Alright, let me tell you about this thing I did recently, kind of a “scratch to scratch” journey, if you will. It wasn’t about starting a company from nothing, nope. It was much simpler, just me messing around with an old project.
Finding the Old Mess
So, I was digging through some old files on my computer, you know how it is, just cleaning things up. And I stumbled upon this Scratch project I made, like, ages ago. It was a little game, nothing fancy, but I remember being quite proud of it back then. Curiosity got the better of me, so I opened it up in the Scratch editor.
Oh boy. Looking at the scripts now? It was pure chaos. Blocks all over the place, tangled connections, variable names that made zero sense. It worked, somehow, but man, it was tough to even figure out how it worked. It felt like looking at spaghetti code, but like, visual spaghetti. I remember thinking, “How did I even make this?”
The Decision: Rebuild!
Seeing that mess kinda bothered me. But it also sparked an idea. What if I took the core concept, the fun part of that old game, and just rebuilt it? Completely new project file, start from a blank slate. Scratch to scratch. Make it cleaner, maybe add a few things I didn’t know how to do back then. Seemed like a decent way to spend a weekend.
Getting Started
First thing I did was just play the old game a few times. Get a feel for the core mechanics again. What was essential? What was just clutter? I jotted down a few notes on paper – real basic stuff:
- Need the main character sprite.
- Need the enemy sprites.
- Basic movement controls.
- Scoring system.
- Some kind of ‘game over’ condition.
Then, I fired up a brand new Scratch project. Blank canvas. Felt good. I started by creating the main character sprite. Didn’t reuse the old art, decided to draw something fresh, keep it simple. Then added the basic movement scripts – left, right, maybe jump. Focused on making that part feel right before adding anything else.
Building Block by Block (Literally)
Okay, movement felt okay. Next up, enemies. Added a new sprite, gave it some simple behavior. Maybe just move across the screen. Used the cloning feature this time, which I barely understood back when I made the original. Made things way easier for spawning multiple enemies.
Then came the interaction part – collision detection. When the player touches an enemy, something should happen. Lost a life, game over, whatever. I set up a simple `if touching [enemy]` block. Ran into a small issue here – it was triggering too easily. Had to tweak the sprite costumes’ hitboxes a bit. Took some fiddling back and forth, testing, tweaking, testing again.
Added a score variable. Made it go up when you dodged an enemy or collected something (added a simple collectible sprite too). Then the ‘game over’ screen. Just a backdrop change and a ‘stop all’ block initially. Kept it super simple.
Refining and Polishing (Kind Of)
Once the basic loop was working – move, dodge/collect, score, potentially game over – I started adding little touches. A simple sound effect when you score. Maybe the enemies speed up slightly over time. Nothing too complex, just small things to make it feel a bit more complete than the original mess.
The biggest difference wasn’t really the features, though. It was the organization. I used custom blocks (My Blocks) this time to group related scripts together. Like, one block for `Initialize Game`, another for `Player Controls`, one for `Enemy Movement`. Made the whole thing so much easier to read and understand. If something broke, I had a much better idea of where to look.
The End Result?
So, after a day or two of tinkering, I had the new version. Functionally, it was pretty similar to the old one, maybe slightly smoother, a bit more challenging. But the real win? The code was clean. Understandable. If I look back at this one in a few years, I won’t want to run away screaming.
Was it revolutionary? Nah. Did I create the next big indie hit? Definitely not. But it was satisfying. Taking something messy and rebuilding it cleanly, just for the sake of it. It was a good reminder of how my own skills or at least my approach to organizing things has improved. Plus, it was just plain fun to mess around in Scratch again without any pressure. Just building something, scratch to scratch.