TouchDevelop Chapter 8-10
Presenter: Jing Xu
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Outline
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Interactions
Game Board
Tiles and Printing
Interactions
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SMS messages
Social messages
Calendar and appointments
Contacts
Locations, places, maps
Emails
Phone Calls
2D barcodes
SMS messages
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SMS is an abbreviation for Short Message
Service.
The TouchDevelop API allows a script to
generate an SMS message ready for
transmission but it will not actually send it.
Demo: SMS(phone)
Social messages
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Several websites, including Twitter and
Facebook in particular, provide the ability to
post messages for other people to read.
The TouchDevelop API provides facilities for
downloading such messages and for
posting new messages.
Demo: SocialMessage
Calendar and appointments
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The Windows phone provides a calendar
where each day’s schedule, comprised of
various meetings or appointments, is recorded.
A TouchDevelop script has read-only access
to the phone’s calendar and can retrieve all the
appointments for a specific range of times.
Demo: Calendar(phone)
Contacts
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Each contact contains several fields. All
fields except for the name are optional.
We can use the API to access and change the
list of contacts.
When some part of the contact’s information
has been changed, the updated contact may
be saved back to the phone’s contact list by
using the social→save contact method.
Locations&Maps
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A location can be created or described by
using the methods of the locations resource.
Locations&Maps(Cont.)
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In addition to the methods provided by the locations service,
location values can be obtained from several other sources. Here
is a list of the possibilities.
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senses → current location
senses → current location accurate
maps → directions
location method of the Link datatype
center method of the Map datatype
location method of the Message datatype
location method of the Picture datatype
location method of the Place datatype
Demo: Locations(phone)
Emails
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A TouchDevelop script can prepare an email
message ready for transmission, but it does
not actually send it.
Demo: Email(phone)
Phone Calls
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A script can prepare for a phone call by
setting up the number and transferring
control to the phone’s software for making the
call.
Demo: Phone(phone)
2D barcodes
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TouchDevelop provides access to the
Microsoft Tag service which generates twodimensional barcodes for text messages
and for URLs.
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Game Board
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Introduction
Board Datatype
Sprite Datatype
Sprite Collection Datatype
Touching and board event
Debugging game
Sprite
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Sprites are 2D bitmaps that are drawn
directly to the screen.
Sprites are commonly used to display
information such as health bars, number of
lives, or text such as scores.
TouchDevelop allows creation and use of
several types of sprite, such as ellipse,
rectangle, text and picture.
Game program structure
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The game loop event is triggered approximately
every 50 milliseconds
The Board datatype
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Methods of Board datatype:
appearance
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Sprite
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Sprites are associated with particular game
boards and are created by methods of the
Board type
Methods of Board datatype:
creating / accessing sprites
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Obstacles and boundaries
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Obstacles are walls that can be added to
the board
Walls cannot be moved once created.
Moving sprites which encounter an obstacle
will bounce back with a speed determined
by the product of the obstacle’s elasticity and
the sprite’s elasticity.
Methods of Board datatype:
obstacles / boundaries
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Forces and animation
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A uniform force can be applied to all sprites on
the board.
The force need not remain constant.
Methods of Board datatype: forces /
animation
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Demo
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MovingBall(phone)
Springs
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A spring can be added between two sprites to
make them accelerate towards each other.
The force of the spring is proportional to the
distance between the two sprites. The further
they are apart, the stronger the force.
Demo: CreateSpring
Anchors
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One way to produce an unmovable sprite is to
set its friction to 1. An alternative possibility is
to use an invisible anchor sprite.
The create anchor method creates the invisible
sprite with its friction set to 1.0.
The Sprite datatype
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Sprites are movable objects which visually
represent parts of a game.
Position and motion
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A sprite has a current position and a current
angular orientation. Both of these change at
rates determined by the sprite’s speed and its
angular velocity.
Methods of Sprite datatype: mass,
friction, elasticity
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Demo: CreateSprite
The Sprite Collection datatype
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When writing simple games with multiple
objects of the same kind (e.g. multiple shots,
missiles, etc.), it quickly becomes necessary to
group related sprites into collections.
A Sprite Set is an ordered set. A value can
appear at most once in the set. The elements
of the set are ordered by their index positions.
Touching and board events
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These events are triggered when the user
touches the screen and taps, swipes or drags a
finger across the board.
tap board event
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The tap board event fires if there is tap
anywhere on the board except on a position
where a sprite is located.
The tap board event has two parameters x
and y which give the position where the tap
occurred.
Demo: TapBoard
swipe board event
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The swipe board event is similar, except
that the event code is passed four
parameters.
The first two show where the swipe started and
the second two show the extent of the swipe in
the x and y dimensions.
Demo: SwipeBoard
tap sprite in XXX event
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Tap events can be provided for sprites held in
different sprite collections.
Demo: TapinXXX
swipe sprite in XXX event
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The swipe sprite event is similar to the tap
sprite event, except that one’s finger is swiped
across the screen and the extent of the swipe
is passed as two additional parameters.
drag sprite in XXX event
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A drag event does not wait for the finger to be
lifted from the screen, as with the tap and
swipe events. It fires while one’s finger is still
on the screen. It will repeatedly fire while the
finger is in motion across the screen.
Demo: TapinXXX
tap sprite SSS, swipe sprite SSS,
drag sprite SSS
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We can also have events associated with an
individual sprite.
The sprite must be promoted to be a global
data variable
Debugging games
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If debug mode is on, the board will display the
position and speed of a sprite next to the sprite
content. Additionally, the width and height is
displayed as a box around the sprite. Also,
in debug mode, even invisible sprites are
displayed.
Demo: SwipeBoard
Tiles
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Pinning the tile simply means creating a tile
on the home screen
Tiles always have a front side; they
optionally can have a back side. When
there is both a front side and a back side, the
phone’s software randomly flips the tile over to
show the other side.
Tiles
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A tile can be associated with an action in a
TouchDevelop script.
If the script contains more than one publicly
visible action, there can be more than one
tile for the script.
General steps
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Create the action which is to be invoked when
the tile is tapped. The action need not
contain any code at this point.
Run the action to its conclusion.
When the action has finished, a row of
icons appears across the bottom of the
phone’s screen. One of the icons is a
pushpin. This icon should be tapped.
Programming the tile’s content
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A new global data item. It has the name XXX
tile.
Demo-SMS(phone)
Printing via a home server
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A home network may include one or more
printers. These printers would normally be
attached to the network via their WiFi
capabilities.
Two API for connecting to a printer
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The TouchDevelop script provides two API
methods for connecting to a printer.
References
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https://www.touchdevelop.com/book
Questions?
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Thank you!
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