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- Disappearing object in Scene Setup on Mac OS X version of Alice 2
- When moving an object around the scene by clicking-and-dragging it, the object disappears from view, going off to infinity.
This happens when the mouse is moved beyond the boundaries of the Scene View window. The information reported from the Mac OS about the mouse location no longer makes sense to Alice, and it cannot effectively render the location of the object in the scene.
- The easy workaround is to click on Undo, and then very slowly move the object.
- As an alternative, use one-shot methods for movement and location of objects.
- Tool-tip persistence on Mac OS X version of Alice 2
- By default, tool-tips (the yellow boxes of explanation that appear when the mouse hovers over different elements of the Alice interface) are enabled in the Edit: Preferences: Seldom Used menu tab. On the Mac OS X version of Alice 2, if a tool-tips has popped up, and you <CMD-TAB> to the next application, the tool-tips does not disappear but will persist in front of the other application.
- To eliminate the tool-tips pop-up, <CMD-TAB> back to Alice, and move the mouse to a place so that the tool-tip disappears.
- You may also wish to disable tool-tips in the Edit: Preferences: Seldom Used menu tab. See the following image.
- Tutorial Related
- On Page 69 of the Penguin Tutorial, if you click on the black space above and below the picture, Alice throws an error
- Starting tutorials with the Properties or Functions tab in focus in the World's details will cause the tutorials to break
- Using the File menu: Export Video command does not always work -- Under investigation
- There is a file menu option for exporting an Alice world to video. This option works well if there are no sound clips in the animation. Unfortunately with sound, our exporter does not recognize that an animation may be over, because the background music may still be playing. For example, if I have a 45 second animation, but I am using as background music a 3 minute and 15 second sound clip, then our exporter will want to record all 3 minutes and 15 seconds. We are working on resolving this problem at the present time.
- See FAQ for Alice 2 for more information
- Sound-related
- Alice can play most but not all mp3 and wav files
- Open your sound file in an audio editor, such as Audacity, and resave your file as either a .wav or a .mp3. If for some reason the .mp3 still does not work, save the file as a .wav.
- The "record sound" button of the Mac version of Alice does not work. We recommend recording the sound in an audio editor such as Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), saving it as a .wav or .mp3, and importing it into your project.
- Export as a web page-related:
- Export as a web-page menu will work on the Internet Explorer browser and on those browsers that have the latest version of the Java Runtime Edition plugin installed for that browser. The exception to this is the latest version of Firefox, which does not yet have an updated JRE.
- Object tree behavior
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When dealing with a character like Girl, my students accidentally drag a subpart off the main character when selecting it in the object tree. When they do this it creates a separate object for that subpart and disassociates it from the Girl. Is there an easy way to reattach the separated arm back to the girl in the object tree? Appreciate any advice.
--Clayton Ruff, Instructor, Pulaski Technical College. -
If this happens, the arm acts like it is still attached to the body. (For example, turn the girl, the arm still turns with it.) Also, creating a "right arm move" command in my first method, will appear as right arm move and not girl.body.right arm move. The world can be saved and reloaded, although this does not rebuild the object tree. It seems that this bug does not create big problems for the actual execution of the world. Let us know if your experience is different.
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However, the arm cannot be "reattached" to the appropriate location in the object hierarchy of object tree, although the object thinks the arm is still attached.
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One work around, is to right-click in the object tree section of the Alice IDE - not on any particular object - and select the "create new group". This will create a folder in the object tree, which can be renamed, and the object, and all of the "detached" parts, can be moved into this folder. This will have no affect on any code that is already created.
- Miscellaneous:
- Alice does not handle large worlds (in terms of hard disk space) well
- Alice gradually slows down after continued use
- There are times when Alice "lags" because the computer operating system is performing other tasks / housekeeping. When this happens it is possible that an object may be added from the gallery to a scene, and yet the object tree will not be updated to reflect the addition. When you add an object to a scene, take time to make sure that the appropriate tile is also added to the object tree. If not, save your world as a new version, quit Alice, restart Alice, and attempt to reopen the worlkd you just saved. If it does not open, then open an older version of the world.
- Some rules of thumb:
- Save your worlds often
- Save multiple versions of your world (i.e. world_v1, world_v2, world_v3 and so on)
- It is not a bad idea to quit Alice and restart every couple of hours.
Go to Alice.org home page