This week’s homework has two parts

1. Draw a person

Describe how to draw a stick-person like the one in the figure. You have two options. Either

describe it in plain English, using very basic elements, such as line and angle, or
use Scratch (including the pen extension) to draw it. See the following question.

In both cases the high level description is something like

Draw the head
Draw the body
Repeat 2 times
- draw one arm
Repeat 2 times
- draw one leg

This is not detailed enough. You need to describe it in higher detail. At this level it is better to have too much detail.

2. Breakout

This part will require you to use Scratch. Each student must create an account at our course’s Scratch page. If you have any problem, ask in the Forum. I will not answer questions outside the forum.

In this part we will make a very basic video game. Using scratch, create 2 objects: a ball and a paddle. There are no bricks in our version. You can start with the example I gave in class, which is also available in our course’s Scratch page. The rules are the following:

The ball bounces when it hits the top, left or right side
If the ball touches the bottom side, the player loses and the game finish
if the ball hits the paddle, the ball bounces
You can move the paddle with left and right arrows

Bonus

Can the player have 3 lives?
How can you show the score?
How can you calculate the score?
Can you use the mouse to move the paddle?
Can you make the game even harder?
What should be the size of the paddle?

More about the game

According to Wikipedia

“Breakout is an arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc., and released on May 13, 1976. It was conceptualized by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, influenced by the seminal 1972 Atari arcade game Pong, and built by Steve Wozniak, aided by Steve Jobs.”
See the game in YouTube: Arcade Game: Breakout (1976 Atari).
The game has a page in IMDB. One of the comments in that page says “Nolan Bushnell offered Steve Jobs a monetary bonus if he could complete build the game with less than 50 chips. Inspired by this, Jobs and Steve Wozniak went on to deliver a product that was made up of 42 chips-this was unusable as programmers couldn’t figure out how to reproduce the game with so few parts.”
On the 37th anniversary of the game’s release, Google released a secret version of Breakout accessible by typing “atari breakout” in Google Images. The image thumbnails form the breakout bricks, turn different colors, and after a ball and paddle appear the game begins (Wikipedia).
- You can see it on https://elgoog.im/breakout/. (Guess why the website has that name.)