Scratch

My general feeling is that if a post concerns ordinary day-to-day Scratch programming, it belongs in All About Scratch.  So that would include scrolling techniques, programming sprites with velocity and gravity and so on. 

Advanced Topics should hold discussions about Scratch as a programming language, methods to modify or extend Scratch, use of Mesh or other "hidden" features and so on.

Advanced Topics might also hold things like real 3D programming, Ray Tracing, Fractal displays, and other things that require advanced mathematics. These can be programmed with ordinary Scratch blocks but since they would be beyond most ordinary Scratchers, I would argue that they belong in Advanced Topics

What do you folks think?

I have to agree with what you guys said. One user reported the other day that things like velocity should go in "Advanced Topics" after I moved it to "All About Scratch." I disagreed, so I thought I'd bring it to the Mod forum to see what you guys thought.

I definitely agree that really math-heavy questions should go in "Advanced Topics." Just to clear this stuff up, shouldn't there be a better descriptor for the two forums? Neither of them really describe what the forum is about.

Any other opinions?

Dazachi wrote:

Yeah, the description would be a good idea to change. Let's see what Lightnin or Paddle2See say.

Yeah, good points! What would you guys suggest as far as better descriptors go?

coolstuff wrote:

Lightnin wrote:

Dazachi wrote:

Yeah, the description would be a good idea to change. Let's see what Lightnin or Paddle2See say.

Yeah, good points! What would you guys suggest as far as better descriptors go?

How about this:

All About Scratch
Questions about Scratch or help with day-to-day Scratch programming can go here. No question is too basic!

Advanced Topics
Discuss technical or advanced features of Scratch here, as well as help with programming involving advanced math.

I tried to keep them as short as possible while still conveying a decent message. 

Those covered pretty much everything we discussed. Although, maybe there is a more general word for math?

coolstuff wrote:

All About Scratch
Questions about Scratch or help with day-to-day Scratch programming can go here. No question is too basic!

Advanced Topics
Discuss technical or advanced features of Scratch here, as well as help with programming involving advanced math.

I tried to keep them as short as possible while still conveying a decent message. 

Hmmm.  The problem is that there are different opinions of what makes for "day-to-day programming" or "advanced" math.  If you are 12, Trigonometry would seem advanced.  I think we need something a bit more concrete without getting too wordy.  We also might want to mention the Scratch Mods and other program extensions somehow.  This isn't an easy thing to do in a short forum description.  Maybe we don't need to try to cram it into the forum description but can explain it in detail in the forum index post?

I think the advanced topics should be complex math, hidden features, modifications and game engines (E.G a 3D engine)

Maybe we could spit advanced topics into Modding and Advanced Scratching. As well as math, it could include other really complicated things that don't just have to do with math.

Billybob-Mario wrote:

Maybe we could spit advanced topics into Modding and Advanced Scratching. As well as math, it could include other really complicated things that don't just have to do with math.

I believe I mentioned that a while ago...

http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=34720

Feel free to bump up that topic.    The problem is that very little discussion about "advanced" Scratching goes in this forum and it could confuse Scratchers as Paddle2See mentioned above about what defines "advanced."

coolstuff wrote:

Billybob-Mario wrote:

Maybe we could spit advanced topics into Modding and Advanced Scratching. As well as math, it could include other really complicated things that don't just have to do with math.

I believe I mentioned that a while ago...

http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=34720

Feel free to bump up that topic.    The problem is that very little discussion about "advanced" Scratching goes in this forum and it could confuse Scratchers as Paddle2See mentioned above about what defines "advanced."

There actually is a fourm like that. modding.tk

A TOPIC FROM THE MOD FORUM 

I agree with what Paddle said in the second post. 

Hey all, I've had a read through and I have a small question. We're saying that things in advanced topics should be either to do with technical features in scratch itself as a programming language, or advanced mathematics - something that your average scratcher isn't capable of. My problem with this description is that, whilst scratch and the scratch community are mostly programming based, there are quite a few users in our community who use Scratch to share very good pieces of artwork.

Some of our artists truly are brilliant, have great ideas and beatiful drawing styles. If one of these scratchers were to post a question called "help with correctly copying Van Gough's use of brush strokes" (    )or something similar in advanced topics, it would probably not be treated as an advanced question and be moved to some other forum section even though it is an advanced question, possibly more so than many of the maths questions posted often in that same section (where would that question really fit but in an advanced area?)

Scratch is a very visual language, and it's used very often by young animators and painters. What I guess I'm saying is that we shouldn't discard other aspects of scratch and call them "unadvanced" just because they're not about equations or source code. So by saying "Discuss technical or advanced features of Scratch here, as well as help with programming involving advanced math.", you're shutting out people who had a big question about old Gough's brushes.

I'm aware that a question in advanced topics about Van Gough's brush stroke techniques might not get many answers there, but surely that's partly because it's a much more difficult question to answer than a math based one? 

Just a though? Feel free to discuss with me 

Last edited by sparks (2010-10-31 11:06:07)

sparks wrote:

Hey all, I've had a read through and I have a small question. We're saying that things in advanced topics should be either to do with technical features in scratch itself as a programming language, or advanced mathematics - something that your average scratcher isn't capable of. My problem with this description is that, whilst scratch and the scratch community are mostly programming based, there are quite a few users in our community who use Scratch to share very good pieces of artwork.

Some of our artists truly are brilliant, have great ideas and beatiful drawing styles. If one of these scratchers were to post a question called "help with correctly copying Van Gough's use of brush strokes" (    )or something similar in advanced topics, it would probably not be treated as an advanced question and be moved to some other forum section even though it is an advanced question, possibly more so than many of the maths questions posted often in that same section (where would that question really fit but in an advanced area?)

Scratch is a very visual language, and it's used very often by young animators and painters. What I guess I'm saying is that we shouldn't discard other aspects of scratch and call them "unadvanced" just because they're not about equations or source code. So by saying "Discuss technical or advanced features of Scratch here, as well as help with programming involving advanced math.", you're shutting out people who had a big question about old Gough's brushes.

I'm aware that a question in advanced topics about Van Gough's brush stroke techniques might not get many answers there, but surely that's partly because it's a much more difficult question to answer than a math based one? 

Just a though? Feel free to discuss with me 

Great points... But has there ever been a topic like that? Probably not. And Scratch really isn't the best program to paint with, so perhaps topics like that would be better suited to Miscellaneous?

Most Scratchers use Scratch for programming, so it's only fitting to have a forum for the advanced programming.