Ranking system? (I'm a level X Lojbanist)

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Lindar

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Oct 11, 2010, 1:41:08 AM10/11/10
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http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

These items are based on the article linked above.
(You may want to read it first/at the same time, but it's not
necessary.)


5. lo tanxe be fi'a la .skinr.

Pulling the most basic ideas out of our arses, we can use a modified
spaced-repetition system to learn vocabulary words (I like how SmartFM
does it. Flash cards for the gismu and one for each place as well as
the reverse, plus a multiple-choice and a fill-in-the-blank.), but we
give experience points on a curve (much like the standard MMO levels
are fast at first, and take proportionately longer as one continues).
What happens when we hit that lull about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way to the
level-cap?

4. lo pacman xu

Some kind of unrelated thing! A side effect of killing monsters in an
MMO is getting items/money which can be cashed in for better items,
which makes killing that next tier of monsters a bit easier. When
you're not grinding and levelling, you're focusing on getting that
newest suit of armour, that cool new sword, that spell scroll, and so
on. However, that stuff comes easily with levelling, so you get
collectibles. Cards are a great example for this. Employing this in
the idea for Lojban, we can reward skins, collectible cards, avatar
decorations, or anything else applicable. Once the player is done
levelling, there's still another activity they have to do to earn
those other items. Maybe once they're done with vocab exercises, the
players can hop on IRC and earn credits for every line of Lojban they
use (this is obviously not a perfect idea, but you see what I mean).
So for every 50-100 lines of Lojban, they can earn X credits (perhaps
modified by their level), which go towards a collectible item.

3. lo dirgo be lo cizda'u

Every X number of successes earns the player a chance to do activity Y
which has a random chance of producing desired effect Z. Perhaps after
every 10 new words in SRS the player gets a chance to pull a slot
machine lever to get a bonus Z. This could be coins (as mentioned in
previous), mini-games (which also somehow teach lojban), or any other
kind of reward. Using this kind of system all over means that the
users will press that button thousands and thousands of times because
they don't know just when that next pellet will come out. Again, start
it on a curve, like...

2. lo rapybatke

...easing them into playing. Start off with fast levels, (small)
rewards more often, get them hooked. Yes, this is what drug peddlers/
tobacco companies to do get people hooked and get more customers. Why
not do it for good instead of evil? =D

Let's take a hint from both the MMO and casual game markets. Involve
players in small, bite-sized adventures with immediate rewards. Before
they've even started, they're already done! It's like eating potato
chips. It's small, delicious, crunchy, satisfying, but not enough. So
the player eats another one, and another one, and very quickly the
whole bag is gone without the player having noticed.

However, it's not good to fill up on crisps, so we have to include
meal options here. Space the save points out so that if the mission is
abandoned, the player loses all of that progress. One must finish or
lose the progress for the entire mission. It's the all-you-can-eat
scenario. No matter how hungry a person is, ey only has so much room,
but ey must eat enough to warrant the purchase.

So now we have our burger and chips.

Penultimate element is "play it or lose it". In Everquest, one must
return to one's castle or it will decay. In Farmville (facebook game)
one must constantly tend to one's crops or they will wither. In Animal
Crossing, one must play every day or the town will become infested
with weeds and the player's neighbours will feel lonely. The whole
idea is to introduce an element wherein the player's progress will
decay if not advanced, or at least maintained. This is pretty much a
given in Lojban, however, as NOT playing means forgetting Lojban.

Finally, putting in an achievement system (think XBOX, steam, and
similar) gives players a reason to continue long after everything else
is done. Even fluent players would want to unlock the achievements!
"Writer Rank 1" - Player has written at least one short story which
has been recognised by the BPFK. =D

1. norgleki

Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);
Complexity (so it's not mind-numbing repetition);
Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the
awesome results of your hard work).

These are the three things that a person needs to have a satisfying
job. I bet you don't even have two of them. Video games fill a void
and are designed to fill in all three of these, or at least make you
think you're getting all three of these things.

Autonomy: Class, race, quests, skills, build.

Allow the players a choice in what activities they do. Do they want to
learn a certain selma'o? A certain set of concepts (time and space
cmavo, words about colours, animal names)? Do we introduce other
choices like creating a virtual country and giving the player a choice
between cities/backgrounds/other choice?

Complexity: Remember all those quests? They were the same thing (fetch
100 $item !) over and over again, but they got more complex. Fetch 100
$item_a, then continue to $place to talk to $sage who will turn them
into $component_a and tell you that you need $item_b and $item_c to
get $component_b and $component_c plus $reagent, and then you have to
go through $dungeon to $ancient_fires to bless them, and then cool
them in $sacred_waters of $holy_place, but you have $short_time to get
them from $ancient_fires to $sacred_waters, so you better hurry. You
get the point. So, really, it's just fighting monsters over and over
again, but you THINK it's complex.

Connection between effort and reward: DAH DAAAAAHHH!! Victory music,
lights, sounds, confetti, level up, new abilities! "Knowing more
Lojban" is, unfortunately, a side effect. You need immediate
neurological stimulation in addition to the more obvious rewards
(better items, which is a "wow, these -are- better") and higher level
areas, "Huh, this is kinda cool.". Likewise, we have to provide some
kind of immediate connection so the player recognises that they are
being rewarded, and that it is a good thing.

So, in a world dominated by technology and gaming, why not turn Lojban
into something fun. Perhaps we can tie in a story line? Turn the
children's show (or a comic book series, or something else, but a plot
none the less) into the variable spaced reward. =D

Let me know what you guys think and if you have any suggestions. Throw
this idea around and concept as much as you'd like. I'll be back later.

Remo Dentato

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Oct 11, 2010, 4:26:29 AM10/11/10
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On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 7:41 AM, Lindar <lindar...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Let me know what you guys think and if you have any suggestions. Throw
> this idea around and concept as much as you'd like. I'll be back later.
>

I really like the idea. I always found the flash card based systems
too boring. A game, expecially an ADDITIVE game as you describe, might
be more effective.

Unfortunately I have no idea what type of game would be good for this.
The only thing I can think about is to add a lojbanic flavour to
those well known games like pacman (imagine having a sentence split
around the screen and you have to eat the pieces in the correct order)
or frogger (you can jump only on leaf and trunks that are tagged in a
certain way) and so on.

A Doom-like game would also be nice. You kill monsters and collect
lojban words that you have to combine to get the blu/red/yellow keys
for the doors.

RPG games would be great but that seems a major effort to me.

I guess the game will have to be well balanced. Too easy and people
will get bored of playing, to hard and people will be more focused on
the game than on learning.

remod

Jonathan Jones

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Oct 11, 2010, 5:05:36 PM10/11/10
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Proof the Lindar is an ass - he wants to turn learning Lojban into an addictive video game.

Proof that being an ass isn't always a bad thing - It would work.


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--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.a'o.e'e ko cmima le bende pe lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

Lindar

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Oct 11, 2010, 10:42:38 PM10/11/10
to lojban
I'd just like to point out that this is an idea party. Feel free to
contribute your ideas and throw around concepts just for fun. I -
don't- want to make a 3D hack-n-slash or any kind of thing like that,
because I've played games like that (Slime Forest, anyone?) and they
SUCK. The goal is not to create the next WoW or EQ, the goal is to
find a way to use the very same weapons wielded by companies like
Blizzard, Phillip-Morris, NC-Soft, Gravity, Kraft, General Mills, and
any other evil company that ropes people in and holds them there for
life. The difference is that instead of people being mindless
consumers of neglect (WoW), cancer (Phillip-Morris), identity-crises
(NC-Soft), xenophilia (Gravity), cheese products (Kraft), or corn/
wheat pastes (General Mills), we have people that actually stick to
learning Lojban and enjoy it. Instead of doing something destructive,
people would be learning something constructive.

Some ideas I've heard so far (for activities):
Write a poem.
Write a short story.
Write a long story.
Spend time on IRC.
Blog.
Audio blog.
Video blog.

Ideas for rewards:
Collectible cards.
Short video segments of a plot-driven animation.
In-game monetary units.
Titles (think of forums).
Privileges (access to certain fora/channels for example).
Music.
Avatars.
Avatar decorations.

There are a lot of text-based/browser-based games out there (Kingdom
of Loathing is probably the absolute best example I can think of, and
in fact, I want to rip of its play style/mechanics), so maybe we can
make our own/model one after an existing game? Perhaps some kind of
RPG wherein players start in a non-jbo town wherein to get certain
things one must learn a certain amount of Lojban, and each successive
town requires more knowledge of Lojban. Combine this with the ideas in
the first post, suggestions I've listed above, any other ideas...

Perhaps the collectible cards are SRS flash cards, and a complete set
of one gismu and all places fits together like a puzzle piece, and on
the back is a portion of an art card. Each town has 10 ju'u gai gismu
cards, each gismu card has been 'shattered' into each of its places +
the gismu definition, each gismu + places, once memorised, reveals a
portion of an image on the back, all 10 complete cards reveals the
whole image. Each 10 cards together allows access to a dungeon wherein
one can gain a comic strip for a game-world-relevant story (perhaps
recalling the history of the world or some such), and every X number
of strips unlocks another challenge which gives the player the chance
to watch an animation that goes between comic strips.

Just ideas. =D

I'd like to see more concepts posted!

David

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Oct 11, 2010, 11:14:29 PM10/11/10
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On Oct 12, 12:42 pm, Lindar <lindartheb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Perhaps some kind of
> RPG wherein players start in a non-jbo town wherein to get certain
> things one must learn a certain amount of Lojban, and each successive
> town requires more knowledge of Lojban. Combine this with the ideas in
> the first post, suggestions I've listed above, any other ideas...
This reminds me oddly of a whole 'secret society' idea ala
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Beisutsukai
I wouldn't want that as a main element, but having it as a secondary
aspect (being able to get better stuff via understanding arcane things
like termsets, zi'e, nei etc-- giving answers in a form that utilizes
them, for example) might be interesting.

>
> Perhaps the collectible cards are SRS flash cards, and a complete set
> of one gismu and all places fits together like a puzzle piece, and on
> the back is a portion of an art card. Each town has 10 ju'u gai

li 10 ju'u mo'e lo cizra

> gismu
> cards, each gismu card has been 'shattered' into each of its places +
> the gismu definition, each gismu + places, once memorised, reveals a
> portion of an image on the back, all 10 complete cards reveals the
> whole image. Each 10 cards together allows access to a dungeon wherein
> one can gain a comic strip for a game-world-relevant story (perhaps
> recalling the history of the world or some such), and every X number
> of strips unlocks another challenge which gives the player the chance
> to watch an animation that goes between comic strips.
ua.
Although I suspect I'd have to research the kind of game you're
talking about in order to really know what you mean.

Lindar

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Oct 12, 2010, 12:13:36 AM10/12/10
to lojban
Yeah, you'd have to have played a game like it. It's a browser-based
RPG wherein you have a limited number of actions per day. These can be
used to fight monsters, talk to people, make items, etc. So the idea
would be to have a text-based RPG with a browser-based GUI and some
accompanying graphics, essentially.

Luke Bergen

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Oct 12, 2010, 12:16:01 AM10/12/10
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so, something like cantr?

What you're talking about kind of sounds like urbandead

Remo Dentato

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Oct 12, 2010, 2:17:31 AM10/12/10
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I reckon I don't know many of the games you mentioned.
Would game like these: http://www.marks-english-school.com/games.html
be helpful?
I liked the golf one

Lindar

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Oct 12, 2010, 3:11:15 AM10/12/10
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That's kinda cool, but not what I was thinking. Perhaps we could have
mini-games like that which have some sort of benefit in-game (extra
turns up to a maximum?).

Lindar

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Oct 12, 2010, 5:39:33 AM10/12/10
to lojban
> What you're talking about kind of sounds like urbandead

From what I can tell, yeah.
Just... with more graphics.

Pierre Abbat

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Oct 12, 2010, 7:59:52 AM10/12/10
to loj...@googlegroups.com

I don't know a thing about games for ranking, but there is a proposal to
create a set of tests for ranking. Hopefully I'll be able to work on it next
year when I'm out of school.

Pierre

--
Jews use a lunisolar calendar; Muslims use a solely lunar calendar.

Michael Turniansky

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Oct 12, 2010, 10:09:09 AM10/12/10
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Yeah, well whatever happened to lojbanquest?
http://jbobac.lojban.org/lojban/lojbanquest/

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Lindar <lindar...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Luke Bergen

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Oct 12, 2010, 10:14:43 AM10/12/10
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That actually sounds pretty cool.  I had had a similar idea but it seems it's already a project.  Is this project currently dead?

Timo Paulssen

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Oct 12, 2010, 10:22:45 AM10/12/10
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On 10/12/2010 04:14 PM, Luke Bergen wrote:
> That actually sounds pretty cool. I had had a similar idea but it seems
> it's already a project. Is this project currently dead

Thank you two very muck for your interest.

I'm the one currently responsible for lojbanquest (or rather: this
lojbanquest implementation). You can "play" the current version over at
http://lojbanquest.net (for free!), but there's not much to be seen
right now.

I'm having a bit of a motivational dry patch. It would probably help me
massively to have someone do a mock-up user interface in HTML, because
I've grown tired of looking at the mess that is the current look of
lojbanquest.

The next step I was about to tackle was actually adding monsters that
roam the world, but that's been a big amorph blob of work that I wasn't
able to grab at the horns (for lack of horns on blobs).

lojbanquest.net also links you to the code you can find on github if you
want to help me improve stuff. If you're interested in helping out (any
little bit helps. not only coding, graphics or HTML, I would also be
very glad to discuss gameplay mechanics, little details, feature ideas
or anything else with anyone!), please find me on IRC (i'm timonator
there) or reply to this email on the list or privately.

Thank you very much!

mu'o mi'e timos

Mark E. Shoulson

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Oct 12, 2010, 10:31:12 AM10/12/10
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I think I also mentioned something along these lines wrt a "ranking
system" like the proficiency tests (and metal achievement pins!) that
the KLI has. People will work mighty hard to earn a stupid potmetal
badge...

~mark

Timo Paulssen

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Oct 12, 2010, 10:33:59 AM10/12/10
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I WANT METAL ACHIEVEMENT PINS SO BAD!

Lindar

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Oct 12, 2010, 8:12:22 PM10/12/10
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Can we somehow meld these?

By the way, I tried to sign up and play. I can't figure out how to do
anything (it doesn't display correctly on my screen) and there wasn't
really anything to do. It's really cool that there's an existing
project, though.

My biggest problem is that it seems like another language-learning
RPG, which is stupid and no fun. I've played a few of them trying to
learn French/Japanese and they're really boring. However, the idea of
using valid Lojban as a method of casting spells is a very cool idea.
Maybe we can build attacks into the learning system. Start with SRS,
and each correct answer is a successful attack. As the game
progresses, the player joins a magic guild, and spells are cast by
typing full valid Lojban sentences which are checked with a parser,
and like in the current model, more obscure words do more damage.
Perhaps different selma'o have different spell effects, too?

However, WRT to addiction, this only addresses the combat/level
portion. So as the player gets closer to the next level, the player
will spam the proverbial button faster and faster. We have that part
down perfectly as it's an intrinsic part of the style of game.
However! We don't have the variable ratio reward (random drop?),
collectibles (cards, decorative avatar costumes, titles,
achievements?), or downtime events (buying better items?).

We could merge my collectible card idea with the spell card idea in
the current model. Spells are flash cards, each card is broken up into
selbri and sumti slots (like how it is on SmartFM), and the complete
card rewards a new spell. There are a dozen or so per area, and each
complete set from an area unlocks a collectible (music/art piece/title/
blah).

The web implementation seems like the best idea as it can then also
interact with web forums (higher ranked/levelled players get access to
more 'elite' forums), the tiki (improving articles, when approved by
an admin, earns more points to be used for in-game bonuses), JVS
(adding new words can also earn in-game bonuses), and perhaps lojban
blogging platforms (entries in valid Lojban also earn points).
HOWEVER! A Rogue-like might be a more fun/entertaining implementation
as there are graphics and motion... could we embed a rogue-like so it
can be played in-browser to link up to other services?

Either way, I like where this concept is going. Maybe it'll move past
concept?

If you need art, I can do sprites/preliminaries.

Pierre Abbat

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Oct 12, 2010, 10:11:46 PM10/12/10
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That's what the LBCK is about.

Pierre
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa

Lindar

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Oct 13, 2010, 3:12:47 AM10/13/10
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Oh geez... seriously... That would be awesome.

At level *conversational* the player gets a real metal pin.
At level *near fluency* the player gets a signed document and a bigger
pin.

It's brilliant.

So have all these collectibles, titles, cards, privileges, and
everything else on the way to learning Lojban, with the ultimate goal
of getting two real badges and an official document from the BPFK/LLG.

Do it now.
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