Blog - Pyrodactyl Games

“Real Groove” Action Scene – A Thought Experiment

April 16, 2023 · Arvind

Before everyone goes “What on Earth has happened to Arvind?” “Is this blog taken over by spambots?” “I’m calling 911” – allow me to explain.

My gym has a fairly standard playlist i.e. a mix of catchy pop and dubstep that makes you want to tear your ears out. One song in that list is Kylie Minogue’s “Real Groove”, and it has become stuck in my head since the past few days.

Okay, big deal – that’s not worth making a post about! Hang on just a second – the way it has become stuck in my head is not the same as a regular song. See, I don’t know what to call this, but every time I hear the song, I visualize an action scene in a manga/anime or action movie.

No, really. Allow me to explain.

I’m not good at sketching or drawing, so all I have is my words to show you what I mean. Since this is not a part of a larger story, I will use general tropes and character archetypes – the important part here is syncing the action to the lyrics.

The Characters

The Protagonist: She used to be a great fighter, before abandoning that life for one of peace. She’s the one singing the song.
The Apprentice: Our protagonist is mentoring her, but she’s not quite there yet. She has a lot of heart, though.
The Rival: A long lost rival, fought the protagonist many times over the years. He has returned to exact vengeance – however, our protagonist refuses to fight him.

The Scene

Since the protagonist doesn’t want to fight anymore, the rival decides to blindside her. He blindsides and incapacitates her – the apprentice intervenes on behalf of her teacher. She is wildly outmatched though, and things are not looking good.

The song starts to play. I’m going to describe the scene in two columns – left is the action, right are the lyrics. Here goes:

Our protagonist stirs on the ground, on the edge of consciousness.	Feel my heartbeat It’s the same old feeling coming over me tonight Me tonight
The protagonist opens her eyes, sees the apprentice in danger. She moves to pick up an improvised weapon from the debris around her (let’s say it’s a makeshift staff).	Feel it buzzing Said I’m never gonna call, but tonight, I think I might Think I might
The protagonist moves to interrupt what would be a deadly attack on the apprentice. Will she get there in time?	[Pre-Chorus] Gave my heart a ride, bump in the night No one can take me higher Know it’s been a while, baby, a while
The protagonist stops the attack in the nick of time. The rival and her lock stares – it’s time.	Do you still feel the fire?
The first round of blows is exchanged. The protagonist looks rusty, and the rival has the upper hand. From a visual perspective, this is about showcasing the two combatants as they feel each other out.	[Chorus] I saw you dancing with somebody Looking like me and you She know how to party But nothing like me and you Got that perfect body But she ain’t got the moves We got something better Got that real groove, baby
The protagonist stumbles. All the days without fighting mean she’s not as strong as she used to be.	Major mistake No, I never shoulda gone, baby, I was on thе run On the run
The rival lands a hit! Things are not looking good for the protagonist.	It was heartbreak I can’t stand another day knowing that you are the one You’re the one
She forces herself to continue the fight, but the rival senses blood in the water. He moves in to land the finishing blow.	Gave my heart a ride, bump in the night No one can take me higher Know it’s been a while, baby, a while
A sudden flash. What’s this – the apprentice saves her teacher!	Do you still feel the fire?
Round 2 – the master and student fight in tandem against the rival, covering for each other. The balance begins to tilt in favor of our plucky duo. This is the longest section we’ve had so far, so we have room for a longer sequence of action.	[Chorus] x 2: I saw you dancing with somebody Looking like me and you She know how to party But nothing like me and you Got that perfect body But she ain’t got the moves We got something better Got that real groove, baby
The duo land a hit on the rival, knocking the wind from his sails. This is where we fade away from the song and into the dialogue, as the characters take over from the action.	[Bridge] Real groove, real groove We-we-we got that real groove, ah Real groove, real groove We-we-we got that real groove, ah

And that’s it! I’ve seen a few movies that have done syncing the action to a song (Kingsman/Freebird being a standout in my opinion), so I don’t know if someone has done this exact song before.

But it doesn’t matter – now this song is out of my system, and hopefully you were entertained by this post enough to not mind indulging me in this…mind exercise? thought experiment? I don’t know what to call it.

A good day to you!

In Conversation with Arvind Raja Yadav, Part 1

January 5, 2023 · Arvind

An interview with the lovely folks at Gamedev.in about how I learned game development, my experiences at school and college, and some advice to future game developers.

Visit their website and give it a listen:

https://gamedev.substack.com/p/in-conversation-with-arvind-raja#details

The source code for (almost all of) the games I talked about in the podcast is available on Github.

I hope you find the discussion informative/inspiring/interesting!

11 Years of Pyrodactyl

August 4, 2020 · Arvind

It’s been 11 years since I first thought about making my own indie games. That thought let to Pyrodactyl Games and 9 years of working with very talented people.

To celebrate, I’ve made the source code for our games public on Github. These games were made in C++ using SDL and OpenGL in a custom engine that evolved throughout the years. Here’s the individual links:

Unrest

Good Robot

Will Fight for Food: SAS: GOTH

I’m eternally grateful for everyone who worked on these games (check the About page for full credits), this wouldn’t be possible without them.

While Pyrodactyl lies dormant, our games and hopefully the memories they gave you live on! We might even meet again someday 🙂

Pyrodactyl, Paused

January 31, 2019 · Arvind

This is a bittersweet post to write. For the past decade, Pyrodactyl has been not just what I do, but who I am. Things were roughly the same throughout, but that changed about six months ago. In short:

The college I was teaching at shut down very suddenly (😢)
A couple of other opportunities didn’t quite work out (😒)

In the backdrop of all this, I was working on The Red Stone as much as I could. Unfortunately, a couple months ago, I entered a stage where I was working but not really making any progress on The Red Stone. I tried pushing through the rut, but that only made things worse. Having read approximately fifteen thousand indie game postmortems, I realized what was happening. After a lot of pondering, brainstorming and thinking twice, I decided to step away from Pyrodactyl for the near future.

While this is not goodbye forever, this is a goodbye for now. I hope the games we made had a positive impact on you, even if it was just making you smile for half a second. Perhaps we’ll meet again!

As for the future, I have a great opportunity to join the team at Ubisoft Abu Dhabi. I’m really excited to be working on I’M NOT SURE IF I CAN REVEAL THIS INFO SO I WON’T SAY IT and I can’t wait to get started!

Before I sign off, it must be said: Pyrodactyl and I won’t be where we are today without the help of a lot of kind and amazing people. My family, friends and colleagues have given me way more love, support and patience than I deserve. I can’t thank you all enough.

P.S. Special shout out to my students for being ~~the best~~ performing better than expected! (jk I love you all)

Something new is brewing at Pyrodactyl…

July 4, 2018 · Arvind

A Mysterious Stone?

How to finish your game

March 8, 2018 · Arvind

I delivered a talk at the NASSCOM Game Developer Conference 2017 about some techniques that can help developers finish their game. It’s fairly fun and accessible, and I talk about my experience releasing several games in the past decade.

If you’re thinking about making games, I recommend you check it out!

(And yes, the moustache is gone. It will be remembered fondly.)

Thoughts on Education, Part 1

September 1, 2017 · Arvind

The last blog post ended on a slightly depressing note, so I thought I’d share something more positive.

(Warning: This article may contain rants about the Indian education system and coaching institutes.)

Even though I had been into programming and game design for the better part of my life, a part of me had always felt that I could be a good teacher if I wanted to. When I realized I needed a break from Pyrodactyl, I thought the time was right for me to dive into this new line of work and see what I could contribute.

I’m very lucky that I got a faculty position at a university that allowed me freedom to experiment with the curriculum. So far, this has been a surprise in a very pleasant way.

What I learned by teaching (so far)

Adaptive Curriculum
My biggest peeve with my education was that it was 100%, Ambuja Cement style rigid. The curriculum was decided in advance and nothing you (or the teacher) could do would change that.I’ve been trying a more flexible curriculum that changes based on the strengths and weaknesses of the students, and while it is very early to definitively tell, I think it is having positive results. (More on these findings as the semester progresses).

Showing (not just telling) students how they will use this knowledge in the future helps a ton.
In my case, first I got freshman students to analyze their own favorite games, and then I slowly explained how the games in question use the game design techniques that I taught them. While I am still figuring out how to improve my speech and ability to explain things, I think most of them became very interested when they realized they could learn how their favorite games worked – even though I was conducting a dry flowcharts and game states lecture.

Subject (and self) Discovery
I’m learning a lot more about my subjects and myself as I give more classes. Even the games that I made appear in a different light with some of the things that I learned while researching my topics.This is exciting – like Eat Pray Love except someone pays me a salary to do it.

I hope this different style of article is cool with the usual readers of Pyrodactyl. I’ll share more as I finish my first semester of teaching!

If there’s any teachers out there in the comments, what did you learn when you started teaching? Any tips to help out a new guy? 🙂

Status Update

May 12, 2017 · Arvind

Hi everyone, Arvind here.

Ten years ago, I opened up Google and started looking for tutorials on programming video games. While some folks on the Steam forums might argue otherwise, I think it’s fair to say that I have learned a lot in these ten years. I have worked with some incredibly talented people, traveled across the world, met some of my heroes and most importantly – had thousands of people tell me they liked my games.

Left: My hostel room, picture taken on a Nokia brick.
Right: My home office, picture taken on a slightly better brick.
Both: Bad fashion sense.

Continue reading →

Good Robot Postmortem

December 16, 2016 · Arvind

Due to being busy with real life, I completely forgot the four-part Good Robot postmortem (which I contributed to) on Twenty Sided.
If you’re interested in learning how we made Good Robot and the fallout after its launch, visit the links below to learn it first hand from me, Ross and Shamus.