Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

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Created By Edward Catchpole – http://wwtbam4.tripod.com

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Readme

Introduction
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the game show loved by millions has gone through various stages of
development. It started off as the popular TV game show that spread round the world, then the
successful board and computer games, now the next stage, a re-usable resource for schools.
This all started as a simple assignment for science; two friends and I had to make a game of some
fashion. We wanted a game that would be different from the others in the group, so on the way home I
was thinking, about the different types of games there are and it hit me, why not do a Who Wants To Be
A Millionaire quiz game on the computer.

So, after working out that PowerPoint was the best way to do it (due to exe restrictions in school), I
started work and after a few days of hard work, the game was finished. It went down a success. This
game was one of the most complicated pieces of software that I had ever created in a Microsoft Office
application. In that lesson I started thinking about how schools could use this piece of software, but it
needed to be modified considerably, because the code had been written on the fly and not really
thought about, it was very fragmented and generally messy.
I spent the next few days cleaning it up and adding the ability to easily change the questions and their
answers. Almost two weeks after the original was made the teaching resource is ready for its debut.
That was back in May 2003.

Jump forwards to the present day – February 2005.

The game has survived in my school (and subsequently my college), a few teachers use it on a regular
basis as a lesson starter and the headteacher has congratulated me on my accomplishment, but, it’s not
exactly how I want it to be – the graphics are shoddy, the code is messy and it’s missing plenty of
features, so, with some time in half-term holiday, I decided to finish it off once and for all. So, I:
 Re-wrote a load of the code for efficiency
 Re-organised all the functions into separate modules (was all in 5 before – a real pain!)
 Designed and added much-needed shape naming algorithm
 Replaced the old ‘50:50’ and ‘Walk’ graphics with good quality images
 Added question animation
 Included current winnings display in between each question
 Added ‘View Correct’ option after getting an answer wrong
 Fixed loads of sound timing bugs
 Added PowerPoint Event capture

November 2005
I had a request for the game to support different currencies so I made some changes:
 Added multiple currency support to the game
 Added option to choose currency in the Question Set Editor
The currency you choose is stored for each question set, so you may have different currencies for different
question sets.
All your old question sets will still work fine, they’ll default to using Pounds (£). To change the currency on old
question sets, simply open them in the Question Set Editor, change the currency (as described on page 5) and
save.
 Changed the Question Preview to support the shape naming algorithm
 Re-wrote the preview question code to support the shape naming algorithm
 And finally, I’ve taken the passwords off the VBA code behind all the documents

November 2005 Update 2

 Found and fixed a bug where if the currency was ‘£’s then the game would never load

November 2005 Update 3

 Fixed an odd bug where when saving a question set, the editor would set all the ‘B’ answers to
those of ‘A’ – thanks Yew Cheng Hui

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Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Readme

The Game
Using

The game is easy to use and play, simply open the presentation file, click play and locate the set of
questions you wish to play.
To answer a question simply click on the correct answer, if you are not sure then you can use a 50:50
by clicking on the “50:50” icon in the top left corner of the screen. If you get to the stage where you
have used your 50:50 and you do no know the answer then you can guess or walk away by clicking the
“Walk” icon in the top left corner.
The money tree on the right of the screen shows you how much money you have gained so far.
When you get a question wrong you will be told how much money you have won and have the option
to play again or exit.

Security

After considerable testing, all known methods of skipping questions have been eradicated to create a
cheat resistant game. Accidental or malicious actions may cause these security measures to be
neutralised so it is strongly advised that the actual game be left as it is and if absolutely necessary to
open the presentation in edit mode, set it to read-only.

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Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Readme

The Question Set Editor

Using

For those that do not wish to edit the question files in Notepad, I created an Excel based editor.
This is very simple to use and will cut down the time to create questions.
To create a new set of questions, start by opening up Question Set Editor.xls.

Question Set Editor.xls

Each question has it’s own row, each row consists of the Question text (column B), the answers
(columns C to F), the correct answer letter (column G) and the 50:50 alternative letter (column H).
There is also a ‘Click to preview’ link. When you click this, Excel will open up Question Preview.ppt
with that question in it so you can check it’s going to look okay.

Question being previewed

Simply press the Escape key on your keyboard to return to the Question Set Editor.

To set the number of 50:50s available to the player, simply type in a whole number between 0 and 15
into cell F1.

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Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Readme

To choose the currency the questions will be played in, simply enter a currency symbol into the cell F2.

After you have written your question set, click Save or Save As at the bottom of the sheet to Save the
questions as a question file (.mil) for use by the game.

Action Buttons

Also in this set of controls are buttons to Load a question file (.mil) for editing, a New button to start a
brand new question set, and a Clear button to blank the current questions for a fresh start.

Note: When you close the Question Set Editor, Microsoft Excel may ask you to save the workbook,
click ‘No’, otherwise you will edit the workbook and it may result in irreparable damage to the editor.

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Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Readme

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this game official?
No.

Nothing happens when I click on Save or Load in the Question Set Editor or a new window opens titled
’Microsoft Visual Basic’ with some text highlighted in yellow.
Please contact Edward Catchpole at: ecatchpole87@hotmail.com, in the message, attach the question
set being used (if applicable), the line that was highlighted in yellow and any other information you
think related.

The sound does not work in the game

Check that the speakers are on and turned up.
Check that in the folder “Audio” the following files are present:
 50 50.wav
 correct.wav
 finalansmusic.wav
 incorrect.wav
 Intro theme.wav
 Lightdown.wav
 lose_32000.wav
 million_pound_lose.wav
 million_pound_question.wav
 million_pound_win.wav
 Round 1 Loop.wav
 Round 2 Loop.wav
 Round 3 Loop.wav
 Total Prize Money.wav
 win_1000.wav
 win_32000.wav
Please note that the filenames are case-sensitive.

Where can I get technical support?

Don’t hesitate to contact Edward Catchpole by e-mail at: ecatchpole87@hotmail.com.

Compatibility
Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 or better is needed for the game to be played and Microsoft Excel 2000 or
higher must be present to be able to create question sets using the Question Set Editor.
The computer running the game must also have a keyboard, mouse and optionally; speakers.

Credits
I would like to thank Michael Deboo, Katy Atkinson, Mr P. Irwin, Mr A. Shaw, Mr. A. Yardley and all
the beta testers for making all this possible, also to Celador for producing the ‘Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire’ idea.
Code credits: to VB Accelerator for their excellent Common Dialog class (you guys rock)

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire; the name, logo and likeness are © Celador 1997-2005

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