Dink Software

Geography Trainer 1.3 Download

Updates for version 1.3:
- High scores added (10).
- Top 3 high scores added to main window.
- About box now enabled (was previosuly disabled).
- The following states were removed as they are not widely recognized as countries: Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, and South Ossetia.
- The following countries were added: Panama added to the South America category (previosuly it was only in the North America category, it is infact in both continents and belongs in both categories).
- The following names were changed: Countries:
* United States renamed to United States of America.
* Taiwan renamed to Taiwan (Republic of China).
* Myanmar renamed to Burma.
Capitals:
* Capital of Switzerland renamed to Bern, not Berne.
* Corrections made to other capital errors.
- Numerous other small updates have been included in version 1.3

Please post any comments, thoughts or bugs you may have with Geography Trainer 1.3.

A question!!! How did you make the UI, did you use VisualBasic?

And why not offer a self extracting executable(installer), you could use INNO(w/ IS Tools) to easily create one.

Geography Trainer was wrote in Basic (not VisualBasic). Thanks for the suggestion with the installer, I'll check into it and it may be included in release 1.4.

Oh okay, but by VisualBasic i actaully meant VB with .net framework(VB.net) to create the UI. Obviously i was wrong LOL! I know nothing of Basic so bleh

INNOsetup and ISTool if you don't want to learn INNO.

Okay small suggestion about the way highscores are stored. And spelling.

Geography Trainer uses a text or Comma Seperated Values file to store the highscroes. This ins't really a problem but it's just too easy to 'hack'. So what i suggest is you move the data files to another directory, so they arn't as blatent. Also change the file name from 'highscores' to something scary like, 'win32vitals.dll.txt'. Along with this you can use a different file type. CSV may be best for BASIC but i'm sure they'll have Xml parsers. Alernatly you could create your own file type, you could build a simple parser using 'split' functions. Example:
=1:hs1:n:<STRING>:v:<INT>
=1 >> Tells parser this line is worth reading.
hs1 >> Identifyer
n >> Name
v >> Score

Also can i suggest something that might be more challenging. Some form of bad spelling acceptance. I personally am terrible at spelling, so even though i may know the answer, i can't always spell it. So if you could think of an alogrith(wrong) that could detect common mistakes that would be great! Obviously as this is a educational app you couldn't only offer half points if it was spelt wrong.

Thanks for the suggestions Holiverh.

Work on version 1.4 will begin shortly so if anyone has any suggestions, bugs or features they would like to see, please post them here.

Also if anyone has an idea on how better to rank players on the High Scores, i.e. Player A answer 1/1 question correctly (100%) and takes position one on the HS, Player 2 answers 99/100 correctly and only takes position 2 on the HS. The HS is currently based on % of questions correct. One possible solution I thought of was requiring a player to answer at least 5 questions (in total) to obtain a place on the High Scores list.

I like that

Mabye you could give players points for every question they get correct, and they get no points if they wnaser incorrectly. that would solve it I think. Player with most points wins. Would also get the highscores working.

A points based high score is not a bad idea Unknown. Keeping it simple: You get 2 points for every question you answer correctly and lose one point for every answer you answer incorrectly. You need to attempt 5 questions (and have a final score >= 1) to obtain a position on the High Scores list.

Just a couple of suggestions Bigwheel on the Informatist forums suggested (so I don't lose them or forget them):

Bigwheel wrote:Dink, Idea for version 1.4. Include the "English" and the local version of a town name. Munich (Munchen)

Dink, Idea for version 2.0. Show a map. Have a look here: http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/euroquiz.html

Keep the ideas coming in, they will help when I start to implement the planned update.

How's about for 1.4, you make it multiplayer online. Like you know, a trivia quiz game of some sort and award them a prize of some sort. Make it like Trivial Pursuit or Buzz.

That defiantly won't be happening with 1.4 although thanks for the idea. Buzz and Trivial Pursuit are both fun games.

Geography Trainer was originally meant to be an online game and was to be wrote in PHP. My PHP level at that time was even worse than it is now (which isn't very good at all ), although I eventually did manage to get it working (even found the site I made for it the other day) I wasn't that happy with it and hence decided to write it in BASIC (which I already had a decent understanding of).