The Coach object is actually made up of a large number of component objects, each of which has six degrees of freedom. Alice is an object-based educational programming language with an integrated development environment (IDE). These functions are called for a variety of purposes in an Alice animation program. Unlike Java, C++, and C# the Alice programmer can specify the method that is to be executed when the program first starts running by designating the method that is to handle the event shown in Listing 1. (The allowable types in Alice are shown in Table 6.) Coach's arm turned backwards by 180 degrees. Otherwise, no typing is required to write your source code. Alice is a computer program written in Java by the Stage3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University that makes it easy to write object-based, event driven, 3D animation and game programs with a cast that can be selected from hundreds of available objects. Extract the files and directories from the zip file into a local directory. The options are: The default is the first item in the list. Furthermore, it doesn't require a Windows installation. Like the Haskell functional language, Alice provides facilities to allow a lazy evaluation strategy in programs, unlike the traditional eager evaluation strategy of Standard ML. Figure 17 shows the tabbed pane for the methods tab. Interactively calling methods on the objects that constitute the parts. Table 2. Standard functions belonging to objects. Apparently however, most of the efforts of the Stage3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon are now being dedicated to the development of Alice 3.0. Before getting into the details of the two methods listed above, I need to explain a little about the physical process of writing programs in Alice. The application has several tutorials that supports learning the programming language used in this tool. You create the skeleton for a new method by: This will create a new tabbed pane as shown in Figure 16 that will contain the source code for that method. The orientation of the object as determined by a 3D coordinate system that belongs to the object. If we tell a penguin or any other object, (such as a penguin's wing) to turn to the right or to the left, that object will rotate (yaw) around the green axis that goes through the object's center point. The default value is the object on which the method is called. Object tree with iceSkater object expanded. I find a need to change the value of this parameter much less frequently than the value of the duration parameter for example. Students can construct "If" statements by dragging questions like "is the carrot near the rabbit" or "how tall is the tree" into them. Reduced screen shot of Events area in program edit mode. All rights reserved. An Alice program can service the set of event types shown in Table 5. To begin our analysis, we recognize that from the coach's viewpoint (and from our viewpoint as well), the green axis is pointed up at this point. The world provides more than fifty other functions, most of a very utilitarian nature. Standard primitive methods in Alice. The reason has to do with real estate in the edit pane. The code following this comment causes the skater to assume the viewpoint shown in Figure 11 (but she is still invisible at this point). This is a simple transition effect, of which many are possible. As a result, this object can be animated to blink her eyes. This computation can be performed in a separate thread by. Alice uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to make the learning experience fun and engaging. Everything in an Alice world, except possibly the world itself is an object. Once the student has extracted the files from the zip file, he double-clicks on one of two executable files to start Alice running. In other words, we must know the directions of the red, green, and blue axes relative to the center point of the wing. Listing 3. Sometimes the center point is inside the object and sometimes it is outside the object. Once again, going back to the original pose in Figure 6, that leaves us with two more possibilities. So, we need to be careful as to the limits if we turn the arm to the right or to the left. The main method for this program is shown in Listing 2. And might I add that Alice provides a rudimentary system for writing event-driven programs, making it suitable for writing games and instructional programs for younger children. When you select a view of an object in scene edit mode that causes the axes belonging to that object to be visible, the axis that protrudes up is colored green, the axis that protrudes to the right is colored red, and the axis that protrudes to the front is colored blue. Except for the manual creation of the objects, which is required, the process of setting the stage can be accomplished either manually or using setup code at the beginning of the program (as I will do in a sample program later in this article), or using a combination of the two. This is a parameter whose value you will frequently change. However, in order for us to know how to do that, we must know where the center point is for each wing and we must know what constitutes front, right, and up from the viewpoint of the wing. (TI is still a world leader in DSP.) Alice is an innovative block-based programming environment that makes it easy to create animations, build interactive narratives, or program simple games in 3D. Figure 13. The two doTogether blocks are executed in sequential order with a one-second pause in between. Custom methods may or may not have default parameters, depending on whether or not the author of the method created them. Deleting a Procedure, Control Structures The closest analogy that I can draw to more conventional programming languages such as Java is that world-level methods are sort of like class methods in Java while class-level methods are definitely like instance methods in Java. Download the zip file containing the Alice environment. In addition, there are numerous detailed features (such at type casting) that are expected from a true OOP language which are not available in Alice. When you mentioned that possibility to your teenager as casually as you could, did she roll his eyes and give you a look that means "No way! In addition, most and probably all of the primitive methods have optional parameters with default values. Alice uses a drag and drop environment to create computer animations using 3D models. No formal "Windows Installation" is required. A complete listing of the program discussed in this lesson is shown in Listing 5. This represents a rudimentary form of inheritance, and is the mechanism by which you can create a library of custom classes. Alice ML is a programming language designed by the Programming Systems Laboratory[2] at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. (Alice is also available for the Macintosh, but I'm not qualified to provide any information in that area.). However, in order to conserve local disk space, the classes for many other objects are not routinely included in the local class library. Figure 1. In addition, methods can be stored as part of an object and then loaded into different 3d "worlds" created with Alice. All objects in Alice (except for the world itself) encapsulate twenty standard primitive methods, about twenty-nine standard functions, and a fair number of properties. Double-click on one of the exe files that are extracted from the zip file. • Add a Control Structure This should be one of the early lessons in The Alice Project’s curriculum to learn how to create an animation or interactive project. Teaching teenagers to write computer programs. Screen shot of properties tab in details area for iceSkater object. I will discuss this program in fragments. Creating and animating an Alice world consists of two very distinct steps. (Yes, the world does face in a particular direction.) ), Animating component objects belonging to an object. Listing 1. The center point and the 3D axes belonging to an object travel with and rotate with the object, independently of the other objects in the world. You occasionally need to use the mouse with an image of a number-pad to enter a numeric value. A related concept is also provided termed a promise, allowing a thread to provide a future value that it will compute to another thread. Finally, if we tell an object to roll to the right or to the left, the object will rotate around the blue axis that goes through that object's center point. Many classes for creating 3D objects are stored locally in an area that is called the gallery. To begin with, I repositioned the camera so that it would provide a better view of the center point on the left arm, which is what I wanted to see in detail. The difference between a right roll and a left roll can sometimes be a little confusing. (The only object that has been added to the world in Figure 3 is the ground.). (The main method in Figure 16 doesn't have any parameters.). A sampling of the objects available in Alice. In addition to straight-forward commands, students can also drag traditional programming constructs, such as "if," "loop N times," "do while something is true," etc. You can use that new class to create additional objects in the same world, or you can use it later to create objects for a different world. into a dialog. If you turn an Alice object to the right or to the left, you are rotating the object around one of its three axes. Also, sometimes it can be a little tricky constructing a complex expression by dropping tiles in the correct order. Rather, all objects must be manually created and added to the world in scene edit mode outside of program code. Therefore, I don't expect much in the way of additional documentation on Alice 2.0 to be forthcoming from that group. The code in the first doTogether block causes the skater to rotate her lower leg around her knee and rotate her foot around her ankle during a default duration of one second. However, the main method showing in Figure 16 doesn't have any variables. The code in the edit pane appears in the form of a tree structure that allows you to collapse and expand the nodes of the tree. If you turn an Alice object forward or backward, you are rotating the object around a different axis. Although the terminology is intentionally simplistic, Alice is actually a complete programming environment, supporting arrays, lists, functions with parameters, recursion, and an object-based data model. ask user example:  NumberDialog(question), mouse example:  Mouse.getDistanceFromLeftEdge(), time example:  getTimeElapsedSinceWorldStart(), advanced math example:  Math.IEEERemainder(a,b), other example:  getVector(right,up,forward). To learn more about the primitive methods in Alice, follow the link to the tutorial titled "Appendix A, Behavior of Primitive Methods" in Resources. The use of the drag-and-drop programming paradigm causes Alice to be much more accessible to beginning programming students than languages such as Java, C++, and C# that require extensive keyboard activity for use. Lesson Updated Nov 6th 2019. This causes the lower leg and foot objects to transition from the viewpoints that they have in Figure 11 to the new viewpoints that they have in Figure 12. Note that I made all of the coach's body parts visible in Figure 10 so that we can see the new position of the left arm in the context of the entire body.

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