Operation Manual

This simple animation program can be extended in a variety of ways. Using the New Sprite option just below the stage on the
right side of the Scratch window allows the programmer to add more sprites that can move and play sounds independently.
Adding in the say block from the first example—or the similar think block, which creates a thought bubble rather than a
speech bubble—allows for the creation of an animated comic strip.
More importantly, even this simple example teaches important programming concepts: despite being a mere five blocks long, it
covers sprite movement in positive and negative distances, sound playback and the concept of delays in a program. To introduce
yet another concept—at the risk of driving yourself insane with repetitive noises—try adding a forever block from the Control
block palette (see Figure 10-6). This adds a loop to the program, causing it to run through its list forever—or at least until the
noise becomes too much and you click the red stop button at the top of the stage!
Figure 10-6: Adding an infinite loop to the simple Scratch animation