We are starting this week strong with our latest game: Deep Sea Diver. In this flappy bird style game, the player takes control of Zonebot as they travel under the sea. Using the space bar, players have to make sure Zonebot gets through the watery level without hitting any of the cave walls otherwise it is game over. Zonebot gets more points the further they travel, plus there are some special chests along the way to grab (carefully!) to award the player some bonus points.
For this week's Guided Hack, we worked on some animation code. We found the blue background a bit plain for an underwater level so we coded some bubble animation which follows Zonebot as he moves through the water, along with some extra fish which swam in the background. Both animations utilise scratch's cloning blocks - creating clones of each sprite and scattering them around the background and screen using randomisation code.
Definitely save the bubble code to your backpacks as these scripts are very useful for animations on main characters - whether its smoke coming from a flame sword or sparkles glittering on a wand!
It isn't Hackers club without a bit of high score code as well as some cool power-ups. Both these hacks use variables and the fact my members can make their own variables without any hint or help from me just shows how far they have all come in Game Dev Club! We've also had some amazing redesigns today from dogs running through parks to Minecraft creepers floating through the sea.
I also wanted to take a moment to say a heartfelt goodbye to two of my best hacker members: Casper and Atticus. These hacker-extraordinaire have come so far with their coding skills; their inventiveness and ideas never fail to impress me. From Casper's problem-solving skills to Atticus's ambitious coding concepts, these brothers will be very much missed by us at The Code Zone.
Best of luck with your new school and your new adventures - we can't wait to see you both again in the near future 
