I've Made a Hiragana/Katakana Learning Game

[xleeque]

Yes Shadow, it did work! The font is now dynamically streamed to user's machine for display.

Kenpachi11, I'm glad it helped! Feel free to tell others who you think Stackana can help them


Thanks,
Xleeque.

[SHAD0W]

What i meant was, have you leanred kana now?

[xleeque]

Hi Shadow, I meant to respond this when I last saw it but somehow I did not. Sorry!

Conventional flash cards do great when it comes to practicing kana characters; that was the reason it remains the de facto standard on the subject. However the prerequisite of that is the player must have memorized the characters at least once before.

The main goal when I designed Stackana was to bridge this gap: players do not have to memorize any kana characters prior to practicing them, they practice and memorize as they go.

So to answer your question, yes, I have learnt a handful of kana characters as I played. But my day job and side project have definitely made me play Stackana less than I once hoped for. And that is the long-term goal of Stackana project: how to bring Stackana to players, instead of having them go to play it.

So stay tuned!


P/S: Is that you real picture in your avatar?

[SHAD0W]

Originally Posted by xleeque

Hi Shadow, I meant to respond this when I last saw it but somehow I did not. Sorry!

Conventional flash cards do great when it comes to practicing kana characters; that was the reason it remains the de facto standard on the subject. However the prerequisite of that is the player must have memorized the characters at least once before.

The main goal when I designed Stackana was to bridge this gap: players do not have to memorize any kana characters prior to practicing them, they practice and memorize as they go.

So to answer your question, yes, I have learnt a handful of kana characters as I played. But my day job and side project have definitely made me play Stackana less than I once hoped for. And that is the long-term goal of Stackana project: how to bring Stackana to players, instead of having them go to play it.

So stay tuned!


P/S: Is that you real picture in your avatar?

How about now? Its been a while, have you learned now?

Can you write them without looking at a table or are you just in the recognition stage?


Oh and - Yes it is me.

[xleeque]

Yah what I meant in my previous post was where I am right now. I have spent nights and weekends on revamping my site (if you see, it's looking different now) and also to incorporate enhancements in Stackana based on feedbacks/requests from its users.

I will try sticking to playing it, and report back when I have made progress

[Starairi]

Wow! Great game! I tried it once, and learnet a few kana (by recognition at least). In my opinion this a good way of starting the process of learning kana. Though if you want to really know them well, you'd probably have to switch over to ther methods after a while.

Good game though, keep it up ^^

[xleeque]

Thanks for the encouraging words, Starairi. I do agree with the need of having another method after this process. Hopefully this helps more people before I discover better methods!

[SHAD0W]

I'm sorry to have to say this to you, xleeque, because you seem like a nice guy. But your wasting your time.

I have 2 jobs, I'm in my 2nd year of my degree and I'm taking a college course, and working around that, sometimes just doing 5 mins a day, i learned kana in less than a week from copying out kana tables by hand and then trying to do it from memory.

I have met many people that have done it in even less time than that.. Sorry.

Its nice that your trying to combine your interests.. but you posted this thread... 3 months ago? Come on man..

[xleeque]

Hey Shadow, whatever you do, don’t regret it, as the saying goes “regret is a waste of time”. I do agree with you on learning kana in less than a week, and I am darn sure I can do it too (I write Chinese so I recognize all the kanji before I even started learning kana ).

I have managed to learn many things (except kana, argh!) during this process, take for example Silverlight (not just using it, but a little more in-depth tasks like font streaming), and also web-service (Stackana interacts with a web-service hosted on a remote server), web-design and so on. I always like Japanese stuff, and I saw just that opportunity for my passion (programming) to help me in some “Japanese ways” (kana?).

One thing note-worthy is: the terms “hiragana game” and “katakana game” have drawn some good number of traffics to the site, so there are people trying to look for these kinds of stuff. It may or may not eventually help them, but we won’t know without trying, right?

But you did bring up a very valid point: not everyone learns it the same way. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. As I started this game I thought I should finish it up, does it help me? Yes it does. Does it help anyone else? That only time can tell.

I do appreciate your feedback. And yes, you got the nice guy part right

[addictedKool]

Hey Shadow, what right do you have to tell someone how and why someone should do what they want to do? If someone wants to make a game, let them. If you don't agree then don't play it (or taunt them for it). What doesn't work for you could work for someone else.

I haven't played the game yet but I think the game is a good idea. It allows the players who already know or in the process of learning kana to recognize the characters as they learn more and more. Of course, one should learn how to write the characters, but it's a start!