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Here you’ll find a step by step guide to install Unreal Tournament 2004 in Linux !

I recently came back to spend some time with my old hobby of making Total Conversion mods and creating game maps, based on my favorite engines, such as Half-Life 2 Source engine and other Quake cousins. This brought me to look for new stuff that I haven’t done before, specially because I have had a hard time trying to run tools such as Hammer Editor in linux, under Wine. This is a tool that’s required for map development and compiling in HL2, if you don’t want to spend ages trying to do it with other tools such as Blender.

That was when Unreal Tournament catched my eye; it did have “that” older release that ran in linux, huh? And it had an installer for it, And, huh, it had modding and mapping and all that, lots of forums and resources. Also, there was the Unreal Engine and all. More important, I owned two legal copies of it: UT2003 and UT2004!!!

First off, I really never have played Unreal. I am more of a HL2 fan, or Quake, because of all the modding and mapping I so much like to do, for Single Player action or RPG. So, I prefer Single Player, with a storyline and some puzzles. A FPS which only objective seems to be that of running around a series of rooms, caves or streets,  shooting everyone you can find with the only purpose of killing rather than be killed, doesn’t really tickle my fancy. Unreal is a Tournament, though, so it’s more like a sport, the game objective is the killing and survival, right? Like a real life paintball tournament, huh?

I appreciate the entertainment benefits of it, though. Or, even, the terapeutical effects of shooting people or entities in a virtual setting, instead of climbing up to a real building, or tower, carrying a deadly sniper rifle aimed at anyone that walks down the street below, mentally scoring points while stealthily gunning down ladies, children and other passers by. Those have real families, real blood and real hearts that stop pumping. No “back to beginning” there, huh? No “spawning” of the same old characters that you already shot, after the whole thing is over. No story, too, in both scenarios, virtual or real. Only, one scenario could be seen as a “sport”, almost like paintball, and the other… well, real blood sports aren’t that welcome anymore, are they? But games are, and games have a place, albeit its violence and gore.

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We keep hearing about fast change, radical change, unexpected change, need-for-change… We ARE at a time of change, internationally. Economical crisis, at a global scale as it is the present one, prompts immediate, decisive change – be it voluntary or not.

So, are you afraid of change in your company or in your own life?

It is natural, I say, that we feel insecure when things turn to be different around us, but there are several traps to avoid, at a personal and professional level, in order to REALLY survive change and make progress.

Imagine your company decides to undergo a radical reorg prompted by crisis. This is actually one of the best things an organization, big or small alike, can do to face external change – to change themselves and adapt quickly.

Organizations, like people, must be swift and decisive when the need for adaptation comes or risk perish and be forever forgotten in the limbo dot-coms and other business bubbles go lurking until complete oblivion or erasure from existence.

How would managers in an organization see change, in the above case?
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There is no denying it, it’s all over the news now and no one in perfect judgment can ignore reality: recession is here, countries do bankrupt and companies all around the world will be in trouble and letting people go because of it – or, simply, taking the excuse to make a profit from not having to pay as much as usual in salaries…

The bottom line is: the ones that need a job to bring food home and pay their bills are the ones that ultimately suffer. All of the sudden there will be thousands, millions of qualified professionals as well as others less skilled, looking for the same: a job, or a income. It’s, more than a financial crisis, a job crisis.

Personally, I went through three major recessions and at least as many job “crisis” thase sent me strugling for survival. That, in the last 20 years.

Did it make me stronger? Yes. I feel much more confident and prepared.

Did it make me ready for future crisis? NO, no new recession brings exactly the same problems neither will it flow exactly the same way.

Can I give advise about it? LOL! I certainly can, but there will never be guaranties that ANY advise will work, only common sense, effort and a lot of preserverance, as usual. Well, at least in my experience that is so, and that’s just what I can share here: my thoughts and experience.

- I read somewhere that the word for Crisis is the same as for Opportunity, in Chinese…

When a job crisis hits you, you have the opportunity to… well, first, not to let yourself fall irrevocably!

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“Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe.”

— Sumner Redstone

While I don’t picture myself as a successful guy, so that quote actually doesn’t relate entirely, I had my quota of experiences and attempts that, huh…  err, failed. I do try to build upon my experience and now that age is taking its toll (hehehehe), I find myself doing a lot more introspection about “what went worng” and “what could I have done better” regarding all my aventures in adulthood-land.

I am particularly interested in keeping track of what did not go right with whatever attempt to create a business or going into some work project, job or venture. So, I decided to start a series of articles on that subject, here at serso.com.

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Back in the early nineties, as in 1990 , I hadn’t heard the term “telecommuting” yet. In reality, I hadn’t heard of anything that mattered for real, anyways.

I had tried to work from home, though. Not as a telecommuter, but has in having my business based there, saving in overhead costs with office rental and so on.

In 1989 I had equiped a whole room at my new apartment in Rio de Mouro (Sintra, Portugal) as an office. There were 3 PCs, one “portable” Sinclair (read: I used to take it with me), one that had two floppy drives 5.25 where I ran accounting applications I developed (basically, glorified Lotus 123 sheets) and one Amstrad with a 10 MB hard drive where I kept the more space needing applications and data, all running MS DOS and Windows, can’t recall the exact versions. We’re talking the most advanced machines here, the Amstrad was a 386 that had cost me about 3000 Euros!

Of course, I needed a typewriter as well, because those awfull Epson printers did not have enough quality for my taste, so I bought from Xerox a Typewriter (with memory, it would store pages of documents and templates), a Fax machine and a Photocopier.

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‘Just found out that there are indeed people scrumming in Portugal. This is excellent news for someone like me, someone who has seen frustrated all of his honest attempts to use ANY methodology whatsoever.

Scrum is a process, a tried and proven way to improve efficiency in development and not just that. I subscribe to it has beeing a true helper for any team.

There was also this managemnet concept called XPM (Extreme Project Management) which I tried to implement in a results driven organization but you guessed it: the business owners preferred the old and tried method of the whip, coupled with the Captain Kirk concept of management*

Knowing this, one would understand why I am not actually a believer in the idea that implementing processes that are rational, proven and efficient – albeit having acronyms that are somewhat funny – will ever be successful in this country’s business environment. Business owners and chiefs, the real big players here, seem to simply be stopped in time and very, very retrograde (not just conservative, they seem to dislike or mistrust even what was “new” back when!).

But I heard GuestCentric Systems is going fully Scrum, at least. So, congratulations guys, thumbs up!! However, let’s realize they are not exactly “from” Portugal, are they? LOL!!!

Well, pardon my bitterness, all of you well intentioned and forward thinking portuguese friends and unknown scentient forms out there, but since I arrived in 2005 there’s very little I have seen around here that could make me change my opinion. But I am still here, still trying, still strugling. And, chicken!, doing exactly what I am commanded to do. I need to put “the bacon” on the table, although I was never a Pig in Scrum anywhere I worked for.

Nevertheless, consolation and vindication is coming my way in unexpected forms. Imagine that the company I work for, indeed does have expertise and people like Andre Torgal that do know how to Scrum for real!!!

Cheers to you all!

* A simple and irrational way to get things done. Kirk asks the question to his Chief Engineer, Scotty: “How long to have it repaired, Scotty?” to what the Engineer replies “Putting all resources and effort to it, Sir, the best I can do is to have it done in two days…” to what Kirk commands, with no hesitation: “You have TEN minutes. Get it done.”