Scratch Gaming

Monday Week 4 12/1/14

Today was the first day into the Gaming Unit, and from the looks of it, this week seems pretty fun. We used a software called scratch to make two different games, but before we did that, Mr. Farrell told us what scratch is. As it turns out, Scratch uses the Net Logo language but is much easier because instead of writing every variable, most of the variables are already defined. My The first game we worked on was pong. Pong was simple, it was mostly you moving the paddle and having the ball bounce around.

To get the ball to move around I used a variable like the one shown below.

After I got the ball program down the rest was easy. But what we did next was in a little different level. The next game we had to make was a story game where you have a character that follows a story. My story is about a football player who helps a lechuga get away from a vegetarian. One of the most challenging factors was trying to get the vegetarian to jump around.

Tuesday Week 4 12/2/14

Today we worked on a different form of Scratch called BYOB. The Only difference was that we could not share the game, we could only share the Mesh and the ip address and we did not have to make any blocks. Today My game also involved lechuga running away from vegetarians. But was more complicated. For instance we learned how to have the page brodcast something so that every sprite could hear the command.

For the rest of the week we continued making games. However on Wensday We made a quiz. This quiz was supposed to test us on our edumication for computer science so far. I used questions from every project except gaming and Robotics. I made mine a Multiple Choice test which I was able to achieve with 40+ sprites, and 13 backdrops. I think It came out pretty well. However it got confusing because I made it so that when the right sprite was clicked it would broadcast a command. This got confusing because I had so many commands. I think it would have been easier if I also did not add so may sprites. Instead of adding so many sprites I could of just broadcast a message for the sprite to change costume. But over all it came out well. The sprite with the most code was my cat.

Above is just part of the code that is used for the cat. The cat has the most code because it is in every question and recieves and broadcasts different things depending on your answer.

Sorting algorithm

Thursday Mr. Miller came in to teach us how complex it is for a computer to sort files. We used a hand on exercise by using film canisters filled with different amount of pennies. The objective was to list them from heaviest to lightest. The point that he was trying to drive was that the work that computers do is very complicated, but computers are able to do it instantly.