Steve Kinney
Temporal
Get Kids into Coding with Scratch
4 hours, 3 minutes CC
Course Description
Introduce young minds to the exciting world of programming using Scratch, a visual programming language created by MIT. With hands-on projects like building the "Taco Chase Game," an interactive story and a comprehensive platformer game, students learn fundamental game development concepts and witness how they can make their creations come to life. Learn computer science principles in a fun and interactive way!
This course and others like it are available as part of our Frontend Masters video subscription.
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Published: September 27, 2023
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Section Duration: 14 minutes
Steve Kinney introduces the course by providing course resources and demonstrating some projects created using Scratch. - Course Website: https://scratch-workshop.vercel.app/ - Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/
Steve walks through the contents and terminology of the Scratch editor, including sprites, costumes, backgrounds, code blocks, and the backpack. How some code blocks relate to JavaScript concepts and the purpose of a code block's shape are also discussed in this segment.
Basic Movement & Game Loop
Section Duration: 21 minutes
Steve demonstrates how to change a sprite's position and the direction it's facing on the stage. Switching between costumes to achieve a walking animation is also covered in this segment.
Steve creates a game loop to only allow interactions when the game has been started. Setting different movement styles is also covered in this segment.
Steve implements the ability for sprites to sense when they are touching something and perform a given action.
Taco Chase Game
Section Duration: 45 minutes
Steve demonstrates creating a custom sprite by utilizing the paint option.
Steve creates the initial game loop and instructs students to implement the ability for the sprite to move up and down on the stage.
Steve discusses common problems when using custom sprites and walks through some possible solutions to the game movement exercise.
Steve adds movement to the taco and creates a Score variable that keeps track of the game score.
Steve demonstrates increasing the player's sprite movement speed when the score increases and restricting where the taco can move. Ending the game when the player hits the edge of the stage is also covered in this segment.
Steve creates an enemy that chases the player's sprite around the stage and ends the game if the player's sprite touches it. Creating clones of the enemy that also chase the player is also covered in this segment.
Steve adjusts the game difficulty by creating an enemy clone every three points instead of every point.
Broadcasting & Lists
Section Duration: 15 minutes
Steve demonstrates broadcasting messages and shows how sprites can listen for specific messages and execute code when they receive the intended message.
Steve discusses creating and looping through lists in Scratch, which have a similar function to arrays.
Raining Apples Game
Section Duration: 38 minutes
Steve demonstrates implementing some simple game physics by creating a velocity variable to increase the speed of a falling sprite.
Steve implements a falling loop with random x positioning for the apple sprite. Creating custom reusable code blocks to avoid building the same code multiple times is also covered in this segment.
Steve instructs students to add a playable sprite that falls to the ground and can walk left and right. Steve then walks through setting up the player sprite and demonstrates multiple options for detecting when a sprite touches the ground.
Steve implements the ability to collect apples and adds falling enemies for the player to avoid.
Nano Jump Game
Section Duration: 36 minutes
Steve implements the ability for a sprite to jump with velocity and detect when it touches the ground.
Steve adds obstacles that move across the stage for players to jump over. Removing the obstacles when the reach the edge of the stage is also covered in this segment.
Steve demonstrates utilizing a combination of collision detection, broadcasting messages, and hiding and showing sprites to create a game over screen.
Steve implements the game's start screen and the ability to restart the game when the game ends. A discussion regarding using similar actions for level design is also covered in this segment.
Velocity
Section Duration: 10 minutes
Steve demonstrates adding velocity to movement by implementing acceleration and deceleration to the sprite's horizontal movements.
Steve instructs students to utilize the concepts covered in the previous lesson to implement velocity for the sprite's up and down movements. A possible solution is also covered in this segment.
Platformer Game
Section Duration: 44 minutes
Steve creates the hero sprite and backdrop for the platformer game. Implementing a code block that fixes the sprite falling into the ground without showing the sprite movement is also covered in this segment.
Steve implements the ability for the hero sprite to jump and discusses the pseudo-code for improving the previously created "fix landing" code block.
Steve implements a code block to detect if the hero sprite is touching a platform. The code block keeps track of the hero sprite's position and moves the sprite back to its last known position when the sprite is touching a platform.
Students are instructed to implement the hero sprite's horizontal movement. Steve then walks through a possible solution for adding horizontal movement and implements horizontal collision detection.
Steve updates the jump movement to include velocity and prevent double jumping.
Further Exploration
Section Duration: 13 minutes
Steve discusses the Pen Scratch extension, which allows complete control over drawing graphics. A demonstration of combining custom blocks and the pen to programmatically draw shapes is also provided in this segment.
Steve discusses utilizing the Pen extension to create infinite and finite versions of a snake game. The video sensing tool is also discussed in this segment.
Wrapping Up
Section Duration: 2 minutes
Steve wraps up the course by demonstrating how to look at a shared Scratch project's code.
This was a great course presented by Frontend Masters; I had three 15-year-olds and one 13-year-old go through the course, and they all enjoyed it. The amazing thing was watching them take things further and create their own games (which were actually really tough to beat!).
Jeff Morrissette
Front End Web Developer
Learn Straight from the Experts Who Shape the Modern Web
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