Gameshow Maker - Discussion, Help, and Feedback

[egerry]

Is there a way to disable the music looping on the category selection screen?  I downloaded Gameshow Maker, and have the setup.ini load the Jeopardy Preset.  I made a couple of modifications to the preset (changed out a couple of sounds).  One of the modifications I made was to trim the JeoLoop to play for 20 seconds (just while the board loads).  As soon as it stops, though, the music starts up again and continues upon each return to the category selection screen. 

Thanks very much for putting this "maker" together - it is helping me out a ton.

Thanks!
Erinn

[pftq]

You're not the first person to request that, so I went ahead and uploaded a version 1.05 with an extra setting called 'musicloop_return'.  If you set this to false, the music loop won't continue after viewing questions.

See: Gameshow Maker 1.05

[egerry]

I just downloaded 1.05 and was able to turn off the looping music.  Thanks so much for your quick response and for the update.    I did  have one more question (for now!  ).  I am wondering what controls the music for final jeopardy and the daily doubles. 

I wanted to use the "jeopardy thinking music" (jeo2.mp3 and/or jeo3.mp3) just for final jeopardy.  I did leave blank questionbg in the jeopard.ini, and noticed that did remove the "thinking music" for the "normal" questions.  It still plays the "thinking music" plays for the daily doubles, but not for final jeopardy.  I re-downloaded Version 1.05 and ran it with your defaults (I only changed the loadpreset to equal presets/jeopardy.ini).  I noticed that the default is not to have music for final jeopardy.  Is this changeable?  Is the daily double music?  If so, could you tell me which ini fiile to change?

I greatly appreciate your help!

Erinn

[pftq]

I uploaded the wrong version yesterday, so if you redownload and replace your Gameshow Maker file (exe/app/swf) it should work fine.  The music for final jeopardy would be 'finalmusic' but the version I had up yesterday did not have the setting fully functional yet.

For daily double music, that would be the 'special' setting (the description says bonus music).

Sorry about that, but thanks for catching the issue before too many people downloaded it.

[egerry]

Certainly no apology needed.  You are helping us all out so much.  Thanks again.

[egerry]

Thanks again ? it is working like a charm now.  I think this game is going to blow people away at my training.  I really appreciate it.

To the forum, I used the Gameshow maker to make a Jeopardy game.  For others that might be working on this or another game, I?d like to share some findings/resources.

I found some great Jeopardy sounds from the show here:  http://www.qwizx.com/gssfx/usa/jeop.htm .  They download as wav files, but you can download a free MP3 ripper/converter from CNET.com.  I used this one:  http://www.freerip.com/ .  It?s very easy to use.  Under the ?View? menu, select ?Converter?.  Then under the ?Files menu? select ?Add Files to Convert?.  Browse out to the files on your machine and select.  Click the button with the CD and arrow to convert.  Follow the instructions in PFTQ?s Read Me to swap out or add sounds as desired.

I also wanted to use the ?This is Jeopardy? sound from the show when the Jeopardy title appears.  On the PowerPoint Jeopardy forum that I originally learned about Gameshow Maker:

http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topic/show?id=649749%3ATopic%3A256828

I found a PowerPoint called jeopardy_template.ppt posted on January 7, 2009.  This has the ?This is Jeopardy? file that I used in titlesfx (Sound of title coming down).  To get the sound out of the PowerPoint, download it.  Then open it and save it as a Web Page.  PowerPoint will ask you to confirm the format change, confirm by clicking ?Save As Web Page?.  When it converts it to a webpage, it will generate a folder of files associated with the presentation and the wav files will be in the folder.  Use the aforementioned free MP3 converted to convert the wav file to an MP3 and follow Read Me the directions as above.

For those that might be doing another game or that might want a little more creative license with the Jeopardy sounds, my friend turned me on to this site:  http://www.sounddogs.com/ .  You can download the sound samples for free by right clicking on them and selecting ?Save Target As? . .  for the sounds in higher quality, they are available for purchase.

For those that want to get really fancy with sounds, there?s free sound editing software here:  http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ .  I have used this in the past, but Windows 7 is not currently supported.  I downloaded WavePad from CNET:
 http://download.cnet.com/WavePad-Sound-Editor/3000-2170_4-10276212.html and found it useful.  Note, this software will obviously also do the wav to MP3 conversion for you, but the previously mentioned converter is less complicated if you only need to convert and not edit sounds.

That?s my story.  A happy and prosperous new year to all!
Erinn

[RandomManA]

I'm having a weird problem with Gameshow Maker. The prefix I'm using (a simple dollar sign) works fine, but for some reason there's a strange suffix attached to the very first row. There's a space followed by a 'y' with two dots over it, and after that is what looks like a lowercase 'b' - lowercase 'p' hybrid thing. I've checked both the setup.ini, and the preset jeopardy.ini, and both say the suffix is blank. And it's not on any other row, all the other rows are fine. I'm totally clueless at this point.

[pftq]

Hi, are you using just notepad to edit the file? Editors like MS Word usually throw in a bunch of encoded characters even if they may look blank or like a space.  Also make sure your file settings are plain text.

[nktvnvn]

Hello,

Thanks for your program. It is a true gem. Can I request the additional capability of displaying Vietnamese characters? I understand filesize bloat will be a problem but is there any chance you can make language-related features small plugins to reduce the file size?

[pftq]

Hi, I can probably add the characters in later this weekend.  I wouldn't worry too much about the bloated filesize for now (unless you are wanting it in the SWF version, which there are no fonts).

I haven't really looked into making the fonts as a plugin yet - that might be something I'll try in the summer when I'm not as busy.

Thanks for the suggestion though!

[waraitai]

Thank you for this AMAZING program.  I would love to see Japanese support down the road (I'm a Japanese teacher)

[Jeremy]

Thanks for all of your hard work.  Would it be possible for you to include the font Cambria Math?  I'm a high school math teacher, and my questions all involve mathematical symbols.  Cambria Math is the font used by Word's equation editor, and if I could just copy and paste them from Word, that would be unbelievably useful and beneficial.

[pftq]

Hi, unfortunately Cambria Math is a licensed font, so I won't be able to include it with Gameshow Maker.

There are a number of math symbols already available with the regular fonts though:
http://www.theworldofstuff.com/characters/
^ You should be able to copy-paste most symbols you find in the above list.

I will get to the Vietnamese and Japanese fonts into the program some time this weekend though.

[Jeremy]

While I very much understand the reason, that's monumentally bad news.  The problem with those general characters is that you're extremely limited with regard to what concepts you can actually cover.  Plus, the fact that you can only get up to a highest exponent of 3, and the square root symbol not actually covering anything make the general symbols pretty useless.  I've tried making a classroom review using the teacher-friendly Smart Notebook software, but it just isn't nearly as cool looking; and the prep time is exponentially higher.  Thanks for the reply, and thanks again for your hard work.

[pftq]

@ nktvnvn and waraitai:

Can you post a few examples of text from the requested fonts? There are usually multiple styles for the writing and I want to make sure I get the right one.

Thanks