Vishal Srivastava - Portfolio

Vishal Srivastava - Portfolio

Some background...
	In September 2003, I started a Masters program in computer science at Stanford University. I’m specializing in Artificial Intelligence, with interests in Graphics and Robotics. So far, I’ve had courses here in Artificial Intelligence, Motion Planning, Robotics, Experimental Haptics, Computer Graphics, Algorithms, Biomedical Informatics, Computer Networks, and Internet Technologies. I’ll finish the program in June 2005.
	In the summer of 2004, I worked as a research intern at Honda Research Institute in Mountain View, CA. There, I had the chance to design and develop a "dynamics engine" for ASIMO, Honda’s amazing walking, talking, and stair-climbing humanoid robot. I employed principles of kinematics and dynamics to simulate ASIMO’s movements in various environments, mainly using Featherstone's algorithm for articulated bodies. Within the dynamics engine, I implemented a constraint system which, in real-time, determines and applies control torques to maintain a desired joint-space trajectory.
	Prior to graduate school, I worked for a year and a half at High Voltage Software, a video game development firm in Hoffman Estates, IL (about 30 minutes outside Chicago). I worked as a software engineer on Hunter: The Reckoning – Wayward, a third-person, multiplayer, action title for the Playstation 2 (best described as Gauntlet meets Resident Evil). During my time there, I was a member of the five-programmer core team for the full development cycle, so it’s very fulfilling to see that people play the game and enjoy it. Here are some links to reviews from Game Over Online Magazine, Tech TV, and IGN.com.
	Before High Voltage and Stanford, I studied at the University of Michigan, where I received a full scholarship to attend their Honors Program. I finished with a Bachelor’s degree in computer science in May 2002. See my résumé for details about coursework, awards, etc.
	While at Michigan, I had an internship at Microsoft Corporation in the summer of 2000, working primarily on the Web Forms features of Visual Basic .NET.

For more information, here's my résumé in Word format. (Updated 4/23/2007)

If you’re interested in contacting me, I can be reached at: corduroy@cs.stanford.edu.

Recent Projects...

Created by: Vishal Srivastava and Jeremy Robin.

Finalist in Stanford's CS248 2004 Video Game Competition!!

Spectrum: Primary Assault is a 3D, third-person, action-adventure, flight/combat experience.

It employs several advanced features, including extraordinary, real-time hydrodynamics (water physics) that are not only visually compelling, but are also an integral part of the gameplay. Spectrum also features dynamic terrain generation, fluid pressure mechanics, realistic rope physics, enemy flocking AI, several kinds of collision detection, and many other concepts.

Click here for the complete web page.

Eschewal & Pursuance

Eschewal & Pursuance (originally “Hide & Seek”, until we settled on a more pretentious title) is an exploration of motion planning AI strategies. In the simulation, there are two agents, a Hider and a Seeker, in a competitive environment. This was a quarter-long project I did with Mohammad Irfan Rafiq for Prof. Jean-Claude Latombe’s Motion Planning course (cs326a) in Winter 2004. It’s my first (hopefully not my last) A+ at Stanford.

Download coming soon.

Adventure Golf

This is a 3D, hybrid action-adventure/mini-golf game. It's a rather massive undertaking, and it's shaping up to be the best game I've made.

Click here.

HISTORY

Sonic Boom began as an experiment in interactive music through video games. The idea was to create a flight simulation game where the player can experience dynamically changing music. As the player interacts with the environment, the music's textures and tones react to the player's motions, location, orientation, and proximity to various objects.

(NOTE: The music has been disabled in this demo due to space constraints)

The other primary goal of Sonic Boom was to create a semi-realistic hang-gliding experience in an abstract, surrealistic environment. If you will notice, the hang-glider simulates various physical properties of flight (drag, buoyancy, gravity, inertia, simple harmonic motion with dampening, etc.) with considerable attention to detail. The various constants and coefficients used in the game were tweaked until the game became a fluid, playable gaming experience.

Credits:

Music programming: Joe Klecha

Music composer: Chris Peck

Physics, Graphics, Gameplay programming: Vishal Srivastava

TO RUN

- Make sure you're in 16-bit color mode for optimal speed

- Warning: May run slowly on older machines (Must be experienced on a fast machine with an OpenGL-friendly graphics card to be fun!).

CONTROLS

- Use the mouse to move the glider left, right, up and down (The game is sensitive to the swiftness of the mouse’s motions)

- Hold down the left mouse button to accelerate

- Hold down the right mouse button to decelerate

Click here to download.

2/26/2004 - UPDATE: Unfortunately, the web sources used by this application have been taken down, so the application will not be able to retrieve any data until new web sources are found and implemented. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please see the project description and screenshots for more details about the project.

SMART Audio Supervision System is a Winamp plug-in application that serves as an all-purpose listening companion for Winamp users...

Scrolling lyrics, artist image, artist biography, and more... retrieved dynamically from Internet sources while you listen!
Have Winamp learn your listening preferences and use sophisticated AI techniques to choose appropriate songs to play!
Have Winamp suggest new songs you might like and display links to their mp3s on popular file-sharing systems!

Click here.

This is a space combat game I made for Prof. Laird's Computer Game Design & Development course (EECS 494).

The mechanics of the game are entirely two-dimensional, as required in the project specs, but the graphics are fully 3D.

Click here.

Vector Minigolf

A 3D-ish miniature golf game,

This was an independent project I did my Junior year in high school. During a physics class I was taking at the time, I was inspired to recreate some of the principles of kinematics and dynamics learned in class. It soon grew to be the following miniature golf game.

Click here.

Contact Information

Email: corduroy@cs.stanford.edu

Phone: (203) 482-1838

Last modified: August 04, 2002