Games by Tim

gamesbytim.com reaches 5,000 monthly users

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 18:00:00 GMT

I am thrilled to announce that as of this month, gamesbytim.com reached 5,000 monthly users, more than double of the same metric 3 years ago!

I am lost for words on this milestone. All I can say is that it is a blessing more people than ever have the opportunity to check out and benefit from my projects. That includes you!

Thank you for your continued support!

Flashcards for PowerPoint v1.2.1 - Important fix for Mac users

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 17:41:00 GMT

Just in time for finals season, we have the first update to Flashcards for PowerPoint in over four years!

This update resolves an issue with setting the background color caused by a recent update to PowerPoint for Mac (v16.79.1). Long story short, PowerPoint for Mac introduced a bug that breaks setting colors in VBA. Hopefully Microsoft will fix the bug soon, but in the meantime, I found a way to work around the bug.

A technical explanation of the PowerPoint for Mac bug is available on PowerPoint Creative. Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint is also affected by this bug and will receive a fix soon.

While I was at it, I snuck in these other quality-of-life adjustments too:

Fixes an oversight with the Macros Disabled pop-up linking to the How to Use slide
Fixes an oversight with being able to remove the stars on the Congratulations slide
Improves performance when running conditional checks for empty strings
Adds title and author metadata to more easily search for Flashcards for PowerPoint through the local filesystem
Resamples sound effects to reduce file size with no loss to quality

Have fun preparing for your next exam!

The history of Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint - Part 1: The early days

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 22:05:00 GMT

Now that the final feature update to Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint is out, I thought it would be fun to reflect on the project’s developmental journey, starting from the very beginning.

Throughout this 3-part series, I will discuss in-depth the backstory of each version and how I grew as a developer each step of the way. It might surprise you how and why I put together certain features. It's going to be a heck of a ride, so buckle up and let us begin!

Prologue: My childhood dream

I fell in love with game shows as far back as my early childhood. In fact, I would watch game shows (almost) as much as the cartoons from Nickelodeon.

I watched Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune the most. They aired weekdays like clockwork: Jeopardy from 7-7:30pm, and Wheel of Fortune from 7:30-8pm. I may not have understood how either game worked at first, but I enjoyed seeing people’s scores go up and down. Jeopardy was great for that and all, but Wheel of Fortune’s big, colorful wheel easily won me over. For that reason, Wheel of Fortune rose to my favorite game show of my childhood.

I recall back in 2nd grade how much I wanted to be the host of Wheel of Fortune when I grew up. My parents took notice, and that Christmas, I received the Wheel of Fortune board game.

I hosted a couple Wheel of Fortune games with the board game, and while fun, I could not help but want to use my own puzzles aside from the included ones. Oh well, it was just a passing thought…

The bargain bin hero

Fast forward to the end of 2011. By this point, I fell off watching game shows and was instead deep into making PowerPoint games. I also recently launched my website, Tim’s Slideshow Games.

That Christmas, my aunt gifted me Wheel of Fortune for the Wii. She remembered how I liked the show way back, and it was on sale, so why not, right? Little did she know the significance of this one gift…

Playing Wheel of Fortune for the Wii reignited my interest in the show. It also reignited my interest to host the game with my own puzzles. Only this time, I had a technical know-how to make it happen.

Beta 1 – The rough draft

I searched Wheel of Fortune PowerPoint templates online to see what already existed and found one from SuperNikestar on YouTube.

Image credit: SuperNikestar on YouTube

When I downloaded the template, my mind blew away at how it can directly type text on the puzzle board in slide show view. This was possible using a Text Box ActiveX Control, available in PowerPoint’s hidden Developer tab.

Sure, ActiveX Controls only work on PowerPoint for Windows, but I was just happy to learn this feature existed.

Now I needed a way to randomly spin the wheel. I grabbed a Wheel of Fortune wheel image and added a Spin animation to it as a trigger. I then added another trigger to have the wheel Appear to see what would happen.

To my surprise, the wheel stopped mid-spin. So, I made the wheel spin ludicrously fast so it was hard to tell where the wheel would stop. The result: a (seemingly) random two-click wheel!

(I will explain the seemingly in a later part...)

With my newfound knowledge, I spent the rest of the night building what would become Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint Beta 1.

To run Wheel of Fortune game for PowerPoint Beta 1, hosts filled the puzzle board with underscores. When players call letters, they replaced the underscores or added the letter to the Letters Used box. Scorekeeping worked manually, but it sure beat allocating paper money to players like in the board game!

I started Beta 1 using SuperNikestar’s template as a base and made the following modifications:

The X’s were removed from the puzzle board tiles.
The puzzle board tiles turned green and were structured per the actual show.
The player count changed from four to three.
Each player score box became colored based on the actual show.
Totals score boxes were added to each player to track score across multiple puzzles.
The Category box was added.
The Letters Used box was added to track letters that were called but not in the puzzle.
A link to the wheel was added to the top of the slide.
The background changed to black.

So, while the end product differed a lot from SuperNikestar’s template, there were still some remnants, most notably the Britannic Bold fonts.

I knew I was not ready for a full release yet, which explains why I labeled the project as Beta 1. I also did not release Beta 1 online until I added the Archive to my website years later.

Beta 2 – Widening horizons

Beta 1 was a good start, but it still had a long way to go. On January 1, 2012, I released Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint Beta 2 on my website.

Right off the bat, I made the template widescreen because I knew that was the future. It took a while to resize everything to the new aspect ratio.

With the extra space on the score board, I expanded the score boxes and added a Free Spin button toggle, a gameplay element from the actual show. Finally, I changed the theme so the new beta looked different.

Beta 2 was the first version I hosted a Wheel of Fortune game with. I hooked my laptop to the family projector and played with my family. We even switched around hosts, so everyone chipped in a puzzle that night. It was a lot of fun!

Version 1.0 – Lights, camera, action

On January 13, 2012, equipped with lessons from the Beta 2 play test, I made the first formal release of Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint.

It started with the definitive theme. This time, I took the kid gloves off and designed the first iteration of the Studio theme, equipped with stage lights.

Fun fact: The original Studio theme is based on Wheel of Fortune for Wii’s puzzle board.

Image credit: Overdrivesinlp on YouTube

The Beta 2 and Beta 1 themes were also available for use.

Because I often struggled with the mental math for scorekeeping, I added a Calculator tab, which would open the Windows calculator for use during the slide show.

Lastly, I added a How to Use section, opting to use a screenshot with arrows pointing and explaining each function. I cannot recall why I chose this approach, but I would continue to use this style for every future variant of How to Use.

Version 1.1 – Pure bliss

By March 2012, I noticed that Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint received noticeably more downloads on my MediaFire than any of my other projects. I think it had roughly 100 downloads compared to my second top project with 50, but I do not recall the exact numbers.

Regardless, I felt primed to release the next version of Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint. I was really into theming and Windows XP at the time, so I proudly designed the Bliss theme, complete with clouds! It replaced the Beta 2 theme and remains the most serene Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint theme I ever made.

Also new to version 1.1 was making the wheel button circular (a duh moment), centering the category name (a bigger duh moment) and the ability to edit player names (an even bigger duh moment).

I found out the Free Spin button was replaced with Free Play and the Wild Card from the actual show, so I changed things accordingly. This frustrated me to no end since I liked Free Spin, which leads to the next version…

Version 1.1.1 – You pick the wheel

On October 2012, I regained sanity. I added a toggle that switches if the wheel should use the Free Spin or the Wild Card.

That is all this version changed. Though it is worth noting I had to create an extra wheel slide per theme to make this happen. The early versions of Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint had separate puzzle boards and wheels for each theme because I did not know how to restyle a specific slide on the fly. This meant this version had three puzzle board slides and six wheel slides!

Around this time, I announced that Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint received over 1,000 downloads.

Version 2.0 – Key functionality

At this point, Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint had three major problems:

It was inconvenient for the host to mentally subtract $250 whenever a player buys a vowel.
Transferring the winning player’s round score to totals took a while to calculate.
To start another puzzle, you had to backspace every puzzle board tile.

I searched online for solutions. I knew each ActiveX Control had an ID and a subroutine on the Visual Basic editor, so something had to work. Sure enough, I found basic VBA snippets that, when clicking on an ActiveX Control, interact with other controls!

This made it possible to:

Add a Buy Vowel button to subtract $250 from a player’s score.
Add a Transfer Totals button that merges a player’s round score with their totals.
Add an X button that zeros out a player’s score (for Bankrupts).
Add a Clear Board button that resets the puzzle board.

I called these new buttons functionality keys.

Up to this point, I only used Text Box ActiveX Controls. So, I learned how to use Label ActiveX Controls to create clickable controls that do not edit text.

Using a Label ActiveX Control as a button is like a native shape, but it has major restrictions:

The cursor when hovering over the control cannot be a mouse pointer.
The control must always stack above native shapes.
The control cannot be transparent.
The control’s outline thickness cannot change.
The control’s text cannot have text effects.
To make the control appear anything other than a rectangle, you must upload a JPEG image.

At the time, I did not know it was possible to use native shapes to run VBA. Heck, I did not even know how macros worked. So, I rolled with it and did my best to make the functionality keys look as good as they could.

I finished the functionality keys for one theme before I stopped development. This took place the end of 2012, when I announced on a now-defunct forum that I quit making PowerPoint games in favor of Web games.

It took until January 2015 for me to release version 2.0, after I made a new year’s resolution to clear my game dev backlog. In addition to the functionality keys, I made other changes I did not think of in 2012. This included a new title slide, a UI font change from Calibri to Corbel, a puzzle board font change from Britannic Bold to Arial, and an updated wheel layout.

I beta tested version 2.0 with a behavior interventionist and her supervisor, which was the second known time I hosted a Wheel of Fortune game. Everglow Youth also hosted version 2.0 as part of a surprise party.

Version 2.0.1, released November 2015, removed By Timothy Hsu from the title slide and revised legal text. It is otherwise identical to version 2.0.

By the time I released version 2.0.1, I thought I was done with Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint. After all, I was not really working with PowerPoint anymore, and I could not think of further ways to improve the template within PowerPoint's limitations. In fact, I put in the old Archive page that version 2.0.1 would be the final version.

Little did I know that would all change, and I would soon discover way more of what PowerPoint has to offer. Stay tuned for Part 2 when I discuss versions 3 and 4 of Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint!

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint v6.4 - Refinements, fixes, and the future

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 17:05:00 GMT

The next update to Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint is here, which includes a few touch-ups I wanted to make following the previous update's redesign.

I also have an important note about the future of the project, so be sure to read to the end!

Changes to manually editing round scores

The default behavior when manually editing a player's round score has changed. Now, the value entered in the input box will add or subtract to the existing score.

For example, if Player 1's round score is $2,000, typing 1000 in the input box will update Player 1's round score to $3,000. Likewise, typing -500 will update Player 1's round score to $1,500.

Previously, the value entered overwrote the existing score, which is now done by appending = to the value entered (ex: =3000). I adjusted the default behavior because I found whenever I needed to manually adjust a score during my games, I thought more in terms how much to increase/decrease the score than what exact score to set.

A more efficient Puzzle Scribe

Puzzle Scribe now uses \ for row separators, so you no longer need to use the shift key to make puzzles. (Using | for row separators remains supported.)

Update to Toss-Up puzzles

Now, when revealing the last letter in a Toss-Up puzzle, the Toss-Up UI disappears, the wrong sound effect plays, and the Toss-Up money is forfeited, similar to the actual show.

$1,000 bonus for guessing Same Letter

In the actual show, guessing the same letter in a Same Letter puzzle grants the player an additional $1,000 bonus. (For example, guessing C if the category is Same Letter and the puzzle is Cupcake Cheesecake Chocolate Cake.)

This score bonus is now applied in Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint when the new setting, Special Score Bonuses, is enabled. The new setting encapsulates the Triple Toss Up Bonus from previous versions.

Verify puzzle solve

Sometimes, you don't want the host to know the puzzle solutions. That's where the new setting, Solve Button, comes in!

By default, clicking Solve will reveal the puzzle. Or, you can have it show an input box so the host has to type to verify a player's response.

Credits to JapanYoshi on GitHub for suggesting the idea and providing code.

Bug fixes

Version 6.4 fixes the following bugs:

An issue where adding to a player's score in the middle of a bonus round gives the empty Value Panel error despite a value present on the Value Panel
An issue where selecting letters after changing rounds in the middle of a bonus round would not function as intended
Various number formatting issues on regions that use the decimal as a thousands separator
Misalignment of the bonus round module if the Games by Tim Attribution setting is disabled

Deprecations

The following features have been removed in version 6.4:

Circular graphic for called letter
- It added too much complexity to the codebase, so I opted to remove it.

The future of Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint

Due to evolving interests and a desire to move on from game show templates, I am ending development on Wheel of Fortune projects. This means I will no longer work on new features or adjust wheel values for future seasons of the show. The web version of Wheel of Fortune is also officially cancelled. For the time being, I will still release bug fixes as needed.

I know I said I'd stop working on Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint before, but this time, I truly mean it. Over the past couple of years, I noticed my passion shift away from game development in favor of going out and joining social events. Part of it is that I'm not pursing a game dev career anymore, and I want to catch up on experiencing life after admittedly spending much of it sheltered coding games. I meant to announce this a while ago, but I wanted to get this update out first, and it took until now to motivate myself to complete it.

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint had an amazing near-12-year run, from its early days of manual letter input/scorekeeping to the juggernaut it stands now. It's time for the project to live its well-deserved legacy.

Remember that Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licensed, so those interested can continue to build on this project as long as Games by Tim is credited for the original work and the project is distributed free of charge.

I'd like to thank everyone who downloaded, hosted, participated in, recommended and/or supported otherwise with Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint over the years. This project will forever mean a whole lot to me, and I'm really proud of the impact it made for classrooms, parties, churches, retirement homes, virtual gatherings, and much more.

Keep on spinning,
Timothy Hsu

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint v6.3 - All spruced up

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 02:51:23 GMT

In honor of Lorraine, my brother-in-law's friend, who killed it on the actual show last night, I am thrilled to bring to you a complementary treat: Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint version 6.3!

While the new Wheel of Fortune season 40 didn't come with major gameplay or wheel value changes, it did update the look and feel of the set. So I took a hard look at Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint and thought, you know what, I can spruce up the design a bit.

What started as gradual tweaking evolved to a final product that looks quite different to what I originally envisioned.

The new look

Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is. As Pat Sajak said it in 1997, presenting, our new puzzle board!

"Ah, ah, I'm so goosebumpy!"

Let's break down the new design elements:

New puzzle board

The puzzle board tiles are now slightly separated from each other, just like the actual show. The puzzle board frame increased in thickness, but not so thick that it overlaps the Letter Selector.

New graphics

The category box has been tweaked to look more like the new season 40 style.

The same can be said for the no more vowels/consonants graphics.

New Value Panel/Letter Selector

The Value Panel and Letter Selector glow brighter, in a fusion style. Consonants in the new Letter Selector appear larger and are no longer enclosed in a blue box.

New font

Say goodbye to the trusty ol' Corbel/Arial/Eras Bold ITC, and hello to our new overlord: TW Cen MT!

At first, I was only going to use the new font for the puzzle board itself. Then I decided to try the font for fun on the player names. Then the scores. Then the Letter Selector. At that point, I went screw it: I'm using the new font everywhere!!

It's kind of scary to change the template's main font after how well Corbel/Arial/Eras Bold ITC served since 2015's version 2.0. But as my brother-in-law says, change is scary but often good. The new font may look weird at first, but after getting used to it, you ain't going back!

New backdrops

A new look isn't complete without a fresh set of backdrops, so here's two to keep you company.

Feast your eyes on Red Velvet, the finest, striking shade of luscious dark red.

Wanna feel like the world's your oyster? Hop aboard Gold Haven, where everyone deserves to be rich.

The gold haven backdrop works best with the gold puzzle board frame, which leads to the next major change:

Color Schemes

The last update added the ability to change the puzzle board frame from blue to gold. This served as a way to make your game look more like the venerable Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.

But then I noticed the Celebrity Wheel of Fortune set also makes the category box gold. As I reskinned the category box with the gold puzzle board trim setting, I fell victim to a crazy idea:

What if everything is gold??

I was on a roll, when another crazy idea slammed onto my face:

What if there's more colors than blue and gold??

Say hello to color schemes!

Now you can customize the color scheme of the puzzle board elements. Choose between the tried and tested blue, the bold and expressive gold, or the calm and subdued silver.

You can toggle the color scheme in Settings, or by clicking the puzzle board frame. Have fun matching color schemes with your favorite backdrops!

Color schemes replace the previous puzzle board trim setting. Also due to this change, backdrops no longer affect the category box, Letter Selector, and Value Panel colors.

Circular graphic for called letter

In the actual show, when a contestant calls a letter, that letter appears onscreen as a circular graphic. Now that graphic appears on Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint!

The graphic comes when selecting a letter, and goes after revealing a blue tile, spinning the wheel, or solving the puzzle.

Now onto the non-design related changes!

The example puzzle

Ever wanted to try out the puzzle board before adding any puzzles? Now you can! When loading a puzzle when there's nothing in Set Up Puzzles, the game will offer to load an example puzzle.

Protip: You can also load the example puzzle after adding puzzles by loading puzzle 0.

Alright, I'll admit it - I really added this feature because I wanted to save time generating game screenshots. But hey, I'm a happy guy if it helps new users get their feet wet before committing to a real game!

Category randomizer

Speaking of helping out, can't think where to start for your next puzzle? Use the new category randomizer in Set Up Puzzles to kickstart your creative juices!

Edit puzzles with Puzzle Scribe

Puzzle Scribe just got that much more useful. In addition to inscribing new puzzles, it can now edit existing puzzles, allowing you to add words, rearrange words, and/or fix typos with ease. Begone, Puzzle Scribe overwrite warnings!

Grab bag

Version 6.3 also ships with these smaller changes:

On the top-right menu of the puzzle board, the Set Up Puzzles link has been replaced with Settings.
- This reduces the amount of clicks to access Settings while not increasing the clicks to set up puzzles. My hope is that more people will take advantage of the settings pane as a result.
During the Final Spin round, the Final Spin music now starts after the final spin instead of after guessing the first letter.
You can now go back to the title slide from Settings.
The default wheel values range has reverted back to $500-$900.
Puzzle rounds are now preserved when escaping out of the slide show.
The About/Credits slide has been slightly reformatted.

Bug fixes

Version 6.3 fixes the following bugs:

An issue with loading Portuguese puzzles that use the Ã and Õ letters
An issue with the Toss-Up or Final Spin music continuing to play after solving a puzzle if the solve puzzle chime is disabled
An issue with the Bonus Round Countdown music going out of sync when changing various settings while the countdown is running
An issue with the player's Wild Card and Gift Tag indicators appearing closer to the next player when in 4 players view
An overlooked use of he/she instead of the non-binary pronoun they
The invalid ability to bring already-guessed Bonus Round letters back to the Letter Selector

Deprecations

The following features have been removed in version 6.3:

PowerPoint 2011 for Mac support
- As stated in the v6.2 blog post, PowerPoint 2011 for Mac is no longer supported. 2011 for Mac users, or anyone not yet ready for the changes in v6.3 can download the newly-released v6.2.1.
The Valentine's backdrop
- The awkward pink backdrop meant for one specific day of the year has been replaced with the superior Red Velvet. You're welcome.
ActiveX controls on the Windows version
- Here's a big one. Starting with this version, the Windows and Mac PowerPoint files are identical. The only difference is that the Mac version is zipped to contain the file with spaces, to resolve a baffling hyperlink bug.
- This means the ability to directly type into the Set Up Puzzles editor without input boxes no longer exists on the Windows version.
- I made this change to save on development resources. I believe Puzzle Scribe, especially with its new ability to edit puzzles, is a viable if not superior alternative to direct typing. The new font doesn't work with ActiveX controls either, which was the last straw.

Lorraine, if you're reading this, thanks for giving me the nudge I needed to push this update out. And major kudos for making it on the actual show, especially with your big win! Now do me a favor and enjoy your ski trip at Mirror Lake Inn. I'll hold you accountable for that - you mark my words!

Mouse Swipe v1.2 - The triangles are triangles

Thu, 12 May 2022 03:56:06 GMT

Following the smashing Keyboard Masher update, we got Mouse Swipe, also receiving its first meaningful update since 2016!

Since the initial release of Mouse Swipe, there was always something that bothered me with Triangle mode. You see, the triangles were only triangles in looks. The hover zones were actually invisible squares surrounding the triangles.

Why was that? Simply put, I didn't know how to adjust the hover zones back then. That all changes now. Introducing triangles that are triangles. Now you actually have to move your cursor to the triangles to score points!

As this change affects gameplay, I re-calibrated my Beat the Creator scores for normal and hard Triangle mode. I did not, however, reset your high scores, so you may be in for a treat! :)

Mouse Swipe also receives the additional tweaks from Keyboard Masher v4.5. To reiterate:

An issue with the game changing position when starting a mode on various browsers/operating systems has been fixed.
Hovering over an achievement star now reveals a tooltip describing what you accomplished.
The copyright author has changed from Timothy Hsu to Games by Tim.
The license has changed from GPLv3 to MIT.

In addition, I updated the Mouse Swipe Strategy Guide with a different strategy for Triangle mode.

Button Masher also updated

I also released Button Masher v4.4, which contains the additional tweaks to uplift with the rest of the Masher Series. Besides that, there are no gameplay changes to Button Masher at this time.

Keyboard Masher v4.5 - Holy s***, I typed that?!

Tue, 10 May 2022 03:30:40 GMT

It isn't often I revisit projects I haven't touched in years. But after replaying the Masher Series games with friends last week, I knew there were a few loose ends I had to tie.

So here we have it: the first meaningful update to Keyboard Masher since 2016!

By no means is this a major overhaul; the UI and coding conventions remain vastly outdated compared to my modern works. In fact, I deliberately not updated these aspects to remain the classic nature of the game. The goal was to implement features in a way I could have conceivably written 6+ years ago, and let me tell you: that was a blast from the past revisiting old code!

So without further ado, let's reveal those loose ends.

See what you type!

Ever wonder what you're mashing on your keyboard? Now, in addition to the good ol' GO, GO, GO!, you can see for yourself in real time!

The last 32 keys pressed are shown in-game. After each game, you can reveal the whole shebang with the new button: See What You Typed.

From there, you can quickly copy your work of art to your clipboard for pasting pleasure. Send it to your friends! Make it a copypasta! It's your baby!

WASD in Arrow mode

In addition to the arrow keys, you can now use WASD keys in Arrow mode. Perfect if you prefer using your left hand, are more used to WASD from other games, or have no arrow keys at all (I'm looking at you, 60% mechanical keyboard owners)!

Additional tweaks

On Firefox, mashing the ' or / keys no longer opens Quick Find, which would disrupt the game.
An issue with the game changing position when starting a mode on various browsers/operating systems has been fixed.
Hovering over an achievement star now reveals a tooltip describing what you accomplished.
The copyright author has changed from Timothy Hsu to Games by Tim.
The license has changed from GPLv3 to MIT.

In addition, I updated the Keyboard Masher Strategy Guide with additional info on mechanical keyboards, n-key rollover, and WASD support.

Happy mashing! I encourage you to post what YOU typed in the comments.

Older projects now downloadable again

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 02:10:22 GMT

Google recently released an update for Google Drive that affects most files uploaded before 2018. For security purposes, the download links for these files have to be updated to include a resource key.

The download links for the following projects on Games by Tim were affected by the update and have been fixed:

Memoric Trivia
Make Your Own Memoric Trivia
Rebus Puzzles Galore
Deal or No Deal on Paper
Cursor Adventure
PowerPoint Arcade
iPad Pro (2015) Screen Size PDF
Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint Solution Cards (for use on versions 3.2 or earlier)

Please note: Only the latest versions of each project have fixed download links. If you need an older version of any of the above projects, contact me for assistance.

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint v6.2 - Tripling down

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 04:49:55 GMT

It all started when the bible study group I currently attend needed something to do, and I blurted, "wanna play Wheel of Fortune?"

At the time, I had some ideas floating around for the next Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint update, but I wasn't in any rush. Now, with an impending game to host, I had just a weekend to implement those changes.

It was a hectic weekend of nonstop development, but I managed to churn out a beta build the night before our game. Even better, we didn't encounter any bugs!

I would like to thank the JM group for motivating me to push this update sooner than later. (The cereal that night was great, too.) With that, here's what new for version 6.2!

Triple Toss-Up mode

It is now easier to run three Toss-Up puzzles in a row, known in the actual show as the Triple Toss-Up round.

Start a Triple Toss-Up by appending TTT to the starting puzzle number on puzzle load. For example, 3TTT will start a Triple Toss-Up round with puzzles 3, 4, and 5.

Solving each Triple Toss-Up plays a new, unique sound effect like the actual show does, and subsequent puzzles load with just one click. This provides flair and saves a lot of time compared to loading 3 individual Toss-Ups!

Triple Toss-Up mode also supports the $10,000 score bonus for solving all 3 Triple Toss-Ups, introduced 2021 on the actual show. To reduce confusion, the score bonus is an opt-in toggle in Settings.

Formatted scores

For a cleaner look and to closer align to the actual show, scores are now formatted across the board with thousands separators. For example, "$2000" now appears as "$2,000" ($2.000 if your system region is set to Germany).

New settings

There's a lot of settings now, enough that I had to split the Settings slide into three columns!

New settings include:

The Triple Toss-Up bonus opt-in
The ability to reskin the puzzle board trim to gold, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune style

The ability to hide the Games by Tim attribution on the puzzle board

I'd like to take this time to reflect on the first iteration of the Settings slide from version 4.0. Good old times, amirite?

New sound effects

Two new sound effects have been added: Triple Toss-Up Solve and Bonus Countdown.

There's also a new sound effect hook for the Final Spin music. Like the Toss-Up music, this has no sound included by default, so it is up to you to source the appropriate music.

In addition, I managed to reduce the file size of all existing sounds without noticeable quality loss.

The $5,000 sliver

Introducing the second non-canon wedge I've added to Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint: The $5,000 sliver!

The wedge looks similar to the $10,000 wedge with the two thin Bankrupts flanking the sides. There are, however, three key rule differences:

Instead of receiving $10,000 regardless of the number of letters in the puzzle, you get $5,000 per letter occurrence (just like a normal wedge).
The $5,000 sliver acts a permanent space instead of a removable wheel item.
Because the $5,000 sliver is permanent, it stays in the Fourth Round.

Please note: the the $5,000 sliver replaces the $10,000 wedge!

It wasn't an easy decision, but I am retiring the $10,000 wedge from Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint because the $10,000 wedge was not well-understood. Before the Value Panel was introduced, many hosts misinterpreted the $10,000 as $10,000 per letter. Even with the Value Panel to enforce the fixed $10,000, it would confuse hosts and contestants as to why $10,000 acted differently.

The confusion made sense. There's no clear distinction between $10,000 and any other money amount in the game, so why would $10,000 break the norm? It didn't help that the $10,000 wedge is a retired wedge that the actual show replaced with the Million Dollar wedge in 2008.

That's why as part of version 6.0, the $10,000 wedge, in addition to all the other wheel items, were disabled by default. But the lack of that kind of wedge took part of the fun and whimsy out of the wheel. From my past personal playthroughs and livestream observations, people liked the $10,000 wedge as a thin, valuable spot to aim for, but it disappointed when they realized the $10,000 was not what they thought it meant.

The $5,000 sliver aims to ease confusion and maintain the essence of what made the $10,000 wedge good. It also allows me to lift the artificial $9,999 wheel value limit on the Value Panel because $10,000 no longer has its own rules. I understand that Wheel enthusiasts may not approve of replacing an official wedge with something non-canon, but I believe it's better to prioritize accessibility and fun over staying accurate to the show.

Grab bag

Version 6.2 also ships with these smaller changes:

If there are no more vowels or consonants in the puzzle, every remaining vowel or consonant will disappear from the Letter Selector.
Solving a puzzle in the Bonus Round no longer plays the solve sound effect, as a user reported it sounds out of place if the player does not solve the puzzle.
It is now possible to complete a Toss-Up puzzle by first clicking Solve, then rewarding the money to the Toss-Up winner.
Transferring totals after a Toss-Up or Triple Toss-Up now overrides the House Minimum, allowing for Toss-Ups worth below the House Minimum.

A note on PowerPoint 2011 for Mac support

Due to increasing development burden and that it no longer runs on the latest macOS, version 6.2 is the final release I am testing on PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. Future versions may run on PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, but I will not test nor provide support for PowerPoint 2011 for Mac specific issues moving forward.

PowerPoint 2010 or newer for Windows and PowerPoint 2016 or newer for Mac remain fully supported.

That Damned History Test! v2 - updated look and bug fixes

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 03:03:59 GMT

You know that feeling when you release something, and immediately after you're like "man, I wish I did this and that instead"?

That's exactly how I felt with That Damned History Test!, a text adventure I released last week. So here we have it: v2 released way earlier than anticipated with these changes.

An updated look

The text adventure UI has been reworked so it looks less cramped on mobile devices.

On the left is v1, and on the right v2 (text hidden to prevent spoilers). Right-justifying the choice boxes leads to a cleaner look and more breathing room for text, especially for deeply-nested choices!

Reworded endings

Two endings have minor rewording for clarity. They don't alter the outcome of those endings.

Bug fixes

The following bugs have been fixed in v2:

The "scroll to top" arrow was not center-aligned on some browsers.
The "scroll to top" arrow font was inconsistent across browsers.
The "scroll to top" button was not fading out when the page scrolls to top.
The choice box borders occasionally didn't touch their choice toggles on mobile devices.
One of the choice box's text was not properly formatted as a paragraph.

New text adventure, That Damned History Test!, out now

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 19:25:17 GMT

In an effort to return to creative writing, I am thrilled to release That Damned History Test! - a text adventure.

The game format is similar to Lost in a Forest, with a completely different story. There are no "right" or "wrong" choices; it's all in the name of entertainment. See if you can uncover all 36 endings!

Fun fact

This text adventure was originally written in 2011 on a writing notebook for a creative writing school assignment.

I've wanted to convert the text adventure to a digital format for a long while, and I'm happy it's done ten years later. In addition to the digitization, the story has some changes over the 2011 original.

The total endings increased from 32 to 36.
Every ending that leads to punishment now has a punishment associated with it, rather than just saying something bad happens.
Most endings with corporal punishment have been replaced with bizarre alternatives.
Various grammatical corrections

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint v6.1.2 - new season adjustments

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 23:40:19 GMT

The new Wheel of Fortune season kicked off this week, and with it came a change to the wheel. This update for Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint reflects that change and improves puzzle loading performance.

New to version 6.1.2

To align with season 39 changes, the orange $950 on the wheel has been replaced with a yellow $850
The setting Base Value has been renamed to Values Range with more descriptive toggle names: $300-$900 and $500-$900
Loading puzzles no longer slows down when you have 100+ puzzles

Fun fact: The Free Play wedge no longer exists on the actual show starting with the new season. Since this template already removed the Free Play wedge by default a few months ago, we were ahead of the curve!

Thank you for 10 years of Games by Tim

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 07:00:12 GMT

On August 23, 2011, I started a Blogger website and uploaded its first blog post.

Little did I know that 10 years later, I'd still maintain that very website. That houses 20+ projects and 180+ blog posts. That 3,000+ people visit per month. That has opened numerous doors to unprecedented experiences and communities.

I would like to thank the moments and people who, over the past 10 years, helped me grow developmentally and evolve Games by Tim to the powerhouse it is today.

Neopets - the catalyst

The online game Neopets is the reason I got into game development and web development in the first place.

Neopets is more than just a virtual pet simulator. It's got a ton of activities that foster creativity and coding skills.

One of these activities, Neoadventures, lets you build your own text-based games with choices, dead ends, and finish lines.

As someone filled with youthful creativity who enjoyed writing stories, I LOVED writing my own Neoadventures. I found it fun to design crazy scenarios and to come up with funny outcomes to all the choices. Neoadventures would later inspire my first game on this site, Escape a Tower.

Neopets also lets you create your own webpages for each of your pets, known as petpages. Petpages were my first ever foray into HTML, which would later motivate me to pursue web development in high school and college.

Although I had to delete my account due to addiction, Neopets is a game I will forever hold deeply in my heart. Without Neopets, I may have never produced any of my projects, let alone started Games by Tim.

PowerPoint Heaven - the first PPT community

When I first started developing in PowerPoint, I thought I had to be the only one crazy enough to make games with presentation software. The PowerPoint Heaven community proved otherwise.

PowerPoint Heaven featured a trove of insane PowerPoint games with high-polygon graphics, animations, sound effects, and much more. These projects, especially Pointer's Way by Mohammad Ahmed Fikree and Infiltration by Jeremiah Lee, taught me the tools and tricks to catapult my own games.

When I joined the forum on December 2011, I developed connections with a fantastic, tight-knit group of people, and we pushed each other to utilize PowerPoint beyond our imaginations. I even hosted a game contest there that received several submissions.

PowerPoint Heaven was the first place I felt I made a genuine impact with. Although the website and forum appears abandoned now, its lasting memories will stay with me.

Wheel of Fortune for Wii - the bargain bin hero

For Christmas 2011, I received Wheel of Fortune for the Wii from the bargain bin.

I still remember playing this game back then, constantly thinking to myself how cool it would be to host Wheel of Fortune with my own puzzles. Thanks to PowerPoint, a projector, and a YouTube video that taught me how to edit text in a slideshow, I was able to make it happen by New Year's Day the following year.

Little did I know this would become the most popular project on Games by Tim, and how much of an impact it would make for hundreds of thousands of people.

Everglow Youth - the game-changing event

At the end of my senior year of high school, Everglow Youth threw a surprise party dedicated solely to my games.

I have my blog post on the event linked above, but long story short, I almost shed a tear. For the first time, I witnessed a large group of people happily enjoying what I made without any intervention from me. It demonstrated that I have in fact made a positive impact on others with my works, which would further convince me to continue game development for years to come.

Mike Rusnak and Reid Powell - the "competitors"

Occasionally, I search "wheel of fortune powerpoint" to see where my project stands on search engines.

At some point, I noticed two other Wheel of Fortune PowerPoint projects in the results: one by Mike Rusnak of Rusnakcreative and the other by Reid Powell of Youth Downloads.

Intrigued, I gave them a try, and yes, they were both well made. That's when I knew I faced competition and had to step up my own game.

Without the "pressure" from my "competitors," Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint wouldn't evolve to where it's at today. For example, the Set Up Puzzles feature, which lets you store puzzles to load on the template, was a direct response to Mike's puzzle creation process at the time. I know Mike also responded to some of my new features with his template updates. You can say that together, we pushed each other to produce the best Wheel of Fortune PowerPoint templates for the world.

(By the way, I by no means try to shoot down other templates in favor of my own. In fact, I gladly recommend other Wheel of Fortune templates when they better fulfill someone's use cases.)

PowerPoint Creative - the second PPT community

Speaking of Mike Rusnak, he also runs the forum PowerPoint Creative.

I'll admit I signed up primarily to speak with the "Wheel of Fortune guy," only to end up with way more.

At PowerPoint Creative, I learned things about PowerPoint I wouldn't dare to touch back in the PowerPoint Heaven days, such as macros and VBA. I also got to meet an entirely new group of PowerPoint users, who helped me uncover a new perspective on the potential PowerPoint really has.

PowerPoint Creative is still open to this day and is the PowerPoint forum I would recommend to join at this time.

Make School Summer Academy - the impactful hackathon

On Summer 2018, I attended the Make School Summer Academy at San Francisco.

The Make School Summer Academy was a 6-week experience where you could learn about iOS or web development. I chose the web development cohort, as I wanted to expand my knowledge to create more compelling projects in this field.

The Summer Academy not only introduced me to a barrage of modern web concepts, it led to the release of my first cross-collaboration web project. So Many Numbers, originally built for a week-long hackathon, would receive many new features into the following year, become utilized in math classrooms, and serve as my first project to use a JavaScript framework.

College Technical Writing class - the new direction

Originally intended for a degree requirement, the Technical Writing class I took at college impacted how I approach working on my Games by Tim projects.

The first revelation was user testing. The idea was to observe how someone else uses your project without any intervention from you the creator. This was huge because prior to the class, I would always tell people directly to try features for feedback. Now I could evaluate whether people can actually find and use desired features and determine how to improve visibility and ease of use.

The second revelation was the personal website assignment, learning how to better design a website to also improve navigation and accessibility. That's when I realized how limiting my original Blogger website was to satisfy the requirements, which motivated me to code an entirely new Games by Tim website in 2020. To this day, I am happy with how my website looks and feels.

Trivia with Budds and Magical Memories Entertainment - the pandemic livestreams

Speaking of 2020, I noticed a download surge for Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint throughout the lockdowns. Turns out Wheel of Fortune's a pretty good game to play over video chat.

In fact, there were professional trivia hosts hosting their own games using Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint.

I felt greatly honored to join in on the games ran by Trivia with Budds and Magical Memories Entertainment. During that rough stage in my personal life, watching others enjoy my creation put a much-needed smile on my face.

You - the viewers

I know it's cheesy, but seriously, you the viewers are what makes Games by Tim worthwhile to work on. From your downloads and views to your comments and emails, I am forever grateful for all your contributions and feedback. Even for those just browsing the site, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Cheers for the 10 years, and for what's next to come!

~ Timothy Hsu - Creator of Games by Tim

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint v6.1 - It's faster

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 07:00:41 GMT

Version 6.1.1 fixes a bug that caused puzzle numbers in the editor not to highlight properly after using Puzzle Swap.

Today's Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint update continues the effort to speed up the puzzle creation process.

The last update introduced Puzzle Scribe, a feature that on average writes puzzles three times faster. Now we turn to the performance side. Via thorough software engineering, I am happy to announce faster load times across the board on Set Up Puzzles.

To test the load times, I ran the VBA timer function across various Set Up Puzzles subroutines on a MacBook Air (Intel Core i5, Early 2015) running the Mac version. The listed times are the average of running each test ten times.

Loading Set Up Puzzles from the title slide

Version 6.0 - 0.27 seconds
Version 6.1 - 0.01 seconds (96% faster)

Loading the editor for puzzle #1 from the HOST'S EYES ONLY slide

Version 6.0 - 0.57 seconds
Version 6.1 - 0.28 seconds (51% faster)

Loading the editor for puzzle #12 from puzzle #1

Version 6.0 - 0.63 seconds
Version 6.1 - 0.37 seconds (41% faster)

Loading the next page of puzzles (puzzles 13-24)

Version 6.0 - 4.16 seconds
Version 6.1 - 1.99 seconds (52% faster)

Your results may vary depending on your computer. Generally, the speed improvements are more apparent on slower hardware. Regardless, everyone should benefit from faster code, improving the user experience.

In addition to faster load times:

The Puzzle Scribe overwrite warning now defaults to "yes".
On the Mac version, the error popup when inputting more than one letter on a puzzle board tile now offers a protip to try Puzzle Scribe.
A bug has been fixed that caused an erroneous macro to run when editing puzzle #3.

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint v6.0 - Holy smokes!

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 00:28:54 GMT

This past year has been a whirlwind for Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint. Throughout the quarantine, I've noticed a surge in downloads from people looking for virtual games. What's more, people started to broadcast their Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint games online. What used to be intended for in-person events transformed into a virtual phenomenon.

With the increased attention and visibility, I've received considerably more feedback than before, directly and indirectly. By observing people other than me use my template, I've noticed several inefficiencies I otherwise wouldn't catch on my own.

The result of all the feedback? This ginormous update. I never saw this coming: Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint version 6.0.

Puzzle Scribe - write puzzles faster

By far the largest complaint with the template is how long it takes to write puzzles. I get it; it ain't fun to fill in each and every letter one tile at a time.

That's where the new Puzzle Scribe comes in. Just type your puzzle in the input box, and presto! Your puzzle automatically writes onto the tiles!

On average, you can expect to write puzzles three times faster with Puzzle Scribe. Here's how much time I saved adding the following puzzles:

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

Without Puzzle Scribe: 12.5 seconds
With Puzzle Scribe: 4.0 seconds

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

Without Puzzle Scribe: 18.4 seconds
With Puzzle Scribe: 5.3 seconds

CRISPY CHUNKY CHOCOLATE CHIPS

Without Puzzle Scribe: 26.2 seconds
With Puzzle Scribe: 7.6 seconds

Remember: Puzzle Scribe is a supplemental feature. You can always edit puzzles the old fashioned way for crossword puzzles and/or aligning puzzles exactly how you want!

Puzzle Properties - stats for nerds

Ever felt like your puzzles didn't challenge your players enough, realized that bonus round was easier than you imagined, or were plain curious how your puzzles stack by the numbers?

Introducing Puzzle Properties: your haven for puzzle analysis.

Here, you'll find various stats about your puzzle, including:

Total Letters - The more you have (especially consonants), the more money your puzzle can give out. Useful for when deciding puzzle order, and for your prize wallet's sake.
Unique Letters - The more you have, the easier your puzzle is to guess. Keep this number low if you wish to stump your players (bonus points if the total letters is high).
RSTLNE Ratio - The higher the percentage, the easier the Bonus Round puzzle. Keep this number low for challenging Bonus Rounds (the actual show does this!).

A simpler wheel

Let's turn our attention to the resolute wheel and its new shiny features, or lack thereof.

Old wheel default

New wheel default

You saw that right: the Free Play wedge, Wild Card, and $10,000 wedge are now disabled by default. Long story short, more people got confused with these wheel elements from the show than it was worth. Ultimately, it's more important for people to understand the wheel than to strive for a replica of the actual show.

That doesn't mean these wheel elements are gone for good. Far from it.

A more robust wheel

Now you can fine-tune your wheel with Wheel Settings, a dedicated slide with a wide assortment of toggles.

Not only can you can re-enable Free Play, Wild Card, and the $10,000 wedge on the wheel, you can customize the base wheel value and the number of Bankrupts for each round.

Just for fun, I also added a $5 wedge setting. Enable it to make a wheel space worth $5, a joke unfortunate and fortunate for the player (at least it's not a Bankrupt)! It even adds strategy to the game, as those who land on it want to make sure there's only one letter they call in the puzzle. (Anything more is money left on the table!)

While the wheel has less by default, it can do more than ever before.

Full-fledged Toss-Ups, finally!

The previous version included rudimentary support for Toss-Up puzzles, albeit in a hidden and convoluted way. Now the kid gloves are off; Toss-Ups are ready for prime time, baby!

To make a puzzle a Toss-Up, append a T to the puzzle number on puzzle load.

To run the Toss-Up, click "Reveal a Letter", which will randomly reveal letters in the puzzle one by one. You can even add Toss-Up music with the new audio hook in Sound Effect Settings.

Finally, to end the Toss-Up, click the Toss-Up winner's round score, which will add the Toss-Up value to their score and conclude the round. It's that simple.

In case your muscle memory needs time to adjust, the old method to run Toss-Ups still works for backwards compatibility.

Two players view - that's all you need!

Now you can display the puzzle board with just 2 player slots.

Although it was always possible to run 2-player game by not using the third player slot, you may appreciate the cleaner look. Also, some users didn't know you can play with just 2 players, so offering a dedicated view helps in that regard.

No more vowels, no more consonants

Just like the actual show, players are now informed if there are no more vowels, or no more consonants in the puzzle.

In case you prefer to keep your letter distributions a secret, you can disable this in Settings.

Final Spin upgrades

Starting the Final Spin got a massive overhaul, with its new full screen banner and alert sound effect.

Not only does the new overlay help inform players how the round works, it saves time and clicks for the Final Spin itself. That's because the Final Spin is now guaranteed not to land on Bankrupt, Lose a Turn, or Free Play!

Editable game name

It's now possible to edit the game name that appears on the puzzle board. Useful it for whatever reason you don't want your game associated with the name WHEEL OF FORTUNE.

Game names other than WHEEL OF FORTUNE will also hide the Wheel of Fortune logo from the title slide.

Wipe scores only on exit

On the End Game slide, there's a new button to wipe just the scores, not the puzzles, on exit. This addresses an overlooked use case where you may want to reuse your puzzles for another class period, party group, or cohort.

In addition, wiping puzzles/scores will now warn you that this is essentially a reset button. You can also edit a player's Totals scores on the puzzle board by clicking their score directly, in addition to their Totals dollar sign.

A new winter backdrop

For the first time since its introduction, we have a new backdrop! It's winter-themed, great for seasonal events.

What's more, existing backdrops received slight color adjustments. You can now also switch backdrops on the fly by clicking the right light pillar.

The glorious grab bag

Of course, a major release wouldn't be complete without the minor adjustments to improve the user experience.

Multiple colors in the template receive adjustments to improve the WCAG contrast score.
The back button on the wheel slide moves to the top to reduce cursor movement. The wheel also has a new trim.
In windowed mode, the cursor no longer disappears on its own. To ensure this happens, always start the game from the title slide.
Multiple other minor UI/UX improvements

Deprecations

The following features have been removed in version 6.0:

The Confirm Solve setting. It's just not useful. Not only is it very unlikely to misclick the Solve button, there's many other spots that are easier to misclick than this. This setting was disabled by default in version 5.2 and is now gone with this version.

And that's it. Since version 6.0 works fundamentally the same as version 5.0, the latest video guide works for versions 5 and 6!

Thank you

Holy smokes, that's a lot of changes! Unlike before where I primarily made changes for myself, many of these changes came from your suggestions and feedback. Thank you so much for using my template for your fun-filled events, and for inspiring me to push this project beyond what I've ever imagined.

Do yourself a favor and update to version 6.0 now!

Further fixes since the Gatsby v3 upgrade

Sun, 30 May 2021 19:54:44 GMT

A few weeks ago, I upgraded Games by Tim's static site generator to Gatsby v3.

As part of the upgrade process, I rewrote parts of the codebase to adapt to the new Gatsby v3 standards. However, I couldn't fully complete the changes due to a bug with the new Gatsby image plugin, gatsby-plugin-image, that added unwanted padding to all images.

Now that the Gatsby team addressed the image padding bug, I've migrated the site's image plugin from the old gatsby-image to gatsby-plugin-image, effectively completing the Gatsby v3 upgrade process. According to the Gatsby docs, images on this site should load faster with the new plugin. I also noticed that the rendered images look slightly better than before.

In addition to applying the new image plugin:

I fixed a bug that prevented the site from generating an instant preview in the Forestry CMS.
I fixed a bug that caused the latest blog post on the homepage to not update properly.

I hope these changes help improve the quality of the site for visitors and developers who intend to use the Games by Tim template for their own website. As always, if you notice something broken about the site, post a comment on this post, email me, or submit an issue to the GitHub repo. Thanks again!

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint v5.2.1 - Letter selector hotfix

Thu, 27 May 2021 23:18:29 GMT

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint version 5.2.1 addresses a bug that caused the Letter Selector to not appear on puzzle load if the computer's system region is a non-UK European country.

This bug has also been patched in the pre-release dev build 2021-05-27. Version 4.1.5 (the latest version that supports PowerPoint 2007) is not affected by this bug.

Trash Panda works again!

Tue, 18 May 2021 22:52:54 GMT

After weeks of the app having a blank screen and a lengthy Zoom session with the team one year later, we're proud to announce that Trash Panda is back online!

What happened, exactly?

For the past few weeks, launching the Trash Panda app led to a blank screen where the button to take a photo and the item categories would be at. This happened despite no changes to the code since we completed the project back in March 2020.

Normally it'd be difficult to reunite a group who worked on a class project over a year later, but fortunately not for us. Since the end of the project, we've kept each other's contacts in handy. Thank goodness we did, because the fix took team effort.

Upon discovery of the blank screen, the Web team quickly diagnosed that it happened due to the frontend site not receiving the data it needed from the backend server. Problem was, we couldn't tell what broke in our backend at first.

We initially thought that our Earth911 API key expired. Earth911 is where we source our data on where to recycle goods, and we had to get permission from their developers to use it. It made sense; the app wouldn't function without the Earth911 data, and perhaps the Earth911 devs wouldn't necessarily want their keys lingering forever.

So we reached out to the Earth911 devs to revive our API key. They replied about a week or two later, asking what our API key was to check on it. Once we got the Web team to fetch our API key from the backend, we quickly realized...

...the API key still worked!

When directly accessing the Earth911 API from the reference methods, data returned with our API key, and an error returned with an invalid key. We simply couldn't believe it. What else could have possibly broke given no code changes on our end?

The eventful meeting

On Friday May 14, the Trash Panda team reconvened for a lengthy 2 1/2 hour Zoom meeting. Granted not all the time was on the blank screen issue, but still, it was quite long.

With the team together, we finally had to chance to deep-dive into the problem without the delays associated with texting. After investigating the error logs more thoroughly, we discovered the errors really came from a PostgreSQL call in Heroku, our backend service. In simple terms, Heroku recently changed some security settings on their end the app didn't account for. One pull request later, and Trash Panda was back in business!

Or was it?

The initial blank screen disappeared, but the app's image detection still didn't work, and clicking on any item category led to another blank screen. Again, this had to be caused from changes to services we depend on, but what could it be this time?

We checked if our custom image recognition API still worked, since it runs on a different backend server. Sure enough, it did when directly accessing it outside the app.

We eventually realized the above problems happened due to changes from the Earth911 API, not from losing access, but from the data it returned. Since March 2020, Earth911 added additional recyclable item categories to their site. Our app has hand-picked images for each item category, but since we didn't handle images for items we didn't know existed, the app errored out. Since this backend request also occurs during the image recognition process, that also broke.

Another pull request later, and Trash Panda finally works again. Hooray!

I'd like to thank everyone from the Trash Panda team (click Meet the team) for staying along to restore our beloved project. And if you haven't yet experienced the project's magic due to the blank screen, absolutely give it a try! Remember, Trash Panda works best on a smartphone (or resized browser window).

Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint dev builds are back!

Fri, 14 May 2021 05:50:00 GMT

Version 6.0 is here! Thank you to all dev build testers!

Download Version 6.0

What are Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint dev builds?

Whenever there's a lot of features for the next version of a project, it's overwhelming to release everything at once. That's why I space out the features into chunks, which I release as dev builds.

Dev builds serve 3 useful purposes:

They let me ship new features more quickly.
They allow me to gather feedback on new features before they make it to final release.
They make me feel more productive as a developer.

I've previously released Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint dev builds for versions 5.0 (2020), 4.0 (2017), and 1.0 (2012).

What new features can I expect?

Quite a bit. You know something huge is coming when I resort to dev builds, so buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Due to volatility and frequency of changes, I do not post dev build changelogs on the blog. Instead, you'll find them on the PowerPoint Creative forum thread. Go to the latest page for the most recent dev build notes.

How often are new dev builds released?

There's no set schedule for dev builds, as my priorities are volatile and this is all hobbyist work. That said, they should update somewhat frequency. I'd say every few days until final release is a good bet.

Why are dev builds Windows only?

Building the Mac version of Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint involves painstakingly migrating every feature into Mac-compatible fonts/macros, which I'd rather not spend time on when there's a ton of dev builds. Don't worry; there will be a Mac version for the final release.

How can I provide feedback on dev builds?

The usual methods. Comment on this blog post, email me, or post on PowerPoint Creative.

Thank you for testing the next version of Wheel of Fortune for PowerPoint!

Games by Tim upgrades to Gatsby v3

Fri, 07 May 2021 05:10:00 GMT

Today I upgraded Games by Tim from Gatsby v2 to v3, a major update to this site's static site generator.

As an under-the-hood upgrade, not much has changed with the look and feel. That said, you should notice general performance improvements, and there was a longstanding bug that took 2 clicks to activate light mode that's been fixed.

The site's also somewhat faster to build for anyone working with the Games by Tim template. For those unaware, the Games by Tim website is open source and designed around a base template. You're allowed to use the template for your own website, as long as you replace the Games by Tim content with your own.

As with any major upgrade, there are breaking changes from Gatsby v2 to v3. I did my best to fix everything for v3, but there's always that chance I missed something. If you notice anything broken with the site (layout glitches, no images where they should be), post a comment on this post, email me, or submit an issue to the GitHub repo. Thanks!

Help wanted - migrating to gatsby-plugin-image

For anyone experienced with Gatsby, I can use your help.

The Gatsby image plugin, gatsby-image, has been superseded with gatsby-plugin-image, which is supposed to be simpler and more efficient. When I migrated the site to gatsby-plugin-image, I noticed that every image has an extra 5-6 pixels of padding on the bottom, like so:

Is this a bug with gatsby-plugin-image, or is there a fix/workaround to remove the padding I'm unaware of? If you have firsthand knowledge of this problem, leave a note on the GitHub issue. I'd greatly appreciate it!

UPDATE (May 30): This bug has been resolved on the Gatsby team's end, and I've fully migrated the site to use gatsby-plugin-image.