Scratch

SD7 wrote:

Hi I'm working on making a space game where the player commands a small yellow ship that moves along the x-axis at the bottom of the screen while fending off a variety of enemies. I'm running into some problems however with making some things work and figuring out how to do certain commands. This is what I need help with particularly:

1. What I'm trying to do is have a single sprite of each enemy type (red is standard, blue is more powerful, and black is a stealth suicide bomber) but have each one duplicate randomly within a set limit (ie the one Red ship sprite would duplicate 3-6 reds on screen at once, whereas the single blue sprite would only duplicate 1-2 blues). Is this possible or would I have to make all five red ships and have some of them "decide not to show up," that is, make a variable that determines whether the ship will begin to move in on the screen?

Cloning is currently impossible, but you could consider stamping all of the ships, and storing their orientation and position in a list.  If you're going to do that, I'd recommend putting all of that in a single sprite, so you can coordinate the "render, clear, render, clear" scripts way easier.  An example is my latest minesweeper game, in which one sprite prints all of the tiles, then clears and reprints every frame

2. I've just begun to code in destroying an enemy. But if you look at the uploaded project and try to fire a shot at the black enemy (the only one with code right now), you'll see it explodes and dies, but keeps moving and eventually the explosion goes away and it switches back to its "ship" costume. What I have set up is that when it's touching the player's laser, it explodes, but I realizes it only explodes WHILE the laser is touching, or a short time after. What I want it to do is if the player's laser hits it, it switches to the explosion costume, stops moving for a second so the explosion lingers, then disappears and resets to the top of the screen. Does anyone know code from that? I've tried a bunch of variations but nothing seems to work.


Doing stuff this advanced with pasted ships might be more trouble than it's worth, so I would recommend making every enemy ship its own sprite.  Then stick this in:

when gf clicked
forever
do movement
if <touching [laser]?>
explode
wait until respawn
respawn
end

3. Sort of in-line with 1, but with the lasers. I'd like to have the laser sprite duplicate so you can fire multiple shots at once rather than only one at a time. Again, same sort of thing as 1, so if there's a way.


Again, cloning is impossible in the current version of Scratch.  If you want to stamp the lasers, I'd recommend only one sprite to do it, though it would probably be easier to make each laser a sprite.


4. Working on the player's own death, I'm running into trouble. I'd like it work like this; if the player is hit by any laser he dies instantly (I want to counteract that by using a shield button that can only be activated for so long). When he dies, I want him to switch to an explosion costume and then stop everything. Two seconds AFTER you die, I'd like to show a "game over" message, with the two second lag added to make the player realize they died before shutting everything down.

when gf clicked
forever
movement
if<touching [red]?>
explode
wait (2) secs
broadcast [game-over]
wait (2) secs
broadcast [shut-down]
end
end

5. Lastly, is there any way to orient the layering of the sprites in the game, so that the lasers will show up behind the ships, and the "game over" message will show over everything?


Simply dragging a sprite in edit-mode will automatically bring it to the front.  Alternatively, you can use the [go to front] block and make the lasers "go to front" first, then the ships, and lastly the "game over" message.

And that should basically solve all the bugs with the game, unless more arise. I'd be grateful to any advice that people can put out on these subjects.

Link to Space Game and code download:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/SD7/2377273

I mainly need a script to make the sprite stop moving where it is.

Last edited by SD7 (2012-03-08 11:49:13)

SD7 wrote:

Link to Space Game and code download:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/SD7/2377273

Post a link with

[url=URL HERE]Link Name[/url]

Meaning

[url=http://scratch.mit.edu/]Scratch Homepage[/url]

would make
Scratch Homepage

SD7 wrote:

Hi I'm working on making a space game where the player commands a small yellow ship that moves along the x-axis at the bottom of the screen while fending off a variety of enemies. I'm running into some problems however with making some things work and figuring out how to do certain commands. This is what I need help with particularly:

1. What I'm trying to do is have a single sprite of each enemy type (red is standard, blue is more powerful, and black is a stealth suicide bomber) but have each one duplicate randomly within a set limit (ie the one Red ship sprite would duplicate 3-6 reds on screen at once, whereas the single blue sprite would only duplicate 1-2 blues). Is this possible or would I have to make all five red ships and have some of them "decide not to show up," that is, make a variable that determines whether the ship will begin to move in on the screen?

no cloning yet, maybe in Scratch 2.0

2. I've just begun to code in destroying an enemy. But if you look at the uploaded project and try to fire a shot at the black enemy (the only one with code right now), you'll see it explodes and dies, but keeps moving and eventually the explosion goes away and it switches back to its "ship" costume. What I have set up is that when it's touching the player's laser, it explodes, but I realizes it only explodes WHILE the laser is touching, or a short time after. What I want it to do is if the player's laser hits it, it switches to the explosion costume, stops moving for a second so the explosion lingers, then disappears and resets to the top of the screen. Does anyone know code from that? I've tried a bunch of variations but nothing seems to work.

when gf clicked
forever
if <touching[myships laser v]>
explosion 
hide
wait <pick random (1) to (5)> secs
go to x: <pick random (-210) to (210)> y: (180)
end
end

3. Sort of in-line with 1, but with the lasers. I'd like to have the laser sprite duplicate so you can fire multiple shots at once rather than only one at a time. Again, same sort of thing as 1, so if there's a way.

No, no cloning yet

4. Working on the player's own death, I'm running into trouble. I'd like it work like this; if the player is hit by any laser he dies instantly (I want to counteract that by using a shield button that can only be activated for so long). When he dies, I want him to switch to an explosion costume and then stop everything. Two seconds AFTER you die, I'd like to show a "game over" message, with the two second lag added to make the player realize they died before shutting everything down.

Well, if the explosion is long enough you can just have it like this

when gf clicked
forever
if <touching[enemy laser v]>
explosion
wait (1) secs
switch to costume [game over v]
stop all
end
end

assuming of course, that you have a game over costume for the ship

5. Lastly, is there any way to orient the layering of the sprites in the game, so that the lasers will show up behind the ships, and the "game over" message will show over everything?

Yes, there is a

go back (1) layers

block that is built into scratch


And that should basically solve all the bugs with the game, unless more arise. I'd be grateful to any advice that people can put out on these subjects.

Link to Space Game and code download:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/SD7/2377273

All of the red blocks and such are ones that you should make yourself, or, ones that I do not know how to put into the scratchblocks

Last edited by MaxFlyboy (2012-03-12 21:15:59)

Oh, and another thing, is there any command that makes it so it performs a certain script once upon touching something, rather than constantly whilst touching it?
Example, IF->laser has TOUCHED enemy
-----------------> then, change score by 1, etc.

Right now, the current code makes it so that as long as the player's laser is touching an enemy the score continues to rise, so rather than getting 1 point for hitting a red enemy, you get about 20, because it keeps upping the score while the laser is in contact. Can I make it so it only runs the script once upon meeting the conditions of touching an enemy?

You're not helping with the code, you're filling up this page with things that don't apply to what I'm trying to work on. Even if you thought making a physical link in the text was so necessary, you should have send it via a private message or other means.

For the pausing movement, it would take a while. You would have to have a "stop movement?" variable and put if's in all the movement. If someone who knows what I'm talking about please explain it more.

MoreGamesNow wrote:

MaxFlyboy wrote:

For the pausing movement, it would take a while. You would have to have a "stop movement?" variable and put if's in all the movement. If someone who knows what I'm talking about please explain it more.

Put every other script that can possibly move the sprite into an if statement:

if<(can i move?) = [true]>
move
end

Then, to make it stop moving, just set "can i move?" to "false" (or any value other than true).

better if multiple movements are in 1 script;

repeat until <whatever> //or whatever the repeat stuff is...
move
other move
if <(can i move?) = [false]>
wait until <(can i move?) = [true]>

Last edited by Splodgey (2012-03-14 05:13:26)

Actually it stops moving but won't explode, and won't stop for about 3 seconds. I don't know what wrong. If anyone has to the time to download the code and tell me what the hell is wrong....

Hey SD7,

I'll take a look at the code and help you out    I'll post again with my thoughts later.