Being a Flash idiot, coming up with a Family Feud Flash game for a student club I was involved with was quite the ordeal. I couldn’t find any pre-made Flash stuff! Back on October 14, 2006, I posted my version of this. Since then, several talented people have come along with improved versions with more features! This page now hosts all contributions to the whole “create your own Family Feud Flash game” idea!

Matt’s awesome Family Feud creation

Matt from Fusion7 Designs developed the most popular version. Warren from inkJet Oasis has built upon Matt’s version to create an even better version, including a Fast Money round. Download it here.

Click here to see a demo of Matt’s version here.

End users

Download the package. (For Matt’s original version, click here.) Unzip the file to a folder on your computer.

Editing the questions

Therefore, in order to change the questions, open the questions.xml file in any text editor (note: do not use Microsoft Word, as it really messes up formatting) and change the fields on the questions that are already there. You can have as many or as few questions, as well as as many or as few answers per question. To add a new question, your best bet is to copy and paste a question section and then modify it.

Here are some questions transcribed from actual shows of the game, graciously donated by dwayne:
– regular rounds
– bonus rounds

Trevor Tubbs has created a question and cheat sheet generator for Windows.

Download the question and cheat sheet generator

Running the game

After downloading and unzipping the package, and editing the questions as specified above, open one of index.html in your browser; ff.exe; or ff.swf.

Note: You will need the latest Flash player to view it, and I’m sure there is some kind of copyright stuff for the logo and sounds, so if you are interested in using, make sure that it is just local fun.

Controls

You can change the team name directly by clicking on it. You can load the question by clicking on the number along the bottom. Numbers 1-9 reveal the corresponding answers, the left and right buttons determine which team has control, and the spacebar commits the current points on the board to the team that has control. “x” will activate the strikes, and it will know how many there are. It basically reads the question from an easy to change/update xml file.

Other end user notes

Make sure you are familiar with the controls (in other words, practise!) before you play it live, as there are a few oddities. For example, if you press ‘x’ before the other ‘x’ has disappeared, the previous ‘x’ will remain stuck on the display. Also, if you use the mouse to click on an area anywhere but the question tabs at the bottom during a game, all controls are rendered inactive. To re-active the controls, move your mouse below the Family Feud logo until the arrow turns to a cursor (looks like a vertical line). Then click.

Need help? Visit the Family Feud forum.

Got an Android phone? Here’s a cool, free buzzer app (to see who hit the button first) developed by Sean. On your Android device, search for “feud buzzer” in the Android Market.

Developers

Download the developer package, which has the .fla, .swf, questions.xml, and required sounds. (For Matt’s original version, click here.)

The .fla file was created with Flash CS3, thus if you do not have the latest version of Flash, you will not be able to open and edit the source. You can download a trial version or buy the latest version of Flash at
adobe.com.

Need help? Visit the Family Feud forum.

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Peter’s and Mitchell’s versions

Peter’s Family Feud	Mitchell’s Family Feud
Flash file Text file	Flash file Text file
You can edit either text file to put in your own answers. If you have less than eight answers on a given board, just make “answernumber5″ through to “answernumber8″ equal to zero in the text file.
Instructions: Click somewhere on the board to “activate” the game. Press the numbers 1 through 8 on your keyboard to reveal the answers. Press “z”, “x”, and “c” to reveal the three x’s for wrong answers.	Instructions: Same features as the other board, but with more options! Click any of the numbers 1 through 8 to reveal the answers. Press “a” to start the theme song music and “s” to stop all music. Also, click the title or press “q” to reveal the question.
Custom Family Feud Flash game generator Video tutorial on how to use the generator	Custom Family Feud Flash game generator

Troubleshooting
First, follow the video tutorial. If that doesn’t help you, the most common problem is that you are using a Windows installation that hides file extensions. In that case, “questions.xml” is actually “questions.xml.xml”. Try simply naming it “questions”.

Still need help? Visit the Family Feud forum.

Kudos
Thanks to this guy for coming up with a model from which I stole the sounds and to this guy for having a tutorial on how to link text fields to a text file.

Whilst galavanting through Asia (how does one use “whilst”?) I’ve been on the lookout for a sleek, usb key–like memory card reader that especially reads SD cards and Memory Sticks. It turns out that this is currently a rare (mostly nonexistent) combo in such a small package. What I’d like to point out, however, is that the prices in Asia have been disappointing for memory card readers. A quick visit to the website LED Shoppe, a place where I have been a satisfied customer, confirmed my suspicion — I could have bought online what I was looking for all along (and gotten free shipping too)!

Oh LED Shoppe, why did I ever doubt you.

Remember, the allure of shopping abroad doesn’t always mean a better deal! (Although, from what I know, LED Shoppe is based in Hong Kong.)

Who knew? Forget Consumer Reports… we’ve got our own government to tell us how fuel-efficient our cars, trucks, vans, etc. are.

Personal Vehicles Initiative (thanks to Chris for the heads-up)

There’s even a handy Fuel Consumption Guide PDF that summarizes ownership costs, discusses ethanol fuel, and contains a giant table on the fuel consumption data of all automobiles.

Now, the best thing to do would be to decrease our dependency on cars… but if you must purchase a new vehicle, check out that link to find out what’s the most fuel-efficient vehicle you can get. You can get data in litres per kilometre or in miles per gallon.

Forget that Hummer — buy a Honda Insight!

Now it’s probably not fair to look at that image in isolation, so here’s the promotion page.

Promotional material always uses asterisks and fine print to avoid being accused of bait and switch practices. This irks me for many reasons. But I’m not here to rant.

I would just like to point out for everybody that in addition to requiring you to sign for a Scotia One account (which has a monthly fee of $9.95 and isn’t really unlimited as it claims), this supposedly free flight excludes applicable flight taxes, fees and service charges. It’s not free.

So save yourself a trip to Scotiabank because they will then explain to what the promotion “really” is — that is, it’s really not free.

In some sort of irony, I’m probably helping Scotiabank out by talking negatively about their promotion…

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In other news, Kuala Lumpur International Airport is the world’s best airport… that is until you realize that it is not in the same voting category as Singapore’s Changi Airport (32 million passengers last year) and Hong Kong (40 million passengers last year).

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August 2007 update: As you can guess from my post, I never actually went for this promotion because I simply didn’t like the ad However, I am glad that this post is serving as a sort of forum for disgruntled customers and am happy to provide this service!

I have two one extra tickets to get rid of. Stabilo and The Kitchen at 8pm at Simon Fraser University. $12 each. E-mail me! Write a comment! Do something! Go to the concert! Help me out! People bailed on me! !!! ! ! ! !! ! ! ! !!!!!!!!!

Stabilo is great — I can even send you some samples to entice you to go to this bargain of a deal of a concert!

!

Also, if you want more tickets you can get them at SFU! Just make sure you get one from me first!

!!! !!! !! !!!!!!!!!

Sep 12th update: still looking for a taker for my extra ticket. However, people seem to be searching for “stabilo sfu” and ending up here… I’ll paste the info from my.sfu.ca below. The very first e-mail I got about it said that there *might* be tickets at the door (you should probably contact Simon Fraser Student Society to make sure) but if you’re up at SFU beforehand, your best bet is to head over to the SFSS office in the Maggie Benston Centre.

All-Ages Highland Pub Concert Series!

The Kitchen + Stabilo Friday Sept. 15th

Sweatshop Union Friday Sept. 22nd

Exit This Side + Black Halos Friday Sept. 29th

Better Friends Than Lovers Friday Oct. 6th

All shows are only $12, any two for $20 or all three September shows for just $30

Tickets are on sale now in the SFSS General Office MBC 2250.

Check out: www.sfss.ca/events

Or for more info email: [email protected]

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Update: concert was great! Here’s a pic of Stabilo and one of Stabilo Boss. Is this where they get their name from?