I have no idea why the sound effects work inconsistently. In the thumbnail preview for the program, they *always* work. All of them. One or two of the sound effects blank out in the upload online or the enlarged view for the program. I have found no difference in varying the stacking order of commands for the sound effects versus visual / movement commands. Does anyone know why the sound effects cut in and out?
My project is here:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/ARTG33K74/1927649
The Venus fly trap is supposed to have the "chomp" sound every time it eats. ??? Again, it works in the thumbnail preview perfectly. I'm running a high end graphics art and video editing laptop, so the speed of my system can't be blamed.
Any help is appreciated!
Shellie Lewis
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Ah, I see your problem. In the scripts for the insects, you have a "stop all sounds" block right at the same time as it reaches the venus fly trap. Due to the speed and timing of the different players, the chomp sound may start playing before that block runs, and be immediately stopped. You can fix this by separating the chomp sound with a broadcast. At the part where each insect gets to the plant, add a block that says "broadcast chomp" right after the "stop all sounds" block. Then in the plant's script, remove the sound blocks and make a new script that says this:
When I receive chomp play sound potato_chip_chomp
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OMG thank you, Harakou-chan! ^_^ The sound works perfectly now. I don't know code, so Scratch is awesome. I was not aware of the Broadcast command.
I noticed that Ai .png clear background does have a slight line of white pixels around the edges of the characters, so in the future I will probably stroke outer lines in black or gray. That will make them look more cartoon-y. I did save as transparent for web & devices; this seems to be a Scratch quirk. I am going to have *SO* much fun with this program. I haven't had to time to sit down and mess with the multi-layered disaster that is Flash CS4. I'm going to make more stuff soon.
My boyfriend taught Scratch basics to Chicago Public School Teachers. He did a demo video [video & audio capture with Camtasia then uploaded to Vimeo] of a live lesson in Scratch and made a .pdf of the project notes. These teachers didn't know what Twitter is or how to use a digital camera; he had to go very basic with this project, but now the teachers are super excited to introduce Scratch to their classrooms. The links are here if you can share them in the correct forum:
http://artg33k74.tumblr.com/post/7874299376/scratch-tutorial-beginner-animation-project
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No problem! I'm glad you're finding Scratch useful and enjoyable, and I hope your class works out.
Scratch can be a little finicky with images sometimes, as you mentioned. It's best to make sure that when you export an image to use with Scratch that the resolution is 480 x 360 or less, because otherwise it gets downsized, which may have contributed to that white border you see.
And yes, the broadcast block is very useful, especially in a situation like your project, because instead of having to use the wait block for timing, you can just broadcast when a sprite has reached a certain point and another one should take action.
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