Scratch

Project Notes

Note ... some sounds are a bit loud, so very young children probably ought to play something else!

I developed this as an example for pre-1st year undergrad students of what can be done with Scratch. It took me 3 hours total to complete the first version, and another 2 hours to enhance it to add better progression of difficulty, a spy plane, a bomber, and fix some coding problems.

It is a version of the popular 1980's Atari Missile Command game, with most of the key features present. It starts slowly with only a small number of slow moving incoming missiles, but things hot up as you progress.

You move the crosshair with the mouse and fire a defence missile using the mouse button. You have limited defence missiles in each city, which you must defend, and the number of remaining incoming missiles is displayed. You score more for missiles hit higher in the air. You will gain an extra city for each 10000 points you accumulate, but the missiles come in faster and more come at once the further you go in the game. You will also see a spy plane fly over at high altitude after you have reached 5000 points and a bomber come across at low altitude after 15000 points. The bomb drops by 'gravity', so get it early before it speeds up too much!

After almost a year away from it I tried it recently (22/1/2009) and got 65,410. Its easier with a better spec PC and mouse because firing is more reliable!

Its cool that so many people have enjoyed it over the past year ... Continue to have fun!