HANGMAN - The classic pen & paper game on PowerPoint

A brand new game and not yet uploaded to Powerpointgames.uk website.

I don't think Hangman needs much of an introduction. It's almost identical to the pen & paper game although you might get a few more chances to continue after a wrong guess in this PPT version. Having said that, quite a few of the words used in this game are not easy from a Hangman point of view - so it evens out a bit.

(You VBA people will be probably be able to do something to get it exactly like the original game - yes. I'm looking at you Rusnakcreative and you TimsSlideshowGames ).

There are 10 individual games here with scope for many more games x10 words.  I'd be interested to know if people find this too easy or too difficult to play and succeed. Should I use some easier / harder words? (A 60 - 80% success rate would be good I think).

EDIT: I've just made an adjustment so that each letter will fade after you've clicked it so you don't click the same letter twice.

Get the game here: HANGMAN


P.S.  Don't think you've got a head start with 3/10 - you haven't.

Nice!  I didn't beat the WHOLE game, but I only missed TWO WORDS! 

From a SlideShowGame developer's standpoint, it's actually very well crafted.  I know how you made it, you know how you made it; let's not spoil it here for the other players.

Thank you.

So you got an 80% success rate which is just at the high end of what I'm hoping for.

As we speak... I'm making an adjustment so that a letter will go semi-transparent after you've clicked it so you know which letters you've used.

BTW - No VBA here either!

I actually already knew that your game didn't use VBA.  I never use the tool, so I can tell when others have made games that do not run on said engine.  I guess you could say I have a bit of a knack for that.  Well, and, for making them without coding;

I mean, check THIS out!

Anyway, your game is incredibly well constructed, and I love the background!  Also, did you make the body parts yourself?

Thanks again.

Background was just from 'insert online pictures' from PPT menu. I searched for 'desert sunset' and there it was.

I did indeed make the body parts myself (including the hat) from 'Shapes' with a few gradient fills. I was toying with the idea of making them more realistic with fingers on hands etc. I got as far as the buttons and pocket on the waistcoat and then thought that actually the word-game itself should be the most important feature so I left it at that. The figure is still more realistic than a stick-man though!

I actually got the idea for the US Western-type background and figure from watching someone play a Hangman game with this kind of look on the in-flight entertainment screen on the back of an airplane seat. I thought...'I wonder if I can do something similar on PowerPoint?' - and here's the result.

Nice!  That's very professional looking!

Contrary to what I develop, I'm not nearly as good at Hangman games as Jade. I only got 50% of the words right...

This is impressive for a non-VBA PowerPoint project. It comes to show what PowerPoint can really do. I'm curious: how was the process creating all the triggers for each letter?

Thank you.

Re the triggers: When a correct letter is clicked, a copy of it fades into its position above. It also triggers a 'wipe' exit of a rectangle covering the 'Your Saved' message at the top of the screen.

The background picture was saved as a picture on my hard drive, then made as the background via 'Format background > picture or texture > from file'. This enabled the rectangles (one for each correct letter) to be formatted as 'background picture fill' which means that wherever they are placed, they will be filled with that part of the background picture. So you don't know that they are there.

Similar triggers were used for the incorrect letters with six drawn shapes around the 'You're Hung' text also filled with the picture. One of the six body parts was also triggered to fade-in when an incorrect letter was clicked. Some letters have to trigger the same shape and body parts a few times (as there are only six of them) but this does mean that the player can have some extra chances to continue after clicking an incorrect letter. It's only when the sixth body part is revealed, the sixth shape will 'wipe right' to reveal the 'You're Hung' text. This is how it works for the 'You're Saved' text too, with the fifth, sixth, seventh rectangle (depending on the number of letters in the word) exiting after the final letter is clicked.

I did a Tutorial on the 'picture fill' technique for the PPC forum having used it in a 'trasure hunt' game which you can find at Blackbeard's Doubloons

The final triggered action, which I added later, was for the letters at the bottom to go 60% transparent on-click as an Emphasis animation. Each letter was set as its own trigger for this animation.

Btw, all the letters and text were made with 'Apple Boy' font and then copied/pasted as pictures (with some cropping involved) so that they will look the same and not be changed into some other font on other people's systems.

Hope the above made at least some sense!

John, you never cease to amaze me with what you can do in PowerPoint without VBA, well done!

Thank you for explaining how your complex system works to everyone, as I'm sure it'll help some PPT game developers out there to push their creative limits when they see what PPT is capable of. I especially love the picture fill background tip!

Thank you. I think that's the great thing about a forum like this. People can see something in a game or animation and think "How did they do that?"  (like we all did with Mibo's amazing 'Toss' animation). If that happens here, all you have to do is ask!

This is the coolest non-VBA project @johnr!