alice-teacher A whole heap of stuff

[Melanie Lam]

Tom,

Thank you for taking the time to give helpful feedback on your Alice
experience. I've responded in-line:


> I put this on Github as a bug. The "Run" window gets *lost* behind the
> main window if you click a code block... and you can't edit anything. The
> panel where the run area was could maybe have a button that says "Stop"
> that closes the Run window or the Run window could be modal. On a mac btw.
> This gets me all the time, and I know this will confuse students.
>
> Yes - this is an important one. We had tried a fix in the past but it had
issues when an error message popped up. We'll definitely make it a
priority. In the meantime, students can probably be reminded that a 'frozen
window' probably means the run window is open in the background.


> Re distribution. I managed to copy my creation to the streaming media
> folder of the Player - which kinda works but is a bit, er, un-slick. It
> didn't list the files available (as per documentation) but I could open and
> run my exported project file. Alice needs a simple way to share creations.
> Surely Alice should be able to generate an .apk .app .exe. e.g like
> Processing <https://processing.org/> does perhaps?
>

We would like to make this easier and 'slick-er'  for sure...

>
> I was surprised not to find  "power pack macros"... by which I mean, a
> single library item that was WASD (and arrow key, and mouse drag/look
> controls" that I drag into my project - they expand, and I can then tweak
> this code. It seems a hell of a chore to do each control by hand... but
> it'd be nice to tweak them by hand (if need be). Another "power pack" would
> be "Random wanderer" where a character walks about... randomly. Do you get
> what I mean?
>

The closest to what you're asking about is the ObjectMover in
InitializeEventListeners > Add EventListener > Keyboard > ObjectMover

Students could achieve the effect of a random wanderer using object
markers/ hidden axes.



> Also I was surprised that I couldn't choose a theme like "Amazon" and have
> my project populated with trees and snakes and the right sort of trees
> etc... a bit like A-Frame has the environment add-on.
>

When you first start a project, there is the option of a "Blank Slate" or
"Starter" ... it is the second tab when you first create a project. Maybe
easy to miss?

>
> My daughter created a model in Tinkercad, imported it into Blender and
> exported a .dae but it errors saying a texture is missing. I did manage to
> get Blender to make a texture ... but Alice doesn't seem to find it (I
> added it to the project too). Is there a way for this lack of texture (or
> simple models to be imported) to be ignored...
>

Yes, we would like to be able to ignore or provide a default, fallback
texture that students can apply a paint color to in Alice. It may be
necessary.  We have done quite a bit of trial and error with Blender and
we're trying to provide reliable steps to ensure textures are properly
associated. If you come up with some, do share here!  We have some
documentation that is too dense to hand to a student but might help with
troubleshooting.
https://www.alice.org/resources/how-tos/importing-models-overview/

>
> Incidentally I scanned some sculptures in Polycam .gltf -> Blender -> .dae
> and they imported beautifully...
>

Great! Would you share a project showing some of the scanned sculptures?

>
> Once again, brilliant work...
>
> Tom
>
> p.s The Email list site is hopeless.. I can't search it, it's barely
> browsable, can't you use almost anything else? It's not 1999 :-)
>
> We share your frustration. We also have a 2010 forum that may be slightly
more searchable:
https://www.alice.org/forums/

best,

-- 
*Melanie Lam* | Director | The Alice Project
*Entertainment Technology Center | Carnegie Mellon University*
| 415 608 4033 | melanielam at cmu.edu
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