Technology

The game is written entirely in HTML with some Javascript extensions.  This means that once your browser loads the page, it runs totally in your browser.  Since the game board is a fixed size, I used frames to set up an area of this size.  There are two problems.  One is when someone has a screen resolution that is too small, and one is when their resolution is too big!!  For the first case, the board area can be made scrollable, and the question and player frames compressed in size.   For the second case, a "padding" frame along the left hand side of the window is expanded to use up
the extra horizontal area.  Extra vertical area is used up by the title frame.

You can look at the frame source in the file "index.html" (use Netscape's "view page source" option).  At the top of this file are a few simple javascript functions.  These are called from within the other frames (this file is the 'parent' to all the other frames).  These allow things like the Instructions text to be replaced by question text, and for the pieces to move across the board.

After trying many techniques (including chopping the board up into equal-sized squares), I settled on leaving the board as a background image and moving the pieces across it within a table structure.  There are 4 equal-sized images for the pieces to cover piece1 only, piece2 only, both pieces or no pieces in a particular position.   Two variables keep track of the scores for both teams (and hence the positions of the pieces on the board).

The only other file that contains any Javascript is the "player1.html" and "player2.html" frames corresponding to the areas for teams 1 and 2.  These both contain simple scripts to change the "Right" and "Wrong" button images when the mouse moves over them.  The is the "onMouseOver" event which runs the local function. When they are clicked however, a function in the parent document (index.html) is run instead.

Coding

Some pages (including this one) were written using Netscape composer, but all the game pages were hand coding using the vi editor on linux.  They were tested in Netscape version 4.75 for linux.  This was largely a process of trial-and-error, especially since I had never written any Javascript before (but had done lots of HTML coding).

Although Netscape Composer is quick and easy to use, it does not give the fine degree of control that you can get by hand coding.  In fact there is no HTML composer currently available that can approach the usefulness of knowing the HTML yourself and writing by hand.

Graphics

Graphics began life as image downloads from a number of sources including;
The Barber Institute, Birmingham
The Victoria and Albert, London
http://www.biblepower.com
http://wbsa.logos.com
http://www.christart.com
http://www.cc-art.com
http://christianbest.com/xian_art.html
I honestly can't remember which image from the game board montage came from which of the above pages, but each one provided me with something, and I would like to hereby acknowledge these resources with thanks.

All graphics processing was performed in The Gimp - a free image processing application (similar, but more extensible, than photoshop) included with most linux distributions.

Rationale

Games:  too many are violent and teach the wrong values, most are solitary and do not promote unity and discussion. In this game I like to see discussion between players, ideally a family sitting together playing it.

Families:  it's too easy to sit and watch television, but much more worthwhile to discuss and enjoy together.  Especially for children - do you really like the idea of them being educated by the television.  So maybe you say that the TV is good for education in some ways.  This is true, but is it likely that children would gain knowledge from the TV but not absorb any of the culture or (poor) morality?  No! They will absorb a little of everything, the bad along with the good.   That's why it is much better, in my opinion to spend more individual non-TV time with family and friends.

Symbolism

In case you didn't guess, the two teams pieces are;
The chalice - to represent the wine drank by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper, and thereby, his blood.
The image of the Holy Bible - the word of God.