Forum

I only have a few months left before I graduate high school, and if I'm being honest here, I don't think I'm going to be happy about it. Like, at all. I'm seriously scared about it. For months, I've been in an emotional distress and had several meltdowns about the negative views I had about the future. The reason for this is that because I have Autism and my childish mind is still a thing along with my own soul, I really enjoyed the normal life I used to have all this time for over 13 years. I have a home, I have normal school years, and I have my family. Although, I do totally understand that I have to leave my own family at some point, simply because we're growing up (even though I really hate saying "growing up"). But it's not that I want to stay at home like a child for my whole life. It's because that I have a very big fear about what's going to happen to me in the future. My biggest fear is that when I get a job, I may not be able to or barely have any time do all of the things I usually enjoy doing in the past. This means that literally the Ages Team as a whole could be at a small risk because I'M the main founder and leader of the team. OK, sure, I have Daisy (a.k.a. Wolfi-Girl128), she's one of the co-founders, but it's still not enough. She can't JUST receive the Ages Team ownership just like that immediately and leave me off to work just for money. She also has other kinds challenges to deal with. This also means that if I stay occupied at my job, it's going to drag me away from everything I love and enjoy and all my life will be work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, all the time, and the online gaming community and the Scratch community will be constantly questioning my absence, AND, my teammates will be missing me, like, A LOT. If this is going to happen to me, then my life will be just like a depressed adult, who had nothing to do other than work at a job, go home very late in the night, sleep, wake up early in the morning, and repeat. That is my biggest fear. Yes, I do know that everybody needs to have a job somehow, and yes, I do know that graduating, getting a diploma, and a degree is valuable, but that is just one thing. But in my opinion, getting someone to work constantly, everyday, and keeping them like that for their entire lives without giving them proper breaks is a WHOLE new level of repulsion. And I am STRONGLY against it. I am also against having a MASSIVE amount of free time and not doing work at all, either. I just want 2 things to be balanced. At least, that is a thing on some careers, but for me, I doubt it. All I want is my life to be simple. That's all I ask for, but of course, because I'm still in high school, currently, they have been constantly bugging me by sending me spam emails about "college/scholarship opportunities", "military opportunities", "cap and gown sales", and the list goes on from there. And you wanna know the worst part? I just discovered today that a GRADUATION RING IS A THING IN HIGH SCHOOL, and this totally killed me, because the fact that the education industry has come up with every little pathetic idea and then make it a "graduation" exclusive and then make mass offers and production, is a WAY FAR beyond my thoughts and feelings. Think about this: All of the documents, papers, rings, personal history, diplomas, is too much for a single human being, and I'm not saying this in a way to express my opinion. I'm saying this to express my feelings about all of this. And also, a few weeks ago, the school forced me to take a Spanish test so I can verify my "seal of biliteracy", simply because I speak Spanish. The thing is that I was homeschooled Spanish. I don't write Spanish at all, so I had to skip one part of the test. I don't know why they wanted to me to take the test. Here's the thing: they said that the "seal of biliteracy" will show the world that you speak more than just English. Well, shouldn't people AUTOMATICALLY know that you speak more than just English by simply speaking NOT English? They're basically saying that speaking different languages is not legitimate if you don't have the "seal of biliteracy". What the hell? Anyway, there is another thing that I'm scared of. My dad is also an electrical contractor. He said that if I want to quit studying at anytime, he will give me permission to do so, but that also means that I have to work with him at his job and join him with no exceptions. And even if I refuse to work with him, he's going to aggressively force me to join him, either way, so it's basically impossible for me to escape. For me, I do not want to be an electrical contractor at all because I just don't like the aspects of taking risks, doing wires, work at extreme temperatures, and going from one place to another. My dad also told me that I have to come to him at work so that I can experience the excessive heat from the sunlight while working outside. I told him that I already experienced something like that, and I can clearly predict how it's going to feel, but he didn't believe me. I have also already experienced working at the roof of a hotel at a freezing temperature, where my hands were literally super cold that my fingers were completely frosted with ice, and when I heat my hands up using the car air conditioner, my hands went burning fire internally. Afterwards, he told me that's how it feels to work at extreme temperatures. But I told him that if winter gloves for work and sunscreen is a thing and available on sale at many stores like Walmart, then WHY THE HELL didn't he PROTECT himself all this time, then? That is like accepting your fate of being severely injured and then end up being in a very bad condition where you almost die, but you were luckily saved at a hospital. You see what I'm talking about? If I can describe a smooth life, I can make a list of the things that made it possible: • Keeping your childhood (Useful when you have a kid on your own). • NEVER drink alcohol, smoke, vape, or deal with anybody that involves of doing illegal drugs. • Get an actually GOOD job, which involves giving you at least some breaks that can cool rest your mind off to avoid stress. • Maintaining as a good family. • Plan out and organize your wealth, savings, bills, and taxes. I have many more things I can list, but those are my ideas of life. But still, I really, REALLY big fears about my future. I already have multiple plans for starting a new family and have a kid, but for situations earlier than that, it's in a WHOLE other level. My school counselor told me that he wants to see me walk up to the stage and receive my diploma, but I told him that I will not be actually happy about doing so. OK, hear me out, I am planning to go to college, and maybe University, but I am still worried, including having thoughts of teachers usually involve having strict rules or aggressive encouragement, it'll be too much for me to handle. OH, and guess what? My mom, who is currently ill, have been receiving spam messages from the MILITARY, asking her if the military has gotten any discussions in MY household. Here's my short answer, I will NEVER join the military at all, ever. Look, things have been going really tough for me. To those of you who are reading this, and if you feel like you wanted to help me out, you don't have to. There's not much you can do about it. I'm sharing this with you so that you can be aware of how I'm currently feeling and fearing of. If all of my IRL friends graduate at the same time, and ended up being in forever-loop jobs, then we have no choice but to shut the entire team down, all of our productions, quit the gaming industry, and say goodbye to the community. But this is something I'm kind of feeling right now. In reality, there's a 50/50 or 60/40 chance this will happen. Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't. Who knows... I feel like there is only a 30% chance I will ever succeed in life, despite my intelligence and grades. And even if I do succeed, it gets really annoying afterwards. I'm just gonna hope and pray to God that I can move on safely in life without having any issues. And no, I have not told anyone in my family about this. But I'm about to have family counseling this Thursday, so maybe she can give me some advices, but it still feels like it wasn't enough. I'm just gonna stop here. I don't wanna worry any of ya'll. However, if you have any advice on your own or have anything to say to me, then feel free to drop your comments below. Let's just hope and pray to God that things will go out well. I am having many doubts rn. Some of you may say that my feelings are nonsense, but that's OK. I've been trolled and teased for years because of this. I've grown mature enough to ignore all of it. Now I feel very empty except a little bit of despair inside of me. If things will go out well, then good ig. But if not, then I'm basically doomed. That's it...

As video games has brought many sources of entertainment to our lives that we all can enjoy, we can also try to bring our imaginations to life by developing something as media/software. I even have made a quote to myself that impressed many people whom I met in real life: "An electronic device may also be used for something productive, if you can just let your imagination fly!" - Papichi05 There are plenty of methods to do this. This includes animating, developing games, and even non-electronic games! Developing games is the most popular method. There are many programming languages that you can use, and this includes Scratch. I've been using Scratch for over 5 years, and I still love using it. Scratch is a children's tool where you can create basically anything that comes to your mind. You can create stories, animations, games, etc. Because of how easy it is to use and the interface design, it has gotten so popular and many children (with an average of 13 years of age) has joined in. Even young adults, like myself, has joined in. But because it does have lots of design and moderation flaws, it does have many, MANY issues. So... Is Scratch a really good programming language to use? Well, here's a short answer: Technically, yes, but not really. It has all sorts of tools you need, but it is very limited. Plus, if you share your project, it is completely open-source and it is licensed under the CC-by-SA license. This means that literally anybody in this entire planet can see literally inside of your project, which allows them to view and redistribute your code, art, and even audio. If you make a very complex project or a revolutionary project, then it is easy for someone to download your project source, reupload it, and then claim it as their own, which is NOT OK as we all know it. They also have this thing called "remixing". What it means is that basically, if you push the "remix" button on a project, it literally copies the entire project and you will have all access to it, and that "remix" will be listed on your personal file folder. And when you share it, you can also literally change all of the details and descriptions of the project, which means you can also literally claim it as yours if you wanted to and the website mods won't care at all. Well, OK, sure, a message at the top of the project description that says "Thanks to [original author] for creating the original project" will pop up, but that still wasn't enough. When it comes to remixing, a lot of high-skilled talented people like me will not be really happy with it. When someone remixes a project, they can change anything they want under their heart's content. Recoloring is one of the most popular methods "remixers" can do when they remix. But here is another concern to be aware of: "Most of the recoloring on Scratch, however, is recoloring of the artwork of other people on the same website. Why, you might ask? Because it's so quick, painless and easy to steal someone's art on Scratch and call it your own, you wouldn't believe it. You see, Scratch has this thing called "remixing". Basically, all you need to do is search up a project, click a button to see the inside of it, adjust it to your heart's content, click another button, and boom! You just entirely stole someone's long, labored, beautiful work." "And do you think the Scratch Team cares about the fact that so many people are stealing the art of others just so they can feel special about themselves? You bet your sweet ass they don't! In the Scratch Rules, it says that everything submitted to Scratch is automatically licensed in the Creative Commons. Which means anyone can edit your projects in any way they want." Source: 5 Reasons Why I Hate scratch.mit.edu by PixelatedButterToast on DeviantArt These quotes you just read is one of the biggest controversies that has been occurring on Scratch for many years, and it is still happening today. So, if you are making a project, sharing it is not recommended. But you can still share projects if you want to if you're making a joke project or something, because those kinds of projects that is meant as a joke don't really matter at all. Another big problem is that the website mods doesn't let you to mention that you are not allowing remixing or taking anything from the project. So, a lot of people have suggested that there should be a way to disable remix, but the Scratch Team rejected it because it is "against the main core principle of Scratch, which is that anyone can remix another user's project and add their own ideas and a violation to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License". For me, I have mixed opinions for this remixing culture. It has its own good and bad sides. It's good because people can describe what they changed in their remix and then share it to the original author to help them out. It's also bad because many people, especially to young children, can abuse this feature by simply calling it as theirs, especially if they bypass the remixing method by downloading the entire project and reupload it to their account. But that method, however, isn't tolerated. The good thing about remixing is that it does have a little bit of security on its own, so people REALLY need to provide appropriate credit and calling projects as theirs isn't tolerated. So, in my opinion, the remixing button should ONLY be used by people who are actually smart enough to provide credit and then described what changes they have made. So, if you wanted to share on Scratch, PLEASE be careful on what you're sharing. But luckily, we don't need to be on Scratch anymore. Because you can still do the same programming method on 2 moderations that are WAY better than Scratch itself. Because Scratch has allowed anybody to remix, the source code of Scratch is also available on GitHub. So, people who are familiar with JavaScript decided to copy Scratch and modify it. First off, let's get into Cocrea/Gandi IDE. Both are 2 different things, though. Gandi IDE is a mod of Scratch that implemented lots of new designs and features that Scratch does not have. Same thing with TurboWarp. Cocrea is a website where you publish projects that was made with Gandi IDE. And guess what? Remixing is now optional there! That website does not have to be subject to the CC-by-SA license anymore, so there is no need to be on Scratch! One thing I do have to mention, though, is that the moderation in Cocrea is unknown because it is recently new, so I'll keep an eye out for you. In Scratch, all you get is a square, basic stage, low quality, and 30 FPS. But Gandi IDE and TurboWarp, however features widescreen, JavaScript compiler, 60 FPS, and more. Speaking of compiler, what it does is that it converts the code that you made using blocks into JavaScript to make them a run lot faster and smoother. Scratch's interpreter, however, is a lot slower. If you want to learn more on how Scratch's interpreter works, take a look at the collapsible list. Otherwise, you can skip this part. Scratch's interpreter processor You see, Scratch's interpreter walks an abstract syntax tree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_syntax_tree)at runtime. The script above internally looks like this: { "va[U{Cbi_NZpSOSx_kVA": { "opcode": "event_whenflagclicked", "inputs": {}, "fields": {}, "next": "tzXnZ{8G!xK|t^WAWF{m", "topLevel": true }, "tzXnZ{8G!xK|t^WAWF{m": { "opcode": "control_forever", "inputs": { "SUBSTACK": { "name": "SUBSTACK", "block": "$xf$bq|xl(}RhT-K,taS" } }, "fields": {}, "next": null, "topLevel": false }, "$xf$bq|xl(}RhT-K,taS": { "opcode": "motion_movesteps", "inputs": { "STEPS": { "name": "STEPS", "block": "cw__.I:g}Y~`:5KmO00q" } }, "fields": {}, "next": null, "topLevel": false }, "cw__.I:g}Y~`:5KmO00q": { "opcode": "data_variable", "inputs": {}, "fields": { "VARIABLE": { "name": "VARIABLE", "id": "`jEk@4|i[#Fk?(8x)AV.-my variable" } }, "next": null, "topLevel": false } } Whenever Scratch executes any block, it has to do a lot of things: • It has to look up the block using its ID, and which function the block's opcode corresponds to. • If the block has inputs, those are also blocks, and must go through the same steps as any other block, and so must any deeper inputs. • It manually maintains a stack of blocks, loops, conditions, procedures, etc. • Scratch scripts can be yielded, so all of this has to happen in a way that can be paused and resumed later. • Scratch scripts can be changed while they're running, so caching everything ahead of time is difficult. • etc. There is a lot going on in Scratch whenever it executes even a single block. The interpreter overhead is added on top of the overhead of JavaScript itself. As this code involves many dynamic types, it can be hard for the JavaScript JIT to optimize it. TurboWarp's compiler TurboWarp's compiler, however, removes all of that overhead by converting scripts directly to JavaScript functions. For example, the above script becomes this: const myVariable = stage.variables["`jEk@4|i[#Fk?(8x)AV.-my variable"]; return function* () { while (true) { runtime.ext_scratch3_motion._moveSteps((+myVariable.value || 0), target); yield; } }; Things to notice: • No more looking up block IDs or opcodes: it's just JavaScript. • No more looking up inputs manually: they're just JavaScript arguments. • No more manual state maintaining: it's just JavaScript. • As this is a single JavaScript function, we can't easily implement live script editing. • If the JavaScript JIT notices that a certain variable is always a number, it can theoertically optimize accordingly. • This JavaScript looks very strange compared to typical human-written JavaScript and runs slower because we maintain compatibility with edge case Scratch behaviors. • We manually formatted the JavaScript and renamed some variables to make it more readable. The real code uses variable names like b0 and has no formatting. Of course, this is a very simple script where the interpreter overhead is negligible, which is the case for most projects. It's only when you execute thousands of blocks per frame that the interpreter's overhead becomes significant. Text Source The text I used on the items above came from this site: How TurboWarp runs Scratch projects 10-100x faster | TurboWarp Documentation(https://docs.turbowarp.org/how) You can see that game developers like me wanted the most of the program's performance. For me, I always wanted 60 FPS and all of that. But that's not the only good thing. There are a lot of more useful advanced features than just 60 FPS. And remember how I said that Scratch is open source? Well, guess what? You can literally see INSIDE the blocks of Scratch and learn coding from there, OR you can convert projects to JavaScript using this website: Leopard Another good thing is that custom extensions are now possible, which means you can make your own blocks by writing JavaScript and then load them to TuroWarp or Gandi IDE. There are many useful custom extensions to use from here: TurboWarp Extension Gallery An example of a custom extension code looks like this: Pretty cool, right? And with the coding of the blocks you're making, you can make Scratch do anything you want. Like the picture above, the name for the custom extension is "stretch", which lets sprites stretch horizontally and vertically, just like the 16-bit classic games. Conclusion: There are pros and cons with Scratch and the mods themselves. But after reading all of the stuff I said, is Scratch a really good programming language to use? Well, in reality, it is yes and no. Yes, because with the unofficial mods, you get to have more freedom. And no because you will still have some limited tools and on the Scratch website, your work is vulnerable to thieves, whether the people on Scratch or the Scratch Team realize it or not. But sharing small projects or joke projects to the website is mostly safe to do so. Publishing large, revolutionary projects to Scratch is not recommended. If you want to share your BIG works to the public without leaving it open source, then consider using the TurboWarp Packager and then embed it to a website like GameJolt or itch.io, OR upload it to Gandi IDE, publish it on Cocrea, and the disable remixing. That's the best you can do. You can also switch to a different programming language in order to leave Scratch entirely as a whole. You can use ClickTeam Fusion, Python, Unity, and more. People used to say that Scratch as a whole isn't a real programming language, but it actually is. How? Well, check out the code inside the Scratch blocks on GitHub or view the source code of custom extensions. It should be that obvious. Programming languages is what made possible of bringing imaginations to life on screens that we can entertain and interact with. Not everything is rainbows and flowers, and everything has its ups and downs, including life itself, but if you can take advantage of what you're good at, then one day, you will be able to find a sudden success at some point. And that is it for this topic. I hope you liked my writings, and don't steal, m'kay? - Papichi05.

i havent been here in a while so i just felt like waving via forum post