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Testing |
Playing |
Download the minigame source
Summary
Scratch differs a bit from the previous tools on the list because it's designed for educational use. Accordingly it has a very small vocabulary, even intentionally lacking procedures (edit: Scratch 2.0 beta includes procedures). This simplicity means that some of the minigame features, like the infinite playfield, required entirely new solutions. Despite the purely graphical programming language, the code for the Scratch version of the game is in some places more concise and prettier than the other versions. But for prototyping, faster solutions are probably preferable to prettier solutions, so I'll leave Scratch to the educational users.
Pluses
- Friendly community that encourages sharing: http://resources.scratchr.org/
- The limited set of available features might inspire unusual gameplay ideas.
Minuses
- No hierarchical game entities
- No way to make new copies of entities through scripting (by design) (edit: this has been added in Scratch 2.0 beta as clones)
- Visual programming language:
- Getting the scripting tiles snapped into the right places takes some effort.
- No tools for searching or comparing code (
grep
, diff
)
- No general undo (only Undo Delete)
- Slow running speed. The minigame runs uncomfortably slowly in Presentation mode even with just 36 squares on the map.
- Pressing multiple keys at once causes stuck keys when playing on Linux.
- Minimal number of keyboard shortcuts, and they're not shown in the menus
- Variables can't be renamed.
- Limited window layout configurability
Hints
- Read this list of hints and shortcuts: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=759
- Holding Shift-click to repeatedly copy or delete works on the stage (upper right panel), in the sprite library (lower right panel), and in the scripting area (center panel).
- The Boolean operators do not short-circuit. They always evaluate both operands.
- You can click on tiles to start or stop them running them at any time, including ones in the scripting library and in the scripting area.
- The frame rate is better if the current scripting area view contains no running tiles, and even better in Presentation mode.
- The
Touching
sensor only sees
the colors that are visible on the stage. It does not see colors of sprites that are covered up by other sprites.
Links
- < Back to the full list of 2D engines and editors
Updates
29 Jun 2013 |
Added summary from full list |
04 Apr 2013 |
Moved out from the full list onto this separate page |
08 Nov 2012 |
Posted |