On Tuesday 01 December 2009 04:12:58 am Carl Cravens wrote:
What if the bullet does a "I'm not over the background" test?
But yes, in general Etoys is set up not to make things pretty but to allow the principles to be applied directly.
My nine-year-old likes "pretty". He wants to write Flash games, but getting the tools set up on Linux to achieve "hello world" seems to be a monumental task. :)
You have to make sure that your son is at a stage where he can handle thoughts like "If I were a bullet what would I do....?". Etoys can then enable him to translate those "whens" and "ifs" into a script. The goal here is not so much to create a full-fledged game but to motivate, enable and strengthen such ways of thinking. The output may look crude to people used to flashy (pun intended :-)) games but its author would have learnt many concepts in the process. Etoys is like dumbbells for brain cells.
In this particular case, create a uniquely colored marker morph (normally hidden) and have the bullet "show" it at a hit spot when collision is detected. Other objects can detect overlap with marker's color, hide it and then trigger an 'explosion' script.
Tip: do not use the test "overlaps color" directly in all scripts to detect collisions. Use a separate script "collision" for the test block and then call it from other scripts. When you decide to change the colors, only one script needs to be changed. A good opportunity to introduce the concept of "hiding implementations".
Subbu