iPhone AppTrivia

The concept is simple… I need a trivia iPhone application. I have a database of 10,000 trivia question in an XLS file. Users will be able to play to either play online against other people or play on the app itself. The app is going to be free so it needs to be able to have advertisements either if the user is playing online or if the user is playing on his own while NOT connected to the live version. First of all, please download “Party Trivia” from the app store to see an idea of what it should look like (but ours is going to look much more sleek and professional than this).

There are going to be three different categories of questions: 1. General Knowledge, 2. Entertainment and 3. Sports.

For both the on-line and off-line versions, a new question will appear every 30 seconds. For the first 5 seconds, it will just display the question. After the first 5 seconds, the answers will be displayed with the question. After the next 5 seconds, one of the wrong answers will disappear. After the next 5 seconds, another wrong answer will disappear. Then after 5 more seconds the final wrong answer will disappear and the correct answer will be displayed in its current location for 1 second. After the 1 second the answer will move up to where the top answer was (If the user got it right, it will also display a green check next to the answer that is not located in the top location, but if the user got it wrong, it will show a red X next to it.), and in the space below (where the other 3 answers were) it will say the following for the next 4 seconds:

If the user got it right, it will also display a green check next to the answer that is not located in the top location, but if the user got it wrong, it will show a red X next to it.

Then, below that area, where the three answers USED to be, it will say (if the user got the previous question right):

Good job!

You earned ___ points!

Next question in # seconds.

The # will decrease from 4, 3, 2, 1 and then that next question will appear.

If the user got the question wrong, it should say:

Ouch!

You earned 0 points!

Next question in # seconds.

Back to the question…

Answers are going to be disappearing every five seconds… obviously, people will choose answers that will disappear. If the chooses the wrong answer and then that answer disappears, he will then be able to choose another answer.

We’re going to need a clock located somewhere on the app. I would say the top right corner is the best location. The clock should look VERY professional. It should be a circle, and it should have the number in the middle. As soon as the question appears, it will have the number 15 displayed in the middle of the clock. Then, when the answers are displayed, it will begin counting down to 15, 14, 13, etc. (since, as mentioned above, every 5 seconds a new answer will be taken away). Additionally, around the sides of the clock, there must be a solid round line that begins to disappear with the time, in a fluid motion. So it should take 15 seconds for that solid line to disappear. When there are 3 seconds left of the click, the entire clock should begin to blink every .3 seconds (to signify that time is running out and the user better hurry up!)

Points:

User will be given points for every answer. However, the points will vary based upon two things. The first is WHEN they answer the question and the second is the difficulty of the question. The points will vary based upon how much time is on the clock. If the user selects the right answers when all 4 answers are present and there are 15 seconds on the clock, he will get 15 points, if there are 14 seconds on the clock, he will get 14 points, etc. down to if there is 1 second on the clock and he selects the right answer, he will get 1 point. And if the user selects the wrong answer (between the final 2 choices at the end), he will get 0 points.

There are also going to be 3 levels of difficult of the questions. (The XLS file that you will be sent with all the questions with have the different levels of difficulty per question). For level 1, the above-mentioned point system will work. For level 2, we will take the above-mentioned point scale and multiple it by 2. For level 3, we will multiply the point scale by 3.

After every 3 questions, the leader board will appear. (Prior to the leader board appear, instead of the bottom of the previous question saying “Next question in…” It will say “Leader board in # seconds” on the top of the actual leader board. How the leader board will work is that it will calculate who has the most points for the last 60 questions and display the top 10 people who have the most points. So if there have been 60 questions played, it will calculate the leader based on the answers to all 60 of those questions. On the 61st question, it will then calculate the leader based upon questions 2-61. It will display the top 10 players with their images and names (based upon Facebook connect, see below) and below the leader board, it will have the specific user’s (who is playing on that specific phone) number of points and what place he is in. So for instance, it will say “You: 312 points 1,384 out of 18,894 players.” And for the number of players, it will only display a number for people who have actually answered a question in the past 60 questions! If people have answered and their score is 0, that is fine, they will still be counted, but if they have not answered in the past 60 questions, they will no longer be counted. The leader board page is also where we will be displaying our advertisement.

Other important things:

- For the live version, the user is going to obviously need to be connected either via 3G or to a wireless network.

- All the questions will be entirely randomized. The way I would like to do it is as follows: we have a database of 10,000 questions. All 10,000 of those questions must be displayed before the questions start cycling again. So at the beginning of the cycle, let’s imaging that the first question that is pulled is question number 5,480, that means that that same question cannot appear again until ALL 9,999 other questions are asked. After all 9,999 questions are asked, then we will begin with the 10,000 questions again. The order of the 10,000 questions will ALWAYS be random, however, at the beginning of a cycle the order of the 10,000 should automatically be assigned so that our system knows which questions will be asked next. This will be important for the next point…

- Since during our Live game, we the users will need to be connected to the internet, the possibility exists that users will experience episodes of slow connection speed. As such, I would like to make sure that the user never misses questions or other crucial aspects of the game because of slow connection speed. Therefore, during each question, it should automatically load all the details pertaining to the next question, so that when the next question is ready to appear, it is already in the systems.

- However, it cannot KILL their battery, so everything must be done very clean. Therefore, in the actual installed version of the game, ALL the questions are going to be installed onto their iPhone (just in case people would rather play offline). So, for the live version, I would like to cut down on the number on connections their iPhones have to make with our server, so how this should be done is when a user first opens the on-line version, our server should automatically give his phone the data regarding the order of the questions that will be asked, so it knows which ones will be coming next. So when it’s time to display a question, it will just pull the question from the iPhone app’s database because it already has it stores (since it was downloaded when the user original downloaded the app.) That is VERY important, because it will cut down on battery drain for users. Additionally, the user’s iPhone will need to connect with our server immediately upon a question ending, so that we know how to calculate the leader board… It should tell us whether the user got it right or wrong, so that we can add their number of points to their current score and calculate the new total.

Facebook Connect:

If users would like to partake in the live version, they will be asked to enter their facebook username and password so they can play the trivia game using their facebook name and picture. Once they enter their facebook username and password one time, the system should always remember their username and password so they never have to enter it again. To view the necessary API information for facebook connect, please view here: [login to view URL]

Graphics:

First of all, I would like for the app to be developed in landscape view. I would like the logo to have a black background and to have bright green, red, and blue stripes in a circle. Please see the logo for “Tap Tap Revenge” for a similar idea.

Each of the three topics of questions will have its own color. Sports should be red, Entertainment should be blue, and General Knowledge should be green. On the top left of the question, it should say “Category: Sports” and on the top right of the question it should say “Difficulty: 2”.

For each question, the background should be should have the category’s stripes going left to right. It should have two shades of the color, a bright version of the color and then a lighter version of the color. To see what this should look like, please look at the icon for the app called “Sportacular” in iTunes. However on the background of where all the text is (question, answers), it should stick out with a bland color from the main portion of the background with stripes… The reason I would like to do this is because the colorful stripes will not be easy on the eye, and we need something more pleasant for where the user is reading. Thus, the stripes should really just be around the edges of the app.

The app will also need to have task bars that make sense…

I am not sure whether I would like to run the app in landscape or regular view… Since there is going to be quite a bit of text and other things, I am thinking it may be best to run it in regular view, but we should definitely play around with it to see what works best.

C Programming Cocoa iPhone Objective C PHP

Project ID: #524027

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