Make a Racing Game in PowerPoint
Are you familiar with PowerPoint but have only considered it a presentation tool? Are you interested in playing and creating games, but know little about programming? Are you interested in learning about more features of PowerPoint, or teaching them to someone, in a fun and engaging way?
In this guide, you will learn how to create a racing game in PowerPoint 2010. The way it works is by creating race tracks in PowerPoint which the player must trace with their cursor as fast as possible. The player must finish each track before the AI competitor does in order to advance to the next challenge.
Contents
Steps
- Make sure that the player can only advance to the next slide by clicking within the starting area:
- Transitions -> Advance Slide -> uncheck "On Mouse Click"
- Compose Starting slide.
- Decorate the starting page with some pictures and give the player instructions on how to play.
- Add a starting zone using either clip art or word art, hyperlink it to the next slide:
- Select starting zone -> Insert -> Action -> Hyperlink to -> Next Slide
- Use a background for setting track boundaries.
- Start a blank new slide; this will be the first racetrack.
- Insert a rectangle to cover the whole slide. This will prevent players from taking shortcuts off the tracks.
- Select rectangle -> Insert -> Action -> Mouseover -> Hyperlink to -> Next Slide -> Check "Highlight when mouse over"
- Whenever the player's cursor goes off the tracks, they will be sent to the next slide, which will be a "game over" page that we will create later.
- Design the track.
- Insert another start button from the previous slide to the same place in this slide. The player's cursor will start in this area. (If you copy and paste the image from the previous slide, they will be at the same position, but you will need to undo the hyperlink on this new one.)
- Start building a racetrack by inserting arrows of different shapes
- Insert -> Shapes -> Block Arrows
- Connect them end to end to form a path.
- You can rotate them by holding down the green circle.
- You can also flip them to create a turn in the opposite direction.
- Insert a checker flag icon to indicate a finishing area, and your track is complete.
- The tricky part: creating the race animation.
- Insert a flag icon at the start of the racetrack to represent the AI driver. Scale it down so that it is less than the width of the racetrack.
- Now add its custom motion path:
- Animation -> click down arrow to go to the bottom -> Custom Path
- Plot a path within the track from start to finish. When you're done with the last path point, press Esc to finish. Try to stay along the center of the track.
- Customizing the animation
- Choose "With Previous" from the "Start:" method drop box under Transitions tab so that the animation starts as soon as the slide loads.
- Adjust the difficulty by modifying how fast the AI driver finishes the race.
- Change the duration of its animation; the shorter the duration, the faster the AI drives, the harder the game becomes.
- You can test it by pressing the Preview button at the top left.
- Undo the "Smooth end" feature or else it will appear as if the AI driver slows down near the finishing line.
- Call up the custom path configuration window by clicking the little expansion button -> Set "Smooth end" to 0 sec.
- Bring the start button to the front:
- Select start button -> Format -> Bring Forward -> Bring to Front
- Set the losing condition.
- Recall the AI driver's finish time that you set in step 6; set the timer to transition to the next slide to be the exact same duration.
- Disable advance slide on mouse click again to prevent cheating
- Transitions -> Advance Slide ->After hh:mm:ss -> enter the same duration as the AI driver animation -> uncheck "On Mouse Click"
- "Game over" page.
- Use Word Art to print out "GAME OVER" and "Exit"
- Hyperlink "Exit" to End Show on mouse click.
- Uncheck "Advance Slide On Mouse Click" for this slide as well to prevent cheating.
- Add more tracks.
- Repeat steps 3 ~ step 10 to add more racetrack slides alternated with GAME OVER slides.
- Make sure that the starting zone is the same position as the finishing zone of the previous track.
- You can copy and paste to reuse the same GAME OVER slide:
- Right click existing GAME OVER slide -> Copy -> right click after the next racetrack slide -> Paste Options -> Using Destination Theme
- Create winning page.
- Once you have enough tracks that you want, add a finishing slide with messages such as "You won!"
- Now you can set winning conditions to connect the tracks.
- Mouseover hyperlink the finishing zone of each track slide to the next track slide; hyperlink the last track slide to the YOU WON slide. For example:
- Select finishing zone -> Insert -> Action -> Mouseover -> Check "Highlight when mouse over" -> Hyperlink to -> "Slide ..." -> Select next track slide, or winning slide if this is the last track
- Do this for each finishing zone on every racetrack slide.
Tips
- You can also gradually increase the difficulty by making the tracks narrower and narrower.
- Decorating the race tracks with scenery can make it much more realistic.
- Explore adding sound effects to enrich the playing experience.
- It is possible to add split paths and secret shortcuts!
- This game is one which can be added online
Warnings
- Just like any other program, test the different elements and the game as a whole after you finish making it.
- There are still ways to cheat at a PowerPoint game such as by accessing right click menu.
- This can't be played with keyboard
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