Tutorial Game Show Presenter

 

 Preferences

The PREFERENCES menu (Fig.1) holds the commands that give you control over how your game show looks and plays. This menu is normally available in both the Quiz Editor and the Quiz Player, although most preferences cannot be changed while a show is in progress.


Fig.1

Note that the top two menu items – SHOW TITLE AND SET-UP and SHOW FLOW – are of particular interest because they act as gateways to numerous controls and groups of options. Under SHOW TITLE AND SET-UP you can access all the basic options needed to run a show in a single screen. Another cluster of options appears when you call up the SHOW FLOW item on the PREFERENCES menu. That window serves as a gateway to many settings that fine tune your show.

To help you learn what these various controls do, here is a tour of all the settings you can find under the PREFERENCES menu:

Show Title and Set-up: Opens the "Set-Up Game Show" control box so you can change the title of your show and many other basic settings in one place. When you play a game show, the text typed under "Give the Quiz Show a title" will be used on the opening show title screen. The "Set-Up Game Show" control box (Fig.2) can be opened from the PREFERENCES menu, as it was told before, and also from within the Quiz Editor by clicking the blue PREFS button.


Fig.2

Here are descriptions for each of the settings in the Set-Up Game Show control box shown above:

  • Quiz Show Title: Type the title of your show into this box and it will appear in the title screen and background sets of your game show. (Shorter is better. Long titles may not fit well.) If you change the show title while you are in the Quiz Player, you can see the results immediately when you click OK.
  • Game Show Set: Select one of three styles for the game show set.
  • Quiz timer: Select how long the timer will run for each question, or turn the timer off completely.
  • Include Supermodel: When checked, Gina Gorgiosso will appear in your show. However, it's possible for other settings to cancel out the supermodel. For example, if you use "Shorten Introduction" under the SHOW FLOW menu, that cuts the supermodel out of the intro scene. And if you choose "Never show scoreboard" under SHOW FLOW, the supermodel won't see much or any screen time. The three scenes where Gina is included (unless you cancel her out with another setting) are: the Introduction, the Scoreboard and the Prize Presentation scene.
  • Pause for Prize Presentations: Got prizes? Check this box. Got no prizes? Leave it off. This feature helps you reward your contestant(s) with a prize presentation scene at the end of the show. Check this box and the Game Show will go from the Trophy presentation scene to a prize presentation scene that shows the scoreboard. Al Morale will make an opening remark about a prize, followed by applause. After that, the game stays in a holding pattern while you do live presentations of prizes. Click anywhere on the screen to move on to the credits. Or if you want to trigger another game in the same show, after your first click to move on, click again while you hear the applause. This will take you back to the "Sign In" screen after the applause.
    TIP: During the paused prize presentation, the keyboard sounds are enabled so you can add some fun effects as you announce prizes. Try the audience "Ooooo!" (that's a capital "O" key) or type "p" to have Al Morale talk about "lovely parting gifts."
  • Music On: Turns the show's theme music on and off. This includes the timer music.
  • Keyboard sounds: This feature is designed for when you are presenting in front of a group and controlling the game from the keyboard. When checked, keyboard sounds lets you trigger sound effects and host comments by typing certain keys. (For example, type "L" for a burst of audience laughter. Type the "f" key to make the host say, "Is that your final error?") Keyboard sounds are available when a quiz question is on screen (before and after an answer is given). This feature helps you make the show more responsive to your audience by cueing sound effects or overriding Al Morale's automatic comments with one of your choice. If no key is pressed to override one of Al's comments, he will speak automatically.
    TIP: If your game players are typing in their own answers during a game, uncheck the keyboard sounds box before your show begins. This way if players press other keys, they will not accidentally trigger sounds.
  • Show Manual Advance: Check this box if you want the game show to pause for live commentary or discussion after each question. If unchecked, the game show flows automatically. When checked, a button appears at the center, top of the screen while the question is still on screen with the correct answer highlighted. Click that button (or press the RETURN key) when you are ready for the game to move on. (The same control checkbox also appears in the SHOW FLOW control box.)
  • Keyboard Sound list button: This button opens a list of the keyboard sounds so you can print it out and keep it handy during presentations.
  • Sound Tweaks button: On Windows computers, this button opens a dialog box that shows the current "Sound Device" and allows you to change it, if your computer has that capability. This feature is useful for troubleshooting sound glitches that occur on some Windows computers. On Macintoshes, the button has no effect.
  • Selected quiz is: This information box shows the name of the currently selected quiz. (To select a different quiz, simply click the name of the quiz you want in the "Quiz Editor" quiz list or, if you are in the player, use CHANGE QUIZ under the PREFERENCES menu.
  • How Many Questions to Use?: This important set of controls lets you determine the duration of your game show by deciding how many questions will be presented. For shorter quizzes – especially when there's just one player – the Automatic mode is a quick way to set up. For a greater degree of control, use click on Manual and then set the slider to any number up to 100. The number you choose will be how many questions will be presented to each player. (The number you selected appears to the right of the arrow buttons.) In Automatic mode, the game show does the following calculations: If your players are taking turns (not buzzing-in), the game show will use as many questions as possible while still keeping an even number of questions among players. For example, if your quiz contains 25 questions and you have 2 players, each player will get 12 questions. The program skips the 25th question to keep the game even since players are taking turns. If you are running the game in Buzz-In Mode, every player is competing on every questions, so automatic will use all 25 questions.
  • Shuffle Questions: If unchecked, your quiz questions are presented in the order that they appear in the Quiz Editor. When Shuffle questions is checked, the game show randomly mixes the order of your questions. If you also have Use difficulty ratings checked, your quiz questions will be sorted according to rating (easy, medium, hard) and then shuffled for presentation in each of the three rounds.
    TIP: Do you want your quiz questions to be used in the same order that you created them? Uncheck Shuffle questions and Use Difficulty Ratings.
  • Use Difficulty Ratings: Check this feature if you want your game show to present questions "Millionaire-style" (start with easy questions and get harder in each round). When checked, the game show sorts your questions according to the difficulty ratings given in the Quiz Editor. (If you didn't give any ratings, then they are probably all rated "medium", which is the default setting. Questions rated "easy" are used in Round 1, "medium" in Round 2 and "hard" in Round 3. In the "Quiz Editor," a ratings summary is always shown for the selected quiz.
    TIP: In some situations, the Use Difficulty Ratings feature will turn itself off if it finds there are not enough questions for the show. For example, if you only have 1 "easy" question but you have 2 players taking turns, you need an "easy" question for each of them in Round 1. Since your quiz doesn't have the minimum number of "easy" -rated questions for this game, the software will shut off the Difficulty Ratings feature. This shut-off does not interrupt the show – it happens behind the scenes.
  • Play In Rounds: When checked, the game show is automatically divided into 1 to 3 rounds of play (depending on how many questions are available). Al Morale will announce the start of each round and the point value per question is displayed. If you turn off PLAY IN ROUNDS, it may override other settings that rely on rounds. For instance, if Use Difficulty Ratings is checked, it will be ignored since it cannot sort the questions by difficulty into 3 rounds. Similarly, if you used SHOW FLOW to schedule any breaks to come after rounds, that will be ignored. Finally, when rounds are off all questions are worth the same number of points – whatever value you selected for "Round 1" under POINT VALUES.
  • Reveal Correct Answer: When checked, the correct answer is highlighted after a player's answer is given. Obviously, this lets people see which answer was the correct one, even if it was answered incorrectly. But in some teaching situations, you may not want your students to see the correct answer during the game show. When this box is unchecked, the correct answer text is NOT highlighted. (However, the button animations of a buzzer and bell will still play when the players' answers are given.)
  • Cancel button: Closes the box and ignores any settings you changed.
  • OK button: Closes the box and applies your changes.

Show Flow: This menu command opens a cluster of options in the Show Flow Preferences window (Fig.3) (shown below). These allow you to customize how your show unfolds and adjust how your game show is presented. The options are divided into three categories: Show Opening, Quiz and Scoreboard, and Breaks.


Fig.3

Here are descriptions of each option available from the Show Flow Preferences window:

  • Start show when program first opens does just that. If you check this box, next time you start Game Show Presenter it will launch straight into the game show as it was set-up when you last quit the program. (You can always halt the show with the STOP command under QUIZ)
  • Shorten introduction, when checked, will skip over the Gina intro scene and get your show started quicker. This is useful if you use Game Show Presenter with the same audience regularly and they want to get straight into the quiz.
  • Skip sign-in screen – check this box to by-pass the player sign-in screen entirely. The AUTOMATIC PLAYER SIGN-IN button on this screen gives you a way to preset the number of players and their names. The defaults are set to generic player names (Player One, etc.)
  • Clicking the Automatic Player Sign-in button brings up the "Player Info." control box (Fig.4) where you can preset how many players and even their names.
    These settings are useful if you want to bypass the regular Player Sign-In screen that comes up at the start of a game show.


Fig.4

  • Manual Advance after each question. Check this if you want to discuss a question after the correct answer has been revealed. If this box is checked, the game will pause after each answer is shown during the quiz. A small arrow button appears at the top of the screen. Click that button (or hit the RETURN key) when you're ready to advance the show past the current Q&A. (This same checkbox also appears in the SHOW TITLE AND SET-UP control box.)
  • Skip the Turn Alert screen before each question. Normally the turn alert screen precedes each question. But if you want a faster pace, check this box to skip that. Your players will need to pay more attention to know when it's their turn, but the software adds the current player's name to the timer over the question.
  • Manual Advance on scoreboard. Check this box if you want more time to view the scoreboard during the game. It will pause on the scoreboard screen until you press RETURN or click the arrow button on screen.
  • Scoreboard only when rounds end is another option that can speed up the game show's pace. When this box is checked, the scoreboard is not shown after every turn. Instead, it is shown once at the end of every round.
  • Never use scoreboard does what it says. If you check this box, the scoreboard will not be shown during the quiz show. However, if you have Pause for Prizes turned on then the scoreboard will appear in that final scene of the show.
  • Breaks: This feature gives you a slick way to combine a game show with a Powerpoint presentation or with live comments. The drop-down menu gives you several options for the timing of breaks. When a break comes up, Al Morale will announce it and the game will display the title screen in pause mode. While the game is paused, you can easily jump to Powerpoint or another application. Game Show Presenter remains in pause mode until you return to the title screen and click the small arrow button. (It's the same button as used for manual advance.) Your click will be Al Morale's cue to say, "We're back!" and jump back into the game show right where it left off. The drop down menu lets you schedule those breaks to come after one or two rounds of play. But if you need even more breaks or you want to do them spontaneously, use the "Click on scoreboard" option. This way, whenever the scoreboard appears, all it takes is a click from you to cause an immediate break in the action.
    TIP: If you use breaks that involve clicking the scoreboard, pay attention to the scoreboard settings under QUIZ AND SCOREBOARD. If the scoreboard is set not to appear, you won't get a chance for any breaks.

Credits: Opens a control box for adding up to five people's names and roles to the credit screen. You can also set the scrolling speed or using fading credits. If you call up this dialog while in the Quiz Player, you can preview your credits. (If you experience any sound choppiness while playing the credits, use the Fade Long or Fade Slow setting instead of scrolling)

Thought Balloons: Add comic relief to your show by letting your audience read the mind of the game show supermodel, Gina Gorgiosso. Open the Thought Balloon Editor from the button that appears in the control box after you pick THOUGHT BALLOONS from the PREFERENCES menu. You'll be able to select which gag to use (or none at all), create new gags or edit the existing ones. Each show can have two thought balloon gags: one when Gina is introduced, and a second one in the prize presentation scene. (Of course, if the prize scene is not turned on, you won't see that second gag.)
The THOUGHT BALLOONS item on the PREFERENCES menu opens control box (Fig.5). Clicking the button "Open Balloon Editor" opens the window shown below (Fig.6).


Fig.5


Fig.6

In Game Show Presenter, you can add comic relief to your quiz show by revealing what's going through the mind of game show supermodel, Gina Gorgiosso. The Thought Balloon Editor has a set of blue buttons that help you write and edit gags for Gina, make the balloon bigger or smaller and even set the timing of how long a balloon appears on screen.
TIP: Need a starter idea for a customized Thought Balloon gag? In the first balloon, have Gina say, "Supermodel is an OK job. But my dream job is to be..." Then add a punch line balloon with the occupation of your audience. (example: "...an accountant.")

Instant Show Set-ups (Fig.7) give you a convenient way to save your game show preference settings under a name so you can instantly restore that game show scenario next time you need it. This is very useful if you have two or more training quizzes, because you can rapidly load and play your various game shows without a lot of set-up work. It's also handy for teachers working through a curriculum that will be repeating annually. Just set your game show up once, then use Instant Show Set-ups to store a snapshot of all those settings. Now you can restore the game show to that exact set-up by selecting the name and clicking LOAD SELECTION.


Fig.7

When you create an Instant Show Set-up, all your preference settings are saved, including the credits, thought balloon gags, show title, show flow, etc.
Creating an Instant Show Set-up is an easy two-step process:

  • STEP 1: Set the game show up exactly as you want it to be. Show title, background, credits, show flow, and all the other preferences should be set-up now as you want them to be recalled later.
  • STEP 2: Under the PREFERENCES menu, click the INSTANT SHOW SET-UPS. When the dialog box opens, click the button CREATE NEW SET-UP WITH CURRENT PREFS. You'll be prompted to enter a name for the set-up. That's it!
    The LOAD SELECTION button recalls your preferences as they were when last saved under that Set-Up name. To use this command, first select the Set-Up by name in the drop down list of names, then click the button.
    The DELETE SELECTION button removes a Set-up name from the list and erases the memory of the preference pre-sets. To use delete, first you must select the Set-Up by name from the drop down list, then click the button to delete it.
    To change a set-up that you've already created, first open the dialog box, select the set-up by name and click LOAD SELECTION. All the preferences will be loaded as they were saved. Now, make your changes to the game show's preferences as you normally would. When you're satisfied, reopen the Instant Show Set-ups box, reselect your Set-Up by name, and click the button UPDATE SELECTED SET-UP WITH CURRENT PREFS. Your modifications to the set-up will be saved.
    TIP: Be sure you have selected your set-up by name each time you open the dialog box for INSTANT SHOW SET-UPS. Otherwise, you might save your updates under the wrong set-up name.

800 x 600 Show or 1024 x 768 Show: Selects the stage size for the game show. The change takes place immediately, unless you are in the "Quiz Editor." (The "Quiz Editor" always shows at the 800 size. If you select 1024 while in the "Quiz Editor," your change will appear when you play a game show.) The current setting is indicated by a checkmark on the dropdown menu.

Big Event, Classic or Flashy Set: Selects your choice of game show settings. The current setting is indicated by a checkmark on the dropdown menu.

Quiz Font: This command let's you choose a font that will be applied to the entire quiz that is currently selected. This is especially useful if you are doing a language or math quiz. Important note: If you select a font on your machine and then send the quiz to another computer that has Game Show Presenter, that other computer must also have the very same font. If Game Show Presenter does not see the font, it will substitute the default font: Arial. It is very important to choose the appropriate font to present your questions correctly. Writing in Lithuanian you should check whether all the characters are shown correctly and choose the appropriate font.

Quiz Text Display: Use this command to open a control box that lets you set either regular or high contrast text. (In the Quiz Player, you may preview the display if a game is not in progress.) If a game is in progress, you may still change this setting and your change will be applied immediately in the show.

Change Quiz: In the Quiz Player, this command opens a screen to let you select the quiz to be used in the show. (The quiz cannot be changed while a show is in progress.) This menu item does not appear in the Quiz Editor, because you can easily change quizzes there in the main Quiz window.

Show Volume: Use this command to open a sound volume control (Fig.8). Keep in mind this is only software control over the Game Show Presenter audio and if you have problems with audio being too loud or soft, you may need to adjust your sound at the system level or on some hardware. Slide the control to adjust the overall sound level of the game show. This feature CAN be used while a show is underway.

 


Fig.8

Game Log: This menu item opens controls (Fig.9) for a feature that will record the score of each player in your shows. This is useful for teachers, trainers and others who would like review how their classes performed on various quizzes. When this feature is ON, the score data is automatically captured for each complete game. You have the option to export the log file, which is kept in a tab-delimited format so you can pull the data into your spreadsheet, database or other program. The log does have an internal size limit and, when reached, the program will prompt you to export the data and clear the log file.


Fig.9

Point values: Lets you vary how many points a correct question will be worth in each round. You also have two checkbox options: 1) checkbox causes deduction of points for wrong answers and timeouts 2) checkbox controls whether points will be reduced for additional guesses on the same question. This only applies to buzz-in mode of play. If the box is checked, then if the first guess is wrong and the question was worth 500 points, then the second guess is worth 250 points. Each wrong answer given will further reduce the points by half. The assumption here is that answering the question gets easier as possible answers are ruled out.
Note that you can now adjust the score while a game is underway to deal with operator errors or other situations. To do that, use the ADJUST SCORE command under the EDIT menu.


Fig.10

Buzz-In Settings: This option enables you to choose either of two modes of competition. In the default mode, players take turns answering questions on a rotating basis. The other method is buzz-in competition in which all players race to buzz-in once they think they know the answer. There are a number of advanced features you can set for buzzer play. To skip over a question when nobody buzzes in, hit the ENTER key or use CONTROL plus SPACEBAR to pass on that question.

Host Options: This command opens a control box so you can choose to turn off Al Morale and provide a live performer to be the game show host. When you are using Be Your Own Host mode, the game show pauses in every scene so your host has plenty of time to talk and interact with your audience. Use the SPACEBAR key to advance the show from one scene to the next. When Al Morale is off, the music, sound effects, and other features continue to operate as before. Note that this feature does not superimpose a video feed of your host onto the screen. Instead, the screen becomes a backdrop for your live performer.
TIP: Need to train your live game show host? Turn on Al Morale and run the show so your live host can easily see how the game show flows.