Introduction

 

On CreatiCode.com, a team of up to 6 users can work on the same project at the same time, using a new feature called “remote edit”. This is a fun experience that allows several people to write code together on their own computers. When one person makes a change, such as adding a block or changing an input value, the other person sees the change right away. This is similar to how we edit the same Google Doc at the same time online.

This tool can be very handy for group projects. You can collaborate using the driver + navigator model, or work on different parts of the same project at the same time.

 
 

How to start a “remote edit” session

 

Here are the 3 steps for multiple users to start a remote edit session:

1. Owner User shares a new project. Only one user will be the owner of the project, who can save changes to the project. The owner user then gives the project’s URL to other guest users, maybe through email or text message. The owner user must also open the project in the playground and wait for the guest users to join.

2. Guest Users open the project in the CreatiCode playground, select the “Edit” menu on top, and then select “Request to edit”, then wait for the owner user to approve the request. Note that this menu option will not be visible if the owner user has not opened the project.

3. Owner User selects which guest users to accept, and then clicks the “Accept Selected” button.

Here is a screen recording for what 2 users would see on their computers (the left half is for the owner user and the right half is for the guest user):

 
After the 3 steps above, both users will be able to change the same project at the same time on their own computers. Note that all users in the session can make changes, but only the owner user can save these changes to the project.

 
 

Tracking Users with the Colored Dots

 

Each user in the session is assigned a colored dot. If a user has selected sprite A, then their colored dot will appear under the icon of sprite A in the sprite info pane. When this user selects another sprite, the colored dot will move as well on all computers. This way, you can quickly find out what other users are looking at or working on.

 
 

Making Code Changes

 

After the remote edit session has started, both users can make changes, such as adding/removing blocks, changing input values, etc. When one user is changing a block, that block will become greyed out on the other user’s screen, which indicates the remote user is making some changes. Users should try to avoid making changes to the same block at the same time, since the changes may conflict with each other, and only one change will be saved.

The screen recording shows what 2 users would see:
 

 
 

Adding/Removing Sprites

 

When a user adds or removes a sprite, it will be reflectedon the other computers as well. Note that you can only add sprites from the standard library or the AI library, or add an empty sprite. If you upload a sprite or image, it won’t be synchronized to other computers.

The screen recording shows what 2 users would see:
 

 
 

How to end a “remote edit” session

 

To end a “remote edit” session, the owner user can click the red “End” button at the bottom. A guest user can also choose to “Exit” the session. If that user is the only guest user left, then the session will be ended as well.

 
 

Best Practices

 

Here are some suggestions on how to make use of this feature effectively:

1. Voice Communication: When the users are not in the same room, it is better to have a voice communication channel, such as a zoom meeting or a phone call on the side. This can make it much easier for the 2 users to decide who will do what.

2. Division of Work: Although these users can make changes at the same time, they can not change exactly the same block at the same time. For example, if one user is updating the input parameters in a block, and the other user is deleting that block, then the result may be unexpected. It is recommended that the users in the team work on different sprites or stacks of blocks to avoid conflicts.

FYI this issue is fixed now.

Hi all,

Sorry there was an outage on our platform earlier this morning. Sorry about the inconvenience. Now we are back online.

CreatiCode

@tyller_

Please give it a try. I would love to hear your feedback. It is always a challenge to know when to give out the answer and when to hold it back, even for human teachers. Our current setting is to make the AI keep providing more hints when the user struggles. Hopefully, that will be good enough for most situations.

Introduction

 

When you need to explain how a project should work, the best way is to make a screen recording of the stage. This short article will explain which tools you can use to record the screen, and also how to share the gif file to get a URL for it.

 
 

Screen Recording on Windows

 

If you are using a Windows computer, we recommend a free tool named “ScreenToGif”, which you can download here: https://www.screentogif.com/

Here is a short video explaining how to use it: https://www.yo utube.com/watch?v=ELfCBzN1Mtc

 
 

Screen Recording on Macbook

 

If you are using a Macbook, you can use a free tool called “Giphy Capture”: https://giphy.com/apps/giphycapture

Here is a short video showing how to use it: https://www.yo utube.com/watch?v=m-4cJMBGfS4

 
 

Share your gif file

 

Once your gif file is ready, you can share it this way:

1. Go to the “My Stuff” page at https://play.creaticode.com/mystuff, and make sure you are logged in.

2. Select “My Files” tab on the bottom left

3. Click the “+Share a New File” button on the top right

4. In the pop up window, click “Click to upload file”, and then select the gif file from your computer.

5. Click the green button that says “upload and share with the CC Attribution license” at the bottom.

After that, you will see the new file in the list of files, and then you can click “Copy file URL” button for that file, which will copy the URL to the clipboard, which would look like this: https://ccdncreaticodecom.b-cdn.net/user-files/BfemEPCxatY6MMAPs/castfireball.gif

@jeffreyrb03-gmail

Acknowledged. This will be fixed soon. Thanks

Introduction

 

In the costumer editor, when the costume is in bitmap mode (as opposed to vector mode), you can use the magic wand tool to select an area with similar colors, then delete the designated area or fill it with a new color.

 
 

Making a Selection

 

To make a selection, you simply need to select the magic wand tool, then click on the area you would like to select. It can be of any shape, and may even contain holes in it:

 

 
Behind the scenes, it uses a “flood fill” algorithm to expand the selected area into neighboring points, so long as their colors are similar to the point you have clicked.

Note that if your computer is slow or if the costume is big, then it will take longer for this tool to determine the selected area.

 
 

Changing the Tolerance Threshold

 

When the magic wand is selected, you can specify a tolerance threshold value. Its value is between 1 and 255, and by default, it is 5. This value represents how much difference in color it would tolerate when it tries to expand the selection area:

• When the value is low, it will make sure the selected area only contains points very similar to the point you have clicked;
• As the value increases, it will include more points even if they are more different from the starting point.

As shown, when you change this value, the selected area will be updated automatically:

 

 
 

Delete or Fill the Selected Area

 

After you have made the selection, there are 2 operations you can do with those points:

• You can click the “Delete” button or press the DELETE key to delete all of those points;
• You can also pick a color from the “Fill” dropdown, then click the “Fill” button to fill the selected area with that color.

 

@jeffreyrb03-gmail

You are right. We should allow users to submit new extensions.

However, the code snippet library should be more like backpack than extension, since it will allow users to modify the code blocks after a snippet is imported. If it is an extension, then users won’t see its implementation and also won’t be able to customize it.

@jeffreyrb03-gmail

There are already packagers like Turbowarp, which works well for generic Scratch projects. And since most of the new CreatiCode blocks don’t work offline, most likely this new packager won’t do much more compared to a Turbowarp packager, right?

So the question is whether it will be justified to dedicate manpower on this feature (as opposed to others) if it is not going to add much additional value.

@attractive-milk

Maybe you can try these ideas?

1. Click the trash bin again to make it stop yelling
2. Make random garbage items fly out of the trash bin
3. Drag and drop garbage items into the trash bin
4. Make the trash bin move to random places on the stage
5. Add multiple clones of the garbage bin of different looks.

@charles-m

This works fine. When would it crash?

@charles-m

Can you please share the project link? We will look into why it crashes.

@charles-m

Please use the draw and clear blocks in the “Pen” category for now.

@dreamsmp_luck

Thank you. We’ll look into this.

@dreamsmp_luck

You can right click on any sprite and select share. Please make sure the code in that sprite is serving one purpose so it is reusable by others.

@drankwarrior4490-gmail

This project can be loaded properly now.

@白刃の亡霊

Thank you for the example.

Image Formats: Vector vs Bitmap

 
In Scratch, a costume image can be a “bitmap” or a “vector” format:

• Bitmap images are stored as a matrix of small square boxes called “pixels”
• Vector images are stored as a few shapes, where each shape is represented by its outline and fill colors.

You can easily tell the difference when you zoom in an image:

 

There are several important benefits when we use a vector image:

First, vector images will always look the same when you scale them up, but bitmap images look worse due to lower resolution when you switch to full screen mode.

Second, a vector image’s file size is usually much smaller than a bitmap for the same content. For example, imagine we need to draw a big square. In bitmap format, we need to specify every pixel’s color, but in vector format we only need to specify the edge length and one color. Therefore, if your project would run faster and smoother when you use vector images

Third, vector images are much easier to modify. Since it is composed of individual shapes, you can move/resize/recolor each shape without affecting other parts of the image.

 
Note that the vector format is not always better. If the image has a lot of details, then the bitmap format should used. For example, if almost every pixel in the image has different colors, then there is no easy way to describe it using simple shapes in the vector format, and we should just store each pixel’s information using the bitmap format.

In summary, choose the vector format if the image is made of a few simple shapes in uniform or gradient colors.

 
 

How to Generate a Vector Image Using AI

 

On MIT Scratch, there are only a limited number of vector images from the library. On CreatiCode, you can use AI to generate new vector images based on your project. The basic idea is to generate a bitmap image using AI, then convert it to a vector format using another AI tool.

Below are the steps:

 
 

Step 1 - Generate a bitmap image

 
As shown, you can start by selecting the “AI” tool for adding a sprite.

 

In the input box, describe the object, specify it is a vector image, and then click “generate”. For example:

 

Important notes:

• This AI tool can only generate images in the bitmap format, even if our prompt says “vector image”. It will try to generate an image that looks like a typical vector image (a few shapes of simple colors)

• The prompt must contain the keyword “vector” to ensure the AI generates an image in this style. You can add additional instructions to further emphasize this, such as “with simple shapes”, “flat vector illustration”, “for costumes in MIT Scratch”, etc.

• You might need to refine the description or regenerate the image.

 
Once you have the image you like, click on it to add it as a new costume.

 
 

Step 2 - Clean up the costume image (optional)

 

The costume will be in bitmap format. Before converting it to a vector image, you might need to clean it up.

For example, the image may contain a shadow. You can use the erazer tool to remove it manually, or use the new magic wand tool to select and delete it.

 
For another example, sometimes the AI generated image has some transparent parts. You can use the “fill” tool to fill some colors in there.

 
 

Step 3 - Convert the bitmap costume to a vector image

 

You can click the “Vectorize” button to convert any bitmap costume to a new vector costume:

 
 
A new vector format costume will be added, and the original bitmap costume is not changed. This is a true vector image, as you can select individual parts and change them:

 
 
Note that the original MIT Scratch provides a button to convert a bitmap image to vector, but it is not really a true vector image. It only represents the entire image as one big shape, and you still can’t edit individual parts.

 
 

Create Vector Images from Drawings

 

Since you can convert any bitmap costume to a vector costume, you can also draw a costume of your own, then convert it.

For example, suppose we use a few simple shapes to create a small house, and then use the “variations” tool to convert it to a cartoon:

 
 
Next, we can convert this cartoon house to a vector image. Note that it needs to be in the “bitmap” mode first, since the “vectorize” button is only available in the bitmap mode:

 
 
 

Search for Vector Images

 

The vector images generated by any user is shared with the community. You can open the AI image tool for sprites (not backdrops), and select the “Vector” type to search for them:

@白刃の亡霊

This seems to be caused by the new buttons we added at the bottom of the costume editor, which takes too much space. We will fix this ASAP.

@dreamsmp_luck

Sorry this issue has been resolved.