Do It Yourself

This time I intend to write a short text about the indie spirit and a new game engine I just found. In the 60's the philosopher Alan Watts emerged with the idea that the educational system practiced was not practical at all, and most of time it only educate us with abstracts conceptions instead of practical ones like cooking, repairing cars and the like... The critic is very profound as we can easy come to the conclusion that we rely on specialized people to do most of tasks that could be simply solved with we we had it tryed before (Think about your house pipes for example). This kind of thinking evolved to a social movement in the late 60's and beggining of 70's known as "Do It yourself".

The first time I read about it was referring to the Sex Pistols and Ramones musical attitudes and everything made sense to me. But sometime back, maybe 2 or 3 years ago, I read that the blogs was like a re-edition of this movement and since then I didn't stop to think how internet is a "prolific" environment. Discovering Linux was great in that sense because every little thing is open and as anyone can understand and cooperate, it's possible to make an even better OS. Well, the last thing that was missing was "what" to do "myself" and that is the motivation of this post.

Since I was kid (It wasn't that long ago like you, pseud-reader, are thinking, it was just like yesterday... lol) I have this passion for games... More by games story. I loved every tale and every character and every plot that made me feel like I was part of some quest! It was like I could interact with a movie! And from watching movies, and playing games, and reading books, and playing games, and enjoying art, and playing games. I've decide to do it myself! I'll create a game!

So I studied enough to know the basis... It took me nice 4 years of programming and data structure studying to know a drop of enlightenment from an ocean of knowledge... and the next step was to choose a game engine! It should have some particularities. First one, I prefer OpenGL (because it's open and it's wider) over DirectX. It should have some nice Graphics but graphical perfection was not my goal since I want to tell a good story. It should be free since I have the Linux collaborative spirit and have no money (haha). It should run on linux for the motive previously cited and it should be of easy understanding... Considering Irrlicht Engine, Ogre3D, CrystalSpace and OpenSceneGraph as graphical engines I've chosen CrystalSpace... But the time I would use reading the documentation I could create my own engine! (I read this in some place I don't remember and it's true...) but it was the closest of what I wanted if wasn't by the numbness of the project (stuck in the 1.2 version since ever) I would have sticked with it... Then I decided to move to OGRE but ogre wasn't purely openGL and everything in Ogre seemed a lot "ready" I didn't want just copy and copy and copy! I want to contribute too and well, OGRE is not a Game Engine... I considered Irrlicht but the graphic capacity was really bad... And I experienced slowness with my applications... I found OpenSceneGrap which happen to be a very nice C++ OpenGL wrap but exactly by this motive I had to abandon the idea. I was about to decline when I found The Zen Engine!! It was like it came directly from heaven!!! Everything attends to my expectations! It's flexibility for using Lua as a script language, the way that the core and the system are split and hey! They even use Ogre to render! And want more? They are very concerned about the indie spirit! With a collaborative ideal and are in full developing! I will try my best to help the development of it and to divulgate as well!!!

I will end this post with the engine links I cited

Cheers My Pseud-Readers...

Zen Engine
CrystalSpace
OGRE
Irrlicht
OpenSceneGraph

Specialization or Limitation?

That bother's me since ever... It's been a time since I've started to think in the words to use to describe such question that I raised when studying the capitalism formation... The source of my inspiration is no other than the man who is considered the Father of Modern Economy: Adam Smith.

In his second published book, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", Smith proposes a society created from the division of labour, and specialization as the engine for this new organization method. As Blinded Rats, it doesn't take long for us to follow without even read the second chapter after the one he presents the concept, where it's said that such specialization would lead workers into a "state of mental mutilation"... And this, my dear pseud-readers, is where we are nowadays...

The continued wrong applications of Smith's theory, specially on administration research field, has contributed to one of my many personal frustration about life and what I believe, the frustration of so many people, who are curious enough to not focus only in one aspect of the true knowledge... We grew up listening to our parents saying we must follow the traditional way of life, where we choose one of so many interesting fields of investigation of knowledge, to financially support our lives, and that we call profession. Without a profession, a man has no honor and no value, but how does that limits ourselves?

How can I Study programming (a passion I have) if I can't be a programmer and an economist at the same time? And for those who would say: "OMG you're lying, you can do both activities"... Well that could be true, but the time I spend dedicating myself to Java is a Time I lose to dedicate myself to Political Economy for example! And for those who isn't yet convinced, how can I be at the same time, an economist, a programmer, and a Musician!? Yeah, I love to play guitar, but the Time I choose to study and to practice pentatonic scales is a time I lose to study microeconomics!

And what pains me even more, are the faces of the ones who are content to live their single lives with their singles jobs... We Could be more if we wish to study and to discover more! And not only that, we are so used to think and to "role play" like that, that we even got difficult to think of another ways of life! Yes! It's possible! The Greek Thinkers for example, were much less specialized than us and nonetheless still influencing modern thoughts! Pythagoras made contributions on math and music! DaVinci is another good example, architect, painter, engineer, philosopher and frequently a personage of secret-society-paranoid-novel!

What I'm trying to say, and I'm really making an effort to write in English, is that we became limited, for just accepting this pre-established organization, as the only one possible...

Let's be more of questions, than acceptations

Cheers, my dear pseud-readers