Balloons
Introduction
You are going to make a balloon-popping game!
Step 1: Animating a balloon
Activity Checklist
Start a new Scratch project, and delete the cat sprite so that your project
is empty. You can find the online Scratch editor at [Link]/scratch-
new.
Add in a new balloon sprite, and a suitable stage backdrop.
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Add this code to your balloon, so that it bounces around the screen:
when
clicked
go to x: 0 y:
0
point in direction
45 ▼
forever
move 1 steps
if on edge, bounce
Test out your balloon. Does it move too slowly? Change the numbers in
your code if you want to speed it up a bit.
Did you also notice that your balloon flips as it moves around the
screen?
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Balloons don’t move like this! To fix this, click on the balloon sprite icon,
and then click the blue i information icon.
In the ‘rotation style’ section, click the dot to stop the balloon rotating.
Test your program again to see if the problem is fixed.
Save your project
Step 2: Random balloons
Activity Checklist
With the code you have now, your balloon will always start in the same
place and move in the same path. Click the flag a few times to start your
program, and you’ll see it’s the same every time.
Instead of using the same x and y position each time, you can let
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Scratch choose a random number instead. Change your balloon’s code,
so that it looks like this:
when
clicked
pick random -150 to
go to x: 150 y:
pick random -150 to
150
point in direction
45 ▼
forever
move 1 steps
if on edge, bounce
If you click the green flag a few times, you should notice that your
balloon starts in a different place each time.
You could even use a random number to choose a random balloon
colour each time:
pick random 0 to
change colour ▼ effect by 200
What happens if this code is put at the start of your program? Does
anything different happen if you put this code inside the forever loop?
Which do you prefer?
Save your project
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Challenge: More randomness
Can you make your balloon start by pointing in a random
direction (between -90 and 180)?
Save your project
Step 3: Popping balloons
Lets allow the player to pop the balloons!
Activity Checklist
Click on your balloon sprite, and then click the ‘Costumes’ tab. You can
delete all of the other costumes, just leaving 1 balloon costume. Add a
new costume, by clicking ‘Paint new costume’ and create a new costume
called ‘burst’.
Make sure that your balloon switches to the right costume when the
game starts. Your code should now look like this:
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when
clicked
switch costume to balloon1-a ▼
point in direction
pick random -90 to
180
pick random -150 to
go to x: 150 y:
pick random -150 to
150
pick random 0 to
change color ▼ effect by 200
forever
move 1 steps
if on edge, bounce
To allow the player to burst a balloon, add this code:
when this sprite clicke
d
switch costume to burst ▼
play sound
pop ▼
Test out your project. Can you pop the balloon? Does it work as you
expected? You’ll need to improve this code, so that when the balloon is
clicked, it shows the ‘burst’ costume for a short time, and is then hidden.
You can make all of this happen by changing your balloon when sprite
clicked code to this:
when this sprite clicke
d
switch costume to burst ▼
play sound
pop ▼
wait 0.3 secs
hide
Now that you’re deleting the balloon when it’s clicked, you’ll also need to
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add a show block to the start of the when flag clicked code.
Try popping a balloon again, to check that it works properly. If you find it
difficult to pop the balloon without dragging it around, you can play the
game in fullscreen mode by clicking this button:
Save your project
Step 4: Adding a score
Let’s make things more interesting by keeping score.
Activity Checklist
To keep the player’s score, you need a place to put it. Avariable is a
place to store data that can change, like a score.
To create a new variable, click on the ‘Scripts’ tab, select Data and then
click ‘Make a Variable’.
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Type ‘score’ as the name of the variable, make sure that it is available
for all sprites, and click ‘OK’ to create it. You’ll then see lots of code
blocks that can be used with your score variable.
You’ll also see the score in the top-left of the stage.
When a new game is started (by clicking the flag), you want to set the
player’s score to 0. Add this code to the top of the balloon’s when flag
clicked code:
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set score ▼ to 0
Whenever a balloon is popped, you need to add 1 to the score:
when this sprite clicke
d
switch costume to burst ▼
play sound
pop ▼
wait 0.3 secs
change score ▼ by 1
hide
Run your program again and click the balloon. Does your score
change?
Save your project
Step 5: Lots of balloons
Popping 1 balloon isn’t much of a game, so let’s add lots more!
One simple way to get lots of balloons is just to right-click on the balloon sprite
and click ‘duplicate’. This is OK if you only want a few, but what if you need 20?
or 100? Are you really going to click ‘duplicate’ that many times?
Activity Checklist
A much better way of getting lots of balloons is toclone the balloon
sprite.
Drag your balloon when flag clicked code (except the score block) off of
the event (don’t delete it), and instead add code to create 20 balloon
clones.
You can now attach the code you’ve just removed to the when I start as a
clone event. You should also replace the hide block in the balloon-
clicking script with a delete this clone block.
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Your balloon code should now look like this:
Test your project! Now when the flag is clicked, your main balloon sprite
will hide and then clone itself 20 times. When each of these 20 clones is
started, they will each bounce around the screen randomly, just as they
did before. See if you can pop the 20 balloons!
Save your project
Step 6: Adding a timer
You can make your game more interesting, by only giving your player 10 seconds
to pop as many balloons as possible.
Activity Checklist
You can use another variable to store the remaining time left. Click on
the stage, and create a new variable called ‘time’:
This is how the timer should work:
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The timer should start at 10 seconds;
The timer should count down every second;
The game should stop when the timer gets to 0.
Here’s the code to do this, which you can add to yourstage:
when
clicked
set time ▼ to 10
time =
repeat until
0
wait 1 secs
change time ▼ by -1
stop all ▼
To add the repeat until time = 0 code, first you’ll need to drag a green
= block, onto your repeat until block:
You can then drag your time variable onto the = block:
Drag your ‘time’ variable display to the right side of the stage. You can
also right-click on the variable display and choose ‘large readout’ to
change how the time is displayed.
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Test your game. How many points can you score? If your game is too
easy, you can:
Give the player less time;
Have more balloons;
Make the balloons move faster;
Make the balloons smaller.
Test your game a few times until you’re happy that it’s the right level of
difficulty.
Save your project
Challenge: More objects
Can you add in other objects to your game? You can add
good objects, like donuts, that give you lots of points, or bad
objects, like bats, that take points away.
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You’ll need to think about the objects you’re adding. Think
about:
How many will there be?
How big is it? How does it move?
How many points will you score (or lose) for clicking it?
Will it move faster or slower than the balloons?
What will it look/sound like when it’s been clicked?
If you need help adding another object, you can reuse the
steps above!
Save your project
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Registered Charity 1129409
