A rather interesting take of a PowerPoint quiz game, I really liked what I saw from it. Did you make the animations? Whether you made them or not, they are a great feature!

Nope. My friend made those, but it was under my direction. 

I did the quiz system, the animations, and some of the power bars. 

I made this to entertain my sleepy students, but the school's computer system doesn't let macros run for security reasons.

This Powerpoint can run without any VBA. It's actually a massive collection of over 300 slides. (It keeps track of score without any VBA)

You have to think of every possible scenario. For example, what if the Red Player answered the first three questions correctly, got the fourth one wrong, but then got the fifth one right to win. There needs to be a set of slides for that scenario. 

Of course I wrote a VBA script so the user doesn't have to search and edit 300 slides manually, but the user can save their questions and build a pptx with my VBA script and it will work just fine.

Last edited by matto on Thu Aug 11, 2022 1:41 pm; edited 1 time in total

300 slides sounds brutal indeed, but hey, the work in this is appreciated! You and your friend did a good job with this quiz game! 

Hi Matt. Welcome to the forum!

I agree that this is a great feat of PowerPoint engineering! The combat animations are astonishing.

I first started making learning games and activities for an organisation that would not allow anything with macros, so I stuck with triggers, hyperlinks and animations and have done so ever since.

Glad you like the forum too!

Thanks John.

In case anyone was thinking this, I did want to say though that the animation sequences are videos. They're not PowerPoint animations. Although, I have seen PowerPoint used for that purpose, but it's really difficult... 

I'm going to release the game commercially, but I'm going to make a free version as well. All the graphics and slides have a native 1080p resolution. The free version will be scaled down to 720p and will only come with very limited editing tools. 

I just keep getting swamped with work, so I can never seem to find the time to work on it. 

How many different variations of the stick fights do you have? I'm guessing each slide is unique? And with every possible combination of points for two players that sounds like a LOT of different animations!

You have a very unique approach to providing a custom made template using macros for those who can't run macros. I may have to consider looking into redoing my games in a similar way just so that those who can't run macros at work or school won't be left out.

As for a simple multiple choice quiz game, it definitely grabbed my attention with those animations. Really fun way to add some excitement to a quiz game. Well done!

There are ten total unique animations, five for each player. The numbers "One", "Two", "Three", "Four", and "Five" represent the number of victories a player has. The first to obtain five victories wins the game. A player obtains victories when he or she either answers a question correctly or his or her opponent answers a question incorrectly. Basically, "attack or be attacked".

The animations that play for each player at victory "One", victory "Two", victory "Three", victory "Four", and victory "Five" are all predetermined and don't change depending on the outcome of the game. For example, it doesn't matter that let's say... the Red player didn't answer his or her first two questions correctly, and the Blue player answered his or her first two questions correctly; assuming that the Red player was chosen at the beginning of the game, the score would now be (Red: Zero Victories) to (Blue: Four Victories). It's now the Red player's turn and if he or she answers incorrectly, the Blue player will win the game. But... The Red Player answers correctly. The Red Player's animation for victory "One" plays. Even if the Red player answered his or her first question correctly or the Blue player answered his or her first question incorrectly, the same animation video for obtaining a victory for the Red player at "One" would play. 

So in that video, I believe that I showed every animation except for the Blue Player's finishing move. Since you're a cool dude, I'll show it to you.

Working on a new Userform based editor.

Small Update:

Hello everyone. I'm not dead. Progress has been slow lately because I've been working six days a week. I can only work on this PowerPoint in my free time. Also, I'm no expert on VBA. Sometimes, there's a lot research and doublechecking that I have to do in order to get code to run successfully. I just started learning VBA two months ago, and I think I've come a long way since then. Just the progress that I've made over the course of the last month has been astounding. However, this done mean that I have to constantly rewrite code as I learn more efficient ways of doing things. This is my second full rewrite of the game editor. 

1. I've ordered to have a new custom Font made for the game. It's based off of HeinemannSpecial-Black. It will be included in the final download. 

2. Power bars will be dynamic in the final version. What I mean by that is that they will be shapes/animations which sync with the fight sequences and decrease when a player is hit, as opposed to being gifs which gradually decrease over the course of the fight sequences regardless of whether the player is being hit or not. 

3.  On the VBA side of things, I've pretty much finished the code which removes all of the VBA features from the PowerPoint and converts it to a Macro-Free PowerPoint. I made a custom file manager to circumvent some limitations of VBA file dialogue boxes. 

https://ibb.co/2Fphfhr

https://ibb.co/bsHHFP7

4. I've finished the script which allows the user to randomize all of their questions or randomize the answers to all of their questions.

New custom Font completed. 

Below is the old Font.



Below is the new Font.



Below is the old Font



Below is the new Font

Nice updates matto!

I'm sorry I didn't see your update from earlier this month until now.

I completely understand the struggle you're going through. Don't give up on your PPT dreams! I've made sure that I leave some time set aside where I get to work on more with the games and pushing myself further and learning new PPT tricks and techniques. I'm really impressed with what you've done so far with such a short time having learned VBA for PPT, amazing!

If it makes you feel any better, some of my current games live on my site have yet to be fully re-written (as they should have been earlier on as you have!) My first versions of the games didn't use much of any variables, so there was a lot of unnecessary and redundant code with static values instead of looping with variables (D'oh!) This is how you learn, by doing, so don't stop doing and keep making and playing around in your own PPT sandbox!

Thanks for the encouraging words. I've recovered a little bit since I posted that.  

Actually, I had planned to make an even bigger update for today, but I got distracted with something. 

I guess my biggest issue with VBA is that often times when you expect a simple, common-sense feature to exist, it doesn't. Often, the only workaround is to write some complicated function. 

Regarding variables... I don't take naming things very seriously. Here's some code from my game. 

At the end of the day... Does it work? If the answer is yes, then grab a beer.

Code:

MsgBox "Red Player Question 1 is" & " " & superfarts1 & " " & farts1 & megafarts1 & vbNewLine & _
"Blue Player Question 1 is" & " " & superfarts2 & " " & farts2 & " " & megafarts2 & vbNewLine & _
"Red Player Question 2 is" & " " & superfarts3 & " " & farts3 & " " & megafarts3 & vbNewLine & _
"Blue Player Question 2 is" & " " & superfarts4 & " " & farts4 & " " & megafarts4 & vbNewLine & _
"Red Player Question 3 is" & " " & superfarts5 & " " & farts5 & " " & megafarts5 & vbNewLine & _
"Blue Player Question 3 is" & " " & superfarts6 & " " & farts6 & " " & megafarts6 & vbNewLine & _
"Red Player Question 4 is" & " " & superfarts7 & " " & farts7 & " " & megafarts7 & vbNewLine & _
"Blue Player Question 4 is" & " " & superfarts8 & " " & farts8 & " " & megafarts8 & vbNewLine & _
"Red Player Question 5 is" & " " & superfarts9 & " " & farts9 & " " & megafarts9 & vbNewLine & _
"Blue Player Question 5 is" & " " & superfarts10 & " " & farts10 & " " & megafarts10, vbInformation, "Randomization Results"

Anyway, there's a new guy in the corner of the screen. He's the "Guru". If you click him, then the game editor will open. I'm thinking about having him fly around and the help the user like the fairy "navi" in Zelda.


The game editor is now integrated into the presentation.
The script which randomizes all of the questions is complete. 
The file manager which allows you to save a macro-free version of the presentation is now complete. 
Check it out.

Also the default progress bar in VBA is surprisingly sexy.

Last edited by matto on Thu Mar 02, 2023 8:03 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hello everyone! I've been hard at work on the Game Editor. 

I wanted to give the user an easy way to rearrange the order in which his or her questions appear in the game. 

First, I thought of using a Listbox and some arrows, but that seemed a little boring to me. So instead, I made it so the user can click and rearrange a series of boxes. The top row is the original order in which the questions appear, and the bottom row is the new order which the user selects. 

Every time the user hovers over a box, the game editor displays what question is currently saved to the game. Nifty, right ? I know this seems like a simple concept, but this was a nightmare, and it took me almost three weeks to program. Here's a peek at the VBA code from one of the lower boxes. It was far from trivial (for me anyway). Anyway, I just need to tidy up one more function and I'll be done with it. 

Code:

Dim PUT_IN As Integer
Dim PUT_BACK As Integer
If SWAPQ_DISPATCH_ARRAY(1) >= 0 And SWAPQ_RECEIVING_ARRAY(1) >= 1 Then
Set lbl = SWAPQ_FindLabel(SWAPQ_RECEIVING_ARRAY(1))
If Not lbl Is Nothing Then
If SWAPQ_RECEIVING_ARRAY(1) Mod 2 = 0 Then
PUT_BACK = lbl.Caption
lbl.Caption = PUT_BACK
lbl.BackColor = &HFF0000
Else
PUT_BACK = lbl.Caption
lbl.Caption = PUT_BACK
lbl.BackColor = &HFF&
End If
End If
SWAPQ_RECEIVING_ARRAY(1) = 0
Game_Editor.SWAPQ_LABEL11.BackColor = &H8000000F
Game_Editor.SWAPQ_LABEL11.Caption = ""
Exit Sub
Else
'
End If

Dim i As Integer
For i = 1 To 10
If SWAPQ_DISPATCH_ARRAY(i) >= 1 Then
SWAPQ_RECEIVING_ARRAY(1) = SWAPQ_DISPATCH_ARRAY(i)
SWAPQ_DISPATCH_ARRAY(i) = 0

Set lbl = SWAPQ_FindLabel(SWAPQ_RECEIVING_ARRAY(1))
If Not lbl Is Nothing Then
If SWAPQ_RECEIVING_ARRAY(1) Mod 2 = 0 Then
PUT_IN = lbl.Caption
Game_Editor.SWAPQ_LABEL11.Caption = PUT_IN
Game_Editor.SWAPQ_LABEL11.BackColor = &HFF0000
Else
PUT_IN = lbl.Caption
Game_Editor.SWAPQ_LABEL11.Caption = PUT_IN
Game_Editor.SWAPQ_LABEL11.BackColor = &HFF&
End If
End If

 







LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS THINK!

Last edited by matto on Thu Mar 02, 2023 8:04 pm; edited 1 time in total

Slight redesign. I made a mini preview for the questions currently inputted into the game. What's highlighted is the answer which is currently selected.

Working on the Font Editor 

Update for Diéresis. Because he's the only one who likes my updates, haha.   

I've been hard at work on the control panel. 

The question Swapper and Font Editor are 100% done. 

I really wanted to have a cool background for the editor, and this was my first choice. A bit loud isn't it?



I decided to use hieroglyphs to tell a story about my game. Like, the old magical man is compelling red and blue to fight.  



Here it is as the control panel background. It's kind of an easter egg. 



Last edited by matto on Mon Dec 26, 2022 8:48 am; edited 1 time in total

Currently, I'm working on a macro that will allow the user to customize which fight animation plays at the end of each question. 

This was my first attempt at a user interface for the feature. Because the images are sourced from video files, they were a bit pixelated, so I just decided on a simple user interface with dropdown menus. I'm really OCD...

I just made infinitely scrolling hieroglyphics. How did I do it?  

Last edited by matto on Thu Mar 02, 2023 8:04 pm; edited 1 time in total