Programming Pro

Nikhilesh Sigatapu ’15 is just your average guy: He programs his own video games, came up with a programming language over the course of a weekend because he was “really bored,” and he plays the Arabic darbuka drum. Street sat down with Nik to talk about coding, gaming and what would happen if we lived in an alternate universe.

Q: How did you get into computer programming?

A: When I was about 10, one of my neighbors showed me something called QBasic, and we messed around with it — it’s a programming language. I found it a lot of fun, and I decided that I should try making computer games, and I found this program called GameMaker. I was mostly learning through experience — just messing around, trying various things. There was a lot of math and physics involved which I learned as I went along.

Q: And your most advanced video game to date is GraLL 2, right? How did you get the idea for GraLL?

A: The idea for GraLL was born out of an online Flash game I was playing at the time where there’s a ball you have to control through a vertical drop. I wasn’t actually keen on making a full-fledged game. I just wanted to do something similar. Instead of something that was about a vertical drop, it ended up being a puzzle game. I called it GraLL because it’s a mix of the words “gravity” and “ball.” It’s a weird storyline a friend and I cooked up about a robot made by this company, and they need to test it so they put it through various tests that are pretty harsh, but since it’s a robot no one really cares about its emotions, right? [Laughs].

Q: And what about GraLL 2? How did that come about?

A: I decided to follow up with a sequel because there were a few ideas that I wanted to mess with, especially dimension-switching where there are two parallel worlds and you switch between them to solve puzzles. Most of the process was just me messing with things or my friends suggesting things like gravity inversion.

Q: Do you think your video game makes you more popular with your friends?

A: [Laughs] I’m not really sure, but I guess the fact that someone makes video games is interesting to people, and interesting qualities make people more memorable. It could be something that makes me more popular. If that’s true, it’s a pretty cool side effect.

Q: What’s your favorite level from GraLL 2?

A: That’s a tough question. There’s a level called Dead End, and once you start the level you can’t stop because the bomb that’s following you around will run into you. You need to switch dimensions in order to make it through. It’s pretty intense, but it’s also pretty short.

Q: What do you do outside of programming and gaming?

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A: In terms of a long-term hobby, it’s always been percussion. I’ve been playing the tabla, which is an Indian classical instrument, since grade six, and also play the Arabic darbuka. There’s a band in Princeton called Sensemaya I recently joined. We’re doing a show at Terrace pretty soon.

Q: Your website has some of your paintings on it. Tell us about that.

A: When I was in grade three, I got into painting, especially because my dad was into it too. I was really interested in art, and I had a huge collection of books on how to draw and shade. One of my favourite sketches is of a horse, and a painting of Krishna, a Hindu god. It was one of my more involved projects.

Q: Do you think your knowledge of art has helped you with programming games?

A: Yeah, it’s definitely helped with designing art for my computer games — especially the sense of depth, perception and spatial understanding. Everything you see in a game is art.

Q: That’s a good way of putting it. Word on the street is that you came up with your own programming language…?

A: Yeah — it’s called nscript. I was pretty bored one weekend, and I was looking at Python, a popular programming language, and I decided to try making my own. I got really into it and wrote the whole interpreter in the course of a day. I was at my computer the whole time.

Q: If you could make a computer game about anything you wanted, what would it be?

A: When we were learning about special relativity in physics, I thought about what would happen if the speed of light were like 5 miles per hour. You would see time dilation and length contraction everywhere. I was thinking of constructing a game in an artificial universe where the effects of special relativity are commonplace. It would be interesting because you would see the world warp around you. You’d talk to someone and say, “Didn’t I tell you we were going to meet up for dinner tonight?” and they would say, “We already had dinner together tonight!” Physics is really weird.

Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Urvija Banerji.