Scratch

This is under construction and is NOT yet complete



Table of Contents

(Press f3 then type the number to jump to a place)

The Program
1.0 - Where to Find Things
2.0 - Sprites and the Stage Basics
3.0 - Blocks and Scripts
   3.1 Types of Blocks
   3.2 How to Find Blocks
   3.3 Baby's First Script
   3.4 Inputs

Topics That Are't Completed

Subject to change

The Program
   3.7 Complex and Confusing Blocks

The Website

Other Stuff
1.0 - Links to other great tutorials and info
2.0 - Scratch Facts

Topics That Are't Started

Subject to change

The Program
4.0 - 1s 1s
5.0 - List, Not Variables

The Website
1.0 - The Front Page
   1.1 Newest Projects
   1.2 Featured Projects
   1.3 My Friends' Latest Projects
   1.4 Projects Selected by
   1.5 Projects from Scratch Design Studio
   1.6 What the Community is Remixing
   1.7 What the Community is Loving
   1.8 What the Community is Viewing
   1.7 Side Bar
2.0 - Uploading your project

The Modifications
1.0 - What is a Mod?
2.0 - BYOB
3.0 - Panther
4.0 - Other Mods



Scratch is a program by MIT that can be downloaded for free here. The latest Scratch is 1.4, but 2.0 is coming out soon.

1.0 - Where to Find Things



1.    Block categories
2.    Blocks
3.    Script area
4.    Tools
5.    Stage
6.    Sprite info
7.    Sprite list

2.0 - Sprites and the Stage Basics


The sprites are the things in a project. There are three parts to a sprite; scripts, costumes, and sounds. Scripts are the programming for the sprite, costumes are the pictures, and sounds are, well, the sounds.
But what’s the stage? It’s where all of the sprites do their thing. The stage, like sprites, can have scripts, costumes (but are called backgrounds), and sounds.
The only thing that viewers will see is the stage and the sprites on the stage (Unless they download the project and don’t view in presentation mode, but you don’t need to worry about that).

3.0 - Blocks and Scripts

Blocks are what make your project. They are the key to Scratch and without them you can program. When you put two or more blocks together it’s called a script.

3.1 Types of Blocks
There are six shapes of blocks. Each one doing a different type of thing and fitting in different places. Here's what each look like and what they do:
Hat blocks  start scripts and look like
Stack blocks  are comands and look like
Cap blocks  are like a reverse of hats, they end the script and look like
Reporter blocks hold values and look like
Boolean blocks are like reporter blocks, but can only hold true or false. They look like
C Blocks hold commands (stack blocks) and look like

Every block is kept in a category. Each category has it's own color and it's own 'theme'. Here's what kind of blocks are in the category and what their color is:

Motion is a blue. Blocks here have something to do with the sprite moving.
Looks control how a sprite looks. Any dark purple block will be found in there.
Sounds are light purple and will be related to your speakers.
Pen blocks are always dark green. There kinda complicated so we'll get there later.
Control these light orange bunch will start, stop, repeat, broadcast and more.
Sensing are a lot like control. The light blue ones do just about anything that's not in another category.
Operators deal with letters and numbers. They're also light green.
Variables are reddish-orange, and are used to hold values and strings.

Subcategories are categories in categories. Right now there are only two:
Motor blocks deal with LEGO WeDo. They are in Motion and are a very dark blue.
List blocks are in Variables and are red. Instead of dealing with one group of text it deals with list.

3.2 How to Find Blocks
If your trying to find a block then think about what the block would do. Does it move the sprite or report a sprites position? It's probably in motion. Does is change the sprites costume? Look in looks. If you know the color of a block then just look at the color of the category.

3.3 Baby's First Script
Let’s start with something simple; a sprite moving across the stage.
To move a sprite you need a motion block. Right now we’ll use this: . Drag the block to the Script Area. To start a project you need to click the (green flag) and to stop click the (stop sign). So click the green flag and watch your sprite move!

   Why didn’t it work? Recall that you need a hat block to start a script. In Scratch 1.4 (the latest Scratch) you have 4 hats to choose from; When Flag Clicked, When () Key Pressed, When sprite Clicked, and When I Receive. We’re going to use the most basic one for now:  I told you to start a project, click the green flag, but that only applies in when that block is in use. Drag it to the script area. Then connect the two blocks. You should end up with:


Now click the green flag. Does the cat move now? It should, but not forever.
Now we need a C block. The block   will repeat the blocks inside it forever. Slap that on your script and watch the kitty fly.

If you want to do it again then drag the cat away from the edge and click the green flag again. Or for an added challenge try to find out how to do it with just scripts.

3.4 Inputs

As you may have already discovered, some block allow you to change the number or the text. Like the . Do you see the white box in the block? Clicking on it and then typing a number in will change how far your sprite moves.

Pull up the script we made before: If you change the 10 to 20 it'll go twice as fast or if you change it to 5 it'll go twice as slow. Do you remember reporter blocks? You can put those inside other blocks. Like this: You could even put reporters in reporters:


Let's look at this C block Do you see the hexagon next do the if? What would that be for? Look at this block It's shape like the hole in the if block. Hmm... let's try to put it in.
IT WORKS!!!
Let's pull up our good old script again. Add our new script to it to get After you click the green flag press space. The cat will only move if the boolean true (<key [space] pressed> is a boolean). The drop down in key [space] pressed is another type of input. Let's change to right arrow. Now if you press the right arrow key the cat will move. Now right click on the if and select duplicate. Place your duplicated script below (not in) the first if block. Change the inputs to if<key [left arrow] pressed> and and move (-10) steps. You should get:


Do you think you get inputs? They aren't too hard.

3.5 Direction
Recall that when you use the move () steps block if you don't input a negative number you would go right. Why? The move () steps block moves in the direction of the sprite. A sprites default direction is 90 degrees (or right). Direction (commonly abbreviated dir) has an impact on these blocks:

The move () steps will move in the sprites direction. The turn blocks will change the sprites direction. The two point blocks will also change the sprites direction. If on edge bounce is an odd block and it will change the sprites direction based on it's current direction. The direction block will report the sprites direction. The () of () block will can report another sprites direction.
To change a sprites direction without blocks you need to move the blue line here You can also double-click it to change to 90 degrees. Now play around with it for a little. Try clicking the buttons to the left of the mini-sprite. See how that affects the direction.

Now that you can make the cat spin like crazy it time to move on to something else.

3.7 Complex and Confusing Blocks
You should try to learn what each block does and how it works. Some block can be difficult to understand, but that where this will help.

topic NOT complete yet


The website is where people like you will post their projects. There's tons of helpful scratcher, but watch out for the trolls.

topic NOT complete yet (of course)



1.0 - Links
An un-brief history of Scratch A great guide about Scratch's past.
BBCode If you want to learn the ways of colors, pictures,  and more come this way (if all you want is pictures try this instead)
Website Lingo has a good bit of words that you may not know. It's under construction so if you do know some words go help out.
Suggestions that have been resolved already If you want to post a suggestion go here and you might find that it already been ask.
THE ALMIGHTY SCRATIONARY!! A lot like Website Lingo, but has more offline words.
More coming soon

2.0 - Scratch Facts

Scratch was founded on May 15, 2007
On April 26, 2010 the Scratch Community had produced 1,000,000 projects

Scratch 1.2.1 was released officially on December 7, 2007
Scratch 1.3 was released officially on September 2, 2008
Scratch 1.4 was released officially on July 19, 2009

In Scratch 1.4:
There's 129 block
In a total of 10 categories
2 of which are sub-categories
On average there's about 12 block in a (sub)category
Sensing has the most blocks (18)
Variables (not counting list)  have the least blocks (5)

620,000 registered members,
175,000 project creators,
1,300,000 projects uploaded,
23,000,000 scripts,
8,000,000 sprites
More coming soon

Please give suggestions and comments

Last edited by SSBBM (2010-11-06 11:39:59)