Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Mission checklist
To get started, go to the Scratch website (
scratch.mit.edu
) and start a new project
by clicking on the
Create
buton at the top of the page. If you already have a Scratch account,
it might be useful to log in first, so that you can save your work in your account. If you are
new to Scratch and are unfamiliar with the interface, have a look at
Appendix
,
The New
Scratch Interface
.
Creating a new project
We need to make sure that we're logged in and ready to get to work on a new project.
We'll then draw some sprites and assemble our awesome cannon (and cannonballs).
The Scratch menu bar gives us the opion to explore the exising projects from other
users (using
Explore
) or create a new project ourselves (using
Create
):
Prepare for lift off
You are presented with a new project, including the
Scratch cat
as usual. We won't use
the cat, so you can right-click on the sprite, and choose
delete
. A
sprite
is the official
name for a 2D computer image. Most Scratch projects are built using sprites. You can
ind an overview of all the sprites used in a project in the botom-let corner of the
screen, underneath the
stage
.
Engage thrusters
We will draw our own sprites for this game. Let's start with a simple cannonball!
The cannonball will be the main actor in this game because it will be the object that
"blows things up". There are a few ways to add a new sprite to the stage. We can draw
a sprite, select a sprite from the Scratch library, or import it from our hard drive. It's also
possible to take a picture with a webcam.
To draw sprites, we perform the following steps:
1.
Click on the litle paintbrush icon between the stage and the sprites window.
This will open the
costumes
tab.
