They’ve made a plethora of wallpaper images available for download from the official website, so you should go and take a look see at that if your screen size is 1600×1200 or smaller. People like me running on a 1920×1200 resolution are not so lucky though. Some clever cropping and background “space” filling may be in order to stretch the image to that size properly.

I’ve also managed to secure the CD cover for “Find the blue”, the game’s opening single.

I haven’t laid down an order yet but I think I will.

I cried, again…

I actually had accidentally spoiled myself of its emotional climax when I was jumping around. My original intent was to get a grasp of the storyline in question but as you can see, that didn’t really work out.

So you know, I thought, hey, I’ve got my manly wall setup around my heart now since I know what’s coming, I’m not going to be affected by this, no sir.

Yeah, just no. That was absolutely painful, I need to stop doing this to myself. I ought to take a break away from sad stories.

You may cry your heart out when you get to the ending, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Holy cow, that was heart wrenching.

I did not have much of a reaction at first, but as the ending played itself out, it just got progressively worse. I started off with the usual hacking coughs but then that evolved into sobs and sniffles. It ultimately spiraled down into tears.

It took me about four and a half hours to complete the game though I’ll admit I was doing other stuff once in a while so one could definitely finish it under that But, it’s probably quite difficult to find four or five uninterrupted hours in this day and age. ;)

I just finished creating a very simple page for the game on Wikipedia. Please contribute any information you happen to find onto the page. I’ll be adding more information to it in due time. It’s rather bland right now since I only wanted to get the page going.

So I was surfing around yesterday when I happened upon a new upcoming visual novel collaboration by Nitroplus and 5pb. named CHAOS;HEAD.

My perceptive readers will probably quickly notice that the characters look surprisingly like those of Myself;Yourself, the Futakoi series, or the Memories Off series. The obvious response to that of course is because it is by the same character designer, Mutsumi Sakaki.

Nitroplus has always had a reputation of making dark and suspenseful games and CHAOS;HEAD is certainly no exception. After some further research online about the game and its plot, I decided to give the game a go and downloaded the trial version yesterday. It didn’t want to run on Wine so I ended up booting into Vista this morning to give it a whirl.

I did not understand as many of the lines in the script as I did with ef’s demo but I still really enjoyed playing through the game. It gets pretty freaky at times and you can really feel the main character panicking when it seems like someone’s out to get him. The part where the protagonist confronts Yua near the end of the demo is particularly creepy. Although much of that scene’s credit probably has to go to Chiaki Takahashi who has really done an awesome job voicing that yandere. The other seiyuus also do a very good job. You folks will probably recognize Hitomi Nabatame, Daisuke Ono, and possibly Hiroyuki Yoshino. The score of the game, while matching the scenes quite well, is subtle enough to not divide the player’s attention and thus, does not detract the player from the gaming experience. It kind of reminds me how the music “works” in Final Fantasy XII in a way.

CHAOS;HEAD will be released in about three weeks on April 25th. Check out the usual suspects online if you’re interested in purchasing this visual novel.

Source:

□■どこよりも早い!! 6月の新刊予定(2008年6月10日発売)■□

◇灼眼のｼｬﾅSII
著/高橋弥七郎
絵//いとうのいぢ
ｺﾐｯｸ/笹倉綾人

Nope, we ain’t getting a XVII just yet.

Now you might be thinking that I’ve filed this under the wrong category but I actually really am here to talk about debugging C# applications on Linux (and on Eclipse, no less). Maybe Microsoft (or Novell?) will provide some .NET tooling for Eclipse in the future, but I suppose we’re just going to have to make do with what we’ve got for the time being from what Harald has done thus far on Emonic.

In any case, let’s get this party started.

1. Grab the Mono 1.9 ‘Other Linuxes’ installer binary from their website.
2. Run the installer. You’ll probably need to use chmod +x on it first though. This guide assumes that you did not opt in on modifying your ~/.bashrc file. I will assume that you installed it into some place like ~/mono-1.9/.
3. Start Eclipse up and point it at a new workspace. You mise well start fresh, right? Note that this has been tested on Eclipse 3.2.2 but since we don’t make any internal API calls, future versions should be a-okay also.
4. Checkout edu.arizona.cs.mbel2, emonic.base, org.emonic.debug.core, org.emonic.debug.ui, org.emonic.debugger, emonicinformator, and Emonic.DebugFrontend from SourceForge. You can use the handy CVS “path” below to fill up the wizard faster:
   :pserver:anonymous@emonic.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/emonic
5. Now we need to change the DebugFrontend.build build file located in the Emonic.DebugFrontend project. Point its debuggerLibs property to /home/username/mono-1.9/lib/mono/mono-debugger/.
6. Next, we need to change the Emonic.DebugFrontend project’s build_release.sh file’s TARGET variable. Point that at /home/username/workspacename/emonic.debugger.
7. We also need to change the build_release.sh file in the emonicinformator project. Change ~/workspace_new/ to wherever your workspace is.
8. Open a terminal and run source ~/mono-1.9/bin/setup.sh.
9. Invoke the build_release.sh script from the Emonic.DebugFrontend folder in the same terminal.
10. Now invoke the other build_release.sh script that’s in the emonicinformator project.
11. Back in Eclipse, we need to create a new ‘Eclipse Application’ launch configuration that includes edu.arizona.cs.mbel2, org.emonic.base, org.emonic.debug.core, org.emonic.debug.ui, and org.emonic.debugger.
12. Next, we need to switch to the ‘Environment’ tab. Set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to /home/username/mono-1.9/lib/ and PKG_CONFIG_PATH to /home/usernamemono-1.9/mono/lib/pkgconfig/. I think this step isn’t necessary if you did opt in to change your ~/.bashrc file, but since I’d rather not have my readers taint their setup needlessly, I decided to walk you all through the “long” way.
13. Make sure ‘Append environment to native environment’ at the bottom of the tab is set. This should be what it is by default.
14. Run the second Eclipse.
15. In your second Eclipse, open up the preference page and then go to the ‘.NET > Installed Frameworks’ preference page and add a framework that points to /home/username/mono-1.9. Now switch over to the ‘.NET > Building’ preference page and then click ‘OK’.
16. Open the preferences again, you should be on the .NET > Building page, configure the NAnt command and point it at /home/username/mono/bin/nant. It is imperative that you followed these past two steps correctly. There is a bug that causes the values to not persist properly and resort to their defaults when switching pages and the like. If in doubt, redo it again.
17. Create a new .NET project. Accept the defaults, the build mechanism should default to ‘nant’.
18. Using the created src folder in the project, create a new C# class through the wizard. You’ll need to create a new target, give it a name.
19. Write some code. Two print statements would be a good test.
20. Right-click on the margin and select ‘Toggle Breakpoint’ on the line with the first print statement (although it is very primitive).
21. Create a new debug launch configuration for a ‘.NET Application’. Point it at your project and then browse to the compiled .NET executable that should be in the bin folder.
    launch configuration. NAnt should’ve been run every time you saved, otherwise, the .NET executable may not have been created.
22. On the ‘Common’ tab, unselect ‘Allocate Console (necessary for input)’.
23. Click ‘Apply’ and then ‘Debug’.
24. After a bit of waiting, switch to the ‘Debug’ perspective by hand. To those that prefer the perspective switching to happen automatically, sorry, that hasn’t been implemented yet.
25. The application should’ve stopped at the first print statement.
26. Try hitting F6 and see that the print statement appears properly.
27. Enjoy!

All feature requests should go here and all bug reports should go here. If you want to leave any comments about the debugger, you should consider posting them here. For personal compliments (or hate mail if applicable), please route them to Harald as I don’t handle the debugger integration on Emonic. This is very much still in alpha, so don’t expect too much.

Yes, we know that creating a regular ‘Run’ configuration doesn’t make anything show up on the ‘Debug’ side. Due to the decoupled nature of our current plug-ins, the two are not tied together.

And no, it doesn’t work on Windows because there is no ‘mdb’ on the Windows Mono build (at least, I didn’t see one when I installed it on Vista). If someone wants to try and write a debugger for us (ahahaha, who am I kidding?) or provide an interface with MDbg or something, please let us know.

I watched the raw of this episode yesterday but I didn’t bother to make a post about it like I have with several of the other episodes in the past since I figured I’d hold off until a subtitled version was released. I guess if Noe ended up winning I’d have written a post to vent, but since Hiromi won out in the end, it’s all good.

I think they paced this episode quite well as they pretty much managed to tie up all of the loose ends. As much as I like Hiromi, I really liked Shinichirou’s final conversation with Noe. It may have taken him thirteen episodes to get here, but at least he was finally able to be honest with himself.

The first bit of the episode with Hiromi acting weird really bothered me even though I kind of figured that everything would work out in the end. However, there was that other side of me that was constantly concerned about a Noe end. I don’t know how I’d have dealt with a Noe end, it’d really depend on how it gets executed due to the less believable nature of that pairing.

true tears has definitely kept my attention throughout the whole season thanks to its awesome visuals, music, and its ridiculous cliffhanger endings. I have to question the usefulness of Aiko since she never really did anything of importance but that’s not really enough to detract me from enjoying the series. true tears probably didn’t really pull off anything new in terms of romantic drama shows but I think it should be commended for its execution and the way it kept you guessing about its ending.

April’s just right around the corner…

コードギアス 反逆のルルーシュR2 (row 1, column 1):
I don’t really have to elaborate on the reasoning behind this one, do I?

RD 潜脳調査室 (row 2, column 1):
The character art looks kind of weird but since it’s from Production I.G and Shirow Masamune, I’ll give it a spin.

図書館戦争 (row 2, column 3):
I don’t even really know what this show is about but the concept of a “Library War” sounds interesting enough. This is also from Production I.G and Marina Inoue will be voicing the lead so this ought to be good.

二十面相の娘 (row 2, column 4):
The premise sounds alright and it’s from BONES so that can theoretically be enough of a reason for me to check out a show.

ヴァンパイア騎士 (row 4, column 1):
I’m totally down with the idea of shoujo with vampires added into the mix so this is right up my alley.

隠の王 (row 4, column 3):
I forgot if it was the art that attracted me to this series or was it because Rie Kugimiya was voicing the lead. Well, no matter, both of them combined gives me an excellent reason to check the show out.

I’m also interested in some other series but they’re kind of on the sidelines compared to the ones above.

So after my brief trip in Seattle concluded, I boarded an Alaska Airlines flight down south to San Jose to head off to EclipseCon.

Once I got the logistics of hotel check-ins and all done, I headed off to the registration area where I bumped into Nitin. After hanging around there for a little while, I met Markus who told me that he was hanging out outside of the bar with some other folks so off we went. I got to meet Tom and Markus’s coworker (whose name evades me) there. Paul and Eric also dropped by a little later to say hi. Some time later, we headed back over to the registration booth where I took some pictures of those AMD machines since my brother works for them. We also spotted Scott here. Markus and he had a good chat while Nitin, Achim, and I started yapping about the difficulties around implementing a shared editor.

After this, Nitin and I headed off to Ian’s blogger party.

This is where Ian asked me if I ever go to class. And the answer is, why yes, I do go to class. Although I will admit I do sit on IRC during some lectures, but not all, mind you. In any case, the rest of the day ended rather uneventfully.

On Monday, I was up early to grab some food and drinks. I bumped into Pascal, Andrew, and Steffen while I was darting around the tables.

The first tutorial I went to was Benjamin’s “Plastic Surgery For Eclipse: Custom SWT Widgets, RCP Customization, And More“. While I’ve done plenty of UI work in the past, I’ve never done any of the things that Benny talked about, so this was certainly well worth my time.

I skipped the second time slot since Andrew and I were going to head over to Google to visit Igor. We waited for the time to pass on the second floor whilst checking emails and the likes on our notebooks.

I was lucky enough to bump into McQ there as I hadn’t met him since my Extreme Blue internship at IBM Ottawa ended. I wasn’t so lucky since I had bugzilla open on my notebook screen, which he was quick to critique about. I guess I failed to show him that I was working on my “work/life balance“.

Time flew by soon enough and it was time for Andrew and I to head off to Google. I asked someone to take a picture of us. Here you can see Dave, yours truly, Andrew, and Neil. McQ had already left, hence he is not here. :(

Google’s buildings are quite elaborate and their food is certainly one of a kind. I forgot to take any pictures so you’re just going to have to take my word on this one. Our trip back wasn’t so great as Andrew had noted, but no problem, we only lost a few minutes. Being Paul’s unofficial underling, I felt compelled to go to his tutorial, so I did. It’s hard to help fix Paul’s bugs if I don’t understand the stuff he works on after all.

While I was waiting for Nitin’s tutorial to get started, I went off to go look for Tomasz and Szymon. Szymon was busy attending to someone else but I was able to have a nice chat with Tomasz.

Nick dropped by Nitin’s tutorial after I pinged him and he, Dave, and I started reminiscing about the good times we’ve had together on #eclipse.

After the last of the tutorials, it was time for the community awards. There was some good Jeopardy action before that first though. I don’t remember what the question was but this answer was real long. I think it was something like “What does the Eclipse Foundation do?” or “What is the Eclipse Foundation responsible for?”. I do believe no one got it.

The community awards came after the two rounds of Jeopardy concluded. Thank you all for your support! :)

Once the event was over, it was on to the BOF sessions. Of course, this wasn’t before having a brief chat with Jeff and Dale and a photo with Nitin first.

I attended the SOC BOF first with Igor where I got to meet Wayne for the second time and Rob for the first time. It was nice having Igor and Rob there as it helped give us a bit of an “insider’s perspective”. Prior to the ECF BOF, Igor and I went over to look for Andrew where I was able to meet the famed Billy Biggs.

At the ECF BOF, we had Scott, Jan, Markus and me from the team. Rob, Pascal, and another fellow were also there to join us. We talked about p2 and ECF’s discovery APIs as well as shared editing.

Upon its conclusion, I waved my farewells and headed off back to my hotel room. I listened to some tunes from Final Fantasy XII before I retired to bed. I was pretty surprised that they had such a device, but hey, I’m totally down with that.

The next day, I woke up at 0400 and took a cab at around 0435 to head to the airport. Hopefully, I’ll be able to attend again next year. Oh, and staying longer next time wouldn’t hurt either. ;)