Hippo Campus is a part of your brain which has to do with storing memories. The purpose of this program, HippoCamper is to help you store things, especially vocabulary and terms, in your memory! It will ask you a set of questions one by one in random order, reasking those you don’t answer correctly until you have managed them all. You may have it use sets of questions you made yourself or sets made by others. This way you’ll comfortably be able to learn vast amounts of words, and it will be easy to go back and repeat old words if you feel the need.

In HippoCamper, questions are arranged in sets. All the questions in one file (e.g. “questions1.txt”) constitute one set. The procedure from that you get your first question in a set until you have answered all questions in the set correctly is called a round.

Once you have started HippoCamper you may start a new round by choosing “New round” from the “File” menu. This will open a dialogue box where you can choose which question file (i.e. set of questions) to open (you may try the example set “example.txt” in the “question files” directory). HippoCamper will now start asking you the questions from the set.

There are two types of questions in HippoCamper. If there is an answer box in the bottom of the program you must give your answer by typing it in the box and then pressing the ENTER key. Otherwise you must answer by clicking in the right area of the picture accompanying the question.

HippoCamper will tell you whether your answer was right and wrong. It will also show you the right answer if you were wrong, and sometimes some extra information related to the question.

If you answer a question incorrectly HippoCamper will ask you the same question again in a while, and it will keep doing so until you answer correctly. Once you have answered a question correctly you will not be asked that question again for the remainder of the round. When you have answered all questions in the set correctly you have finished the round and HippoCamper will tell you so and congratulate you.

At any time when a round is in progress you may restart it by choosing ”Restart round” from the “File” menu. This means the all the questions will be asked again, just like if you hadn’t answered any one correctly yet.

At any time when a round is in progress you may save the round by choosing ”Save round” from the “File” menu. This will open a dialogue box where you may choose a name for your round, and in what directory you want to save it. This way you will be able to continue the round just like it was when you saved it at a later time by loading it.

If you have saved a round, you may continue the round from where you were when you saved it by choosing ”Load round” from the “File” menu. This will open a dialogue box where you may choose what saved round you want to open. The saved rounds have the .hcs (HippoCamper Saved) extension.

You may at any time exit HippoCamper by choosing ”Exit” from the ”File” Menu. If a round is in progress, unless you save it, it will be lost and you won’t be able to continue from where you were next time you use HippoCamper.

A question file is in fact an ordinary text file, i.e. a *.txt file. You can create one by right clicking in any directory and choose "text document" from the "new" menu or by opening a program such as notepad and chose "Save as" from the "file" menu. You can edit the file using Notepad or a similar text editor (which uses the .txt extension for its files.

A question file may contain any number of questions (each including answers, pictures etc.), but must contain at least one. Each question consists of certain parts, some of which must be included in every question, while others are optional.

Each question starts with the characters "¤Q" (excluding the quotation marks, case sensitive), meaning "Question" and ends with "¤E", meaning "End". Between these two "¤A" must be included, meaning answer. The text that actually makes up the question is written within quotation marks (") (and may not itself contain quotation marks) after "¤Q" and before any other "¤" character. In the same way any correct answers are written after "A¤" and before any other "¤", each answer (there may be several correct answers) within quotation marks. This is all which is needed to create a simple question.

Example:

¤Q "How many legs does a dog have?" ¤A "4" "four" ¤E

To make more advanced questions, se sections bellow:

For a picture to be displayed along with the question, "¤P" (meaning Picture) is added before "¤A", followed by the path to the picture within quotation marks. (The path is simply the name of the picture file, including the extension (.bmp - it must be a bitmap file) if the picture is located in the same directory as HippoCamper. If you keep your pictures in e.g. a directory called "pictures" which in turn is located in the directory where HippoCamper is located, the path would be "pictures\name.bmp" (assuming that the name of the picture is "name.bmp").

Example:

¤Q "How many legs does a dog have?" ¤P "pictures\dog.bmp" ¤A "4" "four" ¤E

A function i a question file is simply a small command customizing a question's functionality. To make a question's answers case sensitive, for example, the command "cs" (excluding the quotation marks) may be used. To add functions to a question, "¤F" is written before "¤E" followed by any numbers of function commands (these need not be within quotation marks).

Example:

¤Q "What is the capitol of Spain?" ¤A "Madrid" ¤F cs ¤E

Functions must be used for questions where you click in an area rather than typing an answer - functions related to that are dealt with in the next section, How to use click zones. For a complete reference of the functions, see Reference.

To create a question where you give your answer by clicking on the picture, a click zone question, rather than typing it in the answer box, "¤Z" is added before "¤E" or "¤F". After "¤Z" follows the path to a picture (bitmap), the zone picture. This bitmap must be of the same size as the picture accompanying the question. The zone picture should include one or more zones. A zone is an areas, painted in a colour not present in the rest of the zone picture, corresponding to an area in the picture of a click zone question, in which one should click in order to answer a the question correctly. To put it another way: If the user of HippoCamper would click on the picture of a click zone question, in the area corresponding to the zone in the question's zone picture, he/she would have answered the question correctly. If he/she would click on the picture outside the area the answer would be incorrect.

In addition to including a zone picture (using "¤Z") a click zone question must not have any correct answers (i.e. typed answers). You must still include "¤A", but simply don't write any answers. It must, however, include a function that determines which colour the zone (that makes up the correct answer area) in the zone picture is. If the zone in the zone picture was clear red (Red = 255, Green = 0, Blue = 0), for example, you could include the function "zcred" (meaning "zone colour red"). As an alternative you could use "zr 255", meaning that the zone will include all pixels where the red channel equals 255, regardless of the other channels. That would mean that, for example, clear yellow (Red = 255, Green = 255, Blue = 0) and white (Red = 255, Green = 255, Blue = 255) would also be included in the zone. For a complete reference of all the functions used to determine zone colour, see Reference.

Once you answered a click zone question, the correct zone will be displayed. You can choose in which colour the zone will be displayed using one or more of the following functions: "zdr" (meaning "zone draw red"), "zdg" (meaning "zone draw green"), "zdb" (meaning "zone draw blue"). It is not necessary to use one of these functions, since HippoCamper uses "zdr" and "zdb" as standard, to display the zone in violet.

Example:

¤Q "Where is Spain?" ¤P "pictures\MapEurope.bmp" ¤A ¤Z "pictures\MapEuropeZones.bmp" ¤F zcred zdb ¤E

You may include a zone picture in a question that has type answers (and therefore is not a click zone question), but it won't normally be displayed. You can force it to be displayed when the question is asked (i.e. before the user has answered) by using the function: "qzone", meaning "question zone".

Example:

¤Q "What country is marked blue?" ¤P "pictures\MapEurope.bmp" ¤A "Spain" ¤Z "pictures\MapEuropeZones.bmp" ¤F qzone zdb cs ¤E