[[This is actually like my ninth time writing this up... I keep forgetting to hit "Submit" in the hopes that the forum's "draft" feature will be invoked... but NOPE.]]
MEGA UPDATE: 1/17/2016...
"The road to RC1"- Fixed the controller and other sub forms to be able to fit on the smaller laptop screens. (I kind of forgot that not everyone has a 1600x900 resolution screen. My laptop forced me to rethink that... Sooooo.... Went ahead and resized everything to fit on the smaller screen... Hopefully no one still uses the dinosaur laptops or the small SD laptop screens... or else I'm screwed.
- Added a new difficulty "Extreme" which is meant for Million Dollar Questions. I kind of figured that the Million Dollar Questions were supposed to be a bit more difficult than say $500K, $250K, and $100K... so now there's an Extreme tier. (Difficulties now go: "Joke/Freebie", "Basic/Easy", "Intermediate", "Advanced", "Extreme"). Changed the presets to match.
- Removed "ATAAudienceA", "PAFResponse" and similar fields from the question database. These were supposed to be "simulations"... (If you didn't have an Ask The Audience to Ask and so forth, you can simulate it...) I'll instead make a "random" button mechanic available on the "Ask The Audience" form in the future. (This really doesn't affect anything as it wasn't a publicly facing field.)
Speaking of Forms...
- Removed the "Confirm Double Dip" and "Confirm Jump The Question" windows... Hopefully the game operator will know NOT to hit any button unless they hear "Final Answer/Decision" specifically requested. If not, there's a button called "Reset Question" that will go ahead and "fix" things. (Undo adding time to the bank, undo adding the question value to the banks, reverse the safety net adjustment, clear the final answer and (graphically) crash back to the Logo screen. (Still to do: Recalculate the banked time.) (Thanks for
FinalAnswer19 for the assistance with that one.)
- Improved handling of keeping track of the bank. (When updating the totals on a correct answer, the program will now check to see if the question is in fact answer "Y". If a player "Skips"/"Jumps" a Threshold, it is ignored.
- Added the "Preset" field to Create New Game. This will be filled with various game formats that will read like: "US Classic 2015" or "US Time" or "International Classic" and will proceed to prefill all the requisite buttons, lifelines, question values, game format, difficulty and timelimits and currency indicators for you. There will be an option to create and save formats later. (Even to create one by default.)
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HUGE FIX! Shuffle Format now actually shuffles the questions! It turned out that before I was only having the question values shuffled and not the actual questions. Now the program will actually shuffle the questions too. (For those don't know, the setup form is still the same but when you click OK, the program will take all the values up until the number desired and shuffle them up.)
- Money Tree setup button. (This will likely be removed for... well nothing. The goal is to remove many of the unneeded confirmations and dialog boxes from the program.) Right now the program will allow an operator to hit a "step" each time on cue. The goal will be to reduce this down to the main controller window as a "Magic Button" of sorts (aka: advance, do something, advanced, do something else... Until done.). (see below)
- Minor fix: Removed my "definitions" of shuffle's thresholds. There's like no need for them and they all defaulted to 1000 and 25000 except for like... one or two? They're gone, you can still set custom amounts.
- BIG CHANGE. This was actually inspired by someone's work I've seen on a program they demo'd on their site as well as my friend pestering me about "No the order of the lifelines is supposed to be this way..." (I was following the order of US Season 9+, he was insisting we follow the US Primetime Series 1...) So I'm changing the new game setup screen. Now instead of following the order at fixed points, the game operator can actually selected the order of the lifelines instead. This is planned to not affect anything but the displays of the LL icons on the Host and Projector. (Additionally, this is a "smart" chooser... if you skip a field, the program will still know that the 3rd option is actually found on the fourth field. Crystal Ball will still NOT be a lifeline option unless Shuffle Format is selected.)
(Believe it or not, this took me at least an three hours to try to code :/ ... Dang it OOP languages!!! And its still kind of buggy)
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HUGE UPDATE: Updated the question queue to support queues of 16 questions long! After a bit research (read: asking for assistance in the ShoutBox. Thanks again to @paolo16gula and
ausgameshowfan ...) I have determined that the maximum number of questions is actually 16. (There was mention of a 20 question game but that game is actually a different game show altogether from Brazil.)
- Updated the Money Tree display so that it can properly show if a question was answered or skipped using the "Jump The Question" lifeline there is an indicator on it. (Hope people have Courier New installed on their systems...) This was also done to facilitate the Money tree and the Jump The Question lifeline.
- HUGE UPDATE: "Proper" tracking of banked timed and customization of that feature. So I completely forgot to realize that the UK and International Time Rules are COMPLETELY different than the US timed rules. In that, there is no such thing as banked time for the final question. (It was evidently a US feature to its rules.) Additionally, in the UK, not all the questions were timed. So to that extent, there is now a new option available when creating a timed millionaire game: "To time the question, or not?" If you check the checkbox under "Timed?" (all of which are checked by default when invoking "Clock Millionaire"), you will be allowed to enabled "Banked Time" mode or disable it. (If you deselect any timed checkbox, you cannot play Banked Time and this option will be automatically disabled.)
- Visual Queue willl guide the game operator to what to do next. Inspired by @leimeisel 's controller, there is now a continual updating "Current Status" and "Magic Button" action that will tell you what the program is doing and what will the "Magic Button" will do when invoked.
- Also if you notice above, I have removed the database of "currencies" since I can't properly "handle" the various forms for money and its expression of them. (Some currencies actually use both periods and commands in the whole number section. Some include spaces where here in the US we use commas... some even mix and match.) So that is officially out of the window and now you get a "dummy" version and simplified. In a future update, I may expand this to reflect something I saw in another program... But ehh.
- THINGS TO DO STILL/RANDOM NOTES: (By form, I mean "WinForm" or a "window")
- Crystal Ball lifeline button... (Trying to do this Windowless... No point in creating a form for it.)
* Double Money week... According to the US Syndication Rules, this is still possible... even under the classic tree that they're following this season... Also need to setup a Double Money format for Shuffle format. (I need to find those rules again to see if it only applied to Round 1 or Round 2... or if there is a way to allow randomization/customization of it.)
- Ask The Expert lifeline... Again this is just rules research. (I forget if it was Classic (Super) millionaire that timed them or clock millionaire.
- Considering adding in the "Extra" (read: duplicate/renamed/etc.) lifelines. Like for "Armed Forces Week", Swap The Question returned as "Cut The Question" and was able to be used up until Question 11. (At Question 11, it was taken away.) "Extra Help" was essentially an extra Plus One.(Ask The Expert and Ask The Experts are treated as ONE button since they both did essentially the same thing.)
- Remove the extra forms outside of "Start New Game", "50:50" (maybe... ), "Ask The Audience" (permanently staying in), and "Swap The Question" (permanent...) (Remove "Phone a Friend"'s form or No? Remove "Plus One" form or no? Remove ")
- Start scouring the internet for the sound cues... It's almost time.
- Make a decision between Ventuz (my wallet), Flash (my tears), vvvv (my head?), Windows Presentation Forms (WPF), or one of the other Visual Basic friendly Graphics engines for display.... And MAKE IT SOON...
- "DLC" mode. (To follow Special Editions' "template": pick and choose questions from different "pack(s)" at random or let the game producer pick questions at large.)
- Create "Build a Stack" mode.... Let the game operator/producer/etc hand pick questions instead of picking at random.
(which leads to...)
- Save/Load Question Stacks. this will essentially be like a "Save Game" mode and will allow a game to be picked up where it left off in the event of having to shutdown. (Will also auto save everytime you go up or down the Money Tree...)
- Add place for contestant info... This should be soon. Like... NEXT THING TO DO... (Think back to Season 9 when the image would pop back up on the main screen.)
- Add place for "special situations"... Like advertisements, textual announcements (imagine "Please turn off all your cell phones please..." being displayed on the same kind of screen that is displayed as the question is displayed.), Question of the Day "mode" (aka: Just make a question up on the fly and play it as part of the game or than pulling it from the database. Or something weird... Pretty much it's to allow you to play a question on the fly.
- New nickname for the big projector... "Titantron".... Wait can it be called that?
- Stop the explanation field from being selectable. (.Enabled = False doesn't work... so what will?)
- Soundboard Mode?
- Sound setup. Create a panel for it.
- Guaranteed bank. (I was just told that there was a guaranteed bank to celebrate 1000 episodes of Millionaire US, so to that end... everyone who walked on the set and say in the hotseat got $1000 no matter what AND skipped 5 questions. I'm probably going to work on that as a "starting point..." ... this is later on in life. The "Guaranteed" Minimum can be setup kind of easily.)
- Find screenshot of Host Screen for current season. (I remember attending a Cedric taping in Manhattan and seeing there being a "Time Remaining"... Kind of need that.)
) I guess the next on will be Poland then...
Can you show us what happens on the other screens or haven't you sussed it yet. 
