Operation Manual

A beginner’s guide to Scratch
17
Positioning your sprite
Ok, we’ve told a joke. But this play is looking a bit static, so let’s make our
characters move. The first job is to move our two characters to their start points.
In my play, the cat will come in from the left and the boy from the right.
The coordinates of any point on the stage are shown at its bottom-right-hand
corner. Move your mouse around the screen and watch the numbers change.
TASK: Use your mouse to find the centre of the screen. Move the mouse pointer
until it’s exactly over the point x: 0 y: 0. Now let’s position our sprites.
1. Select the cat sprite then, in the Blocks Palette, click on the Motion block
labelled “go to x: [0] y: [0]”.
2. Change the values in the block to x: -240 y: -80. This will take the cat to the far
left of the stage.
3. Next place a “wait [1] secs” block into your script. This will give you time to see
your cat before it moves.
4. Now add a second “go to x: [0] y: [0]” block. Use your mouse to work out the
x coordinate just left of centre on the stage, to which we want to move the cat.
Repeat this process for your other sprite, positioning it slightly to the right of
centre stage. Ideally, the two sprites should move from the edges of the screen to
stand face to face, separated by a small gap.
Now you need to make the sprites tell a joke. Remember to leave a short delay
after each sprite speaks, otherwise they’ll talk over each other. Have a look at the
screenshots to see our code (and our fantastic joke).
You may have
come across x
and y axes when
creating graphs.
the
x coordinate
the
Y
coordinate
Tip...
Use your mouse
pointer to find the
coordinates of a
position on the
stage and make
a note of those
coordinates on
a piece of paper.
Notes:
And here’s our code for the cat sprite.
Does your looks the same?
This is what our code for
the boy sprite looks like.