[Squeakland] [Q]Some questions about scripting an eToy player

[Darius Clarke]

Scott, Andreas,
 
Thank you. That helped.
I'll play with it some more.

Cheers, 
Darius 





-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Wallace [mailto:scott.wallace at squeakland.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 8:34 PM
To: Darius Clarke
Cc: squeakland at squeakland.org; Andreas Raab
Subject: RE: [Squeakland] Re: [Q]Some questions about scripting an eToy
player


Hi, Darius,


I don't have the perfect answer to your query (perhaps Andreas will) but
here are some observations that may be useful:




(1)  An easy way to achieve the effect you want, I think, would be to
capture your gradient-graced sphere as a SketchMorph.  The reason is
that there is a special feature available only to SketchMorphs that
allows you to specify that their appearance not change as they rotate.
To do this:


* First create your object as an EllipseMorph with gradient fill, as
before.


* Then obtain a SketchMorph from it using one of the new morph...
grab... commands from the desktop menu.


* Remove the transparent pixels surrounding the resulting SketchMorph by
using painting... erase pixels of color.. from its halo menu.


* The result is a SketchMorph of exactly the same size and shape and
appearance as your original.


* Go to the SketchMorph's halo menu, choose painting... set rotation
style... don't rotate.


Now you have a ball whose appearance will not change as you change its
heading from a Viewer or from running code.






(2)  The intent of the rotation code is to take the *complete*
appearance of the object when facing in its "forward  direction" and to
rotate it rigidly by the required number of degrees.  That "complete"
appearance includes drop-shadow, gradient direction, etc.


What you are asking for is directly at odds with that.  If you don't
want to use the SketchMorph trick outlined above, then the best
alternative I can think of is for you to give the object a ticking
textual script that serves to counteract the effect of the rotation on
the gradient direction.  Though I couldn't immediately and without
careful thought write down a script that accomplished this, obviously it
must be possible, though perhaps strenuous.  The script would presumably
have code of the form "Sphere costume fillStyle direction: foo" or
something similar.




(3)  A further thought is:  if you want the appearance to be unchanged,
perhaps you shouldn't be changing the heading in the first place.  An
alternative is to forego the built-in heading-changing feature such as
"turn-by" and to do all your motion-related computations more directly
instead.  Though this obviously  has its price, and the resulting
scripts might be too obscure.


Hope these observations help, or at least don't hurt  ;-)

Cheers,


 -- Scott
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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