alice-teacher Too many objects?

[Don Slater]

I really do not have any other suggestions. I suggest that you run a utility that monitors your CPU activity so that you may actually see what is going on with this student's project when it is running. Alice tends to be a resource hog anyway. When you add an object from the gallery, it will often tell you the size of the object being added. Some things to look at:

-- Are some objects simply scene decoration (they are not being animated, they are just there)? You may add one, and then use the copy tool in the mouse tools in the Scene Editor. This will create a clone of the object, which may not be so resource heavy, but because it is a clone (shallow copy), trying to animate these particular objects can create some weird side effects.

-- Sound? Are there sound files? If so, are they .wav format? If .wav, you may want to create .mp3 versions, which typically are 1/6 the size of a .wav file. Have you inported a sound file, but are using only a small sample from that bigger file. You may want to trim the sample in a sound editor such as Audacity, so that it is only the size that you need. Also, with careful editing, a sound sample can be looped in Alice to good effect.

-- Is the story such that t can be broken into separate Alice programs. You might be able to video-capture each animation, and then stich them together to create the movie animation. Of course this will not work if there is to be interactivity, or a game.

-- More than anything else, encourage your student to keep saving the project, and save different versions along the way. At some point an object will be added that will be the straw that breaks the camels back, and your student is going to want to go back to an earlier, still functional version.

The community may have other thoughts.

All the best,
Don Slater

On Nov 15, 2011, at 7:59 PM, Daryl Detrick wrote:

> Don,
> 
> Did you have any suggestions for my posting?
> 
> Students is creating an e-card on Alice 2.2 that has 40 objects and 30 dummy objects so far.  It is saving very slowly (10-15 minutes).  Any suggestions other than removing objects?  He still would like to put in more objects to have the mummy's, ghosts and skeleton body's spell Happy Halloween.
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions.
> Daryl
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Don Slater [dslater at andrew.cmu.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 2:57 PM
> To: Daryl Detrick
> Subject: Re: Too many objects?
> 
> Done… Let me know if there are any other problems…
> 
> All the best,
> Don Slater
> 
> On Nov 15, 2011, at 2:42 PM, Daryl Detrick wrote:
> 
>> detrickdaryl at warrenhills.org
> 
>