The CustomWords Menu

For Teachers and Advanced Users Only:

Hangman Pro is an educational word-guessing game, and it offers many different methods to choose the word or short phrase that will be guessed. The methods built-in to Hangman Pro to choose words are in the Words Menu. That's where you can Enter your own words one at a time, Use Random Words, Use Photo Words, or choose from among dozens and dozens of built-in categories of words.

But, using the CustomWords Menu, you can create dozens of your own categories of words, using your own words, information, hints and pictures. You can customize Hangman Pro using nothing more than a typical text editor. Here's how...

1 - First, create a new folder (some people call it a directory, but we'll use the word folder here), and name the folder "HangmanProCustomFolder". There are no spaces in the name, and only 4 letters are capitalized. If the folder isn't named exactly as just mentioned (without the quotes, of course), the program will not find the folder.

2 - Place the HangmanProCustomFolder in the Documents folder of your computer.

3 - To create a new Menu Item in the CustomWords Menu of Hangman Pro, you will need to create a text file with a list of words or short phrases that you wish to be used, when that custom category is chosen. The name of the text file you create for each category will be the name of a new Menu Item in the CustomWords menu. You can have as many as 100 different custom categories. Each category of words that you create can also have a  picture associated with that category (just like Hangman Pro's built-in categories have pictures associated with each category.)

===> CATEGORY PICTURE REQUIREMENTS:

Hangman Pro supports the standard JPG (or JPEG) picture format. All category pictures that you include in the HangmanProCustomFolder should be JPG pictures. The name of a JPG picture should be the same as the name of the text file you've created for a specific category, but with a "-p" appended (that's a dash character followed by a lower-case letter p). So, for instance, if you've created a text file (and thus a CustomWords Menu Item) called "Cape Cod Vacation", you'll want to title your picture "Cape Cod Vacation-p".

When you include text files for CustomWord categories, depending on how your computer is set up, the text file may or may not show an extension, such as ".txt", or ".text". When that name is used as the name of a menu item, the extension (if any exists) will automatically be ignored by Hangman Pro. Similarly, when you name a JPG Category Picture file, do NOT include the "txt" extension in the name of the photo. You should, though, make sure that all the JPG pictures end with an extension of ".jpg". So, using our above example, the photo you include for the category "Cape Cod Vacation", would be named "Cape Cod Vacation-p.jpg".

If you're curious, I had to add the requirement for you to add the "-p" at the end of the photo name just to distinguish the name of the text file from the name of the photo that is associated with that text file. You can't have two files with the same name in the same folder, and since both the text file and the photo are supposed to be in the same folder, I had to ensure they are named similarly, but not identical.

===> CATEGORY TEXT FILE REQUIREMENTS

Each text file you create and place in the HangmanProCustomFolder will be treated as the name of a Menu Item in the Hangman Pro CustomWords Menu. The name of the text file you create can only include letters, numbers and spaces. If the name of the file includes any other characters, this file will be ignored.

Each line in the text file will include all the information that Hangman Pro needs to know for one round of Hangman Pro. This one line in the text file will include the word (or short phrase) that will ultimately be guessed, optionally some information about the word, optionally a hint about the word, and optionally the name of a picture you might include that is associated with the word or short phrase that you've entered.

You can include as many as 100 lines in each text file. This means each custom category that you include can include up to 100 words (or short phrases.)

The format of each line is VERY specific. Basically, each line must include, in order, the word, the info, the hint, and the picture. Only the word (or short phrase) is required. All the other parts of the line (info, hint and picture) are optional, and you don't have to include them if you don't want.

In order to separate each part of the line that includes the word, info, hint or picture, you just need to include a a "vertical bar" character. It looks like this "|". You can type this character by holding down the shift key and pressing the backslash key on the keyboard. This is the key that is just above the return key on the Macintosh or the Enter key on a PC. This character is known as a "delimiter". It is used to separate the various parts of the line. (And, if your phrase to be guessed only includes words and doesn't even use info, hints or pictures, you don't even need to include it.)

Here's a two lines in a text file that you might create...Let's say you've created a text file called "My Favorite Bands"...the lines might read like this...

The Beatles|The Beatles are from Liverpool.|This group reminds me of insects.|Beatles.jpg
The Rolling Stones|The Rolling Stones are a great group.|Think gathering moss.|Stones.jpg

...now let's look a the above line. As you see, we've included everything possible...a word to be guessed, info about the word, a hint to help someone guess the word and a picture name. The word to be guessed is "The Beatles". After that round of the game, the information area of Hangman Pro will show the info you've included "The Beatles are from Liverpool". If, during the game, someone clicked the option to show a hint, that person would see "This group reminds me of insects". And, after the round is finished, the program would try to show the Beatles.jpg picture that you supplied in the HangmanProCustomFolder in the Picture area of the game.

It's involved, but it's really not too hard.

What if you don't have pictures to include? No problem, just don't include them...

The Beatles|The Beatles are from Liverpool.|This group reminds me of insects.
The Rolling Stones|The Rolling Stones are a great group.|Think gathering moss.

What if you don't want to be bothered with pictures, and you dont' want to include hints either? No problem, just don't include them...

The Beatles|The Beatles are from Liverpool.|This group reminds me of insects.
The Rolling Stones|The Rolling Stones are a great group.|Think gathering moss.

And, lastly, what if you don't want to include anything other than the words or short phrases to be guessed? Simple, just include the word or short phrase on a line all by itself with nothing else...

The Beatles
The Rolling Stones

Note: Remember all words or short phrases must be seen as valid words to guess in Hangman Pro. The words (short phrases) must be 52 characters or less, able to be split into two 26-character lines, and all characters must be letters from A to Z, and spaces between the words. Information should be less than 255 characters in length. Hints should be less than 100 characters in length.



