Junkbots - Computational Concepts

 Activity 2 - Learning some new concepts

Before starting to program the game, we need to understand the 4 main programming concepts. These are Input, Output, Conditional and Looping.

·       Inputs: This is anything that you; the user, tells the computer. An example could be you moving the arrow keys, or you typing something on the computer screen. All of it is data which you pass to your computer.

·       Output: Opposite to inputs, this is something the computer tells you. It could be some text on your screen, or an image. For example, if you pressed an arrow key to control a character in a game, the output would be the character moving on the screen

·       Conditional: This is basically a question the computer asks itself. If you want your game to end when all the targets are hit, the ‘condition’, you’d program the game to ask itself “are all the targets it?”, IF true then end the game, IF false then don’t end the game.

·       Looping: This is slightly similar to a condition. It means that the code will keep repeating until a certain ‘condition’ is met, or it will repeat forever to check if something is true or false. For example, in our game, the computer will keep asking itself if all the targets are hit, over and over again. When all the targets are hit, the loop will end, and so will the game.

 

Draw a line to match up the words with their meanings:

 

Inputs

Data the computer gives you

Outputs

Testing to see if something is true or false

Conditions

Data you give to the computer

Loops

Looping through instructions until a condition is met

 






Location: Leicester, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Junkbots - Introduction

What are Junkbots & intro to Scratch Junkbots is a project which has been running for many years. It aims to bring sustainability, computing and robotics together. In these activities you'll be creating the robot, which you can control on the screen, and create games with.  In these examples, we'll be using Scratch. Scratch is a type of a visual programming language that can allow you to create your own interactive stories, games or even animations, the possibilities are endless. It sounds simple, but you can easily change it up to make it do whatever you like.
Read more

Junkbots - Spawning some rocks

Image
  Activity 6 - Spawning rocks In this part we’ll start to spawn some rocks. When the green flag is pressed, our code will run. Try to guess what it does . Make sure you click on the “Rock” sprite before coding this part, as the code here will belong to the rock. In this example, the rock is invisible to the user at first, it then goes to a random position . If the rock is touching the edge of the screen it goes to another position, this bit is in a loop. It then becomes visible to the user. All of this happens instantly, so the user won’t be waiting for the game to start. Your task: Spawn a rock onto the screen, in a random position Make sure the rock is not off the screen Try change the code so that the rocks spawn in a place you want.
Read more

Junkbots - Moving the bot

Image
  Activity 5 - Moving the bot When the block with the flag is placed, whatever is under it, is what the program will do when the start flag is clicked. In the case of our game, the bot will move to position (0, 0). These are the coordinates of the main screen. You can change this to whatever coordinates you like, to make the bot have your own starting spot.  Once you have decided where you’d like your bot to start, it’s time to work out how the user will move it around the screen. This will be an input from the user. Using the Control blocks with the motion blocks, you can control what happens when a user presses a certain key. In this example when the up-arrow key is pressed our bot looks up and moves in the Y direction by 10. If you wanted the bot to move left or right, then the X coordinates would change. You can play around with how much you want the bots to move with each step using the motion block. Start your new project, and try make your sprite do the following: Go to a pos
Read more