Hi Randy,
"forward by N" means precisely what it says - it moves the object forward by the specified distance. You can see that if you click on the exclamation mark in the viewer. It is possible to treat it is a measure of speed by setting a script to ticking, effectively specifying that "each tick we move by delta" and naturally, given the values for "tick" and "delta" we can compute the speed by dividing tick into delta and we can influence the speed by changing either tick or delta (for changing the "tick" you can click-and-hold on the little clock in the script; it will show you a little menu where you can choose how fast this script should be ticking).
I think that this will also answer your original question - there is no need to "stop" the object after travelling the specified distance. You can just have it travel the distance directly.
Cheers, - Andreas
----- Original Message ----- From: "Randy Heiland" heiland@indiana.edu To: "'Squeakland'" squeakland@squeakland.org Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 12:05 PM Subject: [Squeakland] drive-a-car newbie questions
Hello,
I'm going to swallow my pride and ask the list... I just finished the drive-a-car (Proj 2) in "Powerful Ideas..." and at the end, after I've built the script to have the car turn in circles, I see the "Challenge" sidebar with the various geometric shapes. But I have no idea how to make a simple square. I don't believe I've learned anything up to this point that tells me how to "stop after traveling distance X" (so I can change my heading). The geometric shapes would seem to involve conditionals. Please enlighten this "professional" programmer :) Related, is there a searchable archive for the Squeakland list? (I found the raw archive)
Also, just some newbie feedback, the term "forward by N" seems a bit confusing. It really is "speed", isn't it? And if so, wouldn't every 1st-grader on understand the concept of speed?
thanks, Randy
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