One of the many benefits of going to the Scratch @ MIT conference was the opportunity to try out the new version of Scratch. It was only in alpha version but was easily available to us at the conference. Mitch Resnick did a few sessions showing off some of its new features.
Among my favourite were the clone blocks and the webcam sensing features. The clone block allows the project to generate clones of existing sprites on the fly. This seems to me to be a very powerful tool, especially for use in games. The webcam blocks allow the project to respond to areas of the picture where there is movement (or lack of it). This was demonstrated well by Mitch with his balloon bursting project, where balloons appear, float around and can then be popped when the user waves his or her hand onto the balloon.
During the month of November I've got the chance to alpha test Scratch 2.0 and I'm really enjoying it so far. My first project involved a snowman creating a snowman army, all of which were clones of the first sprite. Each clone starts off at 10% size and then grows by a random amount ten times. So the end army looks slightly varied.
Among my favourite were the clone blocks and the webcam sensing features. The clone block allows the project to generate clones of existing sprites on the fly. This seems to me to be a very powerful tool, especially for use in games. The webcam blocks allow the project to respond to areas of the picture where there is movement (or lack of it). This was demonstrated well by Mitch with his balloon bursting project, where balloons appear, float around and can then be popped when the user waves his or her hand onto the balloon.
During the month of November I've got the chance to alpha test Scratch 2.0 and I'm really enjoying it so far. My first project involved a snowman creating a snowman army, all of which were clones of the first sprite. Each clone starts off at 10% size and then grows by a random amount ten times. So the end army looks slightly varied.