Plan for Christmas Card – Improvements.

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For the final week we are going to convert the Christmas Card into a Christmas Game.

We will be starting with the Christmas Card that we made last week, if you weren’t there or want to start with the same one that I will be using, have a look at the bottom of this document, I have added instructions on how to get it.

The Plan for this week.

We will be adding some additional Sprites. We will be using Scratch Sprites rather than drawing our own to save time.

  • A sprite for Santa’s sleigh
    • This will move backwards and forward across the top of the screen
  • A sprite for the Presents
    • This will fall from Santa’s sleigh to the bottom of the screen, not directly down though.
    • This sprite will have many costumes.
  • As sprite for you
    • You will be able to move Left and Right across the bottom of the screen to try and catch the falling presents.

The Sleigh Sprite

Scratch does not have a sleigh sprite, so I used the reindeer.

He needs to start on the top left of the screen and move all the way to the top right of the screen and then turn around and go back to the top left, he will just keep doing this.

The code might look something like this:

The Present Sprite

We might have to draw this one.

The present Sprite will start from wherever the Sleigh Sprite is glide down to a random place at the bottom of the Screen, you can make the Present a random size as well to make it more interesting.

The is a Scratch block to put one Sprite in the same place as another Sprite So the code to move down the screen will look something like this:

There will also be code to count the number of presents caught. So, if the Present Sprite touches you, it will count as being caught, so you can increase your score.

When the present is caught you can change to a random costume to display the unwrapped present.

I’ll let you figure out this code as a little challenge (I haven’t done it yet 😊 )

You Sprite

This is the one that catches the presents. I used the Scratch cat, finally.

Not much code for this one, he just needs to move left or right using the left or right keys on the keyboard. So, something like this:

Getting the Christmas Card project.

https://scratch.mit.edu

Login with user name AthenryAdvancers and Password Advancers

Select My Stuff and then click the See Inside button for the ClassVersion-ChritmasCard

You will then have to save it to your device, select File – Save to your computer, so you can work on your version.

Now you will have to open Scratch 3 on your device and open the file you just saved.

This week’s challenge to create a Christmas Card.

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This will be an interactive Christmas Card.

  1. A nice background with Snow, Christmas Trees, a house.
    1. We might use different Sprites for the Trees.
  2. Flashing lights on the House and the Tree.
  3. Falling snow.
  4. Snow building up on the ground.
  5. An animated Snowman.

Snowflakes

To make it even more interesting, we are going to make the snowflakes different sizes and fall at different rates depending on how big they are.

We will use the clone functionality to make the snowflakes.

Each clone will pick a random size and will glide to the bottom of the screen, how fast if glides will be related to how big or small it is.

The snowflake is going to be quite hard to draw as it will be a small white dot on a white background, so we will be careful.

The building up on the ground part, is quite easy, we just pick a random Y value to stop at, as long as it is close to the bottom of the screen we should be ok.

Flashing Lights or Tree Sprites

Again, these might be quite difficult to draw as we have to draw them over the background and get them to be over the Trees?

If we draw the complete Tree in the Sprite I think it is going to be a lot easier.

Snowflake code

Flashing light code

Modellers – Game Controller Part 2 – Week 3

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Hi folks, thanks again for another fun session today. We continued working on our game controller, moving the thumbsticks into place and creating a D-pad and template button. Here are my video notes:

Here’s a link to the folder where all our files. You’ll find a new file in there called controller_2.blend, containing everything we did this week.

This week’s Challenge – To build a Calculator.

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I know Windows has a Calculator, but we are going to build our own. This will give you an idea of how real Calculators actually work.

The Calculator should be able to:

1. Add, Subtract, Multiply and Divide 2 numbers.

2. Be able to work with decimal points (2.5 for example).

3. Display the sum and the result on the screen.

4. Have a “clear” button to reset everything ready for the next calculation.

Let’s look at the steps that you need for a calculation

1. Clear the variables.

2. Click on the numbers for the first number.

3. Click on the operator you want to use.

4. Click on the numbers for the second number.

5. Click on the equals button.

6. Display the result.

Hint: When you click on the Operator, this indicates we have got the first number and need to start storing the second number. See variable 6.

It sounds like there is a lot to do, but if we are smart with the way we work, there is a lot of code that is very similar and we can copy and paste it and then modify it slightly.

You will need 6 variables (for all Sprites) to share:

1. The first number in the calculation (NumberOne), not visible.

2. The second number in the calcualtion (NumberTwo), not visible.

3. The complete sum (Question), visible.

4. The operator (+,-,x,/) for the calculation (Operator), not visible.

5. The result of the calculation (Result), visible.

6. A variable to indicate what number we are working with (SecondNumber). not visible.

Hint: When you press clear, all the variables should be set to blank, except the SecondNumber which should be 0

You will need 17 Sprites, don’t panic! Remember copy and paste is your friend:

11 Number Sprites 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and the decimal point.

4 Operator Sprite +,-,x and /.

1 Equals (=) Sprite.

1 Clear Sprite.

Scratch code blocks that will be used:

Operators, we will use the join operator a lot as well as the +,-,x and /.

If Else block with variable 6 to decide what number to update.

set variable blocks – lots of these!

Hint:

Start by creating the variables.

Start with just 4 Sprites, 1, +, clear and Equals

Once you can get 1 + 1 working, the rest is quite easy.

The answer is 2 (not 11) by the way, just in case.

Coding Tips:

Here is some of the code that we will be using:

This is the code when you click on a number Sprite, this example is for the number 1, can you see what needs to change if this was the number 2 sprite?

This is the code for the + Sprite

And this is the code in the = Sprite

And finally, the CLR sprite