Sprunki Scratch Phase 3: What’S New

Sprunki Scratch Phase 3: Diving Deeper into Coding Fun

Okay, so you’ve been having a blast with Sprunki Scratch, building cool games and animations. You’ve probably gotten the hang of moving your sprites, adding sounds, and maybe even creating some simple interactions. But guess what? There’s even more coding magic waiting for you in Sprunki Scratch Phase 3! It’s like leveling up in your favorite video game – you’re going to learn even cooler techniques and build even more awesome stuff. Get ready to explore new blocks, try different programming concepts, and become a real coding whiz!

What’s New in Phase 3?

Phase 3 is all about taking your coding skills to the next level. It builds upon what you learned in previous phases but introduces some more advanced ideas. Don’t worry, it’s not super hard! Think of it as adding new ingredients to your favorite recipe to make it even more exciting. In this phase, you’ll be working with more complex concepts, like:

• Variables: These are like special containers that hold information, such as scores or names. You will learn how to create them, change their values, and use them in your projects.
• Lists: Imagine a container that can hold lots of things, like a list of high scores, or the names of all your characters. That’s a list! In this phase, you will learn how to work with them.
• More sophisticated control structures: You will explore more ways to control how your code runs, such as using loops with repeat until blocks and conditional statements with if-else blocks, making your creations more responsive and interesting.
• Custom Blocks: This is like creating your own special commands to do a certain thing. It makes coding much more organized and makes it possible to handle complex tasks easier.

These concepts will allow you to make games and animations that are much more interesting, challenging, and interactive.

Variables: Storing Information

Let’s start by talking about variables. Imagine you’re playing a game and you get points. How does the game remember how many points you have? It uses a variable! A variable is like a labeled box that can hold a number or a word, which can change throughout the game or program.

For example, you could have a variable named “score” to keep track of your game score. Every time you earn points, the number inside that “score” variable increases. Let’s look at some ways how you can use variables:

• Setting a Variable: You use a special block to set the initial value of the variable. For instance, you could start the “score” variable at zero.
• Changing a Variable: You use another block to increase or decrease the variable’s value. When the player earns a point, the code might add 1 to the score variable.
• Using a Variable: Display the value of the variable. For example, you can use a “say” block to display the current score on the screen, so the player can see how well they are doing.

You can create variables for all sorts of things, like the player’s name, the number of lives they have left, the speed of a character, or even a timer. Variables are a core idea in programming, and they open up new worlds of possibilities. Let’s look into a small example.

Example: Creating a Simple Score Keeper

Let’s say you’re making a game where the player clicks on a sprite to earn points. Here is how you can use variables:

1. Create a variable: In the “Variables” palette, click “Make a Variable,” and name it “score”.
2. Set the score to zero: At the start of the game, drag a “set score to 0” block into the scripting area.
3. Increase the score when clicked: In the sprite’s code, add this:
   • Use the “when this sprite clicked” block.
   • Inside, add a “change score by 1” block.
4. Display the Score: Use the “say (score)” block to display the current score in the game.

See how the variable keeps track of the score? Every time you click on the sprite, the score increases, and it shows up on the screen. You can use the same idea to manage other game elements.

Lists: Managing Multiple Items

Now that you are comfortable with variables, let’s move on to Lists. In Phase 3, you will start to use lists to handle multiple items with an organized fashion. Instead of just having one score, what if you had a list of high scores, a list of items in a backpack, or a list of colors for a drawing game? Lists make it easy to handle multiple pieces of information, all in one convenient place.

Imagine you have a collection of your favorite books. Instead of putting each one in a separate box, you can organize them in a single bookshelf. This is like a list in Sprunki Scratch. Here is how Lists can help in your projects:

• Storing multiple items: Instead of needing a different variable for each object or item, lists allows you to store many items of the same type in an organized list.
• Adding and deleting items: You can easily add new items to the list or remove existing ones.
• Accessing items: You can easily find the items you want in your list by accessing their position in the list. You can easily find the item at the first, second or any other given position.
• Using lists in loops: You can perform operations on all items in the list by running them within loops.

Example: Creating a Simple To-Do List

Let’s create a simple to-do list using lists:

1. Create a list: In the “Variables” palette, click “Make a List,” and name it “to-do list”.
2. Add Items to List: Now lets add some items to this list by dragging the “add thing to to-do list” into the script area and add each of your todo items in here.
3. Display the list: You can use a loop to read out and display each item of the list on the screen:
   • Use the repeat loop to loop through the length of the list.
   • Then, use the “item (number) of (list)” block to display each list item.
4. Add New Items: Create a feature that allows user to add new todo items by using an ask block to ask what to add in list and then using “add thing to to-do list” block add that item to the list.

Now your project can store and display a list of things to do. You can even add features to mark items as complete or delete them from the list!

Control Structures: Making Code Smarter

Variables and lists help you manage data, but control structures give your code direction. In Phase 3, you will learn more advanced ways to control how your code flows, making it more dynamic and responsive. Two important control structures you will use are loops and conditional statements. These structures allow code to execute based on certain conditions. It is like giving your code a brain to make it interactive.

More on Loops

You’ve used repeat blocks before. Now it’s time to expand on loops with a repeat until block. Here are ways you can use loops:

• Repeat Until: This loop continues to run until a specific condition is met, such as the player pressing the correct button or a character reaching the edge of the screen. This block keeps going until a condition is true
• While: Loops that execute a block of code repeatedly as long as a certain condition remains true.

Loops help in situations like moving a sprite until it touches a particular color, repeating animations or repeatedly checking for winning conditions in games.

Example: Moving a Sprite Until it Touches a Color

Imagine you want your sprite to walk until it touches a blue wall. Use a “repeat until” loop to accomplish that:

1. Drag the “repeat until” block: Place it in your scripting area.
2. Add the condition: Inside the repeat until block, use the “touching color” condition, and specify the color of the wall.
3. Move the Sprite: Add a move block inside the loop, so the sprite moves each time.

Now, your sprite will keep moving until it touches the blue wall.

Conditional Statements: If-Else Blocks

Sometimes you need your code to make decisions, like changing the sprite’s behavior based on a specific situation. For this purpose, you can use “If-else” blocks to add conditions. Here are a few situations where you can use conditional statements:

• If-Then: This block executes a piece of code only if a certain condition is true. For example, “If the score is greater than 10, then say ‘You Win!'”.
• If-Then-Else: This block lets you execute one piece of code if a condition is true and another piece of code if the condition is false. For example, “If the player touched the coin then add a point, else deduct a life”.

Conditional statements help your programs to make decisions. They are essential for creating more intelligent behaviors in the games and animations you design.

Example: Simple If-Else Game Example

Lets say your program has to check if the player has collected enough coins and based on that winning conditions you want to say “You Win” or “Keep Playing”.

1. Use an If block: Drag the “If” block.
2. Add a Condition: Within if block, add a condition, for example, “if score is greater than 10”.
3. Output if the condition is true: Add “Say You win” block if the score condition is true.
4. Else Condition: Add “else” block if condition is not true and in else add block to say “Keep Playing”.

Now your game has different responses depending on how the player plays the game.

Custom Blocks: Making Your Own Commands

As your projects become more complex, you might find yourself using the same set of blocks repeatedly. Custom blocks are here to help. They allow you to create your own set of blocks, which can be used like any other blocks in Scratch. Custom blocks allow you to create your own special commands, which you can reuse whenever you need them. This is similar to creating your own functions in programming languages.

Custom blocks help in many ways:

• Organization: Helps to break down large projects into smaller parts, which makes things simpler to understand and manage.
• Reusability: You can use your custom blocks in multiple places in your project and saves you time from writing same code again and again.
• Readability: Custom blocks make your code easier to read and follow.

Example: Creating a Custom Move Block

Let’s create a simple custom block to move a sprite a set number of steps with a particular rotation:

1. Click on “Make a Block”: In the “My Blocks” palette.
2. Name the block: Give your block a name, like “move with rotation”.
3. Add Inputs: Add number inputs for step size and rotation angle.
4. Define the Block: Drag the “move (steps) steps” and “turn (angle) degrees” blocks inside the definition of your custom block. Use the inputs you added as the steps and angle.
5. Use the Block: Now you can use “move with rotation” blocks like any other block.

By using Custom Blocks you have created your own special move block and reuse them throughout your project.

Putting It All Together: Building More Complex Projects

With all these new ideas, you can start building more complex projects. Let’s have a look at how to use these skills all together to build great projects. Think about how you can incorporate variables, lists, and loops with conditional statements to do things that you haven’t tried before. Here are some ideas:

• Interactive Story: Use lists to store character dialogues and conditional statements to change the story based on user input.
• Inventory System: Use lists to represent items in the backpack, and use variables to keep track of the number of items.
• Math Game: Use variables to track scores, lists to store questions, and loops to repeat until the player gives a specific answer.
• Multi-Level Game: Use conditional statements to move the player from one level to another based on achieving the game requirements.

Remember to start simple and add complexities gradually. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things. Coding is all about trial and error, so keep practicing and soon you’ll be creating even more awesome things.

Sprunki Scratch Phase 3 opens up a new level of possibilities. With new knowledge about variables, lists, and more complex control structures, your projects will be much more interactive and engaging. Keep practicing your coding skills and always be curious to learn new ideas. The coding world is full of fun, so keep learning, creating, and having fun!