[quote=“Nocturne, post:2, topic:929”]
I pray to GabeN every night for the day that I can enjoy all VNs in 1080p with jiggle PhysX.
[/quote]Vector-graphics with any resolution (4K displays and higher so we don’t need to keep doing “HD updates”) would be great, but they would need to be done right…
[quote=“Bowiie, post:4, topic:929”]
I wanted to learn more and eventually got really interested in the programming side of things and then found out my high school offered NO computer courses higher than keyboarding.
[/quote]Same here. I went through a lot of different schools as well (due to moving a lot) and none of them offered programming courses. When we got Internet it was dial-up too… (I’ve since upgraded to tethering my phone’s 3G connection, whee!! speed!!)
[quote=“Bowiie, post:4, topic:929”]
Amazing it worked…also amazingly it would be hit by lightning 2 weeks later.
[/quote]Ouch! I lived in a lightning-prone area once, so whenever a storm came by I’d unplug my equipment. It was terrible for productivity, lol.
My first game console was a NES. After playing Super Mario Bros (a lot) I became curious about how the machine worked. My dad mentioned something about computers, so I went over to the machine he had, which was this cheap-o Windows 95 rig. (Later it was “upgraded” to ME. We somehow skipped 98.) I remember spending a bit of time in DOS but wasn’t sure how I could turn DOS commands into a video game. (We didn’t have the Internet, and I didn’t really understand anything then anyway.)
Later my mom got us a (better) home computer, Windows XP, and a solid Internet connection. I learned about “Game Maker” through Google and looked it up. I did some small things with it, but later wanted to move into 3D games. To do so, I learned that you had to program them (rather than point and click), and that’s when I started to really learn about computers. My “chuunibyou” got in the way a little bit, but also kept the initial passion strong enough to keep pursuing programming.
Having started in some random variant of BASIC, I moved onto C++ and started interfacing with that BASIC language through there. After some time, I became more interested in the low levels and tried my hand at writing an OS. My experience in C was limited, and I had never written such low level code before, so that was a great experience. I had a primitive heap memory manager and virtual file system, running in 32-bits protected mode (the x86 starts in 16-bit “real mode” for those unfamiliar), and was able to load some files from the floppy through a very primitive shell interface. However, I never managed to get “user mode” working, and there was no proper GUI.
The forum software that I was using (as in “visitor to someone else’s website”) was irritating me at around the same time, so I tried my hand at writing forum software (in PHP and HTML). It took a few weeks but I was pleased with it. The software was never completed, but I was pleased with the results… (It was usable, at least. There were some features missing, I’m sure, but it fixed a lot of the issues I had.) Seeing the forum software that Kazamatsuri.org uses makes me wish more sites would use it.
Most of the software that I’ve programmed has typically been tools for a given situation, though I’m working on two projects right now. (The projects are related to each other.) I’ll announce what they are once they’re far enough along.
As far as news goes, a lot of the stuff I get in my tech feed is political lately (e.g., “Company X is suing Company Y because phone Z,” or “Three-Letter-Agency is doing stuff!”). Something that caught my attention though is that Apple might be making a car. http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/13/wsj-tim-cook-approved-apple-electric-car-project-a-year-ago-hundreds-of-employees-working-on-it/ (This is somewhat older information now, and it’s not directly related to computers per se… still.)