Posts made by info-creaticode

@notjaldolfyt

Thank you. We will look into this.

@the_true_odst said in Yellow boxes around projects?:

It is a bit buggy though, it doesn’t always show.

Can you let us know where the block count does not show? We are not aware of this issue. Thank you.

@notjaldolfyt

Those orange borders mean those projects are not shared with you. Most likely, they are published (you can play with it) but not shared (you can’t look inside).

@greeniwastakenyt said in Creaticode AI v4 help:

what does socratic mode do?

Hi, you can actually ask XO this question:

@alexanderstevens-62d46173

This issue has been fixed.

@attractive-milk

Our current focus is on AI-related learning and coding tools. We will continue to make XO (the AI assistant) smarter and add more AI blocks.

Other than that, we work on a list of features requested by users (many from this forum), such as addons/extensions, new 3D models, UX optimizations, etc.

Feel free to make new suggestions!

@sirbots

Please share the prompt and screenshot. It should be working fine, but there may be a longer waiting time when there are many image generation requests queued.

@alexanderstevens-62d46173

You are right. Currently there is an issue if you click the block directly in the palette. It will be fixed in a day or two. For now, please drag the block into the editor to run it.

Thank you

@mclark3388-stu-hcpsnc

That feature is originally meant for users with disabilities. But it has been abused by some students, which distracts these students from learning instead of helping.

So we have taken it down for now. We will restore it when we have added additional safeguards against abusing users.

@the_true_odst

I looked at your “Sprite1”, but there is no “create clone of myself as [polkadot]” block in that sprite. Can you double-check on that?

@the_true_odst

Maybe it is a good opportunity to learn how to debug? Here are 2 tutorials that should be helpful:

• https://www.forum.creaticode.com/topic/1568/how-to-debug
• https://www.forum.creaticode.com/topic/1102/creaticode-xo-ai-assistant-debugging

@blackguy-27c5da45

Yes, it usually takes 24 hours for the index to be fully updated.

@the_true_odst

Looking at your code, 2 questions come up:

1. Are you sure those clones with clone ID of “CB1” and “CB2” are both created?

2. Since the code under “when I start as a clone” is all the same except the clone ID, why not use an “or” block to check both conditions?

@jeffreyrb03-gmail

Thanks. We will look into this.

@the_true_odst

That’s true. It can be hard to use when there are many different layers.

How about 2 new blocks?

1. go to layer [LAYER]: LAYER can be any number between 0 and 100

2. my layer: a reporter block for current layer

@the_true_odst

Keep in mind that the layers are relative, and there is no concept of “layer 0”, “layer 1”. What do you expect the value of this new block to be?

@the_true_odst

The code should work. Can you provide a project link where it doesn’t work for you? And what do you mean by “doesn’t work”?

@The_True_Odst

Here is a complete example:

@the_true_odst

You can ask XO about it. Here is an example prompt:

write a program to find out the third digit after the decimal point for a number

@the_true_odst

Can you explain the question with an example? It’s not clear what you are trying to measure.

@attractive-milk

Not as popular as MIT Scratch yet.

And not many employees. Just a small team.

@flores-yorkshireacademy

If you ask our AI assistant, you should be able to find out the issue:

Our original example was using “body rotation speed limit”. I guess you picked the wrong block?

@the_true_odst said in New block: Round by {number}:

What about a new block?

Well, it will be a bit confusing with 2 “round” blocks. Also, as shown, it is fairly easy to work around it, right?

Yes. And another issue is that the round block is from the original MIT Scratch, and we try to keep those blocks unchanged for compatibility.

@the_true_odst

Another way is to scale it up by 100, round to integers (so get rid of the tiny noise value), then divide it by 100:

@attractive-milk

Points taken. This layout was used when there weren’t a lot of user projects yet. We will redesign it to make popular user projects higher on the page. Thank you.

@coder0145

In that case, you can use a forever loop to turn the avatar towards the direction of the camera (its “H-Angle” like this:

@coder0145

Please take a look at this tutorial:

https://www.forum.creaticode.com/topic/312/3d-a-maze-game-difficulty-3

@the_true_odst

Unfortunately, we are using the NodeBB project for this forum, which does not support such customized notifications. There are some settings you can change in your own setting page.

@the_true_odst

We can look into adding some new gradient patterns. It will still have 2 colors, right?

@attractive-milk

We will look into how to allow each user select a different theme on the forum.

For inverting colors, do you mean inverting the color of the costume of all sprites? It might not be straightforward.

@sirbots

Can you share a project link that shows the problem? Thank you

@the_true_odst said in Maybe Creaticode knows the issue::

point towards mouse-pointer” is a bit buggy

We’ll look into that.

@the_true_odst

In that case, you can skip that whole process when you debug the issue since it is unrelated to the issue, right?

@attractive-milk @The_True_Odst

Thanks for the feedback. It appears to be an issue related to computer speed and network latency between the 2 of you.

We will give it more tests and try to improve the performance.

@the_true_odst

Can you pinpoint which block should trigger the “faded version” to appear? And does that block get to run or not?

You can try to use the “print to console” block at a few critical points to help you track the program flow.

Also, it is not clear why this project takes so long to load. Maybe you can make a copy of it, delete all sprites/code unrelated to the hanger, so that you can start it quickly as you debug.

@attractive-milk

How about increasing or decreasing the value with the scrolling wheel on the mouse?

@sirbots

Please try again. The issue should be resolved now.

Introduction

 
The Sun is the center of the solar system, but many people do not know that the Sun itself is traveling across space at a very fast speed (about 137 miles per second!).

In this tutorial, you will learn to build a simulation of the solar system as it moves in space. It will be a good practice on a few key techniques, such as parenting, transformer node, glow layer and trail mesh.

 

 
 

Step 1 - Create a new project

 

Log into the CreatiCode playground, and create a new project. Remove the “Sprite1”, and rename the “Empty1” sprite to “Scene”. This sprite will be used as the starting point.

 
 

Step 2 - Initialize a scene with a starfield background

 

There is no 3D scene for the space. However, we can achieve that in 2 steps:

1. Initialize an “Empty” scene first;
2. Set the sky type to one of the starfield choices.

We can also add a 3D axis temporarily as we develop the program.

 
Here is the code:

 
This is what the stage looks like.

Note that the 3D axis looks quite small for now, since when the sky type is set to the starfield, the camera is zoomed out by default. This won’t be an issue, since we will add a new camera to replace it later.

 
 

Step 3 - Send 3 messages

 

The rest of the program will take 3 steps:

1. Add the Sun
2. Add planets (Earth and Mars)
3. Make them move

We can easily sequence these events using 3 messages like this:

Make sure you use “broadcast and wait” for the first 2 messages, so these 3 steps are taken one at a time.

 
 

Step 4 - Add the Sun sprite

 

Next, add a new empty sprite, and rename it to “Sun”. In that sprite, when it receives the “add sun” message, add a yellow sphere to represent the Sun:

 
Note that we are giving it the name of “sun”, so that we can select it later.

 
 

Step 5 - Add the Follow Camera

 

Since the Sun will be moving in the scene, we will use a “follow camera” to follow the Sun:

You can adjust the distance and angle of the camera as you wish. Set its direction lock to “free” so that the user can drag the pointer to change the view angle.

 
 

Step 6 - Make the Sun glow

 

To make the Sun glow some yellow lights, we need to set its emission color to yellow (by default, it is black), and then add it to a “glow layer”.:

Now there is some glowing yellow light around the Sun:

 
 

Step 7 - Add the Sun’s trail

 

To clearly show that the Sun is moving, we will give it a “tail” using the trail mesh:

The trail has the same color, and it is added to the default glow layer as well. We will see its effect once the Sun starts to move.

 
 

Step 8 - Make the Sun start moving

 

To test what we have so far, we can make the Sun move forward when it receives the “start” message. Don’t worry about the planets for now. Add this to the Sun sprite:

Note that we need to select the “sun” object first before setting it speed. This is because the active “sprite object” in this sprite is the trail of the sun, not the sun object, as we added the trail object after adding the sun object.

After this step, the Sun will be moving when we run the project, leaving a trail behind it:

 
 

Step 9 - Add the Earth sprite

 

Now let’s work on the Earth. Add a new sprite and name it “Earth”. In this sprite, when it receives the “add planets” message, add a smaller blue sphere and move it to the right along the X axis for 200 units:

 
 

Step 10 - Make the Earth move and orbit

 

Now we arrive at the most challenging question of the project: how to make the Earth moves together with the Sun, and also orbit around it?

An immediate answer is to use parenting. If we make the sun object the parent of the earth object, then as the sun moves, the earth object will move as well. Also, if we make the sun object spin around itself, the earth object will orbit around it.

However, there is one issue with this solution: the orbit speed of the earth object is determined by the spinning speed of the sun, so if we add the Mars later, it would orbit around the sun at the same speed.

The solution is to add another intermediate object to help with the orbiting movement. Let’s call it “earthparent”. So the “sun” will be the parent of “earthparent”, and “earthparent” will be the parent of the “earth” object:

After this step, the sun will make the earthparent and the earth move with it (we will add the orbiting behavior later).

 
 

Step 11 - Add trail to earth

 

We will apply the same code as the sun to make the earth object glow and add a trail to it:

Now we can clearly see both of the sun and the earth moving:

 
 

Step 12 - Make earth orbit

 

To make the earth object orbit, we just need to rotate the “earthparent” object:

Note that they are moving along the Y axis, so the rotation should be around the Y axis as well:

 

 
 

Step 13 - Add the Mars

 

Since the code for Mars will be very similar, we will first duplicate the Earth sprite to a new sprite named “Mars”. Then we have to make a few changes:

1. Names: mars and marsparent
2. Color: blue to orange
3. Size: Mars’s diameter is about half that of Earth
4. Distance: Mars’s distance to the Sun is about 1.5 times that of Earth
5. Orbit Speed: Mars’s orbiting speed is about half of that of Earth.

With all these changes, now we have a complete simulation:

 

 
 

Enhancements

 

For some extra practice, here are some ideas to enhance this project:

1. Add other planets in the solar system: Make sure you get their size/distance/orbit speed correctly relative to the Earth.
2. Make the Sun orbit: The Sun actually doesn’t travel in a straight line. It also orbits in a very big circle path. You can illustrate this by adding a new parent object to the Sun itself.
3. Add the Moon: You can add the Moon of Earth that orbits around the Earth.
4. Toggle camera views: You can allow the user to pick which object the camera should follow. Be prepared for some seriously dizzying results!

@sirbots

We will investigate now. thanks for the heads up.

@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.

@attractive-milk

What device are you using? On computers it should show the up/down arrows:

@attractive-milk

Which block are you referring to?

@attractive-milk

You can generate any costume you need using the AI image generation tool: https://www.forum.creaticode.com/topic/1154/search-or-generate-sprite-images-using-ai

You can also tweak them using the “generate variation” tool: https://www.forum.creaticode.com/topic/1876/ai-editing-images-generate-variation

@the_true_odst

That’s a great idea. We can combine it with this earlier request: https://www.forum.creaticode.com/topic/1793/feature-request-better-thumbnail-control?_=1743099954928

Thank you

@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.

@sirbots

Unfortunately, fake blocks may always exist due to AI hallucination.

You can easily spot it when the block image shows up as red in the XO chat window. When that happens, you can just tell the AI that this block doesn’t exist and make it try again.

@tyller_ @SirBots

Yes, it is a new mode we are introducing, where the coding assistant will not directly provide answers, but rather guide you with questions and hints so you can learn to solve the problem yourself.

@sirbots

That should be resolved now.

@sirbots

Problem confirmed. It seems this is because this project is getting too big. It is over 145M when exported. You might need to consider using smaller clips or fewer sounds.