Tutorial00. Jumping down the rabbit hole

Transcription

1 Tutorial00 Jumping down the rabbit hole This is your quick introduction into the world of ALICE. ALICE program provides us with an interface that allows the user to create 3D animation and write computer programs using fully rendered computer graphics. To get you started double click on the ALICE icon on your desktop. complete the tutorial. You will read the post-it notes and The tutorial introduces us to some new vocabulary. When every we have a new vocabulary word it will be in bold. Fill in the table with what your definitions of these words are. Then the teacher will share their definitions of these words with you. How are the different? VOCABULARY Words Define in your own words What does your teacher think Interface Objects Object Tree World Detail Area Properties Methods Functions Editor Area Event Area Play Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) Computer programming Algorithm Alice00 Making your own skating routine. Have the ice skater perform some more complicated tasks. Add additional methods to the skater routine so that she uses all of her methods. You can have her reuse methods over and over again. The Ice-Skater should appear to be skating in a fixed routine.

2 Tutorial01 Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. Lewis Carroll Now, it is time to get started on your own world. But first lets show you around the ALICE interface. The tutorial showed you the Object Tree, Detail Area, Editor, Event Area, World Window, and Execution screen. The other nice features are the clipboard and trashcan. If you make a mistake in ALICE you will want to delete the mistake. You can do this in ALICE by dragging the mistake to the trashcan. It will then be removed from the editor. When you do something really cool and want to do it again, and again, and again, then you can drag it to the clipboard in the upper right of the IDE. If you make a mistake and want it to go back to the way it was press the Undo button. (No there is not an undo button for you to take home.) You can also press the redo button to undo your undo. I am sure that is all perfectly clear as mud. Alice01 Image: Gwynedd M. Hudson, 1922 So lets get to work. Click File and then click ew World. (To save space from now on this same action could be written File > ew World.) A pop up window opens that say Welcome to Alice! Select the tab Examples. Click on the LakeSkateDemo world. As the world loads a screen flashes with all the objects being loaded into the world. The objects in this world are a listed in the Object Tree. We want to add a rabbit to our world so we must start at the beginning, with the idea of a rabbit. In the World Window, click on the green ADD OBJECTS button. At the bottom of the screen galleries appear. These are collections of classes. This allows us to find a class of objects quickly. We are looking for a rabbit, so let us look inside the Animals gallery. The first class is the Bunny class. Certainly a bunny is a rabbit, but we are not looking for a bunny. Scroll left and you will come across a Rabbit. This is certainly a Rabbit, but it is not the rabbit we are looking for. Scroll left some more and you will find the WhiteRabbit. This is the rabbit we are looking for. Click on the WhiteRabbit. A pop up window opens and describes the WhiteRabbit class. The window tells the memory size of the object and the number of parts that make up the WhiteRabbit. Click the Add instance to the world button. The name of this button will make more sense when you have a better understanding of classes and objects. An object of type WhiteRabbit is created in the world. A new object name is added to the Object Tree. Notice the name of the object is whiterabbit. The name of an object is called a reference. The name of the reference should be different than the name of the class so the computer made the name lower case. Case matters in ALICE. Click the green DO E button. You are going to want to save your world before you go on. File >Save World. You will need to save all your worlds in a folder on your Z:\ drive. Notice that file type (or extension) for an ALICE world is A2W. Name this world Alice01 and save it in an Alice folder on your Z:\ drive. Right click on the whiterabbit in the Object Tree and select rename. This allows you to give the object a different name. Make harry think I am late, for a very important date! Change the name of the object to harry. Make harry move forward 1 meters. Make harry turn left a quarter of a rotation. Make harry move and turn 3 more times. Harry should finish up in the same location he started in. Make harry say I am late, for a very important date! Save your world File >Save World. PRESS Play.

3 Tutorial02 I m afraid I can t put it more clearly, Alice replied, very politely, for I can t understand it myself, to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing. Lewis Carroll Computer programs are nothing more than a sequence of instructions for the computer to follow. Computers execute the sequence of commands to complete a task, very similar to a recipe, which is complete according to list of directions. A program can be written many different ways to complete a task, but a well-written program should is one that easily read by a human. A computer program should not only tell a computer how to complete the task, should tell another person what you want the computer to do. Computer programming following a list of instructions is called a sequential processing. Alice02 File > ew World. A pop up window opens that say Welcome to Alice! Select the tab Templates. Click on the grass world. As the world loads a screen flashes with all the objects being loaded into the world. The objects in this world are a listed in the Object Tree. We want to add a bunny to our world so we must start at the beginning, with the idea of a bunny not a rabbit. In the World Window, click on the green ADD OBJECTS button. At the bottom of the screen galleries appear. These are collections of classes. We are looking for a bunny, so let us look inside the Animals gallery. The first class in the folder is the Bunny class. Click on the bunny. A pop up window opens and describes the Bunny class. Click the Add instance to the world button. The name of this button should start to make more sense. An object of type Bunny is created in the world, that object name is added to the Object Tree. Notice the reference of the object is bunny. Click on the Bunny Folder. Click the Add instance to the world button. Notice the reference of the object is bunny2. The names of the references have to be different. Click on the Bunny Folder. Click the Add instance to the world button. Notice the reference of the object is bunny3. Click the green DO E button. By Sir John Tenniel You are going to want to save your world before you go on. File >Save World. Name this world Alice02 and save it in an Alice folder on your Z:\ drive. Right click on the bunny in the Object Tree and select rename. Change the name of the object to george. Change the name of the second bunny to herbert. Change the name of the third bunny to walker. THERE ONLY APPEARS TO BE ONE BUNNY, because they are standing in the same place. If you click on the bunny in the World Window you can drag walker to the right. Now you can click on herbert and drag him between george and walker. Save your world File >Save World. PRESS Play. Make george jump up and down. Make herbert jump up, turn one revolution, and then land. Make walker jump up, roll one revolution, and then land. Make george walk around the other two bunnies and end where he started. Add Alice into your world. Make alice resize to twice her size. Make alice resize to half her size. Make alice turn to face george. Make alice move towards george. Make alice resize to half her size. Have alice interact with the other two bunnies by moving to them and changing sizes.

4 Tutorial03 The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. -- Carl Jung In object oriented programming, all data are represented by objects. When we added harry to the world he was a single instance of the class WhiteRabbit. All members of a class share certain characteristics but individual instances of a class may be different. A class is like a cookie cutter. It allows us to make cookies that all look the same. When we create an object of a class we must give it a name (reference). Each instance of a class must have a unique reference so that the computer knows which object we are asking to act. Objects in computer programming are just visual representation of data, so we can see data more clearly. In Alice objects are things that you actually see. Alice allows us to see the data. We will be learning to arrange a sequence of instructions to carry out a task, how to choose the best sequence of events for carrying out that task, and how to design the sequence. Alice03 A. Click on the penguin in the object tree. We see the penguin s details in the lower left part of the screen. The first tab is properties these are the fields of the penguin object(color, opacity, pointofview, and isshowing). Select color purple. The state of the penguin will change from white to purple. Select opacity 0.3(30%). The penguin becomes transparent. Select pointofview position: 0, 0, 0. The penguin will me placed back in the center. Select isshowing false. The penguin will disappear. Make the penguin reappear. These are all states of the object which can be set. B. Create a world having a tortoise (Animals), a chair and a cookie (kitchen/food). Put the cookie on the chair. Cookies are tortoise s favorite snack food. Position the tourtose 2 feet away from the stool. You can change the Tortouses position property so he is exactly 2 feet away. Write a program to have the tortose move to the chair an eat the cookie. To begin with have the use turn to face method to be sure the tortoise is facing the stool. Write a program to move the tortoise to the stool. Have the tortoise wave its arm to say thanks for the cookie. Have the tortoise eat the cookie (make the cookie disappear). By Allen Rackem C. Create a grass world where Mana (people) has a Magnet (object) held out in her hand. Add five metallic objects of your choice to the world. Have Mana point the magnet at each object. As Mana points the magnet toward the object, have the object move to the magnet. Then have the object change colors then disappear. The last object should be very large like a vehicle so when Mana points at it, she instead is pulled toward the object while saying something. When Mana gets to the object she will disappear. Homework03 Create a visual and textual storyboard (at least three storyboards) for the following scenario: An ice skater is practicing her skating routine for the Olympic trials. She will perform a sequence of jumps and spins, while classical music is playing.

5 Tutorial04 World Methods All methodologies are based on fear. -- Kent Beck Methods allow for better organization of your instructions for the program. A program with small well-written methods is easier to read and understand. Small simple methods also allow a bug for quicker smoother testing so that bugs can be found easier. Once a method is defined it can be called over and over again which allows for us to easily reuse the code. This code can then be called from different parts of the program with out having to copy and paste all the instructions. When you start writing a program think of it as a bunch of large tasks, without concern for the details of those tasks. Use your storyboards to help you in figuring out what the tasks are. The process of breaking a problem down into large tasks and then breaking each small task down into smaller tasks is called step-wise refinement. Alice04 A. SNOWMEN TIP HAT Write a new world-level method for the Snowpeople world (from Lesson04). The new method, named fliphats, will be called when the snow woman turns her head to look at the snowman. In the fliphats method, the snowman uses his right arm to grab his hat and graciously tip his hat to the snowwoman and then returns his hat to his head. After the snowman flips his hat, the snowwoman flips her hat. (DCP4.1) B. TRIPLE JUMP METHODS In this lesson you will learn how to create a jump that will work for an object. So lets code the solution. You are now going to add AliceLiddell, WhiteRabbit, and the CheshireCat objects to a grass world and place them in line. Click on the world.myfirstmethod tab in the Editor. Click on the aliceliddell in the Object tree. By Sir John Tenniel Next click on the methods tab in the Detail area. Select the alice move tile and drag it to the Do nothing area in the Editor. Select the up 1 meter. Grab the alice move up tile and drag it to the clip board. Select the clip board and drag to below the alice move up tile. Change the new tile from up to down. Stop and play your world to check to test if your code is working. Alice should jump up and down. If not it is a chance for you to practice debugging. Make each Object jump in a different way. Add instructions to world.my first method so that the cheshirecat and then the whiterabbit jump up and down. Test your program. Add one more ojbect into your world and have it jump at the end. (H2c) Once again, make each Object jump in a different way. That is, no two jump should look similar! All the code in this program is with in the world.my first method. Break each task up into its own method an apply a more modular design. Make a method for each of the objects jumping and then call these new methods from with in the world.my first method. Is your code more readable? Test your code. Homework04 Go back to the Tutorial1 and examine the code in the lakeskater world. Rethink about what is done and in terms of reusable code that exhibit good modular design using many small methods. Apply step-wise refinement to world.my first animation create a chart showing an improved design. Could you generalize the code so that a Penguin could perform the routine? (H2.7)

6 Tutorial05 World Methods All methodologies are based on fear. -- Kent Beck Methods allow for better organization of your instructions for the program. A program with small well-written methods is easier to read and understand. Small simple methods also allow a bug for quicker smoother testing so that bugs can be found easier. Once a method is defined it can be called over and over again which allows for us to easily reuse the code. This code can then be called from different parts of the program with out having to copy and paste all the instructions. When you start writing a program think of it as a bunch of large tasks, without concern for the details of those tasks. Use your storyboards to help you in figuring out what the tasks are. The process of breaking a problem down into large tasks and then breaking each small task down into smaller tasks is called step-wise refinement. Alice05 TRIPPLE JUMP GENERIC In this lesson you will learn how to create a generic jump method that will work for any object. Your new mehod will have a variable parameter. A variable is a name for a memory location that temporarily stores a value. A parameter is a variable whose value is passed from one method to another method. A generic class level method will work with any object in a world. Our method jump will allow any object to jump. However for the method to work we will need to tell the method who will jump when the method is called. The variable that will tell the method who will jump is the parameter. By Sir John Tenniel So lets code the solution. Click on the world in the Object tree. Next click on the methods tab in the Detail area. Click the create new method button, and then name the method jump. You will click on the a create new parameter button in the Editor area. In the Create New Parameter dialogue box, which appears, Name is who and change the Type to be Object. Now a tile appears after the name of the method showing you that this method has an object, obj, parameter. Select who tile and drag it to the Do nothing area. Select the world.jump.who move up 1 meter. Grab the who move up tile and drag it to the clip board. Select the clip board and drag to below the who move up tile. Change the new tile from up to down. Your have created your first generic method. You are now going to add AliceLiddell, WhiteRabbit, and the CheshireCat objects to a grass world and place them in line. Click on the world.myfirstmethod tab in the Editor. Drag and Drop the tile for jump who from the Detail area to the Do nothing area in the Editor. When you do this you will need to select a value for the who. Select aliceliddell, the entire AliceLiddle. Stop and play your world to check to test if your code is working. Alice should jump up and down. If not it is a chance for you to practice debugging. Add instructions to world.my first method so that the cheshirecat and then the whiterabbit jump up and down. Test your program. Since your method will work for any object add code so the ground and then the camera jump. Add one more ojbect into your world and have it jump at the end. (H2c) Add code prior to every one jumping so Alice says, Simon says, Jump! Add code after every one jumped so Alice says, Jump! The Cheshire jumps. The Cheshire disappears, but his smile stays visible. (Hint: use the properties). Homework05 Go back to the mana and the magnets in Lab03 and examine the code in the world.my first. Rethink about what is done and in terms of reusable code that exhibit good modular design using many small methods. Apply stepwise refinement to world.my first animation create a chart showing an improved design. Could you generalize the code so that a car could perform the same action as mana performed on the smaller objects? How many parameters would you need? Write what you think the code would look like.(h2.7)

7 Lab03 Programming. Lab04 Properties. Lab05 Methods. Lab06 Creating methods. Lab07 Methods of methods. Lab08 Creating a class. Quiz Homework03 Story Board Homework04 Properties Vocabulary Homework05 Methods/Properties Vocabulary Homework06 Naming methods. Define method Homework07 I do not know HomeworkReview Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide. --Napoleon I.

8 Tutorial06 Class Methods Don't ask whether you can do something, but how to do it. Adele Goldberg A class in Alice is a structure that defines the data and the methods. A class is a blueprint or prototype that defines the variables and the methods common to all objects of a certain kind. A class shares a common structure and a common behavior. A class can be thought of as a cookie cutter. A cookie cutter is pressed into dough and produces identical cookies. In Alice, all the penguins move and look the same so they are a class. The terms class emphasizes the classifications of structures and behaviors. An object is an instance of a class. You can look around you now and see many examples of real-world objects: your dog, your desk, your television set, your bicycle. An object is a bundle of data, which represents related variables and methods. There can be any number of objects of a given class all at the same time. Objects in Alice have fields and methods. Real-world objects share two characteristics: They all have state and behavior. For example, dogs have state (name, color, breed, hungry) and behavior (barking, fetching, wagging tail). Bicycles have state (current gear, current pedal cadence, two wheels, number of gears) and behavior (braking, accelerating, slowing down, changing gears). Objects are modeled after real-world objects in that they too have state and behavior. An object maintains its state in one or more fields. A field is an item of data named by a reference. An object implements its behavior with methods. A method is a function (process) associated with an object. Alice06 WHITERABBIT WALK In this program we are going to animate the WhiteRabbit to perform a walking action. We will write a new method to make a new rabbit walk. So add a WhiteRabbit instance to a grass world. Select the whiterabbit from the Object Tree. Select create new method button. Name the method stepright. From the bottom of the editor grab Do In Order tile from the bottom of the Code Editor and drag it to the do nothing location. First we need to pick up the right leg of the whiterabbit. Expand the Object Tree for rabbit so you can see the parts of the whiterabbit. Drag the whiterabbit.rleg inside the Do In Order box select move up amount other 0.1. This picks up the right leg so he can start to walk. Press Play and test your work when you execute the stepright method. Now we must propel the rabbit forward and put the right leg down. We will need a Do Together tile from the bottom of the Code Editor. Drag Do Together to below whiterabbit.rleg move up 0.1. Copy and paste the whiterabbit.rleg move up 0.1 in the Do Together block. Change the up to down. Play and test that the rabbits right leg moves up and down. To take a step though he must move forward. Select the whiterabbit move method and select move forward other 0.5. Press Play and test your work. The rabbit should take his first step. Congratulations. Now we need to do it from the left side. Select the whiterabbit from the Object Tree. Select create new method button. Name the method stepleft. Copy the Do In Order block of code from whiterabbit.stepright and paste the Do nothing part of the whiterabbit stepleft block. Change all the rleg to lleg in the stepleft method. Press Play and test your work when you execute the stepleft method. Now we need to step together so lets make our walk method. Create a new whiterabbit method called walk. The method should have a do in order method that calls the stepright and then the stepleft methods. Test your code to see if the rabbit is moving well when you execute the walk method. Add a castle object to your world in the background. Then you will need to reposition the whiterabbit so he can walk across the screen from left to right. Create a new World method called guardcastle. This method should have the rabbit walk across screen turn around and walk back. If you finish early, the rabbit walking animation seems a little stiff. You could make it better by adding motion to the rabbit s arms or head. Give it a try. Would it also be nice if there was more than one rabbit guarding your castle. Homework06 Go back to the Homework04 and examine the code in the lakeskater world. Rethink about what is done and in terms of reusable code that exhibit good modular design using many class methods. Apply step-wise refinement to world.my first animation what are some methods you could create that could help you design for the iceskater class in the future. Story board four methods of tricks an iceskater could have. (Hint: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/figure_skating)

9 Alice07 World Methods When all else fails, read the instructions. L. Iasellio The purpose of this assignment is for you to create an electronic greeting card (any occasion you choose - birthday, get well, etc.). You are to create a storyboard and an Alice world of your choice that must have the following requirements. It is to include the following features: 1. You must have at least 4 objects. 2. The objects must interact with each other in the following ways. There must be at least one occurrence of each of the following between some pair of objects. Two objects should face each other. One object should move toward another object. One object should be a vehicle for another object and the two should move together. 3. One object should say something. 4. You should use 3D text. 5. You must use the DoTogether and Do In Order blocks, including some nesting of these blocks. 6. Your animation should be different than the animations we have done in class. 7. Must include at least three methods (not including World.my first method). You methods must be meaningful (have a purpose) and have meaningful names that correspond to their purpose. 8. At least two of the methods must have one or more parameters. They should each be called more than once with different parameters. 9. The presentation must be nice. 20% of the grade is on presentation. Comment your code. 10. Include your code on an Alice web page. When you export your world to a web page be sure to check the box to include the code and this will be done automatically. 11. Name your world with your last name followed first name and Student ID dash and asg07. For example, your teachers world would be named TeacherMister0003-asg Turn in a storyboard. You should have at least four scenes (and no more than 10) with a picture (sketch), list of objects and a written description of what happens in the scene. 13. Implement your design and create an Alice world. Be sure your animation has all the requirements listed above. 14. Turn in the Alice.a2w files on J:\FOP\PerX under assignments07, and let your teacher see it.

10 Alice08 Extra Credit Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. L. Carroll The purpose of this assignment is to have Alice objects work in teams of with two to three members. All team members must be involved in your animation. Each member of a team is responsible for, at a minimum, being used in a new class-level method. Indicate with a comment at the beginning of each method which objects and teams are involved. Build an interactive world of your own design. The program code must include the following features: 1. At least 2 or 3 objects (instances of different classes) in 2 or 3 different teams. Write new class-level methods for each and save them out. Then, begin with a new world and add instances of your new classes to the world to create the initial scene. 2. At least 1 method that you define must be world-level and involve different teams. 3. At least one of your methods has at least one parameter. 4. At least 2 or 3 behaviors used in methods. 5. At least one method must be called more than once. 6. At least one instance of 3-D text. 7. This assignment should result in an Alice project that seems more like a movie and less like a game. As before, first create a graphical or textual storyboard for each of your objects as well as for the overall animation. Show a draft of your storyboard to your lab instructor before the end of the lab (for full credit). Your instructor may indicate ways you need to change your storyboard if it is too sketchy, too ambitious, too easy, or otherwise inappropriate as a plan for this assignment. A challenging part of this assignment is dividing much of the project along class boundaries so individual team members can conquer the parts independently. Be sure to leave time to resolve problems that may arise when the peaces are put together. Develop your program using stepwise refinement: have a plan for all or most of the program before you begin programming, but implement and test your program in stages. A few of the best projects will be awarded extra credit and those will have the opportunity to show off their programs to everyone in a future lab or class and/or be posted on the course web.