A Few Questions

[Ugh2460]

I am really excited to learn and use GP, as a user of Scratch as well as various Scratch 1.4 mods such as BYOB, Bingo, Panther, and others. It seems extremely powerful and packed with useful features. But, of course, I have a few questions about how to use it.

1. Lists: In Scratch, they are set up like variables in that you can manually create them, and in mods like Bingo and Panther, there's a block that creates a list, too. I've tried to figure out how it's done in GP, but only got confusion in return. How can I best replicate the function of all the basic Scratch list blocks in GP?
2. File System: In Bingo, you can open a file browser, allowing the user to open a file or folder of choice. Is this possible in GP, and if so, how is it done?
3. Resolution: Can the resolution be changed from 800x500 to any other size? If so, do tell.

[SimpleSi]

1.

Here are equivalent to default Scratch list blocks

[JohnM]

1. In GP, lists are just values like numbers, strings, colors, etc. The "list" block creates a list, and you can store it in a variable so you can operate on it they way you operate on Scratch lists. SimpleSi's post is a good guide.

2. GP doesn't have a block in the palette to open a file selector, but it would be useful to have one. Thanks for the suggestion!

3. The stage resolution is fixed at 800x500 right now, but GP might eventually support of a few other formats to make it easier to make full-screen GP apps that fit various devices (e.g. phones in portrait mode). If we do that, what sizes or aspect ratios do you think would be the most useful to add?

[Ugh2460]

I'll try to get used to lists. Thank you both for teaching me how to use them! I'll be bookmarking this page until I have it down.

2. GP doesn't have a block in the palette to open a file selector, but it would be useful to have one. Thanks for the suggestion!

I really hope this comes out. I am making a program in Bingo that relies on this feature, and was really hoping to port it over to GP. I'll wait patiently for it, though. If it is possible using blocks from the system palette, please tell me.

3. The stage resolution is fixed at 800x500 right now, but GP might eventually support of a few other formats to make it easier to make full-screen GP apps that fit various devices (e.g. phones in portrait mode). If we do that, what sizes or aspect ratios do you think would be the most useful to add?

I was thinking you could, in the future, be able to set custom resolutions (1763x991, anyone?), but maybe there's something preventing that from being possible. If that's the case, I would think many of the standard SD and HD resolutions would be good options to have as presets, such as 800x600, 1028x768, 1280x720, 1920x1080, as well as various phone and tablet resolutions. A block that could change the resolution in the program would be good for those who would make games with GP, too.

[Gosha]

About the size of the stage, I have noticed that in exported applications, the stage size is 800x600. Is this a mistake or intentional?

[JohnM]

Good catch! Yes, that is definitely an error. The export app is supposed to have the same logical stage size as when you developed it in GP. (It scales when you resize the window, but it should remain 800x500 logical units.)

I'll fix this in the next release.