Scratch

Scratch Games Advice: Gameplay > Presentation
by 08jackt

Hey reader. Some of you will know me as 08jackt, others as just Jack. I've
been asked to write articles about scratch games monthly; so here we go,
attempt one.

A really important thing about making a scratch game is to make the game
fun. As long as a game is fun, it doesn't matter about it's graphics, whether
it has a main menu, or how advanced the programming is. I've seen so many
games on the site that just seem to try so hard to make the game have
good presentation with a main menu and extras,  that they forget to add depth
to the actual gameplay; which is the most important part of a game.  A really
good idea is to make the actual game first, and then add the main menu and
other extra things later.

This is something I've actually recently taken into account myself. A perfect
example of one of these game's is my own game "Rocket Air Riders," which
was pretty much horrible. The main menu was nice, the graphics were okay
and there were plenty courses and characters to unlock; but was the actual game good? Not by long shot.

Now look at m44's "Chop Shop." There was only one level with no extras or
anything, but what it did have was polished and was made to work perfectly,
thus being a wayyy better game. Think about; would you rather play a bad game
over and over just to unlock some stuff or play a really good game once and
enjoy every second of it?

the end.
i might make some changes but probably not.
feel free to change anything.

08jackt wrote:

Scratch Games Advice: Gameplay > Presentation
by 08jackt

Hey reader. Some of you will know me as 08jackt, others as just Jack. I've
been asked to write articles about scratch games monthly; so here we go,
attempt one.

A really important thing about making a scratch game is to make the game
fun. As long as a game is fun, it doesn't matter about it's graphics, whether
it has a main menu, or how advanced the programming is. I've seen so many
games on the site that just seem to try so hard to make the game have
good presentation with a main menu and extras,  that they forget to add depth
to the actual gameplay; which is the most important part of a game.  A really
good idea is to make the actual game first, and then add the main menu and
other extra things later.

This is something I've actually recently taken into account myself. A perfect
example of one of these game's is my own game "Rocket Air Riders," which
was pretty much horrible. The main menu was nice, the graphics were okay
and there were plenty courses and characters to unlock; but was the actual game good? Not by long shot.

Now look at m44's "Chop Shop." There was only one level with no extras or
anything, but what it did have was polished and was made to work perfectly,
thus being a wayyy better game. Think about; would you rather play a bad game
over and over just to unlock some stuff or play a really good game once and
enjoy every second of it?

the end.
i might make some changes but probably not.
feel free to change anything.

Nice! I agree with all of it. (Yes, Rocket Air Riders wasn't great, sorry, but nearly all your others rock.)

iCode-747 wrote:

BTW... We won't be using this base next month, it's much too complicated. Sorry.

If you want, I can put all of the articles in, and you can edit it. I know my base the best.

Last edited by RocksAndFire (2011-01-22 08:19:36)

werdna123 wrote:

gnk2200 wrote:

Werdna: Sorry if I hurt your feelings... I just thought because iCode wanted columns shorter... it's a great article! 

No, it's fine leaving it out, it's just you said 'her'. 

*Blushes* Sorry... I do that all the time. Oops... this is awkward... 

Last edited by gnk2200 (2011-01-22 09:11:45)

iCode-747 wrote:

RAF: Would you do that? Thanks a lot. Jack has made a new, simpler base... Sorry we might ditch yours. 

Sure.
At this point jack's base is better. You can ditch mine and I'll use it for my own purposes. Its fine 

Hee is mine: (short, I know.)

Have you played the simulation "Magnets", which has been featured, yet?
You should.
First of all, it's a really good simulation of iron fillings being dragged around by a magnet.
No, they don't just go to the mouse pointer, they actually form designs real iron fillings would.
Its not a game, but it's very addicting to fool around with.
Some of you may think, "Meh. This is boring.", but could you program such a thing?
I highly recommend it to Scratchers who like simulations.

Here's my article:

A couple weeks ago, I sent an email to the scratch team about scratch 2.0. Three hours later, I got a response from Amos. Here it is.     

Q: Is it confirmed that scratch will be in flash?

A: At this point it seems very likely.

Q: Will scratch 2.0 have the fabled show/hide list and eraser up/down blocks? Has a release day been confirmed? Other than being online (if it's confirmed) what other features will it have?

A: Well, the release of Scratch 2.0 will be different from past releases,
in that it will happen a bit at a time instead of all at once. The
consensus is that show / hide lists will be a good feature to implement,
so it will likely get done, but not until the many issues associated
with having Scratch run entirely "in the cloud" are worked out. I'll
explain more about this in an update in a few weeks.

Q: Will scratch 2.0 have mesh?

A: Not "mesh" exactly, but we are interested in finding more ways for
projects to communicate with each other and the outside world. Sayamindu
(sdg1), a new graduate student in our research group, is working on
this. This will be one of the later features to get implemented.

Q: Is there any truth to the image at http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.p … 154fad.jpg

A: That looks like a really old proposed site redesign from 1+ years ago.
So no, not really. Right now we're still thinking about all the issues
related to using Scratch entirely in the browser. For example, how will
you keep track of projects you started, but haven't finished? Those used
to exist on your hard drive, but of course there is no hard drive in the
browser.

The "layout" and "look-and-feel" stages come after we solve these
problems, and answer the many other questions that have come up about
how Scratch 2.0 will work. That's one reason we don't have any
screenshots at this point - things are still really likely to change.

I can tell you that we are leaning towards "widget" model for the new
user home page, based on all the great feedback we got from the forums
and the suggest.scratch.mit.edu site. I'll write more about this later
in a forthcoming update.

Q: Will scratch 2.0 have something like BYOB or CYOB?

A: A build your own block feature is one that we would like to implement,
but not until we make the transition to the cloud.

Ok - I hope this helps. I'll write a longer update in early Feb.

Scratch On!
Amos (Lightnin)
Scratch Team

Last edited by rocket101 (2011-01-23 16:06:50)

iCode-747 wrote:

RAF: So we'll use 08jackt's base for this month?

[/Randomness]

You can pick whatever you want 

iCode-747 wrote:

I think using 08jackt's base would be much easier for me, I'm SUPER stressed out right now, so we'll go with that.

where's Jack's?

can i join i am a pretty good writer and have a mag of my own.  thanks 

so what can i write?

ProgrammingFreak wrote:

so what can i write?

To anybody who's looking for a column to write: Look on the first page, under "Articles without an Author". If you have an idea for your own column, just ask me about it.