I've got an idea for a training game in Captivate, but it requires randomly selecting scenarios that could be 3-5 slides long meaning random questions are not going to work. I've searched the forum for ideas on random branching but can't find anything useful (although a few calls for this feature to be added to Captivate).
One solution I'm thinking of is to have the first slide of the scenario as a question slide in a pool, triggered from a random question slide. The question would then jump to the next slide in the scenario, which would be in the timeline. The scenario would continue from there sequentially, with the last slide in the series being another random question slide, starting the process off for the next scenario. I've included a rough diagram below to show what I'm thinking.
I haven't tested this out yet, but think it should work (although I could potentially end up with 100+ scenarios).
Does anyone have any better ideas on how to achieve this? Or any suggestions for improvements to what I'm proposing?
Thanks
Alistar
Update: I've tested the above, and it works pretty well, except if the third question in the pool is randomly selected by Captivate then only that scenario plays through, as there is nothing after that to redirect the project back to the question pool. I'm wondering if a variable on each question to indicate if it's been selected would work, with an advanced action that checks and redirects to a random question slide if there haven't been enough scenarios selected (say if 3 scenarios haven't been completed), or skips the random question if enough have been done?
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What I need Captivate to do is to continue assigning scenarios until the time runs out (I think this could be achieved by just having more slides than would ever be possible to get through in the time limit).
That seems like a reasonable way of doing it. 
A few notes on my JS, to help you if you go that direction:
- My code is much more complicated than yours needs to be -- I needed bookmarking, so I had to store my random order in SCORM data, which involved extra decisions and such. (See the simplified version below.)
- I was working in 5.5, so my syntax will be different than what you need to use in 6.1 (see http://captivatedev.com/2012/07/01/adobe-captivate-6-the-javascript-api/ to learn more). Also, if you're publishing as HTML5 as opposed to SWF, the syntax is different (check out the comments of that same article).
If I were adapting the code to your scenario, I'd create all the scenarios, grouping each individual one so that I could see them easily. Then I'd take note of the slide numbers of the first slide of each scenario--these are the numbers you need to randomize.
So if you had three scenarios, and scenario 1 was slides [2,3,4], scenario 2 was slides [5,6], and scenario 3 was slides [7,8,9], the important numbers are 2, 5, and 7. They are what will go into your array which you define in JS and then randomize.
Anyway, I could keep going, but for now I'll just paste the parts of my code relevant to your issue, stripping out the extra stuff (still in 5.5 syntax, mind you):
var objCP = document.Captivate;
var randomNumbers = [put your first slide numbers here];
var scenario = 0;
var shuffle = function(array) {
var m = array.length, t, j;
while (m) {
j = Math.floor(Math.random() * m--);
t = array;
array= array ;
array= t;
}
};
shuffle(randomNumbers);
var jumpSlide = function() {
objCP.cpEISetValue('cpCmndGotoSlide', randomNumbers[scenario]-1);
scenario++;
};
I'd put the majority on the first slide (or call it on the first slide), and then call jumpSlide(); each time you want to jump to a new random scenario (the first time, and at the end of the final slide in a scenario).
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