How to Play

The premise of the game is simple: Answer fifteen questions correctly to become a Pocket Millionaire!

All the questions present you with four choices from which you have to select the right answer.

To answer a question, simply tap on the answer which you judge to be the correct one. This answer will then be highlighted. To confirm your choice, you can either tap on the answer again or, if there is a time limit, simply wait for time to expire.

If you're having difficulty with a question, there are four "lifelines" available to you from the start of the game, the first three being Pick Pockets, Phone Pocket Pete and Pocket Poll. Use with caution as these lifelines can only be taken advantage of once during the course of a game!

The fourth lifeline, Pocket It!, can - and ideally should - be used twice.

If you answer a question incorrectly, then you lose all your earnings so far unless you have managed to reach one of the three amounts of money where receiving that amount is guaranteed - even if you answer incorrectly, you will still get that money. These "guaranteed" amounts are highlighted in yellow on the "Current Score" screen.

The Options screen allows you to alter the following game settings:

The Phone Pocket Pete lifeline allows you to phone the ever-helpful Pocket Pete, who will tell you which answer he thinks is the correct one. It should be remembered that Pete is only human (well, virtually!) and not infallible...

Obviously, the later and more difficult questions will tend to pose more problems for Pocket Pete, who may be reduced to having a wild guess. Thus, this lifeline is probably best used relatively early on if you have a doubt as to the correct answer and would like a second opinion.

Hopefully, the second opinion should clear up any doubts...

The Pocket Poll lifeline polls the studio audience who all give their opinion as to the correct answer.

Needless to say, later questions will pose more problems for the audience whose range of knowledge is probably better suited to the earlier, more generalised questions.

If you're going for a high score, then the Pocket It! lifeline is vital. If you come to a question where you have absolutely no idea at the answer, your best bet may well be to hit the Pocket It! button rather than guess at a wrong answer and risk losing a huge amount of money.

The first time you use the Pocket It! lifeline, your current winnings are saved and carried over to a further round of questions.

Effectively the game is restarted, only this time you already have a sum of money (the total you amassed in the previous game) to your credit. The three other lifelines, Pick Pockets, Phone Pocket Pete and Pocket Poll, are restored.

The next time you hit the Pocket It! button, however, it's function is different. Rather than allowing you to restart the game, it will instead allow you to retire gracefully from a sticky situation with your pride and, more importantly, your earnings intact.

Remember that if you answer a question incorrectly, your score is instantly reduced either to zero or the last "guaranteed" amount, seriously affecting your chances of making the high score table!

Exhausted all the questions that the game has to offer? Take a look at the Pocket Millionaire questions page, which can be found at PocketGamer.org/PM/questions for more questions files.

Don't forget that you can submit any questions files you have created yourself by e-mailing them to:
[email protected].

See Also
Adding questions to the game
Writing your own questions
Submitting questions

The simplest way to add more questions to the game is to find or create another questions file, which you can then either select to use as your questions file or add to an existing questions file.

Once you have created or downloaded a new questions file, the first step is to copy it to your Pocket PC and place it somewhere within the My Documents folder (e.g. \My Documents\Pocket Millionaire).

To order the game to use this new questions file instead of the current one, go to the Options screen and tap the Set questions file button. This will then bring up a file listing from which you can select your new questions file.

To import (i.e. add) the questions from the new questions file to another questions file, tap the Import questions button on the Options screen.

You will then be prompted to select the new questions file (i.e. the one in which the new questions are in) followed by the questions file to which you wish the new questions to be added.

See Also
Finding more questions
Writing your own questions
Submitting questions

Writing your own questions for Pocket Millionaire is easy. To create a questions file, simply create a plain text file (using Windows Notepad for example) with the questions in the following format:

The important things to remember are:

• The question level comes first and should always be a number ranging from 1 (easiest) to 15 (hardest).
• Next comes the question itself, which shouldn't have any line breaks in it (as this will confuse the game).
• This is followed by the four answers, with the correct answer always coming first. It's important that you put the correct answer first because the game has no way of telling which is actually the right answer. Computers aren't that clever yet!
• Each line should be separated by a carriage return (i.e. you press the Enter key!)

However, the format is fairly flexible:

• You don't need to enter the questions in any particular order. For example, you could have a level 1 question entry followed by a level 5 entry, or a level 15 entry followed by a level 1 entry.
• You can have as many line breaks as you like in between question entries.
• You can have as many line breaks as you want in between individual question elements (e.g. between the question text and the answer)
• You can enter up to 200 questions (in fact you can include as many as you like, but only the first 200 will be taken into account), or as few as you like. There's no need for a complete set of 15 or more questions.
• You're allowed as many questions of a particular level as you like. For example, you could include fifteen questions for level 1, but only five for level 10.

If you need any more help, you can always take a look at the questions file that came with the game (Questions.txt) or at the others available at the Pocket Millionaire homepage. Alternatively, you can always send an e-mail to me (Mike) at:
[email protected].

Hints & Tips:

• There's no need to have 15 different difficulty levels for questions. You might find it easier to increase the difficulty every three levels for example.
• Remember that the questions should gradually increase in difficulty. No point in making it easy to become a millionaire!
• The more questions the better. More questions means less repetition.
• As a general rule, however, you probably won't need to include as many difficult questions simply because people won't reach them as often.

Ideas:

• Themes. Got a subject you're interested in (e.g. sport, computing)? Why not write a round of questions for it and submit it?
• Tests. Got a test coming up? Why not revise the fun way?
• Edutainment. Want to educate your children whilst entertaining them? Pocket Millionaire is the answer!

Removing files to save space

If you're short on storage space, you can safely delete the following files which can be found in the game directory (by default, this is \Program Files\Pocket Millionaire):

Please note that removing the sound files will disable all sounds within the game. You can of course replace any or all of the sound files with your own sounds, which should be in wav format.

To save an extra 24 Kb, you can delete the Pocket Millionaire help file (what you're currently reading). You can find pm-help.htm in your device's \Windows folder.

Resetting the high scores

About the game

Pocket Millionaire is released as freeware. You are free to distribute this game as long as no charge is made for it.

Author details:

Mike Wagstaff
182 Devonshire Way
Croydon
Surrey
(United Kingdom)
CR0 8BX

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