This week we are exploring a new concept of moving across a landscape like some of the treasure hunting type games such as Super Mario Brothers(SMB). Mario moves through a landscape of dangers and treasures looking for Princess Peach. He must avoid turtles and capture coins in order to keep going and not lose lives and start all over! Here are the notes in PDF:CDA-S5-Challenge_12-Scrolling backgrounds.

To understand the concept, you must understand that the STAGE is only 480 pixels wide (x goes from -240 to +240). No one SPRITE can be larger than the STAGE and we won’t be able to see a SPRITE that isn’t on the STAGE (ie. it’s x position is less than -240 or greater than +240). So we have to set up a series of SPRITES that extend past the stage and move them across the stage from left to right and under Mario’s feet to make it look like he is moving over the ground from right to left! Get it? It’s tough, but by the end of next week we will have a cool game!

1. We started by downloading an SMB cartoon character from the internet and saving it as an image file (either .png or .jpg) on our desktop or in our personal folder. We used this file to import a new sprite from FILE from the NEW SPRITE area. We then had to make any white background transparent and shrink Mario down to a reasonable size.

2. Next, we drew our own Ground SPRITE using the PAINT NEW SPRITE button. Important!! The sprite must be the full length of the stage!! See the 1st picture above for an example of what the ground sprite could look like. Mine looked like a brick wall, but yours can look like a stone wall or concrete one or some kind of footpath or road.

3. Now we must code our Ground SPRITE! We need to set it’s inital x position to zero and continuously move it in a direction for as long as we are pushing the right or left arrow buttons. To do this we need a new VARIABLE called XPOS. Go to DATA and create this new VARIABLE. See the image below on the bottom the instructions for setting up the initial position of the first ground SPRITE. After you create and code the first one, we can duplicate Ground SPRITE 1 and create Ground SPRITE 2. Be sure that Ground SPRITE 2 has an xpos set to 480 pixels more than Ground SPRITE 1.  

4. Lastly, for this week, we need to get the Ground SPRITES to move!!

!!IMPORTANT! !Click the little i button on your Ground  SPRITE and see all the information about the SPRITE. Change the rotational direction of the Ground SPRITE to non-rotational. It is a button that looks like a dot.

We will code the Ground SPRITES to move to the left when we press the left arrow key and to the right when we press the right arrow key on our keyboards.  See below: Be careful to program the left arrow key to Point In Direction 90 and the right arrow key to Point In Direction -90. Notice both the Change xpos By commands have different numbers! (-5 and +5) Get these wrong and the SPRITE will not move in the correct direction. Once you have the 1st ground SPRITE working the way you like, duplicate it and all it’s coding. All you have to change in Ground SPRITE 2 is the xpos. It must be set to XPOS +480. If you duplicate that sprite, you must set it’s xpos to XPOS + 960 and so on and so on…

My original project is on the Scratch.MIT.edu website. You can log on with your own login name or use our one – CDATHENRY1516 and our password is CDATHENRY and play the game or download it to your computer for next week’s class. Next week will will be coding Mario to jump and to always return to the ground and giving our program a bit of perspective with a mountain in the background. I’ll try adding a coin or two for Mario to jump up and grab! See ye all next week!

Julie

Wow! We had an exceptional day at Coder Dojo on Saturday! We did a huge amount of work developing a maths game in Beginner’s Scratch. My finished project is on the SCRATCH.MIT.EDU website under the user: CDATHENRY1516. Check it out and upload your final version!

1. the player picks a level of difficulty and the computer chooses 2 random numbers to add (subtract or multiply- whichever you choose!) together and show the numbers to the player. Fr this we needed 2 SPRITES and 4 VARIABLES called SCORE, LEVEL, NUMBER1 and NUMBER2 as well as 2 BACKDROPS. 
2. The player then has to enter an answer to the equation and the computer tells them whether they are wrong or right. 
3. We repeated the ask/answer questions 5 or 10 times. Can you figure out where the REPEAT loop fits?
4. We also had a second sprite who reacted positively to correct answers BROADCAST and negatively to wrong answers BROADCAST. You can use whatever sprites you like and change their look whatever way you like. One coder added a puppy as their second and had him bark whenever an answer was correct. 
5. After all the questions were asked we had the 1st Sprite SAY – Game Over! and BROADCAST Game over so that the backdrop changed and music played. There are two ways to change the backdrop- see below! Can you improve our game??! Can you figure out how to subtract or multiply instead of add? Can you get the computer to add three numbers together or give the user 3 level options like: easy, medium or hard? The notes for the Maths Game are here: CDA-S5-Challenge_10-MathsGame-simple addition. Happy Coding! Julie

We had a great day in Scratch Beginners on Saturday! We created a project in which the Sprites all communicated through the use of broadcasts. Each broadcast caused a reaction in the other parts of the program such as the other sprites and even the stage. To begin, we all added two sprites from the library and two backdrops from the backdrop library to the stage. My sprites came with several costumes already supplied, but you can use whatever costumes you like. 

Next, each coder had to decide on a story, conversation or a joke to have one sprite tell the other. After that we placed each character apart on the screen by using the GO TO: command and then had then move together using the GLIDE command. Each part of the conversation is shown on screen with the SAY FOR 2 SECONDS command after which the same words are broadcast to the whole program using the BROADCAST command. The second sprite responds to the first Sprite’s broadcast by SAYing his part of the joke and then broadcasting the same words. This goes back and forth until the story is finished. Keep trying out your scripting by pressing the GREEN FLAG and seeing how it is working. 

At the very end, I have the 2nd Sprite send out a final broadcast which causes the backdrop to change and music to play while both Sprites simultaneously do a dance! I just threw that in for fun and to show that BROADCASTS can cause any part of the program to switch on or off. Here is the slide show if it helps a bit more: CDA-S5-Challenge_09-Storytelling. Also, I put my program up on the SCRATCH.MIT.EDU website for you to play with. Search for projects made by cdathenry1516. This project is called –JulieKnockKnockJoke23-01.

Hope to see you all next week when we work on a guessing a number game which requires input from the user to guess the number the computer has picked!

Julie

Because our last lesson on animation was cancelled, I thought I’d post a lesson online that the kids could access over the Christmas holidays. This Scratch project(Julie’s Christmas Scene) is on the Scratch.MIT.edu website user:cdathenry1516, pw:cdathenry if you want to download it to your computer.

I searched the internet for Christmas Cartoon Images and saved a few to my computer:

Once I had all the images I wanted for Sprites, I opened SCRATCH and imported the Sprites From File but I noticed that each Sprite had a white background that blocked my nice backdrop. I decided to delete the background from each sprite.

I did this for all my sprites. Next I decided to make the dog wag is tail by

1. Duplicating the doggie’s costume,
2. using the select tool to select just his tail and then rotating the tail with the little button at the very top of the selection rectangle.

I did the same with Santa’s arm and his shoes. I just rotated them a bit in each costume, back and forth. 

For the lights on one of the christmas trees, I just

1. duplicated the tree costume 3 times,
2. poured different colours into the round decorations in each costume.

Lastly, I scripted each of the Sprites like this:

That last script is for the doggie! You can script your Sprites in any way you would like. Can you put in a snowman and make him dance about? or bounce around. Can you have presents dropping from the sky like my snowflakes??

Christmas Pizza Party next week!!! Don’t forget to wear a santa hat and decorations! Bring your favourite scratch project and we’ll show the rest of the Dojo!

Julie