Introducing: Learning Languages Through Video Games

[furrykef]

Since I found it unlikely that a better name will come along in the immediate future, yesterday I registered the site as http://www.lltvg.com. By now the domain should probably work for everyone, so update your bookmarks. (The nfshost.com URL will probably still work for a long time, but it was never meant to be the site's public URL, and it will stop working if I ever change hosts.)

Also, I've got all the text for Buster Busts Loose! set up to be translated, though there's still a significant portion left to be done.

[SakeIt2Me]

I just want to let you know I already love your site. What a great idea! On a related note, I'm a fan of the wipeout series myself, and although there is no Japanese used at all in the game itself, a fair number of kana and kanji were scattered throughout the environments and such. I look forward to deciphering these someday. (Small goal.)

[Txkun]

Just wanted to drop by and say: "Great work!"
I like that you don't just translate but cover some grammar points as you go.
This can really help to get a better grasp of the language.

About the name I was thinking about a shorter "Learn Japanese by Games".
LJG ? Does it sounds bad? In italian it is a funny sound like... eljeigi

[furrykef]

Some exciting stuff going on here:
* I got my friend Kitsune Sniper to provide me a dump of the text from Lupin III: Pandora no Isan (an NES game). Since he led a translation project for the game, his dump included translations as well (though I'm not entirely sure of their quality, and they need to be adapted to help illustrate the Japanese vocabulary/grammar anyway). I've already formatted the text for further work.
* Metal Gear for MSX has been formatted for translation, and I did some translations already. (The infamous NES version of the game probably uses the same text, too.)
* Similarly, I formatted the text from Star Fox and translated a bit of it. This should be much less daunting than translating Metal Gear, at least.

[furrykef]

I decided to add the famous intro from Zero Wing. (It was a quick job since I could copy and paste it all from Wikiquote.) Amusingly enough, the original Japanese had a typo as well.

[phreadom]

I had been thinking about doing a logo for the page, but when I saw your new one it inspired me to do a variation on it. I hope you don't mind?

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Nothing fancy... just something to make it look a bit less "default theme"ish.

[furrykef]

Hoops is done except for one bit of text I couldn't figure out.

I had been thinking about doing a logo for the page, but when I saw your new one it inspired me to do a variation on it.

Well, I can't say I was expecting a custom logo so soon, let alone without even asking. But yeah, it looks nice. Pretty much what I would have done with it if I weren't so busy/lazy. The only trouble with it, though, is I think it stands out a bit too much... seems weird to have everything all grey and then there's this big colorful logo in the corner. It draws the eye when it should be easy to ignore. Maybe if we replaced the blue sky with black, but kept the rest? Or if we had that headerbg in faded color instead of just grey?

Also, I was actually thinking of having a rotating logo, so if you had any other designs in mind, feel free.

I'm not really going to work on the site's theming for a while, since I'd rather focus on content, but if you want to take a shot at it, by all means, go nuts...

I have to admit it'd suck for you to put a ton of effort into something only for me to switch away from MediaWiki entirely, though... (not planning on that at the moment, though...)

In other news, I'm trying to figure out how to put a forum on this thing -- one which automatically gives you an account if you register for the wiki. There's no good MediaWiki/PHP integration, it seems. There's a mod to allow MediaWiki to authenticate with phpBB, but I want to do it the other way around. There was an old phpBB mod from a couple years back, but I tried it and the damn thing came up with mysterious SQL errors. Then I tried a forum that's built directly into MediaWiki, but I really didn't like it. Blegh.

Oh yeah, there was also a bit of a hiccup earlier while I was workin' on the site (trying to fix a technical MediaWiki problem). Hope it didn't interfere with your work, TJack.

- Kef

[phreadom]

Well, that was the main reason I was putting it off. I didn't want to put time into something that might just be a waste if you decided to change the back end of the site to something else (which you had already said you might do).

I tweaked it a bit more to make it stand out less... any better?

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[furrykef]

Hmm... I'm thinking maybe we could compromise and give Mario his standard colors (maybe slightly muted, I dunno) but keep the other changes. In any case I need to go to bed now, so I guess in effect I'll sleep on it... ^^;

I think at this point I'm confident I'll probably be sticking to MediaWiki for at least a year. It's not as good as the system I'm imagining, but so far it has proven good enough, and, realistically, with the other constraints on my time, it will take at least that long for me to come up with something better. (Hell, so far it's been taking me longer than that to get around to converting my personal website to Wordpress, and that's considerably simpler.) So I don't think you need to hold back on theming just 'cause of that.

- Kef

[phreadom]

How about this?

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[TJack]

That is some great work, Phreadom! The last one one is the best, I think.

Oh yeah, there was also a bit of a hiccup earlier while I was workin' on the site (trying to fix a technical MediaWiki problem). Hope it didn't interfere with your work, TJack.

Naw, I must have been on at a different time. I like the changes you did with the dialogue with the gray, it looks really good.

[furrykef]

phreadom - that's probably good enough for now. Thanks. Do you know anything about ROM hacking, BTW? Getting some text dumps of games would be good. Since you're already technically inclined, I could teach you how to do basic hacking if you don't know already.

Naw, I must have been on at a different time.

Actually I noticed (through Recent Changes) that you were making edits while I was playing around with it. Though the actual disruption was only for a few seconds, I think. When I noticed that, I stopped messing around with it. (The other reason I stopped messing around was I was @#!!* fed up with it by that point anyway. ^^;)

I like the changes you did with the dialogue with the gray, it looks really good.

Thanks. My main concern is that it takes up a bit more vertical space now than it did before, although that may not necessarily be a bad thing. But the old table format was pretty ugly in any case, so I knew I needed to take care of that ASAP...

I'm also hoping I'll get the LLTVG forum set up soon so we can hold discussion like this over there instead of cluttering this place up with it.

- Kef

[phreadom]

That is some great work, Phreadom! The last one one is the best, I think.

ありがとうございます Just glad I could help on a project I think is really neat.

phreadom - that's probably good enough for now. Thanks. Do you know anything about ROM hacking, BTW? Getting some text dumps of games would be good. Since you're already technically inclined, I could teach you how to do basic hacking if you don't know already.

I haven't done any before, but feel free to send me a PM with the details and I could go ahead and give it a shot.

[furrykef]

We now have a forum. To register, just register for the wiki; the username and password will be carried over automatically.