The Magic Behind Quidditch

Once you have it open, it will look like this (without the bright green writing on it ;):

1. The Menu Bar - below you will find information on each of the items in the Menu Bar - 

• File
• Open Question Set - this will load a question set into the program. You will not see any visible change. See the Quaffle Program lesson for info on how to create your own question sets.
• Open Puzzle Set - Load a logic puzzle into the program. More information on creating your own puzzle sets later.
• Edit Puzzle - opens the puzzle dialog box, so you can edit the puzzle, and put other information in.
• Load Team Info - if you saved the team info for the quaffle program, you can load it into the snitch program, and it will fill in the seeker for you.
• Tools
• Set Colors - ah, sometimes it's nice for the teams to see their colours! The Four HOL Houses are "preset" but you can also play around with the settings to come up with your own combinations. The IRC colours is what will show when the program sends to your IRC client.
• Edit Mode - erm, this is a little confusing, if you set it to "ON" you can move the seekers around manually - you would want to do this if you made a mistake and sent a seeker "right" instead of "left" or something. Make sure to set it back to "off" when you are ready to resume play.
• Rearrange Squares - changes the configuration of the squares on the board, so you don't end up with all clue squares next to each other or whatever.
• Reset Play Timer - resets the play timer for 10 minutes (600 seconds)
• Reset Break Timer - resets the break timer for 2 minutes (120 seconds)
• Set Play/Break Timer to Zero - sets the timers to zero - you may want to do this on the break timer if neither seeker has any clues after first 10 minutes of play.
• IRC
• Connect to mIRC/Pirch client - in order for your program to "talk/interact" with the IRC chat window, you must tell it to connect to your IRC client. (Helpful to have IRC open first, then open the Ref program and connect.) You will not see anything visible happen.
• Begin IRC Play - choosing this will start the game going by announcing the situation, sending the 5 "second" countdown, and asking the question. Either from the beginning, or restart it from the current situation if you halted (see next item)
• Halt IRC Play - this will stop the program wherever it may be.
• Set IRC Channels - with the current version of the program, it will only "broadcast" to the current active window - if you switch windows (or activate a P2P (private chat) window while the program is running - it will follow you and broadcast to that channel. So BE CAREFUL - it's VERY easy to forget. LOL
• Announce Play Break - when the 10 minute intervals are up, use this to announce to the seekers that the 2 minute solving break starts now
• Announce Play Restart - announce to the seekers that play will now resume
• Test Player Handles - this makes sure that the players are receiving messages from the players. Do this before every match.
• Change Player Handles - edit the player nicks
• Help
• Instructions - opens the readme.html file that comes with the program. Godrics Ghost has not had a chance to correct some of the information, so please ignore anything that is inaccurate.
• About Golden Snidget 2000 - just a window to tell you who created this program and such.

2. The Grid

• The "grid" represents the "quidditch pitch" and the seekers "fly around" this grid in search of the elusive snitch.
• The corner squares marked with green * s are the squares in which the seekers start the game.
• The majority of the squares are BLUE - these are trivia squares. When one of the seekers lands on them, like in normal quaffle play, there is a 5 second countdown, with trivia question, in which BOTH seekers have the opportunity to answer.
• Black squares are "BLUDGERS" - a seeker hitting a bludger square loses 3 turns (this is all automated by the program, so you don't have to worry about it, program keeps track.)
• Green squares represent the "Wronski Feint" manuveur - if a seeker hits this square, they are successful in causing the other seeker to crash to ground. *vbg* Other seeker loses 5 turns as a result.
• Logic Puzzle Clue Square are represented in Red. Seekers CAN run into them on "accident", but the program also tells them where the locations of them are, when they have the right number of trivia answers saved up.
• The Yellow Square represents the Snitch. Seekers CANNOT "accidently" find the snitch. If they run into it before solving the puzzle, it just shows up as an "empty square" to them. Once they have correctly solved the puzzle and the program tells them the location, the square is "active" for them.

3. Information Entry & Play Controls

• Team A and Team B boxes is where you type the team names.
• Seeker is the name of the seeker
• The rest of the white boxes tell you:
• Location of the seeker on the grid
• Trivia is how many trivia questions they have answered - when a seeker reaches 5 correct answers, they are given the location of a clue square. This counter will NOT reset UNTIL they reach that clue square. So, on their way to get the clue, they could very well have 16 correct answers, but they will NOT be given a new clue location until they have reached the prior clue square given - once they reach the square, the  trivia counter sets back to zero, and they have to earn five more correct answers to get the next location.
• Clues - how many clues the seeker still needs.
• The "Snitch" button - this is the button you push when a seeker has answered a trivia question correctly.
• Direction buttons are denoted with the green "l, r, u, and d" - left, right, up and down. When a seeker says which way they want to go, push the correct button. 
• The 5 green ***** s represt another button that will magically "appear" when a seeker has received all the clues to the logic puzzle. The button will say "SOLVED" - when they p2p you with their answer, you push the SOLVED button to check their answer. Then it will ask you if they solved it, and if you push YES, it will send to that seeker the location of the Snitch square.

4. More Play Controls & Timers

• A's/B's move - manually tell program whose turn it is
• New Question - in case the question given was bad, or there just otherwise needs to be a new question for some reason
• End Turn - if question is not answered, push the end turn button, and the program will proceed with game play.
• 600 Seconds timer - this is the game play timer. set for 10 minutes. Click on it to start and stop it.
• 120 Seconds timer - this is the "Two Minute Solving break timer" and will start to countdown once game play timer runs out. Clicon on it to start and stop it.

5. Game Play Information

• Question - the current trivia question - if it is a long one, you may not be able to see the whole thing.
• Answer - the answer to the current trivia question - if you cannot see the whole thing, place your mouse cursor in the box, and use your right arrow key on your keyboard in order to make the answer appear.
• buttons - those little buttons next to each of the words (Question, Answer) will send what text is in that box to the IRC channel when you push it.