having a little bit of flash experience under my belt, I am slowly getting anoyed at scratch's limitation on external coding. What I mean by this; ex on flash, I am able to code EVERYTHING at one single place. This is because using instance names, I can acess all the properties of all the 'sprtes'. I was thinking, mabye on the back ground, all the properties (x,y,direction ECT...) can be acessed with a single drop down menu.
why?
it is much more orginized; less use of variables and broadcasts will be needed, it is more like what you'd use for flash, and eventually the only method u can use in c++
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In my opinion, scratch would be prefect if were exactly like flash. Scratch has many limitations when compared to flash, a relatively small limitation would be the inability to control sprites from wherever you want.
I thinks its fine that you can only manipulate the sprite that the code is on, it makes things simple. If you get to know flash actionscript better (especially AS3) you will find that actionscript does many things better than scratch.
Last edited by archmage (2009-02-09 16:16:25)
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Me, being someone who doesn't own flash/understand actionscript, have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Please 'splain for those who don't have the knowledge.
Also, @ archmage: if Scratch was exactly like Flash, it wouldn't be Scratch, would it?
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Ok, to put it simply, you can do things like change a sprite's position from code on the stage.
Also if scratch were exactly like flash except with blocks and a java player then it would be much better than the current scratch. The only downside to this is that the increased number of blocks and features would confuse new users. However, it would then be usable in professional development.
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There are hundreds of different programming languages and environments, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Scratch is totally awesome for those being introduced to programming concepts, but it does have limitations at the higher end. I don't think it will (nor should) ever have the same feature set as something like Flash, though it could certainly be improved at the same time (see suggestion threads).
One thing that would actually be pretty cool for those who are reaching Scratch's limits would be a text view of your project's code, so that you could see what it would look like if you had typed it out by hand instead of dropping blocks. Maybe even be able to tweak it in that mode, too?
Last edited by mrweston (2009-02-09 19:48:25)
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I understand what you are saying about flash being for new developers. That is exactly why i am suggesting this. It is a small advantage that wont benifit the speed or anything but LEARN the youth how you would coe in higher end programs such as C++. As i understand, scratch is all about teaching people who have no programming knoledge how to program, so that they can move on to better programs. I see it as a space shuttle. Scratch is the first stage the shuttle goes through, lift off. It is a crucial part, and without it the shuttle wont get into space. However eventually you need to drop it off to get all the way. Not having stage coding, is like leaving the landing parachute on part one of the shuttle, still possible to land, but so much more difficult
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archmage wrote:
The only downside to this is that the increased number of blocks and features would confuse new users. However, it would then be usable in professional development.
Why not have 2 scratch.image files?(One at a time of course) Beginner or Expert. Beginner would be for people that aren't used to scratch and want to learn the basics, Beginner would be like the scratch we have now
Expert would be for people like you and me Archmage. People who have used every block in Scratch, know how to do amazing things(that one is mostly you:P). It would be like Flash as you said but new people wouldn't get confused(As much)
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