Book Image

Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

If you have the imaginative power to design complex multimedia projects but can't adapt to programming languages, then Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide is the book for you. Imagine how good you'll feel when you drag-and-drop your way to interactive games, stories, graphic artwork, computer animations, and much more using Scratch even if you have never programmed before. This book provides teachers, parents, and new programmers with a guided tour of Scratch's features by creating projects that can be shared, remixed, and improved upon in your own lesson plans. Soon you will be creating games, stories, and animations by snapping blocks of "code" together. When you program you solve problems. In order to solve problems, you think, take action, and reflect upon your efforts. Scratch teaches you to program using a fun, accessible environment that's as easy as dragging and dropping blocks from one part of the screen to another. In this book you will program games, stories, and animations using hands-on examples that get you thinking and tinkering. For each project, you start with a series of steps to build something. Then you pause to put our actions into context so that you can relate our code to the actions on Scratch's stage. Throughout each chapter, you'll encounter challenges that encourage you to experiment and learn. One of the things you're really going to love is that, as you begin working through the examples in the book, you won't be able to stop your imagination and the ideas will stream as fast as you can think of them. Write them down. You'll quickly realize there are a lot of young minds in your home, classroom, or community group that could benefit from Scratch's friendly face. Teach them, please.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Scratch 1.4 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Scratch Resources
Index

Set the cat in motion


Even though our script contains only two blocks, we have a problem. When we click on the flag, the sprite switches to a different costume and stops. If we try to click on the flag again, nothing appears to happen, and we can't get back to the first costume unless we go to the Costumes tab and select costume1. That's not fun.

In our next exercise, we're going to switch between both costumes and create a lively animation.

Time for action – a big step

We will continue working with our script from the previous example:

  1. From the blocks palette, select Motion.

  2. Drag the change x by block to the script area for Sprite1 and snap it in place at the end of the script. See the following screenshot for reference:

  3. Double-click on the script and watch your sprite move across the stage.

    Tip

    Double-clicking on the script runs through each block of the script.

  4. The change x by block has an number field with a default value of 10. This number controls how far the sprite moves. Change 10 to 20.

  5. Double...