How do Trivial Trivia packs get created? Up until last night, the answer to that question may've surprised you!

TLDR: Trivia is now made into a CSV which is converted to valid JSON versus manually typing entries to a JSON file.

The Old Process

Creating trivia packs used to be a very manual and technical feat - find questions, jot down a few key bits of information (statement, answer, related incorrect answers, source, etc.) and add them manually to an ever-increasing JSON file. While utilizing a GUI editor made things easier (JSONBuddy for those curious) manipulating these JSON files with TT:NG, it's becoming moreso cumbersome to use as we kept developing new packs. This editor does not feature a great way to view all of my question statements, spellcheck, or even easily find duplicate questions when they do inevitably happen. I was finding phrasing and quality of some statements to be lacking and the only fix being to navigate through a 500-600 line file to manually spellcheck and re-word questions. Surely there is a better way!

Which leads me to...

The New Process

So what's the solution?

Use Excel. Microsoft Excel is great for a few reasons - you have spellcheck, an easy to use grid layout, and many, many formats to export with. One in particular is of use here - the CSV format! As of last night, I have coded a new web tool to convert a well-formed CSV list into compatible JSON! Each row in this formatted CSV will be converted into valid data I can copy over to my JSON GUI editor. This makes the process of adding (or editing) questions quicker, easier, and ensures higher quality of the content.

This allows the team to also focus more on finding fun questions instead of getting those questions added through a cumbersome process. For example - the t0 question trivia pack you see above was completed in 3 hours. Normally, 50 questions would be a multi-night ordeal between adding the questions, verifying the content, and spellchecking it all.

Since I am personally pretty happy about this new process, I've even made a video showing off the journey of starting at the Excel file and ending it with playing the pack in-game! I hope you all look forward to playing the packs in early August!