This lesson will focus on the trivia bot aspect of Quidditch.

What is a trivia bot you ask me? It a bot (or program depending on how you see it) which basically shoots/says a question and we attempt to answer the question within a time frame. At HOL we do Harry Potter trivia questions which are questions from all 6 books, and also include Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them.

Using the Trivia Bot

Your next question I am guessing is how to get the trivia bot to work?

Well because every bot you see on the blitzed server is unique. Each bot has their own way of starting the bot. The default way of starting the bot is !trivia. But every bot may have a different command to the default one, it could be @trivia, or even `trivia.

The golden rule to remember of the trivia bot is [symbol]trivia. Replace the [symbol] with the trivia bot symbol, such as @, $ or even %.

Since one of your assignment choices is to bot some trivia question, the command to start the bot will be $trivia.

I am going to give you some demonstration, on how to start the bot, answer question, and even stop the bot.

Wow did you see my round of botting! Wasn't it interesting that some things happened. Let's take a look at some things:

1. Noticed how a hint came up after a while. Remember in the Quaffle game, you don't get any hint at all, but on some bots may give hints to help you remember the answer. It can be a good thing and a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.
2. If you don't get an answer right after a predetermined amount of time, the bot would then display the answer to you. This is handy to help you remember the answer for next time.
3. If you did however, get the answer right, then it would show some details to you. Depending on the bot you do your trivia round on, it would normally show the following
a) Your nick that you are currently using
b) The answer to the question
c) Time (The total time it took you to answer the question)
d) The streak (Number of answers right in a row)
e) Points (Number of answers right in total for botting the trivia questions)
f) WPM (Word Per Minute, a statistic of your speed of typing words every minute)
g) The Rank (Ranking of your total points against all the other botters)
4. Also did you noticed I stopped the trivia after 5 questions. The command to stop the trivia is !strivia (Default) and on my bot, it is [symbol]strivia.

Now let's learn some command that maybe useful for you potential Quidditch players:

[symbol]stats – This commands tells you the statistics of your botting records and points.
-Note that you can do [symbol]stats botter_name for the person statistics like !stats fred

[symbol]hof – This is the hall of fame of the top 10 botters with the most points

[symbol]wpm – This is the hall of fame for the top 10 Word Per Minutes

[symbol]hoffast – This is the hall of fame for the top 10 times (Fastest time when typing in the answers).

[symbol]record – This is the list of record and winners throughout the entire botting session

[symbol]streak – This is the hall of fame for the top 10 streaks (Getting number of questions right in a row)

Making a trivia bot

Have you always wanted to have your own trivia bot and be able to use it, it is possible if you have a:

1. Trivia bot program and the question set
a) Trivia bot
Link taken off due to inappropriate content. Sorry. You can google 'tat's trivia bot' though.

Tat's Trivia Bot v.3.55
Description: Few minor corrections. Still the best trivia bot around. But if you want to make a knock off, now should would be a good time.

Version: 3.55 Filesize: 190.90 Kb
Added on: 26-Mar-2006 Downloads: 5446 Rating: 6.0 (2 Votes)

b) HOL Question set (Book 1 to 6 including QTTA and FB)
http://pahpulfirh.com/Quid/images/ecset.txt (Please note, there is only 30 questions in this set.

c) Or an alternative, to download both the trivia set and HP trivia questions in one file (The lesson below will be based on this trivia.zip file.
http://pahpulfirh.com/Quid/images/trivia.zip

2. mIRC Program: http://www.mirc.com/get.html

Please only do this if you are comfortable and confident in installing a trivia bot. If you are unsure or think you will have problems, then this is not ideal for you to do.
These instructions below are for intermediate to advance computer users.

If you are using your parent's computer, please make sure you get their permission to be able to install the trivia bot on their computer.

To do the following, you will need to have the program winzip (if you have windows XP, then you won't need this) or winrar.

You will need to know how to do the following to complete this:

1. Understand computer terms, such as directory, installed etc etc
2. Create and name a folder
3. Unzip the content of trivia.zip
4. Perform simple mIRC functions
5. Be able to set up the program and function it
6. Be able to work out any problems on your own and solve them (Asking me question after question may get me annoyed if you can't follow simple instructions *g*)

Please note that I am not responsible for anything that happens to your IRC or trivia bot should anything happens, the instructions below have been tested and works on my computer.

1. I am assuming you have mIRC installed (if you don't, read the pre-lesson on how to do it).

2. In your mIRC directory, (the default is C:\Program File\mIRC) create a folder inside the mIRC directory and name it trivia.

3. Now download the zip file for the tat trivia bot and the question set to the trivia directory of mIRC.

4. Extract the trivia.zip file to the trivia directory.

5. If you have done that right, you should see 3 files inside the trivia directory. But make sure you leave the trivscript.mrc file there (or it won't work).

6. Connect to mIRC on the blitzed server.

7. Once connected, you need to put the following command in where you type the text on IRC. /load -rs trivia\trivscript.mrc

If you were successful, you should see the following:
* Loaded script 'C:\Program Files\mIRC\trivia\trivscript.mrc'

So you are successful in setting up your trivia bot! Lets get the basics of the trivia bot set up so you can use it to play the trivia questions.

1. Go to Command Menu --> Trivia -->Trivia Options

2. In the Channel area, Click on Add, put in your channel (Such as #holquidditch) and then click on ok

3. Make sure you select your channel (#holquidditch for example), then in the Channel Properties area select question.txt and click on the Remove button.

4. After you removed question.txt, click on Add, locate questions.txt and then click on open.

Your bot should work now after doing this, try this in your channel or #holquidditch by doing !trivia to start the bot.

If it works, then congratulations on getting your bot up and running! Happy botting to you!

The next two screen caps are the botting set which maybe handy for you to set up and allow the bot to run smoothly.

Also make sure that the Ban for WPM and Speed is taken off in the Awards Tab (Just select them and press delete), so you don't get banned for being too fast *g*.

****FOR VISTA USERS**** Rilla White has written this up, seeing as I had no idea that Vista was so different as it's a piece of junk that I'll never use.

Vista works a bit differently as far as loading a trivia bot goes. Everything will need to be saved in a different area due to Vista's security settings.

The trivia folder should be created within
User/My Documents -> AppData -> Roaming -> mIRC
instead of the usual folder.

To find the AppData folder you may need to unhide your files. To do this go into your user folder and click on Organize, then go to Folder and Search Options, after clicking on View you will find a little button which you can press to make hidden files show up. Click Apply and then OK. Like magic your AppData folder will appear in your user folder.

To get to mIRC from AppData you will need to click on AppData then find Roaming, within Roaming is a mIRC folder. Just open the folder and create a new folder called Trivia. Now you can just put all your trivia files right into this folder. Remember everything should be loose. Nothing in folders. If done right this should work.