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 YouTube Videos: Spanish Greek French Kiswahili Russian German Admin [ Download Application + Languages 0.7.12 ( Linux, Mac, Win ) ]
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December 14, 2009
Other languages must be downloaded separately from here due to the large sizes of the various available dictionary resources. Just download and unzip into the xdxf directory appropriate to your installation. That is, if you did not run setup.py, then the xdxf dictionary under your source directory, and if you did run setup.py, then the /var/games/TuxWordSmith/xdxf directory. Now that Wx is reduced to an option, if you're not using it, then to make changes to the layout, background, default language, colors, fireworks show, etc etc, you need to manually edit the config file, either: or TuxWordSmith/Globals/globals/config (not installed) Wx will next be rendered to optional status for all other Asymptopia Software products (TuxMathScrabble and Multiplication Station). What Is It? TuxWordSmith is a multi-language word game with obvious similarities to Scrabble. In developing the game, the goal was not to copy Scrabble, but to extend TuxMathScrabble. Historically TuxMathScrabble came first. Thanks to the language resources provided by the xdxf project it has been possible to create this "sister application" to TuxMathScrabble which can be played in many languages. Are the dictionaries complete? Some are. The game uses resources from the xdxf project, without modification. These resources are mostly in the form of language[a]-language[b] dictionaries, where you play in language[a] and the corresponding definition is shown in language[b]. For example, if using the Greek-English dictionary, then you play with tiles having Greek letters, and the English translation to the words you spell (in Greek) is displayed. Also included is the Merriam-Webster-Collegiate (2003) English dictionary which is very complete and is English-English. (Note that you must download this separately, due to it's large size: 81M). Some of the dictionaries are quite complete, some are quite incomplete. They originate from a variety of sources, and thus the individual quality varies. You can get an idea of the relative completeness by noting the file size of each dictionary. Many of the less complete dictionaries can still be enjoyed via "Demo" mode, in which case both computer players have total knowledge of the dictionary contents and simply play with the words that are available, thereby demonstrating the viability of the software, at least, if not the particular dictionary resource. Are there any bugs? Probably, but with each release their numbers are reduced. Development has mostly focused on aspects common to all languages. In other words, not much attention has yet been paid to filtering individual language resources for specialized gramatical conventions and so forth. Some filtering is done in English to prevent use of abbreviations and names by the computer player(s), ie. Tux, but these crude filters are by no means perfect. Recently it was noticed that the Spanish-English dictionary contains a letter "u" with an umlaut, leading to the inclusion of one such character in the distribution of letters for the Spanish language. This is just one example of something that needs to be addressed. With a few minor exceptions, such as just described, the game is relatively bug-free. How are letter distributions computed? Letter distributions are computed dynamically, based on frequency of occurance within each individual resource, when a particular dictionary resource is loaded. Right-clicking on the background of the game causes a heads-up-display overlay which shows the calculated letter distribution and scoring scheme for the currently configured language resource. What other special features are there? The latest release allows you to set an upper limit to the length of words that Tux (top computer player) will consider. The default limit is 20, so virtually anything goes. In the screenshot above the limit for Tux has been set to 4, and as can be seen, all of Tux's word submissions are 4 letters or less. This also causes Tux to make his move earlier since he then has fewer possibilities to consider. The game can handle Greek and Russian characters, thanks to unicode. There is also an English-Chinese resource which correctly renders the definition in Chinese. The animated characters can be turned-off for a more professional/serious feel. Scrolling the mouse wheel causes the current players' tiles to be rearranged in the tray. Virtually all parameters, colors and sizes can be configured through the interactive configuration window. The admin interface has tooltips over each control which explain the effect of each parameter. How does the game go about using two colors of tiles? This is something that can only be done correctly with a computer game. Since the tiles are created dynamically (ie. they are not images) then as long as they are in the initial "bag" of tiles they remain uncolored. As soon as a player draws the tile, the tile is colored with that players' two-color scheme. Old description TuxWordSmith is similar to the classic word game "Scrabble", but with unicode support for multiple languages and character sets. The game is currently distributed with eighty-eight (88) dictionary resources for playing Language[i]-Language[j] "Scrabble". For example, if configured to use the French-English dictionary, then the distribution of available tiles will be computed based on frequency of occurance of each character of Language[i] (French), and for each submission the corresponding definition will be given in Language[j] (English). The latest release (0.6.3) includes support for the Greek and Cyrillic (Russian, Ukranian) character sets, thus making it possible to play Scrabble in Greek, Russian and Ukranian, as well as a host of other languages which use latin characters. TuxWordSmith (TWS) is a "sister" application to TuxMathScrabble(TMS) -- the TWS code is 95% identical to the TMS code. (Lin/Win/Mac)
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Last Updated Thursday, August 19 2010 @ 12:17 CDT|221,480 Hits 
