KWarp

The Correct “ping” and Incorrect “buzz” typical of Japanese gameshows. They are typically associated with O and X. I can not find these on Google or other search engines. Does anyone have them?

Absolutely. However to get it on Wii I need to downgrade the Flash player to 7. That will take a few days to do after the Flash 8 version goes online. Gman is interested in drawing.

Been playing with the Divas for a while. <()> All the other modes seem to go in slow motion.

You can easy. Just go to Wii settings and change your country of residence. Then go to the shop channel and download away. You won't lose any data. <()>

In my case I find Microsoft has really improved their image in the past year. They really seem to be out to satisfy the consumer unlike a certain other corporation, and they do online really well. Most importantly, the 360 and Wii can coexist in the marketplace. :] I think I'll always be anti-Sony though. I hate hate hate their business philosophy and practices.

Glad to see there's interest and discussion about the grammar especially. Creating sentences is quite difficult and every contribution helps. It seems I've overestimated willing art talent on these boards. I hope I'm not left hanging. None yet. ;_; Thing is there's no AI to find parts of speech here (Microsoft word has enough problems), so nasty sentences are your frustration, not the game's. I had it set up that way for a while, but I figured I'm better off making a new "article" category just for them. Maybe I'll make the code open source and you do that eh?

Update Jan 12 The game is essentially done, but the game can afford more content and the atheistic refined. There are currently about 30 sentences, please donate some, even if you ditch the code formatting completely and just write the sentence with parts of speech. I'll do my best to consider everybody's comments. Play the game here (click) New title screen thanks to Gman. Old title screen Old screenshot Grammar Ninja is an educational game where the player identifies parts of speech in rapid succession. Correct answers help you advance; wrong ones blow up in your face. The game is modeled after Brain Age's CalculationsX20 exercise. Grammar Ninja is my final project for my Independent Study in Game Design. Currently the game is a work in progress and will be completed next week. I'm posting here in search of help and talent to make both the deadline and a quality product. You can play the game here (click). (ultimately all three modes will have 20 questions per run) The situation of the game is a follows: Programming: GOOD Grammar Ninja is a shining testament to my programming skill. All the code was written from scratch, the massive majority of which last week. Some features include Word objects, methods that manage them, and even a text formatting algorithm. Text fields are conscious of plural words, and provide helpful feedback when the player does well or poorly. It’s also flexible enough to include cut scenes (in the loosest sense of the word) before, during, and after gameplay. I wouldn’t consider my code quite professional, as there are small errors here and there and it isn’t exactly Object Oriented Programming, but overall I’m happy with my efforts. The engine is pretty much complete. Art/Asthetic: Weak You can probably tell from the screenshots alone that I can’t draw well. I need an artist(s) familiar with Flash that can draw anything (in Flash) from the following list. Don’t plan to talk to me before you draw, just draw it and send it over to my email (kwarp11 *at* gmail *dot* com) in either a .swf or .fla file (no bitmaps!). You can post it here too, whatever. Nothing needs to take more than 20 minutes. Detail can be as simple as a silhouette, or about as complex as what homestarrunner.com does. Loading Screen: background and/or loading animation Title Screen: background and/or silly distractions How to Play (optional): Anything. If art is provided here I’ll work with it. Credits (optional): Anything. If art is provided here I’ll work with it. Main Game: I have specific ideas here -Right before the game: Brain Age has a “3, 2, 1” countdown. I want an equivalent for Ninjas. Imagine a moment or silence before a generic ninja fight when both ninjas eye each other and silence and the wind blows by. -During the Game: I’m not sure if this will work, but between sentences I want quick cutscenes of ninjas in attack poses. So after the player completes a sentence, something like “KUNG-FU CHOP!” and an accompanying picture would zip by the screen, then the next sentence would load. -After the Game: If someone could make a background that can complement the current text formatting of the scoring screen that would be sweet. Ranks: When the player gets scored he/she is given a rank. Something like “Rice Grain” being the worst or “Grammar Ninja” for the best. I need 5 rank names and drawings. Pixel resolution is 180x125 or any shape that's smaller. The pixel resolution for the game is 560x315. The User Interface probably won’t change very much unless someone makes a suggestion. I think it’s so-so right now. Sound: Nonexistant No sound yet. Usa has graciously offered to compose a short theme song which I look forward to next week. As far as sound effects go, I have some problems. If anyone can provide the following I would greatly appreciate it: -Explosion -Correct “ping” -Incorrect “buzz” -Ninja fanfare, intros, etc. Content: 6 sentences Flash can’t accept external data from txt files in the way that I need it, so all the sentences the game uses must be created beforehand. It’s very easy for anyone to create a sentence: //Sentences are defined like this asen000 = new Array(new Word("Joe", "N"), new Word("is", "V"), new Word("hungry.", "ADJ")); If the formatting confuses you, don’t worry, you only need to worry about the stuff between the quotes (“”). It’s simplest to illustrate. new Word("The word you want to include", "The part of speech the word is”) The part of speech is an ALL CAPS abbreviation of the word. It MUST BE one of the following: Noun = N Verb = V Pronoun = PRO Adjective = ADJ Adverb = ADV Preposition = PREP Conjunction = CONJ Interjection = INT Article = ART The number of words in the sentence will be exactly the number of words you put in, separated by commas. To illustrate again: //separate each word by a comma, keep making as many as you like //hower it gets unreadable around 35 words new Array(word, word, word); I want at least 50 sentences each for the easy, medium, and hard modes, and there’s no way can do it alone in a week. Please please help me by contributing some sentences!!! As guidelines Easy questions have between 2-6 words Medium questions have between 6-15 words Hard questions have between 15-30 words Keep the content appropriate for all ages, quote whatever you want as long as it makes grammatical sense. If you want to add something like “~Ernest Hemmingway” make it one big word and label it’s part of speech “N”. No slurring words (don’t, won’t aren’t) or whatever it is. Please be accurate, or at very least review the accuracy of others. A BIG THANKS to anyone that helps out. ---------------------------------- Wow I just spent two hours typing this. <(@_@)>

IGN gave it the award "Best Game No One Bought". If you're the type to fly through games very quickly, you'll probably want to give Excite Truck a rental. If you're playing it concurrently with other games (I am) then buy it. It's really fun and even got my brother to play Wii. Excite Truck will probably be Wii's best racing game for a full year. Custom soundtracks ftw. <()>

Looks like vbulletein is still in its infancy stages here. I look forward to seeing how it evolves. <()>

Strangest thing I missed Bean on that list. >.> Most/all his art will be included.

My Wii still has had no problems whatsoever. I bought too many games (Zelda, Excite Truck, Monkey Ball, Elebits, Wii Sports, 5 VC games). I can't stop playing the damn console.

Read like 5 times.

I've unlocked the thread for feedback for the changes the art is undergoing. I'm pretty set on the project's direction, and a enraged post is not likely to change that as I've put a lot of thought into it. I do feel that thoughts and opinions are important nonetheless, so suggest away.

Stop baiting me! :3

Something like a stand-alone portable machine that generates holographics perhaps?

Seems like Wingless says I didn't prepare the question well. I'll do so next time. >.> It seems Steven Johnson has a pretty similar explanation to Raph Koster as to why videogames have mass appeal: videogames are full to the brim of readily available, clearly defined challenges and rewards. Rewards = feel good = fun. Yes Dhsu, epiphany.

The Dirty little secret of gaming is how much time you spend not having fun. You may be frustrated; you may be confused or disoriented; you may be stuck. When you put the game down and move back to the real world, you may find yourself mentally working through the problem you've been wrestling with, as though you've been worrying about a loose tooth. If this is mindless escapism, it's a strangely masochistic version. Who wants to escape into a world that irritates you 90 percent of the time? -Everything Bad is Good For You wingless, you are the last person I expected to outright dismiss this idea.

Seriously guys, this is a big issue. I've read books on gaming based on the assumption that games are fun. What if that isn't necessarily true? Here's what I do most of time in Zelda: -circling around the environment for solutions to dungeon puzzles/hidden items -frantically attacking enemies and not hurting them half the time -walking Those things lead to fun, but they aren't often in themselves.

90% of the time I play videogames I am confused, frustrated, or disoriented. Where does this whole games = fun idea come from?

Agreed. In general I don't think many 3rd parties really commit to Nintendo platforms at all. Look at the giant sea of 3rd-party garbage that is GBA. I suspect some of these problems were rooted in the anti-3rd-party Nintendo of old. Lately trend is starting to change with the DS, but many games are still poor-quality sports games or Nintendogs and Brain Age clones. I suppose the PS2 has it's sea of garbage too.

I don't like shooters, fighters, or sports games. Clearly the PSP isn't for me. ...I want Loco Roco.

^I don't think anyone's figured that out yet. @_@ Yes, basically for lazy/dumb people who don't know what emulation is and don't know how to burn a disc image. But emulating on consoles is extremely easy, and you can have entire romsets for free, rather than paying $5 or $10 a ROM. The ONLY benefit I can see for emulating on the Wii is feeling like you're not stealing anything. But you pretty much are. It would be like if I payed a ROM site $3 to download a ROM. How much of that money goes to the original developers? How much does Nintendo keep? How much gets paid to the actual people who programmed and created the game? Nintendo is just a middleman, selling other people's games for cash. It's simple and streamlined, but I just don't think it's worth paying for, especially since there is only a pathetic amount of games offered. From Nintendo's point of view, a CD rom with 300 NES ROMs burned on it should be sold for $1,500. Ridiculous. I don't think Nintendo ever set out to provide better emulation or quality pricing emulation or any of that. It seems the only excellence they strove for was in accessibility. In you words, Nintendo appeals to "lazy/dumb people". Don't underestimate their strength in numbers. It's funny. I've downloaded around 6 virtual console games already. A game like R-Type for example, I could probably easily set up on my computer within 5 minutes if I know where to look. On the other hand I'm not interested in setting up and managing a TG16 emulator and hunting a ROM site with the game down, and then have to deal with learning the emulator interface and button configuration just to play one game I might like. There it is a click away on the shop channel, ready to run on my Wii without any hassle. Of course I take it. The $8 price is pretty steep and I hate it, but downloading a VC game doesn't feel like I'm spending money. It's more like I'm depositing a fat chunk of money and slowly draining it with each VC game download. Nintendo's made it too easy to buy games, and my money's just floating away.

HOORAY! I got all the poes! Went to gamefaqs for the last four. Oh well... I found an awesome small detail: When the orcs shoot arrows at you, you can pick up ones that hit the ground and add them to your quiver. Crusing Hyrule Field is easily the best part of this game, and will keep me coming back to play for a good while yet.

Clearly, the goal here is to make registering as easy as possible for humans, and nigh-impossible for non-humans. Do I see some discrimination here? A wild goose chase of quizzes seem to be ruled out, as well as conventional methods.... good luck finding a solution guys.

<Party Pooper> I think you completely missed the point. It doesn't matter if something is technically possible when it comes to mass appeal. 3DO made 3D games technically possible long before Playstation or Nintendo 64, but at a $700 price tag it had extremely limited appeal. Napster was a free way to obtain music online, but was not simple or convenient, and it rarely yielded high-quality sound files. iTunes offered simplicity, convenience, and quality for a reasonable price, and has since taken over. Wii's Virtual console service does exactly what iTunes does. It offers an easy, simple way to obtain games, a convenient way to play them, and an authentic console experience. Those features appeal to an audience exactly opposite the from tech-savy computer gamer.