Jeopardy Maker 1.

1
by pftq
Apr. 2008 - May 2015
www.pftq.com - questions, comments, feature requests welcome.
INTRO =============================
Jeopardy Maker is a fully-featured and customizable Flash application. The
program is written entirely in ActionScript 3.0 and designed to run on any Wind
ows computer with Adobe Flash support (which virtually every modern computer has
). Categories, rows, columns, daily doubles... are all generated and calculated
by the program on the fly. All you have to do is enter the questions and answe
rs. The program supports any number of rows and columns (the max. being until y
our computer explodes) as well as many other optional settings (# Daily Doubles,
Final Jeopardy, point values, etc). No hassle with Powerpoint slides!
Features:
- Supports any numbers of rows and columns, calculated by the number of que
stions and answers you give it.
- Everything is automatic; just enter your desired questions, answers, and
categories in the appropriate txt files.
- Daily Doubles generated randomly each time. Option to set number of dail
y doubles or disable.
- Final Jeopardy question at the end; optional.
- Countless settings for more advanced users: seperate Q/A folders for load
ing seperate games, changeable table and fontsizes, and other quirks.
*Designed and tested '.exe' for PC. If you have a MAC, run the '.app' inst
ead.
*For web, use the '.swf' instead of '.exe'. Simply embed the file on your
webpage after uploading all files to the webserver. It is assumed you have some
understanding of embedding flash files, but here is an example:
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http
://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="480"><param name="auto
start" value="true" /><param name="src" value="FILEPATH/NAME OF SWF FILE.swf" />
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" val
ue="always" /><embed width="640" height="480" src="FILEPATH/NAME OF SWF FILE.swf
" autostart="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen=\"true\
" allowscriptaccess=\"always\"></embed></object>
SETUP =============================
The program is literally set to go. You can even run it now if you wish
by running the Jeopardy.exe file.
Most users will want to customize their questions and answers however...
By default, there are 5 columns and 6 rows set up, but you can easily ad
d more rows and columns simply by adding more lines (rows) or categories and fil
es (columns).
ESSENTIALS----------------All "required" settings are located in the 'questions' folder.
Open these in Notepad or some other text editor.
categories.txt
List the category names, one per line. The number of categori

es here determines the number of columns in the Jeopardy table. The category na
mes are assigned in the order you list them: Line 1 = Column 1, Line 2 = Column
2...
column#-questions.txt
Questions in the column . Enter one question per line. Each
line corresponds with each row in the column. The first column file is created
for you (column1-questions.txt). Simply create more txt files for any additiona
l columns (column2-questions.txt, column3-questions.txt etc).
To create a new txt file in Windows, open Notepad or another t
ext editor (like the one you use to read this) and edit as needed. Then save it
with the correct name (column#-questions.txt - replacing # with an actual numbe
r) in the same folder as the rest of the questions.
column#-answers.txt
Same concept as the questions. One answer per line. Be sure
to list the answers in the same order as the corresponding questions, so they ma
tch. Again, create more txt files as necessary.
finalj.txt
Enter the question in the first line; the answer goes in the 2
nd line.
OPTIONAL SETTINGS ------------Many other settings are available as well in the 'setup.txt' fil
e. Read the comments after the '//' for details. Feel free to change the setti
ngs and just try them out.
Most useful maybe the 'dir' setting. This determines the folder
it will look at for the questions and answers. This allows you to save multipl
e folders of questions/answers (say.. for different Jeopardy games). Then just
change this one setting to choose which folder to load, rather than copying the
Jeopardy program over several times.
AUTHOR'S COMMENTS ==========================
This was created originally for a class project at my school. The teach
er originally expected a Powerpoint presentation, but it was my 4th time going t
hrough and recreating the same Jeopardy table. I figured why not write up a pro
gram that I could simply feed the questions/answers into (the Powerpoint version
was static and required you to also relink pages or add more rows/columns). I
ended up going a little further than that and adding more features as I found us
eful (and many more just for fun). The key advantage with not using Powerpoint
is being able to literally add anything I need or want.
The program was originally written in ActionScript 3.0 and compiled into
the exe projector using Flash CS3. The program itself I wrote solely myself, b
ut the sounds, music, and logo are undoubtedly of Jeopardy's. There may be trac
es as well from a few computer games. There is absolutely no intention of profi
ting from this program, but if the owners do not wish for the distribution of th
e media, just let me know. Note however that all media used in this application
has been obtained through public online sources.
This program is free, being merely a few days' work, but hopefully someo
ne else out there finds it useful.
ETC ======================================

** Last Updated May 9 2015

20150509: Recompiled for Flash Player 16 and compatibility with 2015-era compute
rs. Added HTML support in questions/answers. Allowed setup.ini to be renamed s
etup.txt to avoid security conflicts. Extra empty lines will now be removed fro
m questions/answers. Option to disable musicloop on return to the selection scr
een.
20080409: Jeopardy Maker is born!
Jeopardy Maker application/coding copyright to pftq
Visit www.pftq.com for questions/comments and updates.