How to learn Japanese the nerdy way (like a boss)

Japanese... this language has fascinated me for so long, the way it sounds, the beauty of its writing, love it or hate it it's hard to deny its usefulness at the least.

So for those who are unlucky and never got the opportunity to study this in formal schooling or even for those of you who are indeed lucky enough to be doing this at school etc then lets dig in!

For all my fellow nerds out there Japanese is probably one of the most accessible and indeed useful languages out there! Want to watch your anime in subs without having to read? Better learn Japanese. Want to read imported game manuals or pre production game info? Again you are going to need to get a basic grasp. 

So what are some of the ways you can learn easily just by being your nerdy self you ask? Well believe it or not there are heaps of things you can do that will both passively and actively boost your learning of this amazing language. 

Anime: This is obvious to most people that watch anime but you really can start absorbing words without even knowing it just by watching anime. Language experts often say the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it and for those of us that can't afford a trip to Japan anime is pretty much the next best thing.  With so many anime out there anyone can find something they like. So if your into anime already great! Keep watching and watch in Sub (Subtitles) and not Dub. If you haven't watched anime then give it a try, from love stories to adventure to space robots I promise there is an anime that will interest you out there. Again here watching it Japanese with subtitles is key. I myself have been watching anime in sub for years and can pick out and remember a tonne of words with no effort put in on my part! (Stuff like, always, everyone, dream, white, damn, I love you, I am, etc). Granted this is no substitute for actually studying it but boosting both your comprehension of sentence structure,  words and phrases with no actual work involved is a pretty sweet pay off for sitting down and watching some amazing stories. 

Ok you say so I can start to get a really basic grasp just by watching cartoons that's pretty neat and all but what I can do that is nerdy to actually study it? 

Well here are several nerdy things you can do with the help of word charts of Japanese Kanji for both Katakana and Hiragana. 

1. Pokémon Names: Have you ever wonder traded your Pokémon? Got some Japanese ones? Cool use the sheets to figure out the names of the Pokémon and the original Trainer! (write it down and keep a book) See if every now and then you can read them without using the sheet from memory!

2. Imported Games: If you have any Japanese imports use the sheets to try and figure out bits of the manual or game. (again writing it in a book can be helpful)

3. Pre-release game info:  If you love games  and the studio is releasing info before the release you can again use the charts to look up what the characters used actually spell so you can figure out what that boss is going to be and what the moves could be ahead of release!  A YouTuber Gaijin Goombah actually has a mini-series of videos on doing exactly this!

4. Last but not least you can use your internet skills! This may sound like a bit of a no-brainer but the internet is actually pretty jam packed with sites that will help you learn Japanese from Kanji sheets like the ones linked above to actual courses and lessons .

So there you have it folks! Ways to start or boost your leaning of a language just by being your fantastic nerdy self! 

Hope you enjoyed this article and as always if you want to fling me some pocket change so I can keep blogging you can donate via paypal to kara_mad@yahoo.co.uk all donations are loved and greatly appreciated. That is also the email you can get me on if you want to suggest content for me to blog about!

Minecraft Adventures: Pixelmon Mod ( Poke Frontier Sever) + Mini Reveiw

So I haven't been posting much on the blog lately (don't worry content is coming) ... the reason is I was gifted a copy of Minecraft. 

This game is unreal. Most people who don't live in a cave will get what I am talking about here its like Lego, you can build anything and the only limit is you. (Also a lot less pricey and cant be used as a booby-trap, Lego + feet = pain am I right?)

So I decided to instal a mod called Pixelmon that I heard a lot about. For anyone that likes Pokemon and owns mine craft I would check it out.

Brief mini review of Pixelmon: As I tend to do reviews here I thought it apt to do a mini review of the mod itself. Anyone who likes Pokemon will most likely get a kick out of this mod. The craftables the mod adds have really sensible recipes and look very nice, the models are nice looking and still blend well into the original game. The Pokemon models are on the whole very nice and there are some really nice nodds to fan cannon in the mod (cloning Mew gets Mewtwo but fail and get a Ditto) which long time Pokemon fans will really appreciate. The mod also has a dedicated wiki which is super helpful and the mod itself is fairly easy to instal. It can be a little buggy at times but it is being constantly updated, worked on and fixed. On the whole its a very well put together mod. If you wanna play a pokemon game but always longed for an MMO experience and love mine craft then this is your dream mod. Get it and find a server.

This brings me onto the more shameless plug bit of this post. So in the time I haven't been posting its because I followed my own advice.

I found a server and became a helper. I play on a pretty good Pixelmon sever called Poke Frontier (pokefrontier.nn.pe:25565) It's a community server with people on the whole being really friendly and helpful and also coming from all over the world! We have both Kanto and Johto maps that are pretty accurate and well built and also the gym challenge for both regions. The Gyms and the Elite four are all real people which makes it a tough but enjoyable challenge, also its totally optional. There are also drop parties and quizzes and Pokemon races held from time to time too which keeps things fun and interesting. Also a big draw for the server is that you have plenty of space to build either a faction base with all your friends or just carve out a little spot all to yourself. 

So come and join it if you think its your kind of thing! 

Now I'm going to show off my base and hopefully get you fired up to join in! 

Have a look at the awesome stuff I have made and the Pokemon I have caught, come and join in. The server even has a Youtube Channel so check it out!

Logo

I am working on some free logo design for a friends pet project.
So far I have made the first demo logo and we will go from there with her feedback. :)

Her basic brief was that she wanted a logo that was 'a bit retro a bit chic and a bit geeky' for 'ChiQ GeeQ PhyiQ' which is a pet project of hers (custom geeky clothing and accessories) she also wanted something mainly typography (font) based.

This was the first sample so I decided to empathize the Q as the tying factor with a diamond for its references to quality and geeky connections (such as Minecraft) I then decided to have each of the words reflect their themes and emphasize that the brand is a little bit different.

RPG Maker XP Adventures (Troll Game) Update2

Ok so only a little update but I felt I would like to share the work I have done...

So apparently waterfalls in caves are not allowed to have nice bubbling endings to them.... :( I searched Google high and low to see if anyone made a custom waterfall autotile but apparently I am the only nutter that wants a lot of caves in their games...

So I was left with the only option of making one (or editing the grassy waterfall to brown pixel by pixel)

I would like to share this so no one has to go through hours of unnecessary pixel work themselves.

One fully working cave waterfall auto tile. Feel free to use in commercial and non-commercial games but please do credit (me) Nights-Rune. :)

RPG Maker XP Adventures (Troll Game) Update1

Ok so really exciting first update! Wooo....

I am working on a game about a young Troll who leaves her tribe wanting to explore the wider world. (Nope no plot spoilers here!)

So far I have been mainly working on making sprites for all the Trolls (who have long ears with fluff and tails with a fluffy tuft) and also on the MASSIVE custom tile set needed to make the Tribe's home in the caves.

Also a lot of map making has been the focus so far (because Troll tribes are very communal there are no doors or truly separate hosing so its one HUGE map for just the inside of her home)

I really like the style of RPG Maker XP. Its graphics may be a little retro but they are clean and quite pretty with a slight anime vibe to the stylization. (The above picture includes a fully animated Troll blacksmith - a sprite edited from one landofshadows produced)

I have so far animated all the fires (Trolls are really into fire) so that torches, fire places and fire pits all move as they should, which takes a long time on a massive map with many sources of light. I have made the cave screens a little bit darker than the outside but since Trolls have brilliant night vision it would not make sense if it were pitch black.

I am at a stage now where I can refine the map and add in people to make it an imersive world. So I am now spriting Trolls like mad (which is mainly adding ears and tails to original sprites) and because I want a really deep and believable world it means making a lot of non essential characters.

Note for other users of RPG Maker XP: This game is not going to be used for commercial purposes as it is my first game, as such I am using a lot of other people's source materiel from the web. I am putting together an extensive credits so that I can give people proper thanks for their work. If you do at any point see any of your stuff please let me know what it is and what name you want to be credited as! I have tried to be really thorough in my search for who to attribute work to but sometimes I haven't been able to the find the creator!  On a related note any of my edited sprites are free to use in any non commercial game, if you want to use them please credit it to Nights-Rune. Thanks so much and keep being the awesome community that you are!

I will be posting more updates on the progress of the game when interesting and non spoiler type things happen so please stay tuned and thanks for reading!

RPG Maker XP Adventures

I was in two minds about weather to blog about this or not but I decided I would. I have recently brought myself a program called RPG maker XP which I hope to use to create games. I have also signed up to a community for game devs to learn and get involved with other games. (link here for people who want it)

I have decided to showcase the work I am doing on my game and on other projects. So stay tuned for more updates.

To start I am showing off the art assets that I made for a horror project called deep within the mind (which has been shelved for now sadly)

It is only a title screen and some buttons but I am fairly pleased with how they turned out.

Interview With Adrian Corker (About Copyright)

Interview with Adrian Corker: - 26/01/2012

Associate Lecturer School of Humanities and Performing Arts (ALD) (Faculty of Arts (ALD))

Interviewer: Holly C
Interviewee: Adrian Corker

Holly: Do you think that copyright poses a threat on participatory culture or participatory culture poses a threat on copyright - if so, how so?

Adrian: By participatory culture you mean people being able to get involved with creators of original work?

Holly: Yeah, the whole culture that’s being spawned from the Internet; the making, sharing, not just passively consuming, actively wanting to be a part of it…

Adrian: Yeah, it does, obviously I mean if you take the kind of old media model it’s not - it doesn’t have a way of making money out of that. Participatory culture accepts rationalizing it as some kind of promotional device – which means that they’ve fought it right from the off as opposed to other industries like the gaming industry which obviously understands a bit more about new media, and the music industry tried as hard as possible in criminalizing its consumers  - in doing that they have kind of devalued what they do really, so if you push that model what the old media is trying to do, it could …But with the Internet the cat’s out of the bag, you’re never going to be able to stop it, and there are attempts to do that at the moment. I think most people who make work and who are artists understand the benefits of participatory culture – everyone Facebooks and Tweets now (well except for me, I don’t ) and people use it as a means of building up networks and connections and getting people to be aware of what they do, and people give away things for free in order to get exposure, so most artists are much more pragmatic about it than the business. But the business doesn’t deal in pragmatism, business is geared to make money and they have formulas - they don’t like to stray from the formulas because it sends their spreadsheets into chaos. Hopefully there will be a balance struck – that’s what we’ve always hoped for. At the moment there is too much  - sort of old media versus new media - there’s a battle going on between them, and people who make content- are the kind of victims of both, and in a way both have got it slightly wrong. I don’t believe in everything being free – like if you go in a supermarket – we’re culturally conditioned to understand that food isn’t free, it’s a resource. I don’t see how things created by human beings using time, expertise, energy and resources should be given for free just because we can now digitize the content and spread it on the internet, so you know new media hasn’t got it totally right – I love the innovation of the new media but its also – you know- we’re needing? to invent new models which will be able to give artists sustainable livings, and old media - what the old media’s based on is a – servant relationship which is – you sign to them – you cannot work for anyone else – so that’s obviously the eighteenth/seventeenth century model – so there’s huge room for some pragmatic shift that would serve everyone.

Holly: Yeah. In light of the recent events where do you stand on the whole SOPA / PIPA debate?

Adrain: It’s the same I think. Like I said it’d old media versus new – they’re fighting for their own basic new business models or old versus new business models and you know – I think artists need to be protected. I don’t think iTunes or Apple or – a lot of new media giants – you know - Google – they have the same inherent moral problems in different areas as the old ones. Privacy, totalitarian dominance of the markets  - this idea that new media is good and old media is bad is just too simplistic and there’s problems with both, the prob with that bill is like a lot of old media companies who lobbied Washington particularly Hollywood, have convinced Washington of their own importance – of how much money they bring in - which I think has been vastly overrated?  - according to what I’ve read – Hollywood don’t bring in as much as the figures suggest but it’s how they account their money? There’s an accounting quirk in how they account the money they generate – they’ve over inflated their worth to the economy. Vastly. And in doing that, you know, probably because they’re all going to the same parties – they’ve got Washington’s ear – and obviously their fighting is very Draconian – sort of bill – fighting to have it implemented. I don’t agree with it, but then I don’t agree with just letting everything sort of float about – I mean, in fifty years time copyright might not exist  - but there’s peoples livings relying on it at the moment and you cant just suddenly overnight sort of cut it all off – which is also potentially happening - well it is happening – peoples incomes have been shredded to pieces in the last five years. So –

Me: So do you think the copyright laws need to be changed and updated to accommodate the - for the Internet?

Adrian: Well yeah – the problem is that – yeah – I do  - you’re getting into a whole thing now where the copyright laws as they exist they’re about a certain time where you own stuff-  a lot of the body of work that’s worth money is now running into the public domain territory. According to the film industry Disney had their bill extended to keep mickey mouse ??… bill twenty years extended for like Disney’s work and that kinda stuff – they’re trying to extend their ownership and its like sand falling through their hands – they cant hold onto it forever. I just think the trouble with copyright is that it was originally intended to protect the work of the person who created it – but because of how the economy and intellectual property works  - the owners of the intellectual property quite often aren’t the creators anymore. These corporations who have used business models and this very unfair servant - slave type contractual relationship, which I’ve just mentioned, to kind of make money and on owning peoples intellectual property – you give it to them  - they give you some money, or the chance to record an album – or make a film, and they’ll give you the money to do that, and then they own everything and make money out if it so – its original intention is changed – and the creators aren’t really the people who are benefiting so much from it  - they haven’t made all the money – the creators – oh people say ‘oh artists, or musicians – they must make so much money from the copyright laws’, but the people who do – are the business not the artists so I’d like to see the business cut down drastically, because they don’t do enough to warrant the profits they actually make – and like – to have the artists have a bigger proportion of the pie?  Like - I haven’t really thought about what could be done to improve it, in terms of concrete suggestions, but I think the middle man should go – what gets freed up by them going should be more portion more to the creators of content.

Holly:  Thanks that was great! 

Note: I decided to add this interview transcript to my blog as it was a really great experience. Adrian Corker is not only a lecturer at Plymouth University but is also an expert on the topic of copyright, being a media content producer in his own right. I found this experience both insightful and informative and wanted to share it. This was also used as part of my dissertation process (Info on how to get a copy of my dissertation here) and may benefit future media students, be used as a resource, or simply prove an interesting read for people curious about copyright.

Review: Nemos Reef (Mobile Game)

It's been quite a while since my last review and I have been wanting to do this one for a while.

I have put it off because of the kind of game I want to review.  Hardcore gamers will probably hiss and slink back into their game caves but I am going to review a 'casual' mobile game.

For those in the dark as to what defines 'hardcore' and 'casual' games pretty much any game on a mobile can be considered casual. Hardcore games are games on PC or Consol like 'Call of Duty', 'Mario', 'World of Warcraft', 'Kingdom Hearts' They generally are things like RPG's and Shooting games and what most gamers consider 'traditional'. Casual games are things like 'Peggle', 'Plants vs Zombies' and the like, simple things like hidden object games. 

I am really not sure how most gamers feel about casual games but between my Zelda stints there are vast times where without casual games I would be left unplugged. I as a gamer I do not really like being unplugged all that often. 

So with that explanation out of the way I would like to talk about a mobile game (available on the app store and Google play store) Nemo's Reef.  A continuation on the story of Disney's movie  'Finding Nemo' where you help the little clown fish build a perfect reef. 

I am not exaggerating when I say that this game is like a digital form of crack for me. I literally have trouble putting it down. 

So what makes it so appealing you ask. Well its visuals are so bright and colourful that even though it's fairly graphically simple it still looks stunning. Yet despite all the bright and varying colours it still has a very relaxing quality.  The music is soothing and you can spend hours getting lost in the repetitive nature of completing quests and harvesting the materials needed to progress.  The game play is pretty simple (it's a kids game so no real shock there) but it's enjoyable to watch your reef expand and grow as you level, bursting with colour and fish as you discover new combos. Little fish are simple enough to get with coral combos making the reef feel alive and for any kid that gets lost watching fish tanks this game will be a winner and keep them quiet. 

 

So are there any downsides? Well yes. The game is free to play with a pay for perk currency and while it is very possible to play without spending a penny it will be very slow going and annoying as hell for anyone who is even a touch completion-ist . The rare fish are much more easily obtained with the pay for currency and there are some very good plants and nifty decorations to spend real cash on. One would think a company as big as Disney would not even need to have pay for perk system in their games but hey everyone likes a profit and the bundles they do are somewhat reasonable. On the plus side rare fish can be 'fed' to spit out a pearl (the pay for currency) around every three days for the cheapest and going down the more in game currency you sink in. The quests can be ignored completely but sometimes do demand use of the pay for currency which can get highly annoying. The game requires connection to the internet to play so if you have a Wi-Fi or cloud access you can enjoy it on the go or at home, it will eat through mobile data though so be warned of that.  Frome time to time a chest will pop up, most of them unlock with the peals (cash based) but sometimes for the in game obtainable resources , though it is worth noting that not all the ones open-able for the in game resources give better rewards than what you need to sink to open them. The flip side is that sometimes a chest will appear with no lock and will open for free, actually genuinely for free... There is a daily log in bonus, it's not the best but you get pearls starting on the third day, the bad thing about it is it resets after five days down to a really rubbish reward whereas most games keep going up or at least keep the rewards good but if you log in all five days you can net nine pearls which is better than nothing.

So on the whole would I recommend the game? Yes I would. For parents wanting a good game for their kids this will definitely keep them absorbed.  You do need to be aware that they will at some point want real money to complete things so it could be a good opportunity to teach them restraint. The way you pay for pearls is linked to your account and there is a confirmation screen but you may have to supervise the more persistent or smart child and laying down some ground rules (for any game) is never a bad idea. For adults looking for something both creative and relaxing that they can play at a whim when boredom creeps in I would say to give it a shot for gamers and non gamers alike.  It may not be the best mobile game out there but it is absorbing and utterly beautiful in terms of visuals and will suck you into hours of reef building if you let it. Also the younger of my cats seems to like playing it too!