I've Made a Hiragana/Katakana Learning Game
 

To prevent myself from having to memorize Hiragana and Katakana the tough way, I spent the last three weeks creating a web game called Stackana. :D

Screenshots of Stackana:


While playing this game I have learnt various Hiragana/Katakana characters subconsciously. I figure this can also help those of you who are new comers wanting to learn Kana but finding it too hard to memorize.

So give it a try now! At the end of each fun game you will realize you know a few more kana characters without even feeling the pain!

Try it now at: Stackana - The Hiragana and Katakana Learning Game

The game is still in Beta stage, please let me know if you find any problem or you have other cooler ideas to improve this game play!


Thanks,
Ben.

Wow, very nice. What did you use to program it?

Thanks!!!! :)

He used Microsoft Silverlight

Thanks for the compliment, Befron! :)

Yes, just as what dougbrowne said, I used Microsoft Silverlight to create the game (I use C# as programming language, if you're wondering). Since I quickly put it together, there may be things that I have not thought about. Please do not hesitate to let me know if you have better ideas on how this game can be improved to help your learning :)


Cheers,
Ben.

Kirakira, Aniki, Dougbrown, Hatredcopter and Sinestra -- thanks for your support, it means a lot to a beginner like me (not to be discouraged by idiotic people).

By the way UltraKawaii, "kana" is a collective term for "hiragana" and "katakana", are you sure you know Japanese? Or you just know how to "watch anime"? Anyway, time to learn the way of life (and you'll realize how small you really are).

Peace out... :mtongue:

great game

Thank you, Onyx! Please enjoy yourself.
Please let me know if it causes you problem!

Stackana Game Font Display Improved
 

It has been three weeks since I first put Stackana online, during this period main part of my time was spent on my day job, and the rest on fine tuning Stackana while striving to maintain a healthy work-life balance. I have had feedbacks coming from various aspects, the following enhancement is based one of such requests...

On a system that does not have Japanese font installed, one cannot play Stackana, for it will not display correctly. The enhanced Stackana changes this by streaming Japanese font to user's machine so that kana characters can be displayed. Streaming font also brings another plus point in which the visual of Stackana can be rendered in a more predictable manner.

Illustrated below is the difference between default font (Gothic) and enhanced font (Meiryo):



As can be seen, Meiryo font makes kana characters that much clearer (notice how dakuten markers are more refined).


So head over and try out the new and enhanced Stackana now! :D

So then, did it work?

Thank you soo much!!! this has helped me a whole lot!! keep up the good work ^^ :)

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.

What i meant was, have you leanred kana now?

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.

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 ;)

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 ^^

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! :)

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..

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 :D

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!

To be honest I have to agree with Shadow. I spent a day learning Hiragana, and same with Katakana. I forget the odd letter from time to time but that will go as I write more.

It was probably a good experience in game creation to make the game, as for learning kana though, if you haven't done it in 3 months then it's obviously not helping you very much. Hopefully that doesn't come across as too rude as you seem like a decent guy.

Though I do wish you all the best and hope that it helps others too.

@addictedKool : Shadow didn't tell him not to make the game, he wasn't rude and didn't taunt him at all. He was just stating his opinion that it wouldn't have worked for him and it clearly hasn't worked for the maker of the game, that's all.

Sorry, but when Shadow said "... But your wasting your time", that came off as rude to me. Maybe it's just me. Who knows? I would hate it if I created something and someone said something similar to me.

So long as you learn from the experience, I don't think it's a waste of time. Shadow, sorry if I'm accusing you as rude when that is not your intention. I was just stating my opinion is all.

I appologised for the comment cuz I was telling him if he wants to learn he should do it another way, although that it was good he was trying to combine his interests.

But thats the point. He hasn't learned. Its been nearly 4 months now whereas anyone else I've spoken to who uses kana learned in about a week? a month at most?

See, this is why I don't help people on JF cuz everytime I do - I get jumped on.

kewls:mtongue: :ywave: :mtongue: :vsign: :mtongue: :vsign:

Well, since it's been four months and he still doesn't know the kana alphabets, then let it be. If he wants to use up another 4 months to set up a program when he could be speaking/reading introductory level japanese by then, then well. Nothing you can say can help him. If he wanted help, he would have followed your advice 4 months ago.

Even though I already know my kana I checked it out and I think it's a good game. However I feel that better romanizations could have been used. It's just a suggestion but it would help more with pronunciation and also for typing in the future. Hope my comment doesn't seem harsh, just trying to contribute to making the game better.

Awww… take it easy guys! There’s no absolute right or wrong for most of the time (unless of course you kill somebody’s cat). What matter the most at the end of the day is you achieve what you intended to do.

Shadow has been well intended, though he sounded "rude" at times, I can see where he is coming from (and to a certain level I agree with him too). I did feel really bad when I first heard from him (damn you Shadow! :D), but hey, he would not have pointed out my "mistakes" if he did not intend to help in the first place. So I took it differently, everyone expresses him/herself in different ways.

Thanks for the encouraging words addictedKool, the use case you mentioned was in fact quite a valid one. Of course I would hope to have Stackana extended to be useful in other scenarios too, but that is likely to pose as a great challenge. And it is not that I did not want to follow Shadow’s advice, he has his points. While I'd like to learn kana, my first priority is to try out new technology for making web game, and try to learn kana (if possible).

MissMisa, you are definitely a very fast learner! One day is ultra cool! Well even a person who can write Chinese characters like me might not be able to do that. Just because I can speak Chinese, most kanji characters are known to me by default, but I was trying to imagine how things would have been like for a person who does not know Japanese characters to recognize them. So yeah, and I did that game.

And thanks for suggesting SceptileMaster, some gave me the same feedback too so I have updated (and released v0.5) on my site. It is now using Hebon-shiki romaji rather than using Kunrei-shiki system, since it is more widely accepted.

So if you'd like, please go ahead and try out the updated Stackana now! ;)

It's the same as it was before. Are you sure you've updated it?

Yeah, that's a caching problem of browsers. Sometimes if the temporary files on your local machine are not cleared then the browser will still reuse that file without downloading it. You may get to see the updated version (v0.5) if you clear your browsing history (and if you're unlucky enough, it won't even re-download after your cache's cleared).

That problem has been pretty frustrating to me at times too! :mad:

Tried it in different browsers that have a different cache and it's still the same.

Okay that's what I meant by the frustrating part. You can now try again to simply press F5 to refresh the page when it comes up, I have just uploaded new page, it should do better now:

http://www.xleeque.com/stackana-japanese-puzzle-game.aspx

Please let me know how it turns out for you, thanks!

Your probably better off pressing ctrl + f5 since that will force the page to look for new files, whereas f5 on it's own won't.

Oh wow, that's a nice trick Lucas, I didn't know that, thanks! Hopefully this resolve the problem for you, SceptileMaster?

Did it all and it's still full of hu and dzu and the like. Are you sure you're not accidentally uploading an older version.

Yeah I am sure because I've been testing it on the server (from my office) and it is Beta version 0.5. Here is how it looks like:



By the way, if you see "dzu" then it is the right version. The older version made use of Kunrei-shiki (e.g. ti) instead of Hebon-shiki (e.g. chi). So in the screenshot above you see "chi". :)

dzu and the like still seem like weird romanizations to me.

What the heck is "DZU"?

In the game I think づ was romanized as dzu. I've always thought of it more as zu just like ず sounds.

Yeah we had this dicussion a while ago somewhere, about 'dzu.' From what I remember, 'dzu' is the supposedly old way to say 'zu.' It was indeed 'づ.'

I like this game, it's helped a bunch. =3