I have decided to return to the original goals and principles of the project.
First: that the most important function of the game and other project products and services is to make the student self-sufficient in Japanese as quickly as possible, capable of tackling the native-language materials they're interested in and extending their own skills through practice and use of reference works.
Second: that a worthwhile, but not critical, secondary function is to accelerate the progress of self-sufficient Japanese-language students toward native-like levels of knowledge and skill.
Third: due to the nature of software, it is unreasonable to expect or attempt to sell it with a fixed price, with an adversarial approach between the vendor (who wants to charge as much as he can get) and the buyer (who wants to pay as little as he get away with). Since any software can be copied, the buyer's payment is naturally voluntary. Therefore, customers are to be treated as patrons and supporters of the software developer, and should not be told how much to pay (although it is reasonable to encourage and reward more generous contributions).
Right now, I think it's really important to focus my efforts on the game itself, so I haven't made any revenue-model-related changes to the site yet, but these changes are coming:
The Free, Intro, and Core versions of Slime Forest Adventure will be replaced with Basic and Full versions.
The Basic version will be available for free, and will include content with the goal of making the student self-sufficient in their Japanese studies, including training in kana reading and the recognition of all gradeschool kanji. I would also particularly like to provide training in basic grammar, basic vocabulary, identification of the radical of each kanji, and kanji stroke counting, and have some online guides to choosing and using reference works, as well as choosing and acquiring reading material.
The Full version will still only be available to members who have contributed a total of over $25 (or who are currently Full/Core members, or are registered as Full/Core-level guests), and it will include additional content with the goal of accelerating their progress toward native-like levels of proficiency, including additional kanji recognition and readings training, and vocabulary building: material which should only be approached after mastering the Basic content.
The idea here is that people who are only casually interested in the game will not care about the Full-only content, while those who have completed enough of the Basic content to be interested in the Full version will have invested enough of their own time and effort and received enough of its benefits that $25 is small by comparison. For someone who really can't afford even that, it's always possible to pirate software (and this little one-man project is not going to be launching any filesharing legal witchhunts), so I think this is sufficiently gentle encouragement to make a substantial contribution.
Due to transaction costs, payments under $1 will not be recognized as contributions, but that will be the only minimum payment for Basic-level registration, to create an account on lrnj.com, join the Project LRNJ community, and make use of whatever member services I can provide (I would still like to get set up to provide at least player-data backups and server-side trainer settings optimization, although those are both relatively low priorities right now).
There will still be Plus and Gold registration levels. I do eventually want to work on non-educational games and educational games for other subjects, and Plus members will have access to these when I do them. The promise to Gold members is, as before, to produce a special limited edition hard copy of Slime Forest for them as a memento or collector's item, when there's a complete and well-polished product worth presenting in tangible form.
This isn't totally set in stone yet. Any suggestions, objections, or other thoughts? |
| Tue Oct 18 14:09:45 -0500 2011 |
Last comment at Thu Jul 26 09:00:50 -0500 2012
by William.
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Another thing I'd like to do in the future, along the lines of redoing the reading word lists and splitting off the truly obscure readings into an optional sidequest, is to replace the main training topic of Hard Mode (best-guess readings) with Japanese-language meaning keywords and maybe even have Japanese-language mnemonics for them and Japanese-language character dialog.
Then I'd have a vocabulary/grammar list for preparatory training, and I could work out a training program for this without reference to the English language (pictures / animations / little interactive scenes rather than explanations), and it could be "Japanese for anyone" rather than "Japanese for English-speakers".
Anyway, just some long-term thoughts. "Japanese for English-speakers" is easier, and I want to get good at that first.
Maybe the intermediate step of simply translating the English kanji keywords into Japanese and using that in Hard Mode or Normal Mode is a good near-term idea. I'll have to give that more consideration after I finish the story and get to work revising the reading word lists. |
| Sun Oct 16 10:55:13 -0500 2011 |
Last comment at Wed Oct 19 04:55:51 -0500 2011
by Darrell.
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The "skeleton world" rapid development plan just isn't working out. Figuring out what holes are both necessary and acceptable to leave in the world is trickier than just filling them properly as I go.
So what I'm doing now is catching up the reading word sidequests before extending the main storyline. I should have a release out shortly that completes the sidequests in the free version, and then to keep it all well-coordinated and consistent, it makes the most sense to do everything but the big finale in one release, although I might see an opportunity to do one intermediate release. |
| Thu Oct 13 18:03:20 -0500 2011 |
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Changed my mind. I'm going to finish the story without changing the reading word lists, and then make a new set of game modes with the new style of reading word lists, without removing the old ones.
I think it's an important principle to not take things away from the customer, even if you think you're providing something better, just in case you're wrong. |
| Wed Oct 05 10:55:27 -0500 2011 |
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So, the principle of the moment is "function before polish". I'm going to be roughing out the story first, leaving holes in the world, omitting gather quests and sidequests, focusing on hitting the key plot points and having all of the testing dungeons in place. Then I'll flesh out that skeleton of the world.
It's obvious to me now that I need to edit the reading word lists before adding the testing dungeons for them. The regular reading list needs to show at least two examples of each common reading, the special reading list must include all words of a particular reading (currently, if there are two or more words which use the same reading, usually only one is included), the words giving uncommon readings from either need to be separated into a third (totally optional) training system (on the clouds, perhaps), and any oddball hard-to-define words of little interest to the typical student remaining in the regular/special lists need to be replaced by more relevant ones. This might sound like a lot, but it's pretty straightforward, and I don't think it'll take more than a week.
So, first the kanji testing storyline, then the reading word list revisions, and then the reading word testing sideplots. Then Jenk's Adventure will be functionally complete, and I can start smoothing the rough edges and jazzing it up.
The polishing process might take a while, and probably won't be the only thing I'm working on. I intend for there to be a short prologue game, two parallel/overlapping storylines from other characters' viewpoints, and then a sequel party adventure. I also want to improve the social/educational features of lrnj.com and do some small, simple non-educational (or non-Japanese educational) games for practice and to possibly bring in some extra money to help fund development.
...and that's how the project roadmap looks to me today. We'll see how it goes. |
| Sat Oct 01 11:22:36 -0500 2011 |
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My customers are the best customers.
Thanks, guys. |
| Fri Sep 30 09:15:57 -0500 2011 |
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| Sorry, I will get around to finishing the story soon, but there were many glaring little easily-fixed faults that needed straightening out. |
| Sun Sep 25 17:25:32 -0500 2011 |
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| Build 117 is out, but I'm going to hold off on announcing it on the mailing list for a day or so while I do some more testing and watch for any reports of things that urgently need fixing from the first people who try it. |
| Sun Aug 21 15:55:49 -0500 2011 |
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As I end the "Set Your Own Price" sale, I'm going to revive the Intro/Core split. I'll be upgrading everyone's account to reflect this and not take away anyone's current priveleges, but there may be some temporary weirdness online.
From tomorrow on, there will be three versions of the game available for download: Free, Intro, and Full. The Intro version will contain only half of the kanji. The "Set Your Own Price" interface will continue to be in use, but payments under $20 will only get Intro access (Intro or Hat registration level), with further payment required to upgrade to Full access (Core and up).
I was hoping to release the completed first draft story tomorrow, but that'll take a few more days of work and I have some offline business to attend to. I've been struggling with problems of aesthetic consistency, incorporating content into a story that wasn't intended to include it, and the needs of new players vs. old ones, and decided to put out a simplified but complete version of the story first and then do a series of upgrades, remakes, and spin-offs, as I should have been doing from the start.
Anyway, I am just finishing this version of the story up, and it should be out within a week or two. Thanks for your patience through all the delays. |
| Tue Aug 31 12:32:18 -0500 2010 |
Last comment at Wed Sep 01 11:09:40 -0500 2010
by Darrell.
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Sorry for the lack of releases this month. I've had family visiting from the other side of the world, and spent it in semi-vacation mode.
Now I'm back 100% and aiming to finish the storyline as soon as possible. |
| Fri Jul 30 09:35:18 -0500 2010 |
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I decided that with the reading sample words picked, it's a good time to straighten out the synonyms and alternates for the kanji keywords, mainly to reduce frustration for people who start playing with some previous knowledge of kanji.
I should also go over the readings sample words and try to eliminate cases where I've included uncommon readings for kanji by choosing uncommon readings for words (I don't think there are many, but I wasn't being careful about avoiding them either). Perhaps I should also add support for alternate readings. The lack is not generally a problem, but sticks out like a sore thumb in the first few "special word readings", plus I have got to sort that out to add the
unhinted readings to Hard Mode (in the absence of context, the hints serve to distinguish between words that are written the same way, but have different readings to fit different meanings).
This should be done today or tomorrow, but with other fairly simple work planned, I'm not sure I'll make a separate release of it. The sidequest playground won't take long either, and I should really be doing less releases and better testing of each release. |
| Mon Jun 28 13:12:04 -0500 2010 |
Last comment at Mon Jun 28 18:29:15 -0500 2010
by Darrell.
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| Build 109 is out. The readings training is pretty much done now, although I'm probably going to be tweaking it bit by bit over time. |
| Sat Jun 26 19:17:00 -0500 2010 |
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(repost from mailing list)
(note: the windows version of Build 107 was broken, but fixed in Build 108, released later the same day)
Build 107
This release includes cave and ocean training battles, for onyomi and kunyomi in response to the Japanese word and its English meaning/hint. Since katakana and hiragana are required to tackle these subjects, they are also included.
The kunyomi training has been around for a while as "special word readings" training, so it is finished aside from some gradual polishing up. The onyomi training is new and only has about half of the total number of words needed to cover every reading - I had originally planned to mix in the "best guess readings" (one per kanji) so I only picked out very common words and words covering non-"best guess" onyomi. I plan to complete it later this month.
I also spent time on, but didn't release, tightly focused lists of katakana loan-words, hiragana vocabulary, and grammar patterns, intended as introductions to using katakana, hiragana, and text entry. Originally, they were supposed to come between the kana training and the readings, but in the end I decided they were too large of obstacles to getting started on the readings training, and should be available in parallel rather than in sequence. They should also appear in the game later this month.
Sorry again for the lack of a storyline extension, but the game has to grow a bit sideways before it can go forward. |
| Fri Jun 25 09:38:30 -0500 2010 |
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I'm going to be adding the grammar patterns and verb forms to Easy mode, so between common words and word endings, I think it covers about 1/3 to 4/5 of what's said in ordinary Japanese sentence (depending on the topic and who's speaking or writing).
Just taking the above sentence for an example, the things that don't fall in the the category of what I'd cover in an Easy Mode for English are, perhaps: "add", "grammar", "pattern", "verb", "form", "mode", and "Japanese".
If you master the stuff you'll be able to learn in the complete Easy mode, then a typical long Japanese sentence (in a furigana-marked or book), might read like this:
"I'm going to be XXXing the XXXXXXX XXXXXXs and XXXX XXXX to Easy XXXX, so between common words and word endings, I think it covers about 1/3 to 4/5 of what's said in ordinary XXXXXXXX."
This is my current plan for the book club: get everybody to play Easy Mode so they don't feel lost, then make trainers for each book to teach most of the XXXXs, and explain some idioms, cultural references, and complicated expressions here and there in the book.
Eventually, I want to split the book club into 2 or 3 levels: all-furigana-marked manga (beginner), manga and light novels without much furigana (intermediate), and serious books for adult reading (advanced). |
| Tue Apr 08 06:00:26 -0500 2008 |
Last comment at Tue Apr 29 00:53:28 -0500 2008
by estar23.
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Based on member feedback, I've made some adjustments to the plan.
Normal will be purely about kanji recognition. The main Easy mode will be all about hiragana: recognition, pronunciation rules, basic vocabulary, and basic grammar. Hard will be purely about kanji readings.
There will also be a prologue mode with a shorter story for katakana. |
| Fri Feb 29 07:02:49 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Fri Feb 29 13:05:53 -0600 2008
by Inari.
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I think I've settled my design and development plan for Slime Forest Adventure.
At first, I'm going to build it with three game modes: Easy, Normal, and Hard. You'll play the same adventure in each mode. This is simply to save development time while still having a structure for all of the curriculum materials.
The Normal curriculum will be based on character recognition, with an emphasis on kanji recognition. Hard will be about learning all of the kanji readings, learning to type, and learning to use a dictionary. Easy will be for pre-kanji training, starting out with an emphasis on pronunciation, then giving you some easy starter vocabulary, grammar words, and forms of words.
When the original adventure is nicely polished (I might well redo it from the start after finishing it once), and the curricula are complete, I'll keep this adventure (Jenk's Adventure) for Normal mode, and make new adventures for Easy and Hard modes (Kale's and Lily's Adventures - I've got stacks of notes built up for all of these adventures).
It'll still be an option to play whatever game mode you like with whatever curriculum you want (in case you only played Easy with Jenk's Adventure, and you need to study Normal, but want to see Kale's Adventure, for instance).
In parallel, I will be developing Slime Forest World as a game without a single cohesive plot, just a lot of separate modules. These will be used for the book club and possibly other subscription-based content. Eventually, I'd like to add an online aspect, and gradually evolve it into an MMO with some offline leveling capabilities.
I want SFA as a product I can complete, and SFW as a structure that can accept perpetual upgrades to continue serving students of Japanese at any level. |
| Sun Feb 10 21:09:23 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Tue Feb 19 14:41:10 -0600 2008
by William.
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Filler training's in.
I put less in than I originally intended, but since the filler is supposed to change as you advance through the storyline, I figure it's better to just put in the first two levels for now, so advanced players can try all of the filler types as I introduce them, rather than just the higher levels.
The idea of filler is not really to be effective training, but just easy and interesting stuff that helps you get more comfortable with the Japanese language.
Maybe you'll pick something up, maybe you won't, but hopefully you'll be interested and a little distracted between main-topic reinforcement events, to help force your brain to use long-term storage for the things you need to remember, instead of cycling it around in your conscious mind where you can easily forget it. |
| Wed Feb 06 11:59:39 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Fri Feb 08 21:05:25 -0600 2008
by Togii.
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Random grumbling moved back to the nanoblog, where it can be enjoyed by all the internets and routinely deleted.
Currently back to working on Slime Forest. The book club set-up was taking too long, and Slime Forest has got to be first priority. |
| Sun Feb 03 16:11:07 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Sun Feb 03 17:52:17 -0600 2008
by Darrell.
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I was going to just set up PayPal links for the book club subscriptions with a brief explanation, then get back to work on Slime Forest, and leave the rest of the book club stuff for later, but once I got into it, I figured I might as well set it all up properly.
So I'm still working on that.
In retrospect, I probably should have stuck to the original plan, but this has got to be done fairly soon anyway to support basic things like discussing which book we should read first. |
| Sat Feb 02 00:29:36 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Sat Feb 02 12:53:48 -0600 2008
by Togii.
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New bug fix release is building.
Next, I'll set up the book club subscriptions.
After that, I'm going to put in the filler training, so the mushiken enemies don't show up.
I think I can get this much done tonight.
After that, I'll do a polish release to fix up the many missing little things such as the red-flashing low hit points, progress counters, and level-ups. |
| Wed Jan 30 20:02:52 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Thu Jan 31 02:48:39 -0600 2008
by Darrell.
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| Whee! More bugs! |
| Wed Jan 30 18:22:34 -0600 2008 |
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Release!
This one is really just a framework release, to build momentum. I've got the build working, and the game is playable, but it doesn't have much of the stuff I've made to put into it.
With this, though, I should be able to put out new versions as easily as I was doing demos. |
| Wed Jan 30 07:43:07 -0600 2008 |
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Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs.
I hate bugs! |
| Sat Jan 19 04:47:05 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Mon Jan 28 21:35:52 -0600 2008
by daemonire.
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Pretty smooth progress yesterday and today so far, but I'm kind of distracted by the Book Club idea.
I am really excited about this plan as a way to offer a complete service for developing Japanese literacy, rather than just giving people one tool.
I've always felt awkward about trying to sell people an incomplete product. By making it an evolving product, which is designed and improved around the needs of students who are subscribing to sort of online class and studying *known* books, I can make people a fair offer, and promote the service without my conscience bothering me.
I mean, "Teach me to read Japanese!" is an incomplete order that leaves me fumbling around in the dark. It's no coincidence that I've struggled to define the curriculum beyond learning to recognize the mere letters in which Japanese is written. "Teach me to read these specific Japanese books!" is a finite, well-defined request, and something I can work directly toward and achieve.
I think this is by far a superior business plan, as well as a superior system for helping people learn Japanese. "Software as a product" is outdated and never worked that well. "Software as part of a service" is much more natural and reasonable.
Anyway, I'm trying to put it out of my mind and focus on the release, but it is so exciting!
Now my main motivation to get the release out is so I can start offering the Book Club (and Reading Club - same service, half price, only you have to acquire the books on your own) subscriptions. This is going to be so much fun! |
| Tue Jan 15 15:29:10 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Tue Feb 12 22:55:21 -0600 2008
by Inari.
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w00t
Cave battles work properly in the new battle engine.
I figured out the details of the record file conversion, too.
So now there's nothing but a bit of arranging tables, testing, tuning, and packing for release.
Geez... that cave battle issue took the better part of 5 days, when I thought I had already built those capabilities into the system.
And... I'm not going to say anything to jinx it this time.
Now I sleep. |
| Mon Jan 14 05:32:39 -0600 2008 |
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If you're wondering about the big hold-up, it is mostly due to a couple of things I thought would be no trouble at all.
One is the cave battles. I discovered that, the way I want to do them, I have to go through all of the code for the new battle sytem and trainer and integrate the concept of a "test enemy."
The other is making the new game an upgrade from the old game. The new game uses a new record file format, and records different information in different ways. It's proving troublesome to translate the data properly.
Once I get these things straightened out, I'll be able to do daily releases. There are so many things I want to add. I could easily do daily demo releases now, but it's important to fit the new functionality into the persistant structure of the game. |
| Sun Jan 13 15:33:00 -0600 2008 |
Last comment at Fri Jan 18 17:48:56 -0600 2008
by HyperHacker.
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| Okay, here is a place for my ramblings and grumblings as I work on Slime Forest. |
| Sat Jan 12 12:52:14 -0600 2008 |
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