Lab 1: Scratch

In this lab you will create a Scratch marble racer program, submitting it to the online Scratch gallery where you will have to create an account. Note that you will receive a score of 0 if you do not submit your project into the Scratch gallery for the course. More details are given below.

Explanation of Lab Assignments and Grading

Lab assignments are always done with a partner and are generally turned in via Blackboard.  The general criteria for grading labs are:

Blackboard and quizzes.

The TA will demonstrate how to take a quiz on Blackboard. There will be a quiz at the beginning of every lab. The quiz is password-protected, so you must be there in person to take the quiz once the TA reveals the password. Quizzes will be exactly 5 minutes long, beginning at the official lab start time and ending exactly 5 minutes later, so if you are 2 minutes late you only get 3 minutes, and if you are 5 minutes late you can't take it at all.  Usually, each quiz will contain 3-4 questions. The quiz questions will be created from the assigned reading material prior to the lab session. For instance the quiz given during week 2 will have questions taken from the reading assigned for week 1.

Creating Marble Racer

• 1. Get a partner.  All labs should be done with a partner.  You don't need to have the same partner each time, and we may ask you to change partners from time-to-time.  You will take turns (every ~10 minutes) typing/using the mouse.  The two of you will turn in a single lab solution WITH BOTH OF YOUR NAMES ON IT.

1. Go to Scratch web site, here. Click "Join Scratch". Use your NetID (e.g. hwang207) as your Scratch Username. If the name has been registered, append "_uic" at the end (e.g. hwang207_uic).

2. Create the Marble Racer program.  See this YouTube video tutorial, with sections described below (by minutes):

3.  0:00 -   3:35   Description of components of the Scratch window

4.  3:36 -   6:35   Painting the background green, creating track, creating the ball and finish line sprites

5.  6:36 - 16:00   Basic up and down ball movement using arrow keys

6. 16:01- 20:20   Left & Right movement, Slow down when hitting grass, stop at finish line & display message, Timer

1. Your interface should look something like the following:

Submitting your Project

• 1. You should work with a partner for a grade. Only one of you need to submit. In other words, only one submission per group.

1. You should submit the lab at the end of the lab session, by 50 minutes after the hour.  If you do not finish the lab, you may submit the lab by noon on Friday for a 1 point penalty. (1:50 for 1 pm lab, 2:50 for 2 pm lab, 3:50 for 3 pm lab and 4:50 for the 4 pm lab) .

2. Follow the turn in instructions described here. Make sure that when you save the file, in the project description you include the names of both members of the group. 

Points

The points for this lab will be assigned as follows:

Stage 0: The green background is drawn, a ball sprite is created along with some ball movement script.

Stage 1: The ball movement can move controlled by all 4 arrows.

Stage 2: The ball also stops or slows down when it touches the green area.  If it stops when it hits the green area you can start it up again.

Stage 3 (Extra credit): Create another ball with a different set of controls (e.g., w for UP, s for DOWN, a for LEFT, d for RIGHT). The second ball should stop or slow down when it touches the green area.  This allows two people to race at the same time.

DO NOT HESITATE TO ASK THE TAs FOR HELP.