The car engine and the game engine

Imagine our government saw the future of Game Industry and interested to directly interact and make it growth! Yeah, it is such a big news and definately will bring exited to the local Game Industry. How they plan to do it? Ok, lets assume that they are going to use the same old model that they did to the Automobile Inudstry here. The way they brought up Malaysia very own brand: Proton.

Ok, first, the game engine. We not going to make it because no matter how hard we do, we still behind people. Why? Because technology is dependancy and it is a cumulative R&D effort. So, the easiest way to do is: We will buy in a ready made game engine from oversea.. Hmm.. Korea Game Industry is very good; instead of buying a car engine from Japan, we will buy in one from Korea.

The business side, Korean company that exporting engine to Malaysia is thinking: I sure wont sell you my latest game engine because that is what we researched for years with that huge amount of resources put it. We are also making a top selling title with it now... It is just impossible for us to sell you the engine now. hmm....... Lets try to do the Japanese way: You take our previous version of engine la.

Our current online game engine, version 2.0 are now come with features such as:

• More optimize and secure core system design... "old design can easily get hack"
  
• Better graphic rendaring interms of pixel shading... "look nicer and cooler"
  
• Supporting more genre type of games... "multipurpose"
  
• Add in a powerful scripting engine... "extensible"
  
• and we also standardized our API... "stable"

The version we sell to you is version 1.0 and it lacks all of the features above. Take it la... Opps. nop, buy it la... I sell you at RM100,000 and you can use it to do any game you wants and brand it as you like. But for every game you sold, I wants to take incentive of 10%.

Ok, now what? We have the tools d, we need the people. So, it is the education part. We should encourage our people to learn the Korean Way. It is amazing that their nation growth so fast in just a few years. Instead of "Learning from the east: Japan", now we will do: "Learn from the east: Korea version".

What next? Malaysian government formed/appointed a local game company, do publicity that Malaysian going to do our very first Game that is MADE IN MALAYSIA... and then... yeah! Malaysia Boleh. The game is out now in the market!

The first version called Saga Online. Next we will come out Wira Online, Waja Online and so on...

The market now.... How we going to sell it? Our game doesn't seem as good as what the Korean game because they are usign Game Engine 2.0 and we are still using the Game Engine 1.0. Hmm.. our game already made... and it is related to the name of the country. No matter what, Malaysian should support Malaysia Made product.

Ok, to make sure it work, lets set a rule. All oversea online game that sell in malaysia have to be taxed on their subscription fee. So, a RM30 monthly fee will now become RM60 and so on....
Hehe... more people will wants to play Saga Online now as it still sell at RM30.

20 years passed... We are playing Savi Online now... It is nicely packaged, engine enchanced and said to be totally self made (100% MADE IN MALAYSIA) now without any dependency at all (ohh...ic... we made DirectX too)...

Although some of the players lots their characters in game (get stolen by hacker) because of the poor security system of Game Engine 1.0, but we have came so far until we now have our very own successful game industry. Yeah, sacrify are needed for changes.

Malaysia Boleh! Please visit our Game City in Cyberjaya insted of the Proton City in Tanjung Malim for celebration... 20 years later la

P/S: All above is just imaginary case study, please do not take it seriously and and Happy Merdeka Day!

This API is not that API

Hehehe. came across this funny idea from the internet.

API in programmng language is Application Programming Interface. In commn word, it is just some function calls and parameters that provided by the creator to other developers. When you obtain these information, you can write your own programs using the library/engine without having the knowledge of how it is implemented, or without the need to obtain the underlying source code.

Most of the engine/SDK are publish in this model. Other than that, DirectX and Win32 are also an API from Microsoft Windows.

An API are said to be commercial/close when you need to pay money to purchase it and yet you are not necessary able to access to the source code. Most of the time, it is just a dll or static lib.

API in Malaysia totally means others things: Air Pollution Index.
At first the government do not plan to annouce it: Read NST

However, it is great that the government have eventually annouce it. Now, anyone can freely access the statistic from Malaysia Department of Environment.

Breath like Darth Vader in Cyberjaya

Darth Vader : Lets launch our haze attack!

Darth Vader appeared in the most intelligence city in Malasia - CyberjJaya?
Yeap, alot! Almost all Cyberjaya residents breath like Darth Vader. For your info, this is not a galaxy attack, but Haze attack!

I don't know why I put this into this gaming related blog... maybe the pollution have seriously affected my work as a programmer in an open air room that without air condition.. or maybe I am just too angry with our government attitude that prefer not to annouce the Air Pollution Index. Hopefully those people that always sit inside aircond room and aircond car could understand how serious the air pollution is to a small citizen like me.

View from Cyberia Smart Home, Cyberjaya

Well, this haze is seasonal as it always happends around this month of every year in Malaysia. I have a suggestion on why not make it a national events? Like,

• a "Haze Semester Break"???
• or.. a tourism promotion like... "Hazy Hazy Malaysia"?
• or.. "Welcome to South East Asia London"?
• or.. maybe the smoking campaign of TAK NAK! can enlarge its scope by not just targeting the tobako company?

Frankly say, I really dun understand why our neighbour country like to play fire and burn forest so much. I just hope that they have finished burning all their forest since I started to recognize the word "Haze" in my primary school when I was told dun have to come for school cocuriculum activities.

By the way, this is what my FireFox Weather Status Bar shown for my hometown: Melaka, which is 2 hours drive from CyberJaya:


Due to my personal requirement on making complaints by providing solution too, I required the following step being done in order to shout my mouth off:

• Annouce the API to Malaysian and the world
  
• Bring this issue to related country through diplomatic step

Update on 11 August 2005

OK, great. Now the Department of Environment, Malaysia have announced the API on 10 August 2005. Anyone can freely access from: http://www.jas.sains.my/jas/Air+Pollutant+Index.htm

Thanks to several non-governmental organisations had called for the readings to be made public in the light of the current hazy condition after our Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said there had been no decision to make the API readings public on 09 August 2005.

More Reading:
What Malaysia Government Said
What JeffOoi Said
What a MMU Lecturer Said
What a MMU Engineering Student Said
What a UKM Dr Said
Some photo of Hazy Cyberjaya
API vs AP in MalayMail
The souce of Haze

Are you a working machine?

Most of my friend have gotten their job after graduate and some of them started to buy car, pay loan and so on. Looking at their success for able to purchase things they desire and able to give money to family makes me feel lost. For your information, I am in the process to startup my own business.

After analyze my feeling, I have some funny thought. People working because they are afraid. They afraid of jobless, they afraid of unable to pay loan, they afraid of not able to feed the family, they afraid dunno how to answer when friends and relative ask them where you are working now... Thus, they work to get the money to overcome all these fear, and at the same time, they use money for entertainment: to buy happiness.

All these are very normal.

The book i recently read is Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It is an interesting book that make me think. In the book, it illustrated how a boss view his worker: always asking to increase salary, always complain about their job and always asking for more benefits from employer. The boss said their behaviour are just like bagger.

There are people that claims that they don't like money and yet still working for 8 hours everyday on job that they are not interested.

All these... make a person act like a working machine, or a slave for money. Wake up, fear, go work, back, get entertainment, sleep, loop.... Once this secure working life model works for a long duration, the person will build strong dependancy on it and feel weak to escape from the loop. What they can do is either complain about current job or asking for higher salary.

This is the trap of depandancy, which I am very aware of no matter it is in software development or daily life. In real life, employee are always under control of employers and thus there could never have a fair treat relationship.

Thus, the book suggest people to escape from the loop. The book said one shold working for desire to make things better. This is the only way that you could make money work for you.

Sound interesting, but how to apply it? I am still learning...