Scratch

AddInnovation wrote:

Great Tips - thanks for those.

Also on a point of faster processing AND Development,

I started looking at a breakout style game a while back, and one of the most frustrating elements was when making changes to the main script behind one "brick" sprite, and following that through to each other script and then personalising that script on each brick sprite.

E.g. I have one brick script I work concentrate on and refine the scripts for called R1C1, then I've got 5 rows, and 10 columns on each - 50 sprites in all. I'd refine the script on R1C1, then drag and drop onto each other sprite, and then change all of the references where necessary to the name of each sprite.

I've found a much better approach is to use one local variable with the sprite's name, and then use a list to represent the name of each visible sprite.

The upside is that it makes detections easier with a small script using a loop, the online downside could be in the extra time for loops, but overall it works faster.

I'd set up a game "Skeleteons in Wellingtons" with several scripts for the skeletons. There's a slightly different set of scripts of Skelly 1, but Skelly 2-5 are all almost exactly the same, and to add a new skelly I just duplicate the sprite and change it's "MyName" variable, then add it to the list of "monsters" - works great !

In my city game (link at the top) I had to make each individual tile a sprite and it took forever! The good thing was though that all I would have to do is change three numbers on this one sprite and it would effect the positions of everything else. It worked quite well, but I never knew you could use that script. One thing I would suggest it instead of dragging the scripts onto each one, just duplicated the script, change the necessary variables and re-duplicate so that A.You know you've done each one and B. you can quit at any time and know where you left off.

Paddle2See wrote:

Borrego6165 wrote:

eventexception wrote:

Great guide!
Is ´Show and tell´ the best category for? Ask a mod to move it 

Btw. ´ghosting´ slows down one of my projects running with the Flash player.

Maybe "help with scripts" would be best. where do you go to ask? and thanks, i'll add a bit about translucency.

I agree!  There is lots of useful information here.  But I don't want to set a precedent of allowing advertising in Help With Scripts.  Why don't you make a few changes so that you are not explicitly advertising and then let us know with the Report button again?  It's okay to link to projects to demonstrate key concepts...but advertising is not what HWS is all about.

I half-advertised it so that it could go in show and tell, that's the only reason i did it like that. I'll change it!

check your comments!

ug, my stop motion animation was way to big! i compressed and everything!

OK, I'll have a look at this later. The main reason why I am posting is so that I will remember this as it will appear when I view my posts.

Very thorough, useful, guide. Nice work!

Nice guide.

"Merging" sprites seems to be a good way of improving performance. If you have 2 different menus (a main menu and an options menu) Then you can use the "options" button in the same sprite as the "back" button. You would need something like this:

when [options/back v] clicked
if <(costume#) = [1]> //Costume 1 is options and costume 2 is back.
broadcast [options v] //or whatever it does
switch to costume [back v]
goto the right place
else
broadcast [title v]
switch to costume [options v]
goto the right place
end

That way you need one less sprite. Having less sprites seems to have surprising impact on performance. You could probably do a similar thing to merge the player with the play button if you don't have an options menu. But this wouldn't have the else and, animation might get in the way.

I have had a lot of problems with lagging scratch projects but for some reason, they work fine online and lag when downloaded.
But this helped!
Even though, I guess there eventually is a limit because you can't just go on forever, even with really efficient programming.

I have seen some programs here with large numbers of event activated scripts that got stuck and actually were doing things in peculiar order.  Thanks for your kind words supporting neoclassical architecture by using variables more.  Also, if you had a bunch of scripts be activated by say the same keystroke, would that many of us really have the discipline to make sure all the scripts are done and really ready to move on?  Some days its good to be an old fart.

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