Quiz Master Copyright (C) Moose O'Malley, ----------- September 2007. +===========================================================+ | T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S | +===========================================================+ | * Introduction | * Using this Program | * Question and Answer File Format | * Quiz Results File Format | * The Future | * Reviews / Awards / CDs | * Freeware Information | * Warranty | * Amendment History | * Contacting the Program's Author +===========================================================+ Introduction : -------------- Quiz Master for Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, etc. This program is free software. Anyone - any person, any company, or any business - can use this program for free. No fees or payment is required. See "Freeware Information" below. Quiz Master is a program that enables you to easily set-up quizes - either for fun, or to test or build knowledge of particular subject areas, or to help with assessment of student / employee achievement. Quiz Master enables you to specify : - The Questions to be asked. - The list of possible answers, along with the correct answer. - The time allowed to answer each question, so that difficulty questions can be allocated more time. - The score (or weighting) of questions, so that harder questions can be made to be worth more. Included with the program is a set of 45 Sample Questions, but many more questions will be made available in the future. At the moment, I am working on a set of 1,600 questions !! These will be available to Registered Users only. Using this Program : -------------------- To use this program, unzip the contents of the ZIP file to a directory - such as c:\quizmstr - and run the executable file quizmstr.EXE. In the registered version of this program, you can setup your own Quiz Question and Answers. (See below for further information). Question and Answer File Format : ---------------------------------- The following explains the format of the Question and Answer file. Comment Lines : ! - Any lines starting with an exclamation mark (!) are treated as comments and ignored. Each Question must consist of : Q:: The Question to be asked. A:: Answer - with possible answers seperated by '::' N.B. The first answer in the list must be the correct one ! Each Question may also have the following optional settings : S:: Score or weighting for the question (1 to 100). e.g. 1 = Easy, 10 = Hard. (If this parameter is not supplied, the default = 1 but Registered Users can change this on the Settings Screen.) T:: Time limit for the question in seconds. 0 indicates no time limit. (If this parameter is not supplied, the default = 5 but Registered Users can change this on the Settings Screen.) In addition, "QT::: is used to hold the Quiz Title (only one per quiz), for example : QT::General Knowledge Quiz Example : QT::General Knowledge Quiz Q::What is the capital of France ? A::Paris::Berlin::London::Prague S::1 T::0 Q::If 3 Men can move 7 tonnes of gravel in a 8 hours, how long would it take 11 Men to move the same amount of gravel ? A::3.2 Hours::3.5 Hours::3 Hours::8 Hours S::5 Q::Which Day Is Named After A Planet ? A::Saturday::Monday::Wednesday::Friday T::3 Q::What Is The Larva Of The Fly Called ? A::Maggot::Grub::Wiggler::Flyet Quiz Results File Format : ----------------------- The Quiz Results File is written with one student result record on each line of the file, and with the information in each record seperated by commas to enable easy importing into Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, Quatro Prom or just about any other Spreadsheet. The comma seperated fields of each student result record consist of : - Surname, - First Name, - Date that the quiz was attempted, - Start Time, - End Time, - Ellapsed Time taken to complete the quiz (in Seconds). - Overall Result %. Example : O'Malley,Moose,22/11/1999,13:58:58,13:59:32,33.5,90% Limitations / Restrictions of the Shareware version : The Future : ------------ In the future, many improvements could be made to this program, such as : - Ability to specify Success Messages depending of quiz score. (At the moment, these are fixed within the program). - Better / Flashier / More Exciting User Interface. - Encryption of the Question and Answer File. (So students cannot peek at or alter the Questions or Answers). - Encryption of the Results Log File. (So students cannot peek at or alter any results). - Ability to handle massive question lists - consisting of 1,000's of questions. - Ability to have "Quick Fire" rounds where you try and answer as many questions as possible in 60 seconds. - Anything else ? If you would like any of these improvements, or would like to suggest more, please email me and let me know. How much more work I do on this program depends entirely on what support I get, how many people use the program, how many people have registered, etc. Reviews / Awards / CDs : ------------------------- None so far. Freeware Information : ----------------------- This is free software. Anyone - any person, any company, or any business - can use this program for free. No fees or payment is required. However, if you find the program useful, then please consider making a PayPal donation to support my efforts. (To make a donation, please run the program and select the "About" option under the Help menu, and then click the PayPal link on the "About" screen). Warranty : ---------- This software and the accompanying files are provided "as is" and without warranties as to performance or merchantability or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. The user assumes the entire risk of using this software. If you do find any faults with this program, email me and let me know. Amendment History : -------------------- Vers Date Description 1.0 22-Nov-1998 First Public Release. (Written especially for J. T. Lawson.) (5,280 lines of code / comments.) 1.1 17-Apr-2001 Add in support for "Big Fonts" and "Other Sized Fonts" - with these Windows resizes the windows automatically - but only sometimes and it doesn't always do it right, so now I make sure my main window is the right size before doing any scaling, etc. i.e. I make it fit the component(s) that extend the furthest right and furthest down the form. See the Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Pannel -> Display -> Settings Tab -> "Advanced" button -> "General" tab for your PC's settings in this area. Bring program up-to-date with my latest code libraries. When the user select the "Settings" option from the File menu, only display the "Get Extra Functionality if you Register" dialog if the program isn't registered. Fix the "Edit Q&A" button - it was editing the Log file prior to the fix. Add in "Make Surname and First Name Entry Mandatory Priot to Quiz" setting. Add in a Quiz Results Form, with a list of the questions answered wrongly, along with the answeres selected. Add in a "QT::" symbol which enables you to set the title of the quiz from inside the quiz questions file. (9,390 lines of code / comments.) 1.2 14-Mar-2002 Bring the program up to date with my latest code libraries. Brand New About Screen and associated functionality. Add in support for the Maximise icon in the top right corner of the program's main window. Make the default time to answer a question 20 seconds, but ofcourse, you can override this using the T:: parameter - see above. (21,756 lines of code / comments.) 1.2b 20-Nov-2002 Bring the program up to date with my latest code libraries. (34,450 lines of code / comments.) 1.2f 3-Sep-2007 This program is now FREEWARE - see "Freeware Information" above. If this program was not downloaded from my Home Page, then it is possibly an old version. The latest version of this program is available from my WEB page - see below. Mike "Moose" O'Malley ____________________________________________________ Moose's Software Valley - Established July, 1996. WEB: http://move.to/moose ____________________________________________________