The Words Menu

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.

===> ENTER WORD: The ENTER WORD menu item is a quick and easy method to enter any word or short phrase that you want. This option is used when you are playing with friends and family. You enter the word while your friends or family members turn their back. In addition to entering the word or short phrase to be guessed, you can also, optionally, enter some information about the word or short phrase, and a hint to help the person guess the word. You can also choose a picture, if you want, that will be displayed at the end of the game.

A typical scenario might be entering a short phrase such as 'Uncle Kenny At The Wheel', entering information such as 'Here's a picture of Uncle Kenny in his car', and entering a hint such as 'He's not an Aunt but an...', and choosing a picture you might have taken of Uncle Kenny at the wheel of his car. The possibilities are endless and lots of fun for all ages.

===> USE RANDOM WORDS: As you can see, there are dozens and dozens of built-in categories of words (Anatomy, Animals, Artists, Astronauts, etc.) Sometimes you will want to choose a specific category so all Hangman Pro words come from just that category. But, other times, for more of a challenge, you might want the words to come from a Random Category. Just choose USE RANDOM WORDS, and all the words chosen in Hangman Pro will come from one of the built-in categories of words.

===> USE PHOTO WORDS: This is a really fun way to use Hangman Pro. When you first run Hangman Pro, the USE PHOTO WORDS menu item will probably be dimmed out and not available for choosing. This is normal. You have to do a little preparation to use this method of word/picture entry. When you have everything set up correctly, the words you guess in Hangman Pro, can be the names of the photos that you include in a special folder. You can have a folder full of pictures of friends and family members and favorite vacation spots, and the names of those photos will be used as the words that must be guessed in Hangman Pro. At the end of each round of the game, the picture will be displayed.

Here's how to set things up...

1 - First, create a folder called "HangmanProPhotoFolder". Make sure you spell the name of the folder exactly as it is here. There are no spaces in the name, and only some letters are capitalized. If the name of the folder does not exactly match "HangmanProPhotoFolder" (without the quotes, of course), the folder will NOT be found.

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

3 - Lastly, just copy or drag as many photos as you want into the HangmanProPhotoFolder (which resides within your Documents folder).

And, that's it. Now, if you run Hangman Pro again, and you followed the steps above, the USE PHOTO WORDS menu item should be available to be chosen, and no longer dimmed out.

Now, when you choose this item, Hangman Pro will randomly choose one of the photos in the special folder that you created for each round of Hangman Pro. At the end of each game, the program will display the picture you've chosen. (If the photo isn't able to be displayed for some reason, you'll hear a beep, and the standard Photo Category photo will be displayed instead.)

Remember, that the names of the photos are used as the words that must be guessed in a Hangman Pro game. So, if the name of the photo is NOT a legal Hangman Pro word, it cannot be used in a game. When you play Hangman Pro, only the letters A-Z and spaces are allowed, no numbers, no punctuation marks, etc.

Note: The program will automatically disregard any file extension when using the name of the photo. So, if you have a photo that is called "Uncle Kenny.JPG", the program will remove the dot (the period) and the letters "JPG", so only "Uncle Kenny" remains as the word that must be guessed.

In summary, create a new folder called HangmanProPhotoFolder, place that folder in the Documents folder of your computer, and then fill the HangmanProPhotoFolder with properly named photos.

===> ANATOMY
===> ANIMALS
===> ARTISTS
===> ASTRONAUTS
===> (etc.)

The last dozens and dozens of items in the Words Menu are the built-in categories of words. A built-in category menu item will include a small "info" icon if that category includes a little bit of information about the guessed word or short phrase. This is where Hangman Pro really shines as an educational game. All the categories of words are fun and challenging, but categories with information attached are really special. Enjoy!

