Update: I have created a new plug-in called AnkiEmperor. It is meant to be the successor of AnkiWarrior, so I suggest to use AnkiEmperor instead.

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Hi,

I've made a plug-in for Anki, called AnkiWarrior, with the goal to make learning with Anki more fun and addictive by creating a more game-like environment.

In the current version of AnkiWarrior, you have to "conquer" Japanese cities.
You start with a small city and for every flashcard you answer in Anki, you'll "convince" more and more of the citys population (i.e. with your fantastic language skills). As soon as you've convinced every inhabitant, the city is yours; you'll reach a new level and move on to the next bigger city. Currently, only Japanese cities are implemented.



Please see a more detailed description as well as the download link here: http://ankiwarrior.hallojapan.de/

Update: The first "official" release of AnkiWarrior is now available in Download -> Shared Plugin

It is still in development, but I am already posting it here to get feedback. The most important point for me to know is, if there is any public interest in such a plug-in.

Furthermore, I am looking for ideas on the ranking system:
How often should the rank change? (The more often, the more work to create ranks and descriptions for ranks).
What would be good ranks? Right now I just copied some Japanese stuff from wikipedia...

What does AnkiWarrior need to be addictive, so you don't want to quit doing anki reviews?

Do you have any wishes, suggestions or tipps for future development?
Of course it would be also important to know if there are any bugs or problems on other (operating) systems.

Would be great to hear your feedback!

As far as i could follow it, by reaching an amount of kanji you get a new "rank" (i.e. Hello Kitty in your picutre, alright). So if you answer to 1000 flashcards correctly, you will automatically have 1000 experience points (let's call them EXP) and you gain a new character - which is fantastic. It does seem so childish at the moment, but when it comes to more complex stuff like getting items etc. you can turn Anki into a nice SRS-Game (amusing for me at least, it seems to be more like playing and not drilling vocabularies). Keep it up and: any German translation available?

Concerning the ranking system: keep it smaller, like 250 Kanjis (for slow users/learners especially helpful) being more userfriendly finally.
Concerning items - if you have time programming them why not, can be a nice additional part of the game you are creating right now.

Good luck, greets from northern germany,
T.

anki is already an addictive game to me.... [Gotta catch'em all kanjiman]

It sounds great!

I think if you made it direct available through Anki's shared plugins it would get tons of downloads.

It would be awesome if you could achieve certain ranks or special items by completing lists of items. For example, to obtain an item when you finish reviewing for the first time all your RTK 1 or 3 kanji, or all the kanji or vocabulary for each JLPT level, etc.

If that were possible, I would propose the ranks of "Heisig (or RTK) Padawan" and "Heisig Jedi".

Also, I think it would be a good idea to set the plugin so that you can actually lose XP and rank if you slack on your reviews.

Hello,

thank you a lot for the input!

About the experience:
Actually you (usually) get more than 1 Experience Point for one card. It depens mainly on the age and ease of the card. A card which is answered for the first time actually gives you 10 experience points. I think on average it takes one day to reach the next level. I am looking for a way to make more level-ups without having to much work for creating all the ranks.

About items:
That's a great idea! I already thought about it a little, and I will probably also give some kind of currency for each answered card (e.g. 1 gold/answer). That could be used to buy items. Well, here are no limitations for imagination, and the possibilities a a bit overwhelming.

About German:
There will probably no German translation soon. And greetings from "central" Germany. ;-)

About addiction:
If you are already addicted to Anki, that's great :-). But probably not everybody is. My goal is to take those heavily addictive characteristics from WoW, FarmVille and so on and use it for SRS. The average playing time of 15-year olds in WoW is about 4 hours a day. How much could one learn in that time? A lot!

About Anki's shared plugins:
Yes, as soon as the plugin is in a usable state :-)

About completing lists:
I think that would be really motivating! Especially if the goals are broken down further, like the RTK Chapters or different percentages completed of the JLTP levels. First I'll focus on general features which work on all kind of decks but later that would definitely be a nice feature.

About loosing XP:
I've considered this. I don't know if it's good a not. I am not trying to punish anybody for not doing his reviews but rather encourage him to do these. Maybe increased experience when cards are answered on the day they are due would do the trick. Same effect, but different "feeling" ;-)

Thanks for your comments, further input is highly appreciated of course! :-)

Interesting! I've never understood the appeal of games that have you earn points/gold/etc., including console games and 'achievements' or whatnot, but I like the idea of having 'characters' and such like as companions or proxies (though not Hello Kitty [or Pokemon] ;p).

By the way, I wonder if 'minecraft' or something has Anki-related possibilities...

Cool stuff! I completely agree that it would be awesome to add some sort of a reward system (like experience) in Anki to make it feel like you are achieving something, since it's hard to quantify actual gains made in language acquisition. Animations and sounds I think would go a long to achieving this goal. Maybe after every "easy" you get a special victory dance or something

I think you should check out Progress Quest, they got the whole leveling/item/skill/story progression thing down pretty well. If you are going to do more stuff for this you should consider setting up a Google Code repository for it or something, so that people can easily contribute patches

Edit: I think it would also be interesting to set up a ladder where people can compete with each other for experience. This way you would always be motivated to do your reviews, otherwise you might just lose your rank!

Good idea!

It reminds me a lot of the app for the iPhone called "Epic Win," which is a task manager that gives you experience, loot, and you build your character as you do tasks and complete them.

This looks like it will be very good! Keep it up!

This is awesome! =D

Surely it should get harder to level up as you continue? If it only takes 1000 experience points each time, you'll run out of ranks pretty soon, right?

Items sounds like a cool idea, though I'm not sure what you would use them for...

This is probably over the top, but what I think would be really cool, would be if you could use your rank and character data in a proper full game. Someone mentioned minecraft, if you could somehow add resources and other rewards to a minecraft world, that would be awesome! You could do other games too. It's probably way to much work though...

Perhaps to motivate people to continue studying, you could make people slowly lose experience when they don't review for a while. Maybe when you fail a card too.

What would be cool too, is if you could have every time you get some experience, you get something pop up on the screen saying how much experienced you gained. A bit like Call of Duty when you get "+100" come onto the screen.

Competing with other people online would be cool too. Though I don't know what else you can do apart from leader boards... Maybe you could battle other players?

Okay, maybe some of these ideas are a bit too ambitious...

I propose to reach a new level when you reach your first 9000 reviews.

Quote:

IT'S OVER 9000!

Great idea!

Here's how I would do it. Feel free to disregard this advice.

- Incremented levels (e.g. Level 1 = 100xp, Level 2 = 250xp, Level 3 = 500xp).

- Level-based bonuses. Your pictures are a good idea. It'd be cool if the pictures started out with noob culture like Naruto and geisha and then progressed into shamisen players and obscure 17th century poets.

- +1xp per incorrect answer, +2xp per correct answer, -1xp per due card (so that your level will gradually drain if you avoid reviews).

- Some kind of combo bonus (e.g. +10xp for five correct answers in a row).

I think anything more than this risks being counter-intuitive. Giving more xp for 'Easy' vs 'Good' or 'Hard' will only encourage inaccurate responses imo.

Anyway, fantastic idea, good luck developing it further.

Hi and thank you for your awesome suggestions and comments!

I was hesitating to post the plug-in here so early because it's in an early stadium but now I am really glad I did it. Your comments encourage me to continue developing and you have some great ideas!

I am trying to address most of the points made in the last comments:

Quote:By the way, I wonder if 'minecraft' or something has Anki-related possibilities...

Please stop suggesting games which look like they would make me addicted if I start playing ;-) . Maybe sometime, an integration with a "real" game would be fantastic of course.

Quote:Maybe after every "easy" you get a special victory dance or something

Take a look at the "positive reinforement" plug-in. Personally I don't want to make AnkiWarrior to obstrusive.

Quote:consider setting up a Google Code repository for it or something, so that people can easily contribute patches

Yes, when I have a basis to build on and a plan where the plug-in should go, I'll try to make it a collaborative project.

Quote:I think it would also be interesting to set up a ladder where people can compete with each other for experience.

I would love to do that, but it's more difficult as it sounds. As you are rating yourself in Anki, it's very easy to cheat. And poeple rate themself different. Some might have more complex flashcards and do less per day... and so on.
Maybe I'll give it a try and see how it's working out.

Quote:Surely it should get harder to level up as you continue? If it only takes 1000 experience points each time, you'll run out of ranks pretty soon, right?

Yes. That's a problem. I think in most EXP-based games you need more and more experience to level up but you also get more and more experience by stronger enemies. But how would you do that in Anki?
Right now, You reach a new rank at these levels: 0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21
So you'll level up every 1000 EXP, but it takes more and more levels to get a new rank.
I'll probably try to combine level and rank in the future.

Quote:Perhaps to motivate people to continue studying, you could make people slowly lose experience when they don't review for a while. Maybe when you fail a card too.

I am a little bit surprised how many people suggest this :-). I think I'll give it a try.

Quote:What would be cool too, is if you could have every time you get some experience, you get something pop up on the screen saying how much experienced you gained.

I agree, though I think after every card would be to distractive. But I definitely need to show more encouraging messages.

Quote:Some kind of combo bonus (e.g. +10xp for five correct answers in a row).

That's a great idea! Hope it doesn't tempt you to cheat though ;-). Currently I am only giving a bonus if you answer one card successively correct.

Quote:Giving more xp for 'Easy' vs 'Good' or 'Hard' will only encourage inaccurate responses imo.

Currently, I am giving 1 for Hard, 3 for Good and 5 for Easy. A hard card is earlier due again than an easy card. You can therefore answer it "more often", I think giving less EXP is a fair solution.

Thank you so much everybody, awesome suggestions!
I'll make a more general comment on further developement plan in an own reply.

So I thought about the ranks and levels and experience...
the possibilities of course are endless. Maybe later I can implement different "game modes", where you have different ranks and different settings.

But for now, I think I'll adjust my initial idea a little bit:
- With increasing experience, one will "conquer" Japaneses cities.
- in every conquered city, one can build (real existent) attractions, like parks, buildings, sights and so on. You'll earn money for every answered card and can use it to build something
- I'll make a webpage, where you can register your progress and share (and probably compare) it.
- I'll make a form, where people can suggest attractions which will be added to the system.
- If there is some need for it, I could still make some "conquerer" ranks, based on your level of experience.

The advantage with cities and attractions is
- it's a well-defined data set.
- there are a lot of things to add, so it doesn't get boring soon.
- it's easy to get pictures without copyright problems
- one can learn about Japan (and as everybody can suggest attractions, maybe some insider tips?)
- there is a clear goal: "conquer all cities"
- there is a never ending goal: "buy all attractions"

Focusing on cities lets me concentrate on the development of AnkiWarrior without having to worry about different ranks. As soon as it works, it shouldn't be difficult to define other kinds of goals.

It'll probably take some time until the next update. I have to write the php code, collect cities and initial attractions, and implement the changes. I'll let you know about my progress.

Further ideas and comments are of course highly appreciated!

Once you are into programming (which you obviously are very capable of) you really should make a short TODO list and collect some people on google code repository, some git repo, or anything you like. About the PHP code base: you will need steadily an internet connection for using AW as a plugin in Anki to explore the cities etc., right? I suppose you already have a server for running a database including php code
Good luck - and most important - have fun programming! \ø

Yes this does sound awesome!

The "Conquer all Japan" makes me think of Age of Empires 2 or Command and Conquer! In addition perhaps you could have your own avatar where you can purchase weapons (with your acquired gold) and armour. I guess when you "equip" it the image can overlap? Making your own unique "Anki Warrior". haha i don't know xD. Now that i think about it, when i played WoW, especially End-game world of warcraft (level 80 or whatever) seemed to be so addictive because i kinda turned into a "perfectionist" and wanted to get the best items their were... and it took so long to get to level 80 and put all that effort in i was not going to accept 'mediocrity' ^^. I think mabey layering it out so that once you have climbed that mountain and reached the highest level rank there needs to be just something a little special and extra. Some nice cherries to pick!

bombpersons Wrote:Perhaps to motivate people to continue studying, you could make people slowly lose experience when they don't review for a while. Maybe when you fail a card too.

When i read this i did agree at first, but now that i think about it i don't think you should be punished for failing a card. Thats like loosing exp for dying! I think that would get a bit annoying. Plus i think khatz said failure should be embraced! Doesn't Khatz say failure is the mother of success/planting the seeds of success and should not be feared ^^? However, i do agree about losing experience when they dont review, as consistency in reps is what the SRS is about.

It sounds like a great idea and I really like the idea of making something that could be appealing to people who usually aren't motivated to study. Of course, if it's going to be focused on Japanese cities etc. I hope you're planning on making a Japanese translation sometime so everyone who already have a somewhat good understanding of Japanese can learn from their "prizes". Of course, non-Japanese versions are still important so the learners who still don't know that much Japanese can appreciate their prizes.

Mostly I just wanted to say good job, keep going

Edit: Oh yeah, you mentioned that new cards give a higher exp bonus, right? I was thinking it should be the other way around, so that persistence is rewarded. Of course, that could mean the exp gaining ramps up so much that you keep ranking up at the same speed as earlier, but that's not necessarily a bad thing... I think?

Okay, so this whole concept of buying attractions in Japanese cities really reminds me of Momotetsu (

). Maybe you can draw some inspiration from it.. like you might want to include a few villains that try to destroy your cities (Godzilla or something).
As long as there's a fancy exp bar I'm in.

Now I have this image of starting out in the farthest reaches of the 田舎, in the tiniest of tiny towns, and taking Japan over vocab card by vocab card, adding strange roadside attractions as I go, in some sort of SimCity meets Civilzation has a WoW baby and it breeds with Anki and Romance of the Three Kingdoms is their surrogate mother sort of thing.

Smashing.

Proxx Wrote:So I thought about the ranks and levels and experience...
the possibilities of course are endless. Maybe later I can implement different "game modes", where you have different ranks and different settings.

But for now, I think I'll adjust my initial idea a little bit:
- With increasing experience, one will "conquer" Japaneses cities.
- in every conquered city, one can build (real existent) attractions, like parks, buildings, sights and so on. You'll earn money for every answered card and can use it to build something
- I'll make a webpage, where you can register your progress and share (and probably compare) it.
- I'll make a form, where people can suggest attractions which will be added to the system.
- If there is some need for it, I could still make some "conquerer" ranks, based on your level of experience.

The advantage with cities and attractions is
- it's a well-defined data set.
- there are a lot of things to add, so it doesn't get boring soon.
- it's easy to get pictures without copyright problems
- one can learn about Japan (and as everybody can suggest attractions, maybe some insider tips?)
- there is a clear goal: "conquer all cities"
- there is a never ending goal: "buy all attractions"

Focusing on cities lets me concentrate on the development of AnkiWarrior without having to worry about different ranks. As soon as it works, it shouldn't be difficult to define other kinds of goals.

It'll probably take some time until the next update. I have to write the php code, collect cities and initial attractions, and implement the changes. I'll let you know about my progress.

Further ideas and comments are of course highly appreciated!

great idea i would be on your site all day

Don't base anything off of kanji, remember that Anki has lots of uses other than just Japanese!

For the ranks, I think each rank could have multiple levels. This gives you a small goal (levels) and a large goal (ranks).
For instance, the lowest rank might have 5 levels. Then when you lvl up again, you go to the new rank. Then that rank might need 10 levels before you get the next rank, and so on.

Proxx Wrote:

Quote:Giving more xp for 'Easy' vs 'Good' or 'Hard' will only encourage inaccurate responses imo.

Currently, I am giving 1 for Hard, 3 for Good and 5 for Easy. A hard card is earlier due again than an easy card. You can therefore answer it "more often", I think giving less EXP is a fair solution.

D'oh! Didn't think of that.

These fancy programmers with their logic...

hereticalrants Wrote:Don't base anything off of kanji, remember that Anki has lots of uses other than just Japanese!

At the risk of gratuitous complexity (and more work) ....

The plugin could be a framework with its own sub-plugins where users with little programming experience could still create "reward packs" or "themes" and share them. Urm, make it a feature for version 2.0, heh.

I think that this is a good idea.

I like the conquering of cities idea. If you the user were able to have his/her character updated with each city he/she takes down that would be neat too.

Keep us posted on when you get the next version up and I'll download it!

Might want to apply some of these: http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-c...ed_p2.html