Lecture 6 – September 13, 2007

Mike Ware on Alice

"Terence_WashingtonDance.a2w" world from this site: http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/ice-dev/111

"Objects and Arrays" world from this site: http://www.personal.psu.edu/jas86/research/aliceworlds.html

Alice is an object-based but not full-fledged OOP language because it lacks inheritance, encapsulations, and polymorphism.

We looked at an existing program:

attributes

methods

creating events

briefly talked about control structures

if

looping

do together – concurrency

input

key presses

mouse clicks

output

object movements

people talking

sound

We discussed

no syntax errors since Alice environment dictates what you can do

concurrency in Java vs. Alice

in Java, have to use threads

in Alice, it’s built-in

We did not talk about functions – it’s something for you to explore

Alice - Your First World

In-class assignment:

Create a world where a "person" object has a magnet (in the Objects folder) held out in the person's

left hand. Add three metallic objects (in the Objects folder) of your choice to the world and one by one

have the person point the magnet at each object. As the person points the magnet toward an object,

have the object move to the magnet. Have the last object be very large (perhaps a car from the

Vehicles folder) so when the person points at it, the person is instead pulled toward the object WHILE

saying something like "Whoa!" or "Yikes!".

At a minimum, your program should do the above. Then, you can add whatever you would like to your

world: sound, user input, animation, different camera views, etc.

HINTS:

(1) use the vehicle property for help in making the object move in coordination with the person's hand

(2) use the move toward method to make an object move toward another object

(3) use the orient to method to orient objects with the person

RESOURCES:

Alice website: www.alice.org

Alice tutorial: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/alice/Alice0920.htm