Helper script to construct a game file for pi-connect. Read the README in the pi-connect repository for documentation on how to run a game. This README only explains how to use the game creator.

Documentation

You will need the latest stable version of Node and ffmpeg to run this script.

For non-programmers on Windows: You'll need to install the latest (probably 64-bit) versions of Git, Python, Node and ffmpeg, and you'll have to add Python and ffmpeg to your path. To check that you have everything working, run the commands below, but with copy in.txt.example in.txt instead of cp in.txt.example in.txt

Quick start (for Linux):

git clone https://github.com/krawthekrow/pi-connect-maker.git
cd pi-connect-maker
npm install
cp in.txt.example in.txt
node index.js # call this to generate the JSON output

If any of the clues require images of your own creation (as opposed to ones downloaded from online), do mkdir images and save the images in PNG format in the images directory.

The game JSON will be written to out.json.

This script works by reading a specification file called in.txt in the same directory as index.js. It uses a non-standard format, but is designed to hopefully be intuitive. This documentation is intended only for clarity, and you can probably get a good picture much faster by looking at the example specification provided in in.txt.example.

Empty lines and lines starting with a hash (#) are ignored.

The specification file contains four main sections, delimited by the following lines:

!connections
!sequences
!walls
!vowels

Within each section, a puzzle is delimited by a line beginning with a hyphen (-). The text following the hyphen is the solution for that clue. There must be exactly six connections puzzles, exactly six sequences puzzles, exactly eight wall puzzles (four per wall, they will be grouped in the order that they are specified) and any number of vowels puzzles. The puzzle data follows the hyphened line.

Connections and Sequences

Connections and sequences share the same format: a list of exactly four clues. The fourth clue in a sequences puzzle serves as the solution. There are two kinds of clues: text clues, which span a single line, and complex clues, which span two lines. In a complex clue, the second line is the text that shows when the solution is revealed.

What a line starts with determines the kind of clue it is.

• If it starts with https://www.youtube.com/, then it is a music clue. An audio clip will be downloaded from the URL specified. Optionally, you can place one or two integers after the URL, separated by spaces, indicating the start time and duration (in that order) in seconds. In game, if the players listen to the music for more than the specified duration, it will just loop.
• If it starts with audio/ (for example, audio/clue.mp3), then it is a music clue. The audio will be taken from your own computer, in the audio folder (you'll have to create one yourself with mkdir audio in the same directory as index.js). Any common format should be supported, but when in doubt use MP3.
• If it starts with https:// or http:// and isn't a music clue, then it is a picture clue, and the image will be downloaded from the URL.
• If it starts with images/ (for example, images/clue.png), then it is a picture clue. The image will be taken from your own computer, in the images folder (you'll have to create one yourself with mkdir images in the same directory as index.js). It must be a PNG because I've had no reason to support multiple formats.
• If it starts with __html: (for example, __html: <b>clue</b>), then it is a raw HTML clue. The HTML will be inserted directly into the clue tile. Note that text clues are normally presented inside an <h2> tag, which is omitted for HTML clues. Include your own <h2> tags or set the font size with a style attribute for clues to display at the correct size.
• Otherwise, it is a text clue, and the content of the line will be the clue itself.
• Backtick escapes -- if a line starts with `, it will be treated as a raw string containing everything after the backtick, including whitespace.

The four clues in a puzzle do not have to be of the same type.

Walls

The first four puzzles in the walls section will be used for one wall, and the next four puzzles will be used for the other. Each puzzle contains exactly four lines for the four clues corresponding to that category. In total, this gives four puzzles with four clues for each wall, and you get the sixteen words.

Wall clues support the same special prefixes (images, raw text, HTML, etc.) as connection and sequence clues.

Vowels

For vowels, the text after the hyphen will be the category that is shown on screen. Each puzzle contains exactly four lines of text (vowels included), corresponding to the four questions in that category. The text in the line will be shown as-is when the solution is revealed. Clues are automatically devowelized and respaced in-game, with "Y" considered a vowel.

You can specify a custom devowelization for a clue by preceding it with a line containing an equals sign (=) followed by the devowelization. The provided devowelization will be used verbatim, without respacing.

Customization

Special commands can optionally be used to customize the look and feel of the game.

• !disable_shuffle_connections, !disable_shuffle_sequences, !disable_shuffle_walls: By default, the questions in the connections, sequences and walls rounds are shuffled. These commands disable the shuffling in their respective rounds. Questions will instead be presented in row-major order.
• !connections_time_limit <x>, !sequences_time_limit <x>, !walls_time_limit <x>, vowels_time_limit <x>: Sets the time limit for its respective round type to x seconds. Setting x to 0 disables the time limit for the round altogether.
• !wall_life_token <token>: token will replace the "life tokens" that are displayed during a walls round when two out of four clues have been solved. It supports the same special prefixes (images, raw text, HTML, etc.) used in connections/sequences clues. For example, !wall_life_token __html: <b>O</b> will display a bold O.