Greetings and Salutations from another PowerPoint "addict" :)

Hiya ladies and gentlemen,  my name is Mark, but otherwise known as "ListWits" among my friends, and I'm a powerpoint game producing addict (a lot of mine are a lot simpler in appearance than what I've seen on here.. )

I'd actually come across PPC totally by accident, as I had been working on some of my various powerpoint creations, and I've been stuck on a bug for my Lingo game that I've been trying to work out, and it just so happened I came across Rusnak's site, and as I was reading up on some stuff, I saw a link for PPC.. and figured "what the heck".

And I have to say, amazing job and community that I've seen around here, and hope to pick up a few tidbits and quickie hints, as well as hopefully share a few along the way...

Thanks,
Mark, aka ListWits

Glad you have stumbled upon this forum, Mark aka ListWits!

If you haven't done so already, I'd be interested to see some of your work. Do you have a site or some links to where your work is stored?

Funny you should mention Lingo, as that was the next project that I have in the works (after squashing bugs with the already released games, of course!) I have the main game mechanics down so you can play the main puzzle game, but that's about it for now. What were you stuck with in your version?

Hello, ListWits! It's nice to meet someone else into making PowerPoint game shows.

Incidentally, I also came across PowerPoint Creative by accident as I too searched for a game I was working on. (Bet you can guess what that game was.)

Although I'm transitioning out of PowerPoint, I still stop by occasionally and look forward to seeing what you got.

I'll post the Lingo one a little later.. (Like I said, I've got a lot of games.. some are prettier than others, obviously, and I'd love to make some look more like the main games, but with my crew they always prefer I get the games together before I start prettying them up.

But for the issue I'm having with my LINGO game:  It works fine if there are no repeat letters in a word... so for instance if it were "Their" for one of the mystery words, marking off the letters works easily.

But if it were a word like "BERET", because of the double "E"'s, my computer's logic will always hose it up at some point.

For instance the word's BERET...   They put in the guess of  PEACH, it will always mark the E in PEACH as being in the word, but in the wrong spot, instead of recognizing the correct location of the first E.  It'll recognize the first E and mark it correctly at first, but as the word scan continues it'll see the second E in Beret and change the E back to being in the word, but in the wrong spot.

I know it's a logic thing, but I've yet to figure out how to work around it.

I too searched for a game I was working on.

I'm still amazingly jealous of Rusnak's Press Your Luck...   Mine looks so ridiculously horrible in comparison

And Rusnak, I know someone on Twitch who uses (might be used, as he had said something about changing over to a Unity version of your game at some point) your Wheel of Fortune religiously every week...

I have also noticed that issue while developing Lingo, and can't remember if I was able to resolve it or not. I'd like to say I did or at least made an attempt to.

I visited your website you had linked on your profile here, and I am shocked to see all the games you offer! How long have you been working on your games? What got you started making games and learning VBA?

Can you post a link to whoever is using Wheel of Fortune? I'd be interested to see that in action.

To answer your questions.. i've been broadcasting games starting on the PS4 a little over 3 years ago.  April  24, 2015 to be precise.     It started when i found the Playroom (totally by accident), and I watched a few of those "streams", and I thought I could do better with a "show" to push what the PS4 could do, and I'd always had a love of game shows.  So it was a natural fit.  I mean the Playroom wanted to be something special, but people sitting on a couch and watching their phones was driving me nuts... so I tried to do something different.

But the original shows was actually me with a big old art pad doing a "list". (I'll explain that in a second.)..

But as the first few shows kept going I had literally piles of paper piling up in my basement, and i had a HUGE heavy wooden board that I had to constantly move before and during the show, and I'm like.. I'm IT, why not use the computer, so voila.. powerpoint became my baby.   My original shows using PPT were literally on a standard monitor pointed at the PS4 camera with me in the background.   

And once I had powerpoint, it was just the next step to making multiple types of game shows.. if it worked for one, why not for others?  So i took two real easy concepts, which i borrowed off the old ITV and GSN Playnation:



The missing four letters in order from top to bottom made another 4 letter word, which all the answer was.. but you had to pick the right word (as there were multiple possibilities).    I'll let you think about how many four letter words you can make from top to bottom  (such as D-E-E-R)


Then there was the list (and this i definitely got the idea from ITV... the Playnation one was never really that good), and people had to guess the 10 items on "The List".




So people might guess "Liar, Liar Pants on Fire" which isn't one of the 10, but "Dress for Success" was on the list.  Sometimes the list are simple word phrases... like "Ground" Phrases (Ground Control, Stand Your Ground, etc.), and sometimes they're topical themed like this one above.



And from there it just built up.. I think my first game was a weak version of Scrabble (which I have actually been working on since last week) and Blockbusters.   (one of my all-time favorites is Secret Fortune, but I rarely use it due to the difficulty in making/finding/borrowing questions for it).

Some of the games are really short (think of how The Price is Right is a bunch of mini-games, or 5 Minutes to a Fortune)

And some I've based off of one clip I'd manage to see on YouTube (such as Celebrity Sweepstakes, TKO and Twisters).

The trick for me was that I had to come up with variations, since mine was based on text chat (so I've always had to adjust the rules, some nights I don't get anybody playing and some nights I can get 8 to 10 playing easy... Countdown was one of my first that was "truly" loyal to the game with me making almost no changes to the rules, other than the number of players), and that means ridiculous variations (like a open version of Blockbusters and Break the Bank).   For instance, I have like 5 variations of how I run Pointless, based on how many people are participating in the chat during the show.

I have a few games I'd love to run, that I can't just because I can never get enough people to watch the show when I'm broadcasting.

As for when I went to VBA:  I blame the game of "The Chase".   I had a version of the Chase that had OVER 120 slides... one question per slide.    And the moment i had that, I knew had to officially "condense" my shows...(Ironically, i haven't worked on the Chase game in a LONG time... Thanks .. now another one on my too do list!  )    I had some shows that had 120 question and answer boxes on them, and shows that had a zillion slides... and well, as I said, being in IT, I knew I could smooth it out to make it work better, and already having a good computer background to start, VBA in Powerpoint was just a breeze to change to.


There's so much I could add to this biography, and I'll probably do it tomorrow as I'm getting ready for bed... 4 am work wake up calls are killer
 

As for the person who is using your WOF game... he's on twitch and every thursday he broadcasts what's called "The Wheel of Geekdom", and his name is Rob Logan, but his WOG show is broadcast on TheGeekGeneration (and Sunday he had just done a long stream of _all_ of his WOG games he'd broadcasted.     https://www.twitch.tv/TheGeekGeneration  (if you check him out, let him know I sent you there.. I keep trying to get his attention, but it never works

Thanks for sharing the link. I did send Rob an email, hopefully he'll respond back. I am interested in seeing how he was able to make changes to the game's VBA