EraseFromVector
{
    // Functor
    bool operator ()(const int value) const
    {
        return (value == 20);       
    }
};

vInt.erase(std::remove_if(vInt.begin(), vInt.end(), EraseFromVector()), vInt.end());

Looks like g(r)eek, you say? Alright then, let me explain. Basically, std::remove_if() is a magical chap. He takes two iterators as a range within which to work. For each element within that range, he then checks the unary predicate(our third argument) to see whether the element should be removed or not. If the predicate returns true, the element is removed.

I did say "removed" but in actuality, remove_if() sends the doomed elements to the back of the container. He doesn't actually remove them. How could he? He doesn't know what kind of container he's working with. Only the container can remove elements.

The nice thing about remove_if() is that he is guaranteed by the standard to preserve the order of the elements that were not removed. So, if our vector contained the elements 10, 20, 30, 20, 40 in that order, it will now contain the elements 10, 30, 40, 20, 20.

Finally, remove_if() returns an iterator to the start of the sequence containing all those miserable elements just sitting there at the back waiting for the axe to fall. We pass this iterator as the first argument to vector::erase() and an iterator to the end of the vector as the second argument. In one full swoop, all elements in the range are erased.

Now, doesn't this seem a lot more fun than a boring old while loop? :)

R.I.P Steve Jobs

At first, the world saw him as nothing more than a nerd, a high school drop out, a rebellious kid. Then the world saw him as a geek, a competitor, an irrational human. Being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened because that's what made him a real entrepreneur.

A man who looked at the potential in smaller companies and brought out the best in them. He believed in beauty and elegance in computers unlike the rest of the world. The world resisted his ideology but never killed it.

He returned and changed the music industry for the better. He went through a near-death experience. He beat it, came back and changed the entire way we perceived a digital world with the release of the iPhone. Now, the world sees him in a different light - Visionary, Creator, Future Technologist.

Requiem De Pace - Steve Jobs. You will sorely be missed.

ACSVParser: A simple CSV parser written in standard C++.

Hey folks,
Its been a while since I posted back here... ok, its been a looong while. A lot has been going on. I've pushed forth my career in gaming all the way to Singapore! Yes, that's one of the four asian tigers and it sure is one of the best places to be working as a game developer. That, of course, does not mean I will let this blog lie fallow. So here goes...

One of the most interesting (vexing?) things about programming is that some of the simplest things turn out to be not so simple at all! Consider a CSV reader. We've probably used one (if not written one of our own) and yet we all know that it could do with a whole lot of customization. Some of the general peeves, I've heard are:
"I don't want to use commas, I like using the caret symbol!"
"Why can't I have new lines in my CSV content?"
"I want to have embedded spaces in my CSV data!"
"I want to sneeze with my eyes open, darn it!"

All of these (except the last one), led me to stop kicking the can down the road and come up with my own parser. I called it ACSVParser(after yours truly :))

The project is hosted on github at https://github.com/angelorohit/ACSVParser
Do check it out and let me know what you think (feedback, suggestions, issues).

Cheers!