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Shark Chase

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Game

  • The predator follows the prey and the prey is the mouse pointer. If the prey gets caught, you lost.

  • Teaches:

    • Sprites, backdrops

    • Forever loop

    • If… then… conditional

  • Have the prey follow the mouse by constantly going to it.

  • Have the predator follow the prey with a short delay by pointing in its direction and moving a few steps.
  • The player loses when the predator touches the prey.​ Show this by changing the backdrop to a losing screen.

Lesson 1 

Scratch Basics

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  • Different areas of the screen

    • 3 tabs at the top

      • Scripts: (the picture has the scripts tab open)

        • Right gray square: coding area where you
          drag blocks out to

        • Center area full of blocks: where you get
          blocks to code with

          • Organized by color and function

          • drag them out to the coding area and
            connect them to make programs

      • Costumes (if sprites are selected):

        • Add new costumes or draw your own

      • Backdrops (if stage is selected):

        • Add new backdrops or draw your own

      • Sounds:

        • Add new sounds and listen to them

    • Left white square with the cat: the screen that the public/game players see

      • Green flag at the top: start button for the game, corresponds to start block in programming block area

      • Red octagon: stop button for the game

    • Left bottom area: shows sprites (characters) and stage backdrops

      • Add new sprites

    • Title: can be changed in the top left

    • Saving the game: usually autosaves, can be manually saved with a button saying “Save now” at the top right (if it’s already saved, it says “Saved”)

    • Tools:

      • Stamp: copy anything

      • Scissors:  delete sprites

      • Resize: choose the enlarging or reducing arrows to resize sprites

  • Allow some time for the students to explore the blocks on their own.

  • Animate the sprites. The shark sprite can switch costumes quickly to make it look like it's chomping.

  • Insert sound: Add the “chomp” sound effect from the library when the prey gets caught.

  • Make a timer. This is a little more difficult, because it involves variables, so let a student do this challenge if they have previous experience. The player wins if the prey survives for a certain amount of time.

  • Level choice/starting screen: This is also difficult, because broadcasting is used to tell the sprites when the game starts. Create level choice using the ask and answer blocks, and set the step size of the predator to their answer.

Challenges

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. See http://scratch.mit.edu.

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