WORD GAME

This simple program reinforces key words in a similar style to the classic game of ‘hangman’. A random word is generated from a list and students are required to guess letters present by typing the keys. A correct guess will show the letter(s), an incorrect guess will result in the loss of a life (one of the stars).

1. Open the Flash file ‘word game.fla.’ in Flash MX 2004 or later. Save the file under a new name for your project such as ‘European Capitals’ using the Save As option from the File menu (fig 1)

Fig 1

2. Type a new title for your game directly on the stage by double clicking the ‘Your Title Here..’ caption. Doing this will open up a cursor allowing modification of the text (fig 2).

Fig 2

3. Open the Actions window in Flash by clicking the arrow on the actions tab (fig 4). Note if this is not visible you may need to show the windows by opening them all as in fig 3.

Fig 3

Fig 4

If the panels are not visible click the white triangle.

Open the Actions panel.

4. In the actions panel find the line that contains the key-words. This is the first line in dark letters, under the instructions. The line begins with: “var.wordList: Array=” (fig 5).

Fig 5

5. Modify the words listed and add as many new ones as required, each word must be in lower case, contain no spaces, be surrounded by quotation marks (usually SHIFT+2 on most keyboards) and separated by commas. The last word does not need to be followed by a comma or a full stop (fig 6).

Fig 6

6. Test your work by pressing CTRL+ENTER to open the preview screen (fig 7).

Fig 7

To go back to the work screen select the tab.

NOTE: To preview further modifications you must press CTRL+ENTER to refresh the preview.

7. Once you are happy with your work you will need to publish it as a file that can be viewed on any computer. If you have previewed your work (step 9) you will automatically generated such a file in the same directory as your saved file (step 1). This will have the same name but with a ‘Shockwave’ extension (e.g. European Capitals.swf). Another way of publishing is using the option from the File menu:

Fig 8

8. To view the finished (published) work it will need to be opened in a browser such as Internet Explorer that has the Flash plug-in (most machines have this but if necessary it can be downloaded free of charge from Adobe.com). To open the file right click on it and from the options select Open With followed by the browser (fig12).

Fig 9