Grammar Ninja

[KWarp]

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. <(@_@)>

[Ab56 v2 aka Ash]

Please answer this question truthfully:

What the friggity?

[DarkeSword]

Can is not an adjective. It doesn't describe a person, place, or thing. Can is an auxiliary verb, meaning "to be able to."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/can

[Darth Lime]

Can is not an adjective. It doesn't describe a person, place, or thing. Can is an auxiliary verb, meaning "to be able to."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/can

Pwnt.

On a serious note, pretty good stuff. Educational games are making a comeback, with BrainAge and Big Brain Academy for the DS. I would love to see this one out for the DS. I would to be able to correctly find verbs just by reading a road sign or in a excerpt from my textbook. Good job.

[SirChadlyOC]

So if I wrote the sentence, "Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like an orange," would that completely b0rk your game?

[Steben]

Can is not an adjective. It doesn't describe a person, place, or thing. Can is an auxiliary verb, meaning "to be able to."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/can

Actually, the real issue here, is that "cannot" shouldn't have a space in it.

"Pigs cannot fly." would be more appropriate. Although you'd probably want to avoid that sentence entirely, as cannot is a verb and adverb combined.

ADDENDUM:

More issues. The first sentence I made up doesn't work well.

"John likes to listen to video game music."

The problem with this sentence is that the first "to" is not a preposition - it's part of the infinitive "to listen". Also, if I were to write "John likes listening to video game music," then "listening" would be functioning as a gerund, not a verb. Also also, "video" and "game" are both functioning as a single adjective on the noun "music", which is kind of confusing.

Of course, the obvious solution is to avoid such weird sentences. It was just something I noticed.

ADDENDUM DOS:

Alright, I have one sentence:

Steven often sleeps during English class.

new Array(new Word("Steven" , "N"),new Word("often","ADV"),new Word("sleeps","V"),new Word("during","PREP"),new Word("English","ADJ"),new Word("class.","N"))

Of course, this sentence is kind of weird, because "English" is a noun being used as an adjective. It was weirder, until I removed the "his" before "English". "His" is a possessive pronoun, which functions as an adjective.

Another issue that comes up is that articles are adjectives by definiton. So if the instructions tell the user to find all adjectives, does it count articles as adjectives too?

[The Damned]

You should make another version called Grammar Nazi. Instead of throwing stars, you use little swastik...

Maybe that was a little too much.

[Steben]

You should make another version called Grammar Nazi. Instead of throwing stars, you use little swastik...

Maybe that was a little too much.

I was actually disappointed that he didn't do this.

I can see it now, you go to delis and banks across Germany, correcting people's grammar. If they mess up, you send them to Auschwitz.

[linkspast]

So if I wrote the sentence, "Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like an orange," would that completely b0rk your game?

or, I had a weak back a week back.

[Barnsalot]

Aw, this is awesome. I remember when you posted about this game before.

...And I don't have any sentences to contribute. :/

Good luck with it, though.

[Scufo]

He deserted his dessert in the desert.

[V___]

You should make another version called Grammar Nazi. Instead of throwing stars, you use little swastik...

Maybe that was a little too much.

heheheh

Cool game, though what other ranks are there apart from ninja? I played several times, getting adjusted times from 0:05 to 1:37, and no errors to max errors, and every time I got ninja rank...

[SirChadlyOC]

or, I had a weak back a week back.

My point is that when defining "flies," it would operate as both a verb and a noun in the same sentence. Furthermore, "like" is a preposition in one case and a verb in another. I figured this would cause SYNTAX ERROR: GAME = LOSE!! or something equally frustrating.

[KWarp]

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.

Cool game, though what other ranks are there apart from ninja?

None yet. ;_;

My point is that when defining "flies," it would operate as both a verb and a noun in the same sentence. Furthermore, "like" is a preposition in one case and a verb in another. I figured this would cause SYNTAX ERROR: GAME = LOSE!! or something equally frustrating.

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.

Another issue that comes up is that articles are adjectives by definiton. So if the instructions tell the user to find all adjectives, does it count articles as adjectives too?

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.

You should make another version called Grammar Nazi. Instead of throwing stars, you use little swastik...

Maybe that was a little too much.

Maybe I'll make the code open source and you do that eh?

[Barnsalot]

He deserted his dessert in the desert.

That's seriously a good one. Throw in a lot of your-you're, there-their-they're, then-than sort of words too. My gosh, so many people get those wrong.

[D-Lux]

You should make another version called Grammar Nazi. Instead of throwing stars, you use little swastik...

Maybe that was a little too much.

I loled irl.

[DrumUltimA]

now i know what an article is! Thanks grammar ninja!

[RJG]

I would so play this game on my Wii if it was released.

P.S. Please release it.

[KWarp]

I would so play this game on my Wii if it was released.

P.S. Please release it.

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.

[Steben]

I was thinking about this earlier today. If I wanted to play a game called Grammar Ninja, I'd probably be wanting to do two of my favorite things.

1) Correcting people's grammar.

2) Throwing shurikens at people with poor grammar.

If you really want to get on the ball with this, I think it'd be cool if there was a mode where people pop up and say sentences with a grammatical error. In order to kill them, you have to first select the correct shuriken from your stock (split infinitive? misplaced modifier? capitalization error?) and then drag it to the appropriate phrase in the sentence where the error was made. If you select the wrong shuriken, it bounces off the target, and if you select the wrong part of the sentence, they dodge the shuriken.

[Usa]

Yeah, that or a mode where you can actually lose the game, by making too much mistakes in one game or something...maybe only giving you limited amount of shuriken or something. It would be much more of a challenge then, compared to the rating system right now. Make the hardest level really a challenge, even for your English teacher!

[KWarp]

Good suggestions, but unfortunately that's way out of my scope in terms of time, talent, and the way the game is coded. If you want to program a Grammar Textbook's worth into the game once the code goes open-source, be my guest.

Grammar Ninja will hopefully be done on Thursday. Gman's made some great drawings, Usa has made great themesongs, and my English teacher has made great sentences. Overall we have a quality product for the simple purpose it aimed to serve. I've personally put around 45 hours into the game by now.

[Devyn]

I have a meeting to attend in a few minutes, but I can't wait to try this out. Your last game was great, although I can't remember what it's called.

[KWarp]

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.

[L4r3]

Holy crap. That's a lot of improvement over the one you posted previously. Very nice to have had help with the art and music/sfx.