Plain Backgrounds

Hey all,
I'm helping a friend with a bit of school work and we're having some trouble.

1. We are doing a slide type show and need to know how to have a set made up of just a black background and text.
2. we need to insert a small audio clip, and i must be missing where to insert.

If it would be easier to IM let me know and ill give you my AIM or whatever you need.

You could use a billboard object to fill the screen, then make the billboard invisible with the object's opacity property or isShowing properties.

Image files can be imported into Alice as billboards using Alice's Make Billboard feature on the File menu. The billboard could be a plain background, a title, or any image. 3D text can be used for titles. You can use any paint or drawing program that allows you to create an image file, such as a .jpg file, save the file, and then make it a billboard in Alice. I found that .jpg files work well.

The StartScreen object in the flightSimulator world supplied with Alice is a billboard with its opacity set to 30% so that it is semi-tranparent.

You could also get a plain background by making the ground invisible.

See the attached worlds -- both are short files. One demonstrates the use of billboard and 3D text objects, the other is a take off on the traditional "Hello, World!" program. (My apologies to Dr. Kernighan.) I also attached the jpg file I used, which was created using Microsoft paint.

Check the properties tab for an object. You may need to click the plus sign next to the word sounds near the bottom of the properties tab. You can import sound or record sound of your own right in Alice. Then you can use the object's play sound command in a method or set up an event to play the sound.

You can also record new sound or import sound from an object's play sound tile itself.

Be careful -- sound files can be huge, and greatly increase the size of an Alice world, which could, in turn, cause some strange side effects.