This document will walk you through getting started and how to run a game. If you prefer, you can watch this tutorial video which walks you through most of the content in this guide.
Zoom Jeopardy lets you host Jeopardy games for friends over Zoom, with all the bells and whistles of the real broadcast show. You can play over 1,000 full archival Jeopardy games, or write your own clues and answers.
Zoom Jeopardy runs inside TouchDesigner , an application which runs on Mac and Windows and handles the video compositing, clues, scores, and sound. TouchDesigner is free for noncommercial use.
As a host, you’ll run a game by starting a Zoom call with players. You’ll distribute a “ green screen ” for players to set as their virtual background. You’ll arrange their video on your screen, and select the region of screen their video occupies - Zoom Jeopardy will handle grabbing that live video and compositing it into the game.
To get started:
https://derivative.ca/download
( If you already have Touch, please update to the most recent version.)
If you are on Mac, you’ll need to grant TouchDesigner screen recording access, which it uses to pull the Zoom videos into the game. If you see the dialog below:
Click through to System Preferences and grant access.
Your first time opening TouchDesigner, you’ll be prompted to log in with your Derivative (the company that makes TouchDesigner) account.
Click the “Not registered yet?” link to create a free account. Sign in with your new username and password, then click “Create Key” at the following dialog to get started:
Once open, you should see the main Zoom Jeopardy screen:
The top is the broadcast area - this is what you will screen share to players and audience over Zoom. The lower left is host controls, and the lower right lets you manage player names, see clue answers, and mark responses correct and incorrect.
In the host controls, the blue buttons switch the broadcast area between scenes. Test them out to see how they look. The red buttons will play sound effects you might like to use during the game. The yellow buttons on the bottom are used less frequently, if you’d like to have a commercial break, or when the game is over.
Before a real game, you might like to practice the process of selecting the player’s Zoom videos on screen. Next to the TouchDesigner file, you’ll find a test video you can use called “VERTICAL_Fake_Zoom_Practice_Footage.mp4”. Open this and arrange it next to Zoom Jeopardy, like you will with the Zoom panel in a real meeting:
First, enter a name for each player. (You won’t need to name the host). Player video previews live in the lower right - enter a player name in the text boxes marked “Player 1 Name”. Enter player names like so:
Click the green “GRAB PLAYER VIDEO” button to switch to a panel for selecting player video:
The drop down menu at the bottom labelled “Grab Player Pixels From” selects where the player video pixels are pulled from. On Mac, you will only have “Full Desktop” as an option. On Windows, it is advised to choose the smallest source you can to pull pixels from (the Zoom window, or your video player in this practice case).
Now, it’s time to tell Zoom Jeopardy where on your screen the video for each player resides The P1, P2, P3, Host radio buttons select which player you’re setting video location for. By default, P1 is selected. First, use the left, right, bottom, and top crop sliders to select the region occupied by Player 1. As you move the sliders, you’ll see the video region pulled for this player update on the display to the right:
Try to crop as close as you can to the area you think the player will occupy. Switch to each of the other players to grab their video, as well as your own, as the host.
You can then use the “Player Position” and “Player Size” sliders to adjust where the player video is centered behind the podiums, and account for differently sized player video. When hovering over position or size sliders, the preview will show a representative scene for setting scale:
Sliders for one or all players can be reset to defaults with the blue and orange reset buttons. When you’re done with this process, click the red “Done” button to return to the main host controls.
When you’re running a real game over Zoom, ask each player to download the green screen background and set it as their virtual background. It is included in the Zoom Jeopardy Zip file, but you can tell the players to download it here: https://tinyurl.com/zoombg123
You’ll want to share only the “broadcast region” of the Zoom Jeopardy screen. After clicking “Share Screen” in Zoom, first check the “Share sound” and “Optimize for video clip” check boxes. Then, go to the “Advanced” tab and select “Portion of Screen”.
After, you’ll be able to drag the green Zoom share region to cover only the broadcast region:
After you share, it’s a good idea to pin your Zoom participants to the first page (so they don’t shift if audience members join or leave the call), and then resize the Zoom participant window to take up as much available screen space as possible outside the Zoom Jeopardy window: the larger you can make it, the better the resolution of your player videos in the game will be.
Leaving the Zoom Jeopardy game in the “Standby” scene, which shows arcade carpet patterns, can be nice during the stage, since it will hide Jeopardy from your players as you set up. Setting up player positions after screen sharing is necessary since Zoom resizes the participant window upon screen sharing.
Checking the “Use dual monitors” option under General settings in Zoom can sometimes help you to scale the participant panel to a larger size. Without this setting, there is a strange Zoom quirk that the participant window is resizable when meetings have more participants, but fixed in size with only a few. Strange!
Next, you’ll want to load a game. The default is to load an archival game, indicated by the yellow radio button “J-Archive”. See the “Creating Custom Games” section to learn how to make custom rounds.
You can repeatedly click the red NEW GAME button to load a new random game. The air date of the game will be displayed in the “Answer Panel” in the lower right. Stop whenever you like and the game will be loaded.
TIP: If you aren’t staying in standby mode to surprise your players when the game intro starts, or aren’t screen sharing or don’t mind revealing categories ahead of time, you can click NEW GAME repeatedly while in the “SCENE: BOARD” scene to see what the Jeopardy! round categories are for each archival game loaded.
Next, double check you’ve set player names, let players know the game is about to begin and click “CONTESTANT INTRO” to start the Jeopardy intro and introduce players.
When it’s over, your host video will be displayed so you can introduce the game. I like to click the “SCENE: PLAY WIDE” scene after this and before starting the round to show the players what they look like behind the podium, it usually gets a laugh. :D
This is also a good time to let players know how they will buzz in. There is no formal system for this: I like to tell them to just say something like “ didilidee ”. It can be fun to assign an audience member the job to let the host know who they think buzzed in first.
Then, click the dark green “START ROUND” scene to begin the Jeopardy! round. A short video of the board populating will play, and then the categories will be introduced. You can click on the broadcast area or press SPACE on your keyboard to advance through categories:
When all 6 categories have been introduced, the game board will be displayed. The player whose name is highlighted in green has control of the board, so let them know they get to select a clue first. In this case, it’s “Calm Gary’s” turn:
Once a clue is selected, simply click it on the game board to display the clue. You can display the board by clicking the blue “SCENE: BOARD” button.
The clue will be displayed, and the answer will appear in the answer preview panel:
When a player buzzes in and answers, you can click the “CORRECT” or “INCORRECT” button over their player preview to add or subtract the clue value from their score.
If the player is correct, the clue will disappear and the player’s name will turn or remain green as they still have control of the board to choose the next clue. If they are incorrect, the clue will remain displayed for other players to try.
If no one can get it, you can click the all gray “All Wrong / Dismiss” button to play a sound and dismiss the clue. This dismiss button can also be useful since some of the archival clues are video or image clues which have no image, so occasionally you’ll want to dismiss such a clue.
Continue the round this way, letting the player with control choose a clue until all clues are exhausted. At any time during the round, you can click the yellow “COMMERCIAL BREAK” button to fade out the broadcast and display a short ad. The button will blink halfway through the Jeopardy! round to remind you to do this, but it’s of course optional.
It can be fun to “interview” the contestants when coming back from the first commercial break. You can use the “SCENE PLAYER (1,2,3)” buttons to switch to players as you interview them. If you click any of the blue scene buttons (or click the board, hit a hotkey) during a commercial, you’ll cut the commercial off and return to the game.
When all clues are exhausted, you’ll hear an airhorn sound play. This is a good time to go to a new commercial break. When you come back, you can click the “START ROUND” button to begin Double Jeopardy!. Categories will be displayed, and the round will proceed almost exactly like the Jeopardy! round.
There is one Daily Double in the first, Jeopardy! round, and two in Double Jeopardy!
When you hover your mouse over a Daily Double clue, you will see a badge displayed over the answer panel to warn you this is an important clue. This also helps so that if someone chooses it, you can say “ANSWER…” before clicking it, just like Alex used to.
When a Daily Double clue is selected, a short animation and applause will be played, and then the view will automatically switch to “SCENE: PLAYERS WIDE”.
The player preview panels will show a badge allowing you to click which player selected the Daily Double. This will switch the broadcast to a closeup of the player, and display a text entry field for their wager:
Let the player know they can wager up to their entire score, or $1000 in Jeopardy! or $2000 in Double Jeopardy!, whichever amount is greater. Enter the wager into the text field, and then click the word “WAGER” to display the clue.
Give the player 10 seconds or so to think of a response, then click CORRECT or INCORRECT. If they wagered their whole score, a “true daily double,” some guy in the crowd will add an extra yelping cheer during the applause.
When all clues in Double Jeopardy! have been exhausted, you’ll hear an airhorn sound. Click the “START ROUND” button. A wide host scene will be displayed.
Click the broadcast area (or use the SPACE key) to display the Final Jeopardy category to the players and play a chime.
I like to ask the players to get a pen and paper at this time to record their wager and answer.
Traditionally, this is when you’d click “COMMERCIAL BREAK” to give the players a moment to decide on their wagers. Ideally, they can DM these to your privately or give them to a third party on the Zoom call. If it’s a casual game, they can just tell you the wagers aloud.
When back from commercial break, click the broadcast area again (or use SPACE key) to display the Final Jeopardy! clue. Once you’re done reading it, click the broadcast area once again to start the deliberation song.
Once deliberation has completed, the player preview area will display buttons to take answers and wagers from each player. The order you should ask for an answer is indicated by the player name turning green (starts with player with lowest score):
In this case, it’s Jane McDougal’s turn. Click “SELECT P2 WAGER”. The broadcast area will cut to a closeup of Jane, and the wager entry text field that Daily Doubles use will display. Enter the players wager:
Then, click “WAGER”, and take the player’s answer. Click “CORRECT” or “INCORRECT” accordingly.
Another player’s name will now turn green.
Click their select wager button and repeat the process.
After all three players have wagered and answered, the broadcast area will automatically switch to a camera view of the winner, play applause, and shower the winner in confetti.
When the time feels right, click the “END CREDITS” button to play credits to end the show. When the broadcast area goes black after the credits, it’s a good time to stop screen sharing on Zoom and end the game.
It’s fun to make up a custom round or full game of Jeopardy in someone’s honor for a birthday or who knows what.
To create a custom game, you must venture beyond the relative safety of the Zoom Jeopardy UI and into the woods of TouchDesigner. But don’t worry, it’s not too bad.
First, press ESC to exit “Perform Mode” aka the main Zoom Jeopardy interface. You should see something like this:
If you do not, hover your mouse over the grid and press the “h” key to home, or frame all nodes, and you should see something similar to the above.
You can zoom in and out of this view with the scroll wheel on your mouse, or by holding ALT + RIGHT CLICK and moving your mouse left or right. More information on navigating the TouchDesigner node view
The seven “table” objects/nodes you see at the top hold text for the questions, answers, and Daily Doubles for all three rounds of your custom game. You’ll need to edit them, like filling out a spreadsheet, to write clues for your game.
Zoom in to the table in the top left, labelled “CUSTOM_QUESTIONS_JEOPARDY”:
You should be able to double click in a cell to change its text value. Edit a cell in the QUESTIONS table to write the clue, and edit the corresponding cell in the ANSWERS table for what answer to display to the host.
Change the category headings to change round category names - make sure to update the Categories headings in the Answers and Daily Double tables as well.
There is one Daily Double in Jeopardy! and two in Double Jeopardy! But, you can have as many as you want. In the “DOUBLE_JEOPARDY” tables, write “True” in the cell corresponding to the location of the Daily Double clue/answer. Use “False” for all other clues.
You can also change the clue value amounts.
For Final Jeopardy, simply edit the Category Heading, question, and answer.
It can take enough time to write even a single custom round for someone! If you want to play a single round game and Final Jeopardy!, you can erase (completely erase, not even blank spaces!) all the cells (except for the categories and values) of the CUSTOM_QUESTIONS_DOUBLE_JEOPARDY (or CUSTOM_QUESTIONS_JEOPARDY) table and the round will be automatically skipped.
If you ever find yourself unable to double click to edit a table, make sure the table is in “ Viewer Active ” mode. You can toggle in and out of this mode by clicking the “+” at the bottom right of the table node. If properly in Viewer Active (edit) mode, you should not see a light red border around the table.
When you’re done creating your round, SAVE your TouchDesigner file and the custom clues will be saved along with it, and will load when you next open ZoomJeopardy.toe
Press F1 to return to perform mode. Switch the J-Archive / Custom radio button to “Custom” and click “NEW GAME” to load.
You can play with more than 3 contestants by designating one team captain to represent at the podium, and having teams confer in private chat rooms or the like.
If you ever press ESC to exit “performance mode” in TouchDesigner, the main interface will disappear and you will see the visual programming environment where Zoom Jeopardy was built. You can press F1 to go back into Perform Mode and see the main user interface.
You can set the overall output volume of sounds coming from Zoom Jeopardy with the VOL slider in the center of the host controls.
If you want the sound from Zoom Jeopardy to be sent to an audio device other than the system default, there is a drop down that lets you select this in the “GRAB PLAYER VIDEO” panel. For any kind of fancy sound routing, I recommend Voicemeeter Banana (Free) on Windows and Loopback on Mac.
Click a non clue part of the board, or press the SPACE bar, to toggle between the board and PLAYERS WIDE scene. This shortcut exists because so much of the game involves alternating between these two scenes.
The following keyboard keys will switch automatically to the listed scene:
~: PLAYERS WIDE
1: PLAYER 1
2: PLAYER 2
3: PLAYER 3
4 or B: BOARD
5 or H: HOST
For more information on Jeopardy rules, see the “Gameplay” section of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy!
Commercial breaks are randomly selected from the video files found in assets/video/advertisements. Add H264 16:9 720P video files in here and they will automatically be eligible to be chosen for commercial breaks next time you launch Zoom Jeopardy.
Some users with Mac multiple monitor setups have found things easier to manage while “mirroring” displays.
If you want to learn Touch, here are a few links to check out:
The Interactive & Immersive HQ
If you go poking around in the Touch file to make changes, most of the interesting stuff lives in /jeopardy/jeopardyGame, a text DAT.
To any of you who build in Touch, I’m sorry the main /jeopardy section is not in containers. I never intended for the project to get this big when I started and wanted to get this out fast. Also, apologies about the inconsistent use of GAME_STATE. I got lazy.
If you find any bugs, let me know at @mfrederickson on Twitter, or on GitHub.
Or, if you’re so inclined, fix it yourself:
https://github.com/funfunfunfunfunmike/ZoomJeopardy
Zoom Jeopardy was created by Michael Frederickson
All sound, images, clues, and game ideas are property of Jeopardy
Archival clues from J-Archive
Standby arcade carpet patterns from Astro Carpet Mills
To official Jeopardy types: Nobody is making any money off of this. It's just for fun, and reminds people that they like your show. Let the people play! ok, thank you
