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Fixing a bug in Quiz Break

04 September 2015

One of the games in Scratch Programming in Easy Steps appears to have a bug on the Raspberry Pi, presumably caused by changes to Scratch in the latest version of the operating system. The game concerned is Quiz Break (chapter 6) and the bug is that the clock doesn't draw or work correctly. You can fix it by adjusting the centre of the costume like this:

Click the arrow sprite to go to it
Click the Costumes tab
Click to edit the costume
Click the button to set the costume centre
Click and drag the costume centre to the middle of the arrow stalk, roughly in line with the back-pointing tips of the arrow's head (see picture)
Click OK

Screenshot showing how to edit the arrow's costume centre. You can see the clock in the top-right of the Stage

I was so surprised to find this error, knowing how many times everything was tested and double-tested during production, that I found an old copy of the Raspberry Pi software and tried my book version on it to double check it worked there. I'm not quite sure why that same file doesn't work on the latest version of the Pi software: I had assumed that sprite data (including the costume centre and size) was stored in the Scratch file, and that has always appeared to be my experience, but perhaps there's an issue with loading it.

You can download my original Raspberry Pi demo files and find more supporting resources for Scratch here.

Many thanks to Don Sturtz, who discovered this issue and wrote to tell me about it. Thanks to all the children, adults and teachers who have told me they're learning Scratch with the book too. One of the nice things about Scratch is that it has a vibrant online community, so I often get to see what readers have made using the book and get their feedback. The book covers Scratch 2.0 (the latest version) and Scratch 1.4 (on the Raspberry Pi) and shows readers how to make a range of games and projects that explore Scratch's capabilities. If you're starting Scratch this term, want some new games to build, or want to sharpen your skills, you can download a sample of the book here to find out more about the book.

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