I've learned mostly by watching other people code, going into projects and seeing how it's done. However, I can't make sense of this string of code that I often run into while looking at scrolling platformers:

when green flag clicked
forever
set x to ((scrollX) + ((480) * (0)))
end

This code is taken from the project 8 Scrolling Demo by SampleProjectsTeam seen here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/583769/

What does ‘*’ mean? I'm rather confused, and always have been by this bit of code. Anyone care to dumb it down for me?

The * means multiplied by.

480 x 0 = 0 so adding 480 x 0 doesn’t do anything. But the other similar terrain sprites add 480 x 1, 480 x 2 etc to kind of spread them out side by side.

PutneyCat wrote:

The * means multiplied by.

480 x 0 = 0 so adding 480 x 0 doesn’t do anything. But the other similar terrain sprites add 480 x 1, 480 x 2 etc to kind of spread them out side by side.

Wow, I never put that together. Thank you very much, this should be very helpful!

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/92682141/ may help you see why this works.

deck26 wrote:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/92682141/ may help you see why this works.

That did help a lot, thank you! I've bookmarked the page so I can reference it again in the future.

MistCat wrote:

deck26 wrote:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/92682141/ may help you see why this works.

That did help a lot, thank you! I've bookmarked the page so I can reference it again in the future.

The big realisation for me was the idea that the screen is just a window onto the ‘real world’ so scrollx/y are just adjustments to the real world coordinates which tell you where something is in terms of screen coordinates. Once you see that the rest is relatively easy.