The Great Race!

For the last 3 weeks my control tech class has been using Etoys an activity on Sugar XO.This activity involves making a picture move using a script such as moving forwards, turning and stopping and many other scripts.

Our task in class was to make 4 cars race around a track at a variable speed so the outcome each time would differ.

For this task to work we would need multiple scripts and pictures of cars.

Firstly we had to draw a track which included 4 cars and 4 different coloured tracks.

Then we had to make the cars follow the track. We done this by using the Test (yes/no) script which allowed us to make a colour on the car touch another colour and turn.

Then we had to apply this for each car to work. We also had to make the cars travel at different speed variations so the outcome of the race would change everytime. This required a lot of testing because the car in the middle had to go slower then the outside cars.

The next step was to include a Reset button, a Start button and a Stop button.

Then the next step was to make it so all cars would stop as one car reached the end of the track.

(here are the scripts for the following above)

The Top left is for the start button, Bottom left is for the reset button which places the cars back in their original position, the middle is for the cars to follow the track and move forwards, and the last script is for the stop button.

Here is a picture of my track and the buttons for reset,start and stop and also the timers and car speeds.

I found Etoys very troublesome for a few reasons.

1. was because whenever I tried to save it would just close the program and I would jsut simply lose all my work. this occurred to me 3 times.

2. I couldn't view the scripts while having the cars move because the scripts would get in the way of the test.

3. the scripts were always in the way of the pictures so i had to close them everytime i finished with them which was very time consuming.

4. the drawing tools on Etoys aren't the greatest tools you could get.

Although these reasons were troublesome I found Etoys interesting because there were so many scripts and other things to play with. If you were to use every script on Etoys i assume it would take at least 2-5 days.

Also I was helped by namelessurl, air sok and G.I Joe

Thanks for reading

DUDE