CreatiCode Scratch Forum

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.

Introduction

In MIT Scratch, you can already manage dates using the “days since 2000” block. However, if you need a more granular control of date and time, you can use this new block:

 

This block will return the number of seconds that have passed between the given timestamp and the beginning of 2000.01.01.

 
 

Input Format

 

The input is a timestamp, which contains the date, a “T”, and then the time. The date is represented as year:month:day. The time is represented as hour:minute:second. Each field has to be 2 digits, except that the year has to be 4 digits.

The timestamp is assumed to be the local time of the computer that’s running this program. If you want to use the UTC time, which is the same across the world, then append a “Z” at the end of the timestamp, such as “2024.01.01T10:00:00Z”.

If the input is left empty, then the current time is used:

 
 

Calculating Time Difference

 

With this new block, you can easily calculate how many seconds are between 2 timestamps. You just need to run this new block for both timestamps, then calculate the difference between them:

 
 

Converting to Date

 

You can also convert the number of seconds back to a Date object. For example, the program below first gets the number of seconds for a specific timestamp, then create a date object using that result, and we get the same timestamp as our input:

@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.

@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.

@011830-0a42ef84 said in "Important Forum Announcement" - Question:

@info-creaticode am I able to be a moderator/mod helper?

Currently 2 helpers are good enough. If they are overwhelmed we might need to add more. Thanks for the offer.

If you are looking for a particular 3D model that is not in our library, please reply to this topic. If you can include an example picture of it, it would be more clear what you are looking for. We will try to fulfill these requests as best as we can. Please make sure you do not submit duplicate requests by searching for it first.

Thanks
CreatiCode Support

@tyller_

We are working on fixing the cloud blocks. Should be within next few days. Sorry about that.

@jeffreyrb03-gmail

It should not be used to store real secrets like passwords. The reason is that this block runs on the “client” side (the user’s browser), so when the data is sent over the Internet to the webserver, it is exposed in the network package.

However, for most games/projects you build for learning, it should be good enough.

The “private” mode is meant to store data specific for one user. Say 100 users are running your shared game. Suppose each of them can specify a secret passcode that can be used to save or load game progress. You can use this block and use the “private” mode, so the data is separated by user ID, and 2 users can’t see each other’s data.

This issue has been fixed. @CattyPlayzy

@jeffreyrb03-gmail

That’s also a good option, if the hit box must have an empty square hole inside it.

Here is an example of how to do it using “compound shape”. You just need to draw the costume using 4 boxes:

https://play.creaticode.com/projects/670083d55689190abfe5461f

@106809nes

It would be interesting. We can certainly add this feature, but frankly it will be fairly low priority at this point, compared to other features on our list.