Middle School Tech Classes

Web Class

Use Google Sites to build a website about your favorite ANIMAL

Go to sites.google.com and use your ncalive.org login to create a new website.
Research your favorite animal and put together a site with pictures and information.
Species Survival Status: Is this animal species in danger of extinction? If so, why? Has it lost habitat, lost a food source, or has it been over hunted?
Behavior: Describe interesting features of your animal's behavior. For example: Is there evidence of herding or is it a solitary animal? Does it burrow underground? Does it hibernate, estivate, or migrate in cold weather? Is it nocturnal (most active at night)?
Habitat and Range: What type of biome does this animal prefer (does it live in the desert, swamp, tundra, deep sea, coral reef, tropical rainforest, pond, or other habitat)? Where in the world does it live? List the continent(s), country/countries, and/or smaller areas that it lives in.
Diet: What does your animal eat and how does it get its food? Is it an herbivore (plant eater), carnivore (meat eater), omnivore (eating meat and plants), or something else? Is there something unusual in the way your animal eats? (For example, the flamingo sieves its food from mud while its head is upside down under the water.) Where is your animal in the food web (is it a top predator, like the grizzly bear, is it at the base of the food web, like krill, or is it somewhere in the middle)?
Adaptations: What are the obvious adaptations of your animal to its environment? For example, the giraffe's neck is an adaptation for obtaining leaves that are high off the ground. It also has tough lips to avoid thorns on its main food source.

Code Class

Tynker Lessons

Tynker access was sent out to your ncalive email. 3/22

Code Movement X and Y axis

The x value of an instance is the horizontal position in the current room, measured in pixels. This value can be either 0, positive or minus, where 0 is the left hand side of the room and moving right increases x, moving left decreases x (a negative value for x means that the instance has gone outside the left side of the room).

By setting the x (and y) values you can make the object jump around the room to the position of your choice, or you can add and subtract to them by smaller amounts to give the illusion of movement without actually using the built in speed and direction functions. This should be taken into account when making your games as often one type of movement lends itself to a particular style of game-play more than another.

x=x+5; // moves the player to the right 5 pixels

Intro to Google Sketchup

Go to this site and login with your Google account: https://app.sketchup.com/

Pushing and Pulling Shapes into 3D

With the Push/Pull tool (), you can create a 3D shape from a face or cut a 3D shape out of your model. You can push/pull any type of face, including circular, rectangular, and abstract faces.

The Score Variable

With this action you can set the score to a value of your choice. Note that "score" is a global variable and as such, this action can be placed in any object, meaning that (for example) you could have a destroy event for an enemy object that sets the score to 10 relative. Why relative? This will add 10 to the current score whereas if you do not make it relative it will just set the score to 10!

score = 10; // assign the value 10 to score. This is not relative.

score += 1; // add the value 1 to score. This is relative.

// can also be written as 'score = score + 1'. This is relative.

Paint Bucket and Move Tool.

To add detail and realism to your models, SketchUp enables you to paint materials on faces. Materials are essentially paints that have a color and optional texture (defined within an image file). For example, in the following figure, the roofing material has a blue color and a texture that simulates metal roofing. The siding and grass are also materials that have a color and texture.

The "if" Statement

A simple "if" statement takes this form:

if (<expression>) <statement>

or it can have the slightly more complex "if... else..." form:

if (<expression>) <statement> else <statement>

In this case the expression will be evaluated, and if the (rounded) value is < = 0 (false) the statement after else is executed, otherwise (true) the other statement is executed. It is a good habit to always put curly brackets around the statements in the if", and take a new line in the block for each statement, so the end code will have this form:

if (<expression>)

{

...

}

else

{

}

mp_potential_step

This function lets the instance take a step towards a particular position defined by xgoal/ygoal, all the while trying to avoid obstacles. When the instance would run into a solid instance (or any instance when checkall is true) it will change the direction of motion to try to avoid that instance and move around it. This approach is not guaranteed to work but in most easy cases it will effectively move the instance towards the goal. The function returns whether the goal was reached or not.

if instance_exists(obj_Enemy)

{

var inst;

inst = instance_nearest(x, y, obj_Enemy);

mp_potential_step(inst.x, inst.y, 5, false);

}

The above code first checks to see if there are any instances of "obj_Enemy" in the room. If there are it then finds the nearest one and stores its id in a variable. This variable is then used to tell mp_potential_step to move the instance with the code towards the x/y position of the object that was found at a speed of 5 pixels per step while avoiding only instances flagged as solid.

Next Room

room_goto_next();

Description

With this function you can make your game go to the next room. If this room does not exist, an error will be thrown and the game will be forced to close. Note that the room will not change until the end of the event where the function was called, so any code after this has been called will still run.

You can avoid the error if there is no room by adding in the code below.

Example:

if room_exists(room_next(room)) room_goto_next();

The above code will check to see if there is another room after the current one and if so it will go to that room.

Position of the View in the Room with xview and yview

This variable can be used to get or to set the x axis position for the view in the room. By changing this value you can set the view to a new position, with (0,0) being the upper left corner of the room, or you can reference this variable to ensure that an instance is always drawn at a relative position to the view (see example code below). This value can also be negative and so show an area that is outside of the room

draw_text(view_xview[0] + 32, view_yview[0] + 32, "Score: " + string(score));

The above code will draw the score at a position relative to the x and y coordinates of view[0].

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