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New Features Alice 3-1

This version was saved 11 years, 7 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by Don Slater
on August 16, 2012 at 3:28:03 pm
 

This document lists the feature set of Alice 3.1 that differentiates it from Alice 2.x and AliceBeta 3.0

 

New Features Alice 3.1 Has

 

  • The design of Alice 3.1 includes support for students and teachers who wish to directly transition to Java. Therefore, Alice 3 strives to provide more faithful object oriented features, with an emphasis on classes and objects, inheritance, true scoping of variables and parameters, and a more realistic Java language display mode.

 

  • An Alice 3 plugin for NetBeans allows an export Alice 3.1 worlds to a Java IDE where the code for an Alice animation can be typed with a keyboard (instead of the GUI drag-and-drop use in Alice).

 

  • Alice 3.1 models are significantly restructured. This restructuring involved the development of a consistent skeletal hierarchy for each superclass in the gallery (Biped, Quadruped, Flyer, Swimmer, Prop). The restructuring allows for a class hierarchy that supports inheritance to a greater degree than in Alice 2. (Note that introductory students do not need this feature but more advanced student do.)

 

  • The design of Alice 3 gallery models is joints-based (rather than the subparts-base used in Alice 2). Creating animations using components of an object now involves manipulation of the joints of the object instead of the sub-parts of the object. This may seem to be a subtle change, but it allows the use of a soft-skin for the models, creating more realistic animations when a component of a model is animated. For example, an object kicking its leg outward will no longer move outside its clothing, exposing a bare leg.

 

  • The search box in the gallery is faster and more responsive. To improve the search mechanism, each model is “tagged” with a theme or reference. For example, the word “snow” is used as a tag for a snowBoard, an iceFloat and an iceMountain. When the word is snow is entered in the search box, these models will appear in the list of possible matches, even though two of the models do not have “snow” in their name.

 

  • The scene layout editor has a significant redesign, providing greater control in setting up the scene. The use of handles for moving, rotating, and resizing objects and their components is more intuitive than simple mouse-clicks.

 

  • A new camera perspectives menu provides options for viewing a scene from different locations within the 3D virtual world. This provides more reliable camera viewpoints than were previously available in Alice 2’s quad view.

 

  • Boxes are now available in the Scene editor for the display and manipulation of the X, Y, and Z values of an object’s location in the world. Also, boxes for width, length, and depth size values are now available in Scene editor.

 

  • A grid is now available in the Scene editor which enables more precise placement of objects on the grid in the scene. A snap to grid feature allows for precise positioning on grid blocks.

 

  • Events are now implemented using the listener model in Java. There is no longer an event editor, as in Alice 2.x, but rather an event listener method in the Scene class, in which listeners for events are now created and defined. This change provides a larger set of event listeners, including listeners that support collision detection. (Note that some of the listeners are still primitive, as of this writing, and will be fully available in the next release.)

 

  • In the Project menu of the code editor, there is now a resource manager that allows users to identify resources (sound files and image files) that are to being used in a project. This provides quick access to all resources used in the project and can be used to safely delete unused resources to streamline the size of a project.

 

  • In the Window menu, there is a Project History command that displays every user action in the creation of the project up to that moment in THE CURRENT SESSION OF ALICE. In other words, saving a world and quitting Alice does not save this history. It does, however, allow a user to backtrack through the work of the current session, effectively providing a selective “undo” of everything back to that point. Of course, the user may move forward through the list, as well.

 

  • Alice 3.1 project files are now significantly smaller in size than in Alice 2 project files.

 

Features Alice 3.1 Does Not Have

 

  • It is not possible to import worlds from Alice 2.x and AliceBeta 3.0 into Alice 3.1, and we do not imagine a pathway in which that will ever be possible.

 

  • The models in Alice 3.0 that came from Alice 2.x are not in the Alice 3.1 gallery. The task of reverse engineering the 700+ models in the Alice 2.0 gallery, each with their own unique skeleton, was just too huge for the team. The models that were available to use in Alice 3.0 were there as a half-way step that allowed for restructuring of the model hierarchy but eventually had to be removed to allow for full functionality of the new hierarchy.

 

  • Although it is possible to import Alice 3.1 projects into NetBeans, converting them to Java projects, in which the projects can be modified and enhanced using the Java programming language, it is not currently possible to go the other way, to bring a Java project back into Alice.

 

Preview of Coming Attractions:

 

  • There is not yet an automatic save or backup feature in Alice 3.1, but it is being developed.

 

  • It is not yet possible to save out a class, or an object that has user-added features as a class, to be imported into another Alice project, but that is a feature that is being worked on right now.

 

  • AliceBeta 3.0 has an export to YouTube menu feature that at present is not available in Alice 3.1, but which will soon be reintroduced.

 

  • Alice 3.1 has implemented Java's localization feature and some languages are currently being implemented. Some versions have been worked on but are incompletely implemented versions of Alice in other languages available from the Preferences command in the Window menu. Anyone interested in being part of the translation effort into other languages should contact the Alice Team.

 

  • The Alice 3 plugin is only available for NetBeans, at the current time. There are plans, however, to support other IDE's in the future.

 

 

 

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