The only thing you need to do is remember: everything is googleable. Got a bizarre error message? Copypaste to Google. Want a new feature but don't know where to start? Google. Unsure about a part of the language/library you're using? "<thing>+<libraryname>+<languagename>+api". You might need a thin base of terminology knowledge to get started, but you don't need to sit around reading books and such before you start doing stuff. Start doing stuff and google as you go. Chances are that anything you want to know about programming, someone else has also wanted to know and asked about it somewhere.

Technical books put me to sleep. Unless that's your thing, I'd say skip them.

[Android]

Guess I'm really interested in Java mainly because of Android, since it's what I'm targeting. But iOS is also very interesting for me, and later on I'd love to develop for Win / Mac / Linux.

Unity 

Or HaXe?
But the tutorial support for HaXe isn't really there, so you'd probably be better off starting with AS3 going that way, where the support is definitely there and awesome. The two languages are almost interchangeable syntax-wise. If I was learning programming from scratch again, I'd probably go with AS3 - it's hard to shoot yourself in the foot in AS3, and with Flixel or something getting an actual game up and going is trivial.
But I'm sure Unity is good too.

Sorry Gimmy, but I think you have no idea what you're talking about. Things like bishoujo, moe, imouto, whatever are not genres or subgenres. They're character traits. The only reason people can get away with using them to describe genres is because they're Japanese words and so you don't have to think about how stupid and undescriptive genres called 'beautiful girls', 'cute girls' and 'little sisters' are.

It's even more ridiculous when you mention something like Gunslinger Girl. Sure, Hentrietta and the other girls are 'moe' (in plain English: cute) and the Fratello relationship is somewhat brother-sisterly, but categorising by that is stupid. It's like saying James Bond is a suave man movie, while Terminator is macho. No - they're fucking action movies.

I don't mind the idea of a genre label to describe things like K-On, Lucky Star, etc. - but 'moe' is not it. Especially if you're going to use the same label for stuff like Gunslinger Girl or Madoka.


I don't think manga has brought any softening of gender lines. Walk into a bookstore in Japan and tell me you don't feel intimidated as fuck to go into the shoujo manga section. Cuteness is just valued differently in Japan, and it's acceptable for males to like it.

I really don't like the misappropriation of the word 'moe' as a genre. It's a character element and it's quite useful as that. It's like the endless misunderstanding of 'shounen', 'seinen', etc. They're useful terms already - redefining them makes things murkier. I don't really know what you're talking about when you say 'moe anime' - is Aria 'moe anime'? Is Kamichu? Sora no Woto?

I think when people say 'moeshit', or 'cute-girls-doing-cute-things', they're not usually including these shows, but when you talk about and criticise 'moe' I feel a bit lost.

Gantz starts great but becomes shit. Enjoy the good bits while they last.


And I still really don't understand why Akumetsu is so highly rated. I thought it was juvenile shit trying to be superedgy, except most of the plot comes out in endless monologues against cardboard cutout villains who then die rinse-and-repeat, so it's not even the fun sort of superedgy. If you're Japanese and really hate your country's politicians (which is fair enough, they seem to be pretty terrible) then sure, I guess there might be something there for you, but otherwise I don't get the hype.

I haven't actually seen Spice and Wolf, but its reputation is much, much better than you make it sound.

For romance with a bit of fantasy/magic realism/surrealism, I'm gonna say Kamichu!


Also, just finished The Daughter of Twenty Faces. I love finding excellent shows that no one talks about. The direction that the plot ultimately settled in was a bit underwhelming, but overall really good.

Holy shit The Daughter of Twenty Faces. I don't think I've had my expectations for the direction of a show shattered this much since Ga-Rei Zero, and before that maybe the Narutaru manga. Holy shit.

There's a meetup near me this time, so I'm definitely in. Desperately coding with other people in the dead of the night is something I've missed from uni, somehow.

They should really manipulate the backers bar/numbers to make it look more popular.

Although if they haven't, that means that 10 people are stupid enough to have given them money...

No harder than any other medium, I think. How are you looking?

I think there's enough variety in anime that whinging about moeshit is silly. If you don't like it, don't watch it - there's plenty of other stuff each season. This is a particularly bad season to be complaining about it given the different things that are on. I'm watching two romantic comedies, one sports show, a fantasy parody, a historical war story, two straight-up action shows, one cyberpunk, one near-future science fiction, futuristic fantasy gang battles, a magical battle revenge story, a post-apocalyptic drama, a fantasy/science fiction cross, and an Arabian Nights inspired fantasy. There are a couple of other decent shows on that I dropped just because I don't have time to watch everything.

Of these, one looks like generic moeshit, and it's actually quite good.

I read Daiz's post and didn't get the impression that he was a sociopathic sexist hate-robot. I think it's wrong about a lot of things, sure - but his post to me looks like it was made in good faith and undeserving of the general 'fuck you' response he got. I think those sorts of hyperaggressive responses that come up in any serious thread here are the most offputting thing about this forum, personally. I understand it against the real assholes that were posting before, but I don't think just screaming people down is the right way to handle a rational (if, perhaps, ignorant) difference of opinion.

(And since I started writing this some other people have made less-shitty replies, which is nice)

cRPGs have been in something of a dark age since around 2001 or so, but currently there are numerous high-budget high-profile projects promising to be released in the next few years.

I'm not sure about gaming in general though - seems like too big a thing to classify like that except, maybe, far in retrospect.

RPGs in general has been stuck in time for far more than that. Just check this review of Lands Of Lore by Edge, people were already tired of it in 1993.

Eh, for me the short-lived golden age of RPGs roughly spans from the release of Fallout to the release of Arcanum. Stuff like LoL never really did anything for me.

cRPGs have been in something of a dark age since around 2001 or so, but currently there are numerous high-budget high-profile projects promising to be released in the next few years.

I'm not sure about gaming in general though - seems like too big a thing to classify like that except, maybe, far in retrospect.

I have a pretty broad taste.

Is the last one a joke? It looks pretty much like everything I hate about anime.

I am not sure what to believe.

You should watch Princess Tutu.
not even trolling

it's full of tropes and cliches because it made those tropes and cliches. nge laid the groundwork for dozens of copycats for years to come.

I don't think that a recipient straight from the 90s wouldn't notice how terribly executed Misato is. Those cheesy motives I critizised have been there before and not only been present in anime, but also in other storytelling media long before. I am not even pointing at the fact that the obvious protagonist is barely 14 years old or the idea of a neo tokyo. The characters are not authentic at all - on the other hand, they also don't feel like ably caricatures. Not even Dragonball Z is this bad.
But I'm curious, what exactly was NGE considered groundbreaking for?

I'm not even a huge Eva fan, but I think you're going a bit over-the-top.
If anything, I think Shinji's reaction to being told 'hey, go save the world' is pretty realistic. If having teenage protagonists in your anime is a problem, maybe anime is not for you...

To Aru Majutsu No Index 1st season >>> 2nd.

I'll check out Railgun then if u say it's better

You should read the Railgun manga. I think everyone pretty much agrees it's the best incarnation of the series.

Good interface is very low on the list of priorities, because there's a large enough fanbase that doesn't care about the interface and keeps giving him money regardless, and it would probably take a while to make an actually good interface.

But yeah, I know how to play. I choose not to these days because DF is a massive timesink. Play it with the wiki open underneath and refer to it often.

I have no ideas for a game, but while looking for inspiration my mind was completely blown by baton twirling.



.

Actually, if there's one thing that I could do if I wanted to (completely winging it here), I could have attempted a SNES game... heh. 

Well, SNES games are pretty easy to run under win32. No one said it had to run natively, just that it has to run.