Hello, Scratch community. There has been some debate over removing the limits on where sprites can go in the side of the player screen. The reason it's there is so new Scratchers won't lose their sprites. This is a great implementation and helps a lot of beginners to get started.

Fortunately for the more experienced, who see this feature as a stumbling block, there have been workarounds. The problem now is there's been a change; the workarounds sometimes no longer work. The limits are now that the sprite's center can only be between x: -239, 239 and y: -179, 179, and also a certan degree of showing. It used to be just the showing part. IMPORTANT EDIT: Only rotating sprites seem to be affected. There seem to be weird exceptions, like here.

Now there is no real way of getting the (rotated) sprites out of the scene smoothly without drastically altering the center point and adding a whole lot of size in clear coloring. This may help new Scratchers, but it cripples anyone else who actually wants to get sprites off the screen. Now scrolling items, animations, certain other kinds of games, and other countless things have been ruined. Numberless projects have (probably) been affected. This is an aesthetic feature that is incredibly basic to programming.

There have already many good suggestions for the option to remove beginner restraints. Here's one. And another. This proves I am not alone.

NOW THE REAL SUGGESTIONS:

Keep the beginner restraints! Don't altogether remove them, and keep them on by default. They have helped many starting Scratchers, and it's only common sense to have them.

Option to allow sprites off-screen. Perhaps tucked away in the Stage, or maybe in the Edit dropdown. I don't really care where to put it as long as it's there. I like griffpatch's suggestion of putting it in the sprite information pane.

And finally, a “recover sprite” option in the sprite info area, next to all the checkboxes. This would execute these scripts:

go to x: (0) y: (0)
show
go to front
set size to (100) %
clear graphic effects
stop [all v]

Because I am working on several projects that NEED this particular feature, I am not making any more projects that, well, need it until I can move sprites out of the screen again. Earlier I tried to “quit” Scratch, but now I'm back. Just because of the importance of this feature, however, don't expect me to make anything all that big.

Please, please don't ignore this, Scratch Team!

Support for sure. My scrolling games are noticeably jumpy

+1

I support allowing sprites to go off screen as an option. But by default have them stay on screen for the convenience of New Scratchers and Scratchers who are still inexperienced.

I support!

Failord wrote:

Hello, Scratch community. Before we begin I would like to say that my time on Scratch has been a fun and wonderful journey. There have been bumps along the way, like the glitches that came and may still be with 2.0. I hope this is just one of them.

There has been some debate over removing the limits on where sprites can go in the side of the player screen. The reason it's there is so new Scratchers won't lose their sprites. This is a great implementation and helps a lot of beginners to get started.

Fortunately for the more experienced, who see this feature as a stumbling block, there have been workarounds. The problem now is there's been a change; the workarounds no longer work. The limits are now that the sprite's center can only be between x: -239, 239 and y: -179, 179, and also a certan degree of showing. It used to be just the showing part.

First things first - do you have a project showing this? This is the first I've ever heard of a limitation of the sprite center range. I sent a message to the developers about this to see what's going on, but if it should be a bug, we'll need an example to view.

cheddargirl wrote:

First things first - do you have a project showing this? This is the first I've ever heard of a limitation of the sprite center range. I sent a message to the developers about this to see what's going on, but if it should be a bug, we'll need an example to view.

I'm just about to make such a project. I'll link it when I'm done.

EDIT: Maybe it's just a glitch that has to do with rotating- only rotating sprites seem to be affected by the glitch. I will update the main post accordingly.

EDIT: The project I started seeing this glitch in has corrupted and lost several costumes and probably some scripting. I just lost hours of work.

Support. Support. Support. Support. Support. etc…etc…

Support!

Support

Failord wrote:

The problem now is there's been a change; the workarounds no longer work. The limits are now that the sprite's center can only be between x: -239, 239 and y: -179, 179, and also a certan degree of showing. It used to be just the showing part.
IMPORTANT EDIT: Only rotating sprites seem to be affected.

I've tried to get this to happen, but failed. Have you managed to create an example project to show this, or got one you've already made that clearly goes wrong because of it…?


To buck the trend slightly, I can't say I've been 100% convinced about the whole “prevent users from losing their sprites” argument - I'm not convinced that many kids will struggle with it for more than a few minutes (more likely the less savvy adults, actually!), and it seems like a useful learning opportunity when it does inevitably happen (not only in terms of using Scratch, but also the possibilities for starting to interact with the forums, or teachers/helpers, etc. - not that you should create problems that cause users to come here, of course! :D )

Also, it seems like it's not so hard to lose a sprite anyway, even with this ‘safety-net’ in place (e.g. create new project with Scratch Cat, “point in direction 20”, “change x by 400”, “point in direction 90”).


If the constraint was removed entirely, I wonder if there really would be any ‘lost sprite’ issues turning up if instead there was some obvious kind of way to ‘reset sprite’, rather as Failord suggests - so it unhides the sprite, moves to front, points in direction 90, and makes sure it's clearly within the screen bounds, etc…?

I think at the moment there are several more tricky things in the UI than losing a sprite off-screen - for example, the little “i” to get at the sprite info (I never noticed that until MrLog pointed it out to me!)

Ah well!

I don't think the sprite centre is limited to the screen,since I used the trick to scale a sprite up to bigger than the screen and was able to move it outside. The only limit is that part of it must be visible.
(In the past I have used the cheap solution of putting a border of 20px or so around the screen to hide the edges of “offscreen” sprites.)

I support removing these constraints altogether. I don't think it is too much of a problem for new Scratchers anyway - there are already other ways to lose a sprite (like hiding it), it is important for them to learn things like this, and once it has happened once they probably know how to deal with it in future.

I would have a “center sprite” option on the list in addition to “show” (and maybe “reset size”) - this would be helpful for people who want to reset something about their sprite without changing its other attributes.

Bump!

EDIT: I have an example of the glitch. Laser Battle 2.0 has been affected. Go to Singleplayer and in the “pick side” screen, hover over the lower screen. Move the cursor up and down to see how my extra menu options have been messed up by this.

EDIT: I have an example of the glitch. Look for it to be fixed in the re-scripted original Laser Battle 2.0.

Support

+1

Support!

Bump!

Support! <- I cannot say this enough, this feature NEEDS to be added.

I like checkbox in info pane idea the most.

Bump!

Failord wrote:

Bump!

Just one, or is it a Bactrian?

I also post two bumps, to avoid the useless dromedary camels.