“Irish Speakers” is a deceptive metric.
When we consider the gap between the number of people who speak Irish, and the number of people who can, it seems that the effort to teach Irish in school has not really been a failure. It’s just that we live in a mostly English speaking country and one cannot think in Irish, in English. If that’s the case, the barrier to fluency isn’t educational, it’s contextual. What if there is a way to “switch on” thinking in Irish? If Irish as a first language of cognition could be activated at the touch of a button; wouldn’t that be worth exploring?
na ring gael is open source software for mobile devices. (landscape mode only. Tested on Android Chrome) I believe it has potential. Would anybody like to get involved?
feictear go hiontach é!
An bhfuil agat nasc don chód?
(Tá mo gaeilge uafásach, gabh mo leithscéal)
Maith thú! Níl mo chuid Gaeilge go híontach, faraor. Ach tá taithí agam le tuairiscí fabht (i mBéarla). Bhuel, tá taithí agam le códúchán freisin ach nílim ag iarraidh é sin a dhéanamh arís.
What kind of help are you looking for? Going by your GitHub it looks like you’re mainly looking for coders for now.
I would define a roadmap with milestones between where you are now and the next goal. This helps keep contributors motivated and coordinated.
If you have native speakers doing the language, let people know. It will motivate them to know that that the result will be decent Irish rather than another ‘school Irish’ effort full of Béarlachas. If not, enlist some.
Also, if you haven’t already, the Craic le Gaeilge server on Discord has Irish language translators and developers who are responsible for games like Among Us and VVVVVV being available in Irish now. It could be well worth asking there.
Dia dhuit a chara. Go raibh maith agat.
Coders, yes, certainly.
There are 32 counties, each with 6 locations. Each of them has it’s own url. So, in theory, anybody could develop one of these endpoints as a “scene”. A castle, a dungeon, a forest. Bothán. Quest. I’d like people to take command of Locations, or Counties or even Provinces, and develop them. For this I could write a document explaining how to get started.The player begins the game in a mysterious dungeon. By the time they escape to the surface, they are playing in Irish, and have a moderately powerful character. They will have learned through a series of dreams and encounters that:
- They are the fenian dead, returned to Éire from the “Other Side”
- Tír na nÓg is facing some terrible threat. (Formorians?)
- Player’s mission is to rally a force and lead it back down through the underworld.
So, the game continues across Ireland; player flying around undertaking side-quests for various Chieftains and factions, in return for Warriors, Bards, Druids, Kine etc. When the player has built up a sufficient force; they sally through the dungeons to rescue Tír na nÓg.
Once a player catchs a pooka they can fly. To catch a Púca one must think in binary terms. On, Off; True, False. So if the displayed word is “positive” and you step forward when the white puca is active, you get a step closer. I’m not sure how clear that is. Maybe it’s too easy. Maybe it’s too hard?
But instead of these simple binary vocab builders; the system could be loaded with quiz or riddle games. So yes, help with the coding would be fantastic. And if a project manager emerges from the shadows, that would be fabulous.
But the Púca chase, the story, the whole thing is a mechanism which enables users to engage through Irish. So the main thing I’m looking for help with is original narrative content. Plot points. Characters. Dialogue. Poems. Set pieces, descriptions.
Entertaining, engaging story content Is what this needs. And it needs really quite a lot. I realize such work is a process, so at this point, English is fine. Bad Irish is better, and still fine. We can work on it.The project needs quite a lot more content than the player is likely to experience. Even the same choices should have different versions, to keep things fresh; and to capitalize on the difference between this revival-software and more conventional games.
It sounds like a great idea! It could be worth also trying https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/ if you haven’t already.
I would urge against including bad Irish even as a placeholder.
I don’t have android so the game doesn’t seem to work for me, which is fair enough.
Thanks very much. May I ask, in what way does it fail? Is it the case that the landing page loads but the spinning button doesn’t respond to clicks? And, are you using Safari?
Sorry about that. Not only was a lacking specifics, but I also didn’t really say it right at all. I get the intro text on the vertical scroll until the text “Is mise” Comes up.
Before then, I can actually use the controls to adjust or toggle the translations. But once it hits that point, I can’t progress.
I tried to Safari and Firefox on desktop. I tried Safari on mobile.
Aha! That’s supposed to be a wheel. Swipe it to give it a spin. Thanks for the feedback. (also - did it go full-screen for you on mobile? It’s supposed to - but earlier it didn’t on Safari. Haven’t tried recently.)
On iOS I just see the title screen. It doesn’t go full screen and my tapping doesn’t cause any response.
But it’s working in Safari desktop! I really like the style! I had no idea that you could interact with the “wheel”. In fact, even when you said it, I was interacting with the little navigator on the bottom right At first. That could definitely be made clear to the user.
Also while I’m clicking around trying to figure things out the script in the top left is going backwards to earlier parts of the text. It’s a bit confusing. I would disable any parts of the navigation that should not be used in a given scene.
I really like what I see so far though. It’s absolutely beautiful.
Thank you so much! I’ll try to fix it for iOS, will msg back here then. Will also add some kind of prompt for the wheel UI.
