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JadeJohnsonGames
JadeJohnsonGames
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"Space Decoder" game question Empty "Space Decoder" game question

Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:07 pm
Alright, cool!

Okay.  So there's this one SlideShowGame called "Space Decoder", from this one site at:

people.uncw.edu/ertzbergerj/MS_PowerPoint_Games/Space_Decoder/Space-Decoder-v3.ppt

.  In it, there's a minigame in which you have to shoot all the spaceships with your mouse before time runs out; and you actually have to shoot, ALL, of them, or you "die", or at least fail your objective.

What I'd like to know is, "How did they make it so that you couldn't advance to the next set of questions unless you landed a hit on each and every ship?"

I know that it's not just one spaceship that triggers the clearing of the level, because I tried clearing them in different orders, and no matter which one was the last one flying, it ALWAYS took you to the next quiz.

I do have one theory, and it goes like this:

1. The developer put the ships into the game engine, then covered each one with as many invisible disappearing triggers as the total number of ships in the current stage, being sure to have individually selected one ship and all of its accompanying layers at a time and then giving them all a global yet pod specific motion path that was unique from that of each of the others and its own dematerializing imperceptible triggers. 

2. They then set each trigger to make all of the other triggers in its same layer disappear, resulting in the uncovering of the next layer of triggers. 

3. As it appears that each ship is taken out by the player, what is actually happening is the removal of the ship, along with all of the trigger layers over it, and the subtraction of one layer over all the remaining ships as the total number of spacecraft is subtracted from by one until there are no more layers. 

4. The spaceship objects themselves would thusly serve as their own triggers that would then cause the 'stage complete' (or whatever it says) message to appear as a screen filling object over the whole slide once whichever pod was left was clicked, since there is nothing left to have been animated in the actual level. 

4B. Either that, or each actual ship instead serves as a hyperlink to that particular stage's 'level cleared' slide, since, either way, there would be no more vanishing triggers to cause the final vessel not to disappear on click of itself.

What do you think though?  Is my theory correct?  If so, which variant of part four looks most like it was the one that was actually implemented into UncwEdGames's "Space Decoder" game engine?

Thanks, and I look forward to your answer!


Last edited by JadeJohnsonGames on Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:19 pm; edited 1 time in total
rusnakcreative
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"Space Decoder" game question Empty Re: "Space Decoder" game question

Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:18 pm
Is there VBA involved? PowerPoint files prior to 2007 (.ppt) may have macros in them, so it may be hard to tell just by the file extension. However, if you have macro settings enabled which gives you the option to enable them, that would be a good indication whether or not this was accomplished by macros.

If it's just by trigger animation, there could be a system in place where the "continue" button is buried underneath rectangles that will disappear one at a time via trigger when a spaceship is clicked. There could either be a rectangle that appears over the continue button or the continue button hides after a certain time. If that's the case, click all the ships down, don't click on continue but wait a while and see if it disappears on its own.
JadeJohnsonGames
JadeJohnsonGames
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"Space Decoder" game question Empty Re: "Space Decoder" game question

Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:20 pm
JadeJohnsonGames wrote:Alright, cool!

Okay.  So there's this one SlideShowGame called "Space Decoder", from this one site at:

people.uncw.edu/ertzbergerj/MS_PowerPoint_Games/Space_Decoder/Space-Decoder-v3.ppt

.  In it, there's a minigame in which you have to shoot all the spaceships with your mouse before time runs out; and you actually have to shoot, ALL, of them, or you "die", or at least fail your objective.

What I'd like to know is, "How did they make it so that you couldn't advance to the next set of questions unless you landed a hit on each and every ship?"

I know that it's not just one spaceship that triggers the clearing of the level, because I tried clearing them in different orders, and no matter which one was the last one flying, it ALWAYS took you to the next quiz.

I do have one theory, and it goes like this:

1. The developer put the ships into the game engine, then covered each one with as many invisible disappearing triggers as the total number of ships in the current stage, being sure to have individually selected one ship and all of its accompanying layers at a time and then giving them all a global yet pod specific motion path that was unique from that of each of the others and its own dematerializing imperceptible triggers. 

2. They then set each trigger to make all of the other triggers in its same layer disappear, resulting in the uncovering of the next layer of triggers. 

3. As it appears that each ship is taken out by the player, what is actually happening is the removal of the ship, along with all of the trigger layers over it, and the subtraction of one layer over all the remaining ships as the total number of spacecraft is subtracted from by one until there are no more layers. 

4. The spaceship objects themselves would thusly serve as their own triggers that would then cause the 'stage complete' (or whatever it says) message to appear as a screen filling object over the whole slide once whichever pod was left was clicked, since there is nothing left to have been animated in the actual level. 

4B. Either that, or each actual ship instead serves as a hyperlink to that particular stage's 'level cleared' slide, since, either way, there would be no more vanishing triggers to cause the final vessel not to disappear on click of itself.

What do you think though?  Is my theory correct?  If so, which variant of part four looks most like it was the one that was actually implemented into UncwEdGames's "Space Decoder" game engine?

Thanks, and I look forward to your answer!
JadeJohnsonGames
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"Space Decoder" game question Empty Re: "Space Decoder" game question

Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:26 pm
Well actually, if I remember correctly, the continue button does NOT appear until all the ships are gone.  So it might be that when all of them have been removed, the result of clicking on the final one may be that there is a separate slide with an empty stage in it, and that each actual spacecraft object is in fact a hyperlink to said "continue" slide, which would thusly have a "Fade Smoothly" transition applied to it. 

That would also explain why the continue button isn't timed out by the event of failing the objective.  But no, I don't think I got a macro prompt when booting up the game, so this was definitely done via trigger animation. 

Thank you!  That really helped!


Last edited by JadeJohnsonGames on Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:33 pm; edited 1 time in total
rusnakcreative
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"Space Decoder" game question Empty Re: "Space Decoder" game question

Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:31 pm
JadeJohnsonGames wrote:Well actually, if I remember correctly, the continue button does NOT appear until all the ships are gone.  So it might be that when all of them have been removed, the result of clicking on the final one may be that there is a separate slide with an empty stage in it, and that each actual spacecraft object is in fact a hyperlink to said "continuE" slide, which would thusly have a "Fade Smoothly" transition applied to it.  Thank you!  That really helped!

I just downloaded the game and took it apart to see how it works. The ships and the "continue" button are all on the same slide. The "continue" button has multiple rectangles covering it. Each rectangle disappears when you click on one of the ships. The timer goes off no matter what happens, and will display a large rectangle with an on mouse over hyperlink to a fail slide.
JadeJohnsonGames
JadeJohnsonGames
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Join date : 2017-08-25
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"Space Decoder" game question Empty Re: "Space Decoder" game question

Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:34 pm
Wow!  Thanks!  That's just what I needed!  That's actually kind of cool!  I never thought of it that way.  So thank you very much!
rusnakcreative
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"Space Decoder" game question Empty Re: "Space Decoder" game question

Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:36 pm
Glad to have helped!
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"Space Decoder" game question Empty Re: "Space Decoder" game question

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