Adventures in Alice Workshop- TIDBITS - June/July 2011

Summary of how to use Scene change

1. If you want to change the ground texture, you need to drop in the super ground and make the original ground invisible and also move it down 200 meters out of the way. If you are not changing the ground texture you don't need superGround.
   
2. To use the fade to black and fade back in.
   1. You must create two world variables storeAtmosphereColor and storeAmbientLightColor.
   2. Setup your camera views
   3. Write the fadeIn and fadeOut methods.
   4. Write methods for each scene.
   5. Put the following in myFirstMethod in this order.
      1. Save the old atmosphereColor and ambientLightColor by storeAmbientLightColor set to ambientLightColor duration = 0 storeAtmosphereColor set to atmosphereColor duration = 0
      2. do the setup for scene 1 such as moving to the camera view for scene 1 and changing the ground texture. You may want to set the duration to 0 for these things so they happen instantly.
      3. Play scene 1.
      4. Fade to black by calling fadeOut
      5. Setup for scene 2 - change camera view, change ground texture and anything else you need to do to setup scene 2
      6. fade back in by calling fadeIn
      7. Play scene 2
      8. fadeOut
      9. Setup for scene 3 - camera view and ground texture
      10. fadeIn
      11. play Scene 3

World variables, class variables, local variables and parameters

• world variable
  
  World variables are for values that either involve several objects (such as a list of objects) or are values that several objects or their methods will refer to.
  
  Create a World Variable under "world properties"
  
  Examples include:
  • All lists of objects should be under world properties (create new variable).
  
  
  
• class variable


A class variable is a property that is related in some way to the object and whose value you may use in several class methods (or functions).

Create a class variable by clicking on the "properties tab" for the class and then select "create new variable".


• local variable


A local variable is for a method (or function) to store a value that is just needed during the execution of the method and then is no longer needed.

An example is you may want to jump up a random amount and then come down that same amount. You could generate a random number and store it in a local variable for that method. Then you can use its value for the jump up part and the same value for the jump down part.

Create a local variable in a method (or function) on the top right of the method where it says "create new variable".


• parameter


A parameter is a place holder for a value that you will pass into a method (or function). This makes a method more flexible to handle different values. For example a method "jump", to jump up and down a certain distance, could have a parameter number that is for "how high to jump." This makes the method more flexible so that you can call it with different values to jump different heights.

Create a parameter in a method or function on the top right of the method or function where it says "create new parameter".