I think it depends on the language, but specifically for the Spanish version I was initially brainstorming the following idea(s):

1. Separating parts of speech (verbs, nouns, adverbs, etc) into different “word decks” and for each deck you play as a different character (warrior, miner, etc.). This would create some variation to keep the player interested.
2. The words you are trying to guess will be above the various things that character is trying to accomplish (enemies for warrior getting killed - ore that the miner gathers - etc.) 2a. For Spanish, Verbs have multiple conjugations - so there might for example be one Large enemy you kill for the infinitive version (eg: “ser”) - and there is a bunch of his minions you must kill in succession afterwards which are the conjugations (eg: "soy). 2b. You have a health bar, and getting answers wrong takes away health. The large enemies (infinitive verbs) for example could do more damage than the conjugations.
3. occasionally, other things that are not spanish words will be sprinkled in that might be little power ups or something that you can use (maybe they can be used for hints or something)
4. You go through levels, gain character experience, etc. - which of course is all superfulous, but might make it feel more like the player is actually making progress - trying to get a high score.
5. As you gain experience, you could upgrade the visual look of the character or unlock things.

–These are just some ideas I was brainstorming, and if I am doing this myself, it will take me a while so it would be a slow and incremental process - but I think this might be one of many possible ways to keep it vocabulary focused, while still making it feel more like a game than learning. I’d of course be open to any ideas though.

The mandarin version already made feels more like a flashcard app, with minimal gamified aspects, but I think if I was to start over on the Spanish one, I would lean more into the game feel - with more visuals and such. I think it would also be nice to add a toggle option to either type out the answer or select it with the mouse. Of course, depending on the time and effort, there are a lot of avenues to take, it just is a matter of actual implementation. Getting artists on board would be nice as well, since we wouldn’t have to rely on the Creative Commons sprites and could get a more unified theme. Probably wishful thinking, but I am thinking of best case scenario.

Sorry for the long answer, I realized I ended up rambling on a bit. :D

I’ve hardly used it so far, but simpleX seems promising from my limited knowledge. I highly suggest checking it out.

Doubt you’ll get pinged for my comment edit, but I fixed the leniency - easier to draw and not be as precise on the hanzi writer. It was a super easy one line fix pretty much - thanks for the feedback, and let me know if its actually better for you or not with the change.

Don’t know if you’ll get pinged for my edit on my other comment - The change is now applied (color coded hanzi to tone) Thanks for the suggestion!

I’ve seen a few - don’t know which ones are any good - just a quick google and I found this one: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1876551906

If this project gets enough traction - I’ll hopefully add sentences eventually to it - but that will likely be a while from now if I am able to find some other contributors.

Oh, I haven’t heard of it - but I’ll look into it and that sounds like it might be a nice option moving forward with the project! Hopefully I’ll eventually find some more experienced developers to help out with the project and beef it up. There are so many “gamified” language learning apps - but it would be nice to have one that is the right balance of a. actually being fun and engaging and b. actually drilling the words enough to learn them.

I always have a hard time sticking with things, so the hope is to make something that people actually want to use - whether this project gets there or not - well have to see…but this minute quest idea sounds promising. Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the cross-post, and pinging me :D

Ah, yeah - this is a good Idea - I’ll try to work on getting that implemented! Thanks for the feedback :)

[EDIT] Implements - Color coded to match Pleco color schemes for hanzi/pinyin.

Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment! And yeah, I’m not sure many places to post other than this or Reddit.

Thanks! Hopefully some more experienced people eventually contribute, so I am not just slowly throwing code at a wall with AI, lol.

The hanzi drawing needs to be a bit more lenient, I can’t draw that accurately in a small touch zone on my phone

The Hanzi section is using a open source library (https://hanziwriter.org/) - so I’ll have to see if they have an easy way to adjust this.

杯子 and 杯 can both show up at the same time as “cup; glass” but only one button will work for each

Ahh yeah, I have noticed this issue - and am not sure yet the best way to tackle duplicates. I guess for now I am going to just say “it’s a feature, not a bug” /s - lol. It’s like those memory games where you have to remember the correct one lmao. No, but in all seriousness, yeah - I need to tackle this. (there are a few other issues still needing fixed too - like the font selection to choose different fonts)

This is awesome!

Thanks! It definitely needs work - but I think its at least functional enough to be useful(ish).

[EDIT]: Thinking more about the duplicates: I am not a Chinese speaker, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it, but someone who has more nuance to the differences in the words could probably just update the JSON translations so that duplicates don’t exist. The JSON data for all the translations were harvested from APIs - but could easily by hand tweaked by a knowledgeable person.

[EDIT 2] Fixed leniency - easier to draw and not be as precise on the hanzi writer.

Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of the AI approach, I would love to build it without, but I simply am not a good enough programmer to do it without (I have tried in the past, but eventually give up).

AI has allowed me to actually get the digital version farther than I have ever gotten it before - and on one hand it’s nice that I can actually create something, but on the other hand I am afraid it will turn off people who would have otherwise possibly been interestes in contributing. . . But without anything created at all, I would have probably a harder time getting contributors - so a catch 22 in a small way.

But yeah, my current plan is to try and get the project as far as I can using AI, in the hopes that an experienced programmer will eventually be interested in contributing and cleaning up the mess I’ve made. Probably not the smartest strategy, lol, but it’s the only one I’ve got. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Just a couple if days ago I converted my Chromebook (~4gb ram) to Linux with coreboot and installed antiX, then changed over to MX Linux, and I think MX is a great for what it is. I’m using the fluxbox window manager (provided as one of the options on MX) because it’s lightweight enough for the Chromebook, and my Chromebook runs far faster on Linux than it ever did with chromeOS.

If nothing else, I suggest looking into MX - I’m a happy customer. I think antiX was actually great too, and a bit more minimal - but the graphical interface of MX out of the box felt a bit more polished and was worth while for me.

Thanks for the thorough response :)

While I get what you mean about things being pre-installed for super new people to Linux/terminal. . . If it has a apt package, it’s as easy as “sudo apt install xyz”. Also, I thi k Debian comes with the synaptic package manager which makes it fairly easy to install as well. With that said though, I do see your point, as it’s one more hurdle.

Thanks for the info, I was not entirely aware about the fact that they recently changes their proprietary software approach.

Thanks for the detailed reply - great points!

Mostly, this makes sense to me - but at the end you stated that people who want to settle down and have a reliable computer for non gaming stuff - and I would think that this would be a parallel userbase for non gamers coming from windows. Granted you did say “experienced” Linux users, but I honestly find Debian to be extremely noob friendly after the initial Linux familiarization of how installing apps and such works. And with LLMs these days, troubleshooting any issues is pretty easy, especially on .deb . Idk, maybe I’ve just become a fanboy or something, but I just feel that the distro gets overlooked as an overly stable/outdated option for servers when I’ve had an absolute great experience so far as a daily driver (of course, not playing games)

I guess it makes sense that I’m comfortable with using Debian then, lol, because I don’t know what most of those things you mentioned are - haha.

Thanks for the explanation though :)

Ok, so it seems that gaming is a recurring theme from the few comments so far.

My curiosity then would lead me to wonder opinions from a non-gaming standpoint.

Do you think you would mind as much if you didn’t use your machine for gaming? Would the slightly older packages still affect you?