How can I make a Quiz with AGS?

[madradubhcroga]

Hello.


This might not be the right forum for this post.
Arguably, this might not be AGS appropriate at all.

I want to make a 4 player quiz game, a bit like 'buzz' for the ps2.

Here's how I see it:

Room 1:  select number of players, 1-4.

Room 2: shows a simple checkerboard with the players lined up on the left.  (actually the players are objects. cEgo is only used to change room) and the finish-line on the right.

The keys Q,Z,P and M act as the players' buzzers.

A question pops up in a GUI. If player 1 presses his buzzer first, another GUI appears, with 4 possible answers to the question, and the player's portrait above.  If he is correct, he moves forward one square. If he is wrong, he moves back one square.

More sophisticated challenges (solving a maze on a timer/ identifying a tune etc) take place in subsequent rooms.

The first player to make it to the right edge of the board is the winner.

Screenshot here :


http://madradubhcroga.blogspot.com/2012/05/blog-post.html


That's the plan, in general. 
My main concern is getting the architecture right at the beginning, so I can upload engaging content as I create it.
Another issue is how to arrange categories of questions, and randomize within those categories.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this?  Or on the project in general?

Discussion and ideas appreciated.

[geork]

I dunno if this helps but for creating and randomising questions catagories I would use structs:

  http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/manual/struct.htm

you could define a struct with all the variables of a question, say:

Code: ags

struct Question {
  String q; //The question
  String ans[4]; //The answeres, from ans[0] to ans[3]. You could make 4 seperate variables, I preffer arrays
  int RightAns; //Number of the correct answere;
  int catagory; //Say 1 = Nature, 2 = Poltics etc.
};

//in some other part of code
Question question[50] //or however many questions you want

This is just a concept struct but that's along the lines of how I would organise my questions with catagories. Randomising within these can be done in various ways, but I preffer simply to order the catagories by number, so Nature questions are from 0-9, Politics from 10-19 etc. Then just call:

Code: ags

 int MyVar = Random(9) + MyFactor //Where MyFactor is an integer which changes depending on which catagory is selected
                                                              //E.G. if politics was selected this would be 10. 

  MyVar would then determine which question is asked (question[MyVar].......)

I dunno if this helps with the catagorising thing, that would just be my method

Good luck with this project though, it sounds great!

[madradubhcroga]

Thankyou Geork!

That gives me something to work on, for sure!