What is this game?

[Zepper]

[tokumaru]

Famicom Wars!

[ccovell]

Print this out and keep it in your wallet. More useful than a slide rule!

[Sik]

Yeah, but that still won't help you with Japanese words (a lot of words in Japanese are basically English turned into katakana, though). This will help for words that are in Japanese (you can just type it in English letters and it'll convert them too, no need to mess with an IME).

Of course you can go like I did with Nectaris and just figure out the commands by playing =P (this was before I learned Japanese and that there was an English version of the game - it was simple enough to figure out, really)

[zzo38]

Print this out and keep it in your wallet. More useful than a slide rule!

Well, for me, I can memorize that (and I know some Japanese words and kanji too); also some words have extra mark ゛゜ to tell it is "voice" "semi-voice" such as キ is "ki" and ギ "gi", and ハバパ can be "ha ba pa", so you should know that too, if you like to learn Japanese writing. And, I have a slide rule! Another webpage for Japanese dictionary is WWWJDIC; that's the one I use.

[Drag]

I taught myself katakana and hiragana by repeatedly studying the kana tables and writing them over and over. Once I got comfortable, I randomized the table's consonants and vowels, and now I can read katakana and hiragana. I don't know any words though, but at least it's easier to punch it into google translate now.

As a fun fact, I saw that Famicom Wars has English letters in with its font, so I started working on a translation. I changed the menus to be horizontal, but a lot of stuff is still unfinished (you still press left/right to move the cursor, and I had to figure out how the AI was operating the menus (it generates the button presses) for when it was time to update the menu controls), and I eventually lost interest all together.

I found some interesting stuff though, there are tanks defined (in text) that don't seem to appear anywhere in the game.

[Sik]

and I had to figure out how the AI was operating the menus (it generates the button presses)

Would have been easier to check whose turn it was and swap the buttons if it was a human player, then let the menu work as usual.

[Drag]

Yeah, that would've been easier than trying to reverse engineer the AI to find where all of the button press constants I needed to update were.

[Zepper]

(...) has English letters in with its font

Uh... you mean latin letters..?

[Drew Sebastino]

You know what he meant. Yes, Latin letters.

[Drag]

I specifically meant the 26 letters used in the English language, considering the lack of umlauts or accents, plus the lack of any symbols that appear in other latin alphabets but not in English.

But since that's really wordy to say, plus we're all reading this thread in English right now, I just said "English letters" since everyone would hypothetically know what I was talking about, with the context being a Japanese game full of Japanese text.

But yes, Latin or Roman or otherwise not-Japanese characters.

[Myask]

suggest split from post 3, subject "kana and language"

Print this out and keep it in your wallet.

One formatted to the sound-rows is easier to read, I feel.

There are a last few things to note to be able to read straight katakana. (Caveat: I'm still just a student of the language, but these are the very basic learn-in-the-first-week(s))

• Each kana is meant to have the same pronunciation time.
• An i-column (that is, shi, ki, gi, hi, etc.) plus a small y-row(ya/yu/yo), as in シャ("shya"/"sha") is just one sound, so the 'i' gets elided. (This counts as one mora.)
• This also happens with katakana to make a few other sounds that Japanese doesn't usually have.　チェ being Chi+little-e => che; ティ being te+little-i = ti...or, here, ウォ o+little-u = wo. (ヴ is for a v-sound, similarly.)
• A small tsu (ッ) before a character means to double the consonant sound, so アック is "akku"; three morae.
• In katakana (the kind we're discussing) a long-vowel sound is usually marked by an extender, which looks just like a tiret/hyphen. アー is thus "aa". This is often used to indicate a trailing R like in "computer". In hiragana (which has the same number of characters, corresponding to the same sound-set, but looks different), used more for native Japanese words, one uses a vowel kana; which one varies slightly. Hiragana are generally rounder and less sharp-looking.
• Katakana are basically boldface/italics for Japanese; used to indicate foreign words, onomatopoeia, and occasionally emphasis.

Code: Select all

(hiragana, katakana)
  a-i-u-e-o a i u e o
- あいうえお　アイウエオ
k かきくけこ　カキクケコ
s さしすせそ　サシスセソ
t たちつてと　タチツテト
n なにぬねの　ナニヌネノ
h はひふへほ　ハヒフヘホ
m まみむめも　マミムメモ
y や　ゆ　よ　ヤ　ユ　ヨ
r らりるれろ　ラリルレロ
w わ　　　を　ワ　　　ヲ
	n:ん　　　　ン

[hr]
[pedantry]

English alphabet, 26 letters, no accents

The thorn (Þ/þ), long s (ſ), ash (æ) and ethel (œ) ligatures would have words with you; umlauts (or rather, diaresis, as naïve is from French) and other accents (mêlée) are only lately (decades) dying out. The en-yay ñ will likely not soon (jalapeño).

otherwise not-Japanese characters.

Да товарищ.

[Sik]

The thorn (Þ/þ), long s (ſ), ash (æ) and ethel (œ) ligatures would have words with you; umlauts (or rather, diaresis, as naïve is from French) and other accents (mêlée) are only lately (decades) dying out. The en-yay ñ will likely not soon (jalapeño).

Actually, é at the end of a word is not dead either because it's needed to indicate that e is pronounced (e.g. maté - no, not the same thing as mate). Note that jalapeño is taken from Spanish as far as I know (where ñ is a letter).

[Shonumi]

The thorn (Þ/þ), long s (ſ), ash (æ) and ethel (œ) ligatures would have words with you;

Most linguists don't even consider them part of Modern English's orthography though. Historically, yes. Presently, no. They're dead.

umlauts (or rather, diaresis, as naïve is from French) and other accents (mêlée) are only lately (decades) dying out. The en-yay ñ will likely not soon (jalapeño).

Those characters are from loan-words however, and were never part of English to begin with. Although you'll see them plenty inside English writing, they're still not native to the English writing system. Drag was correct (pedantry aside as well) , as "English" in a present day sense technically only has 26 characters. Well, there used to be more, but that's a secret to everybody. Classified intel, government secrets, aliens, etc.

Actually, é at the end of a word is not dead either because it's needed to indicate that e is pronounced (e.g. maté - no, not the same thing as mate). Note that jalapeño is taken from Spanish as far as I know (where ñ is a letter).

Maté is also a borrowed word too , also Spanish Well to be more exact, the French borrowed it from the Spaniards, who borrowed it from the Quechua, and now everyone uses it.

[Sik]

Maté is also a borrowed word too , also Spanish Well to be more exact, the French borrowed it from the Spaniards, who borrowed it from the Quechua, and now everyone uses it.

Except that in Spanish, the word is mate (without accent, because that'd change where the stress is instead!). I was going to say fiancé but I forgot if that's the correct spelling (or if I was even thinking on that word).