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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 24, 2012 at 9:47:13 am
 

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

 

 

 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.

 

 

 

  • New, richer scene templates to start building scenes are available.

 

 

  

  • 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, babyYeti, and a penguin. When the word is snow is entered in the search box, these models will appear in the list of possible matches, even though only snowboard has “snow” in its 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 event editor (which is in Alice 2.x) but rather event listener methods 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, but will be fully available in a future release.)

 

  • In the Project menu is 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 option 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 their work in 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 Alice3.0Beta 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.x gallery, each with its own unique skeleton, was just too huge for the team. The models were available in Alice 3.0 but were there as a half-way step that allowed for restructuring the model hierarchy. Eventually, we had to remove the Alice 2.x models, to allow for full functionality of the new hierarchy.

 

  • Alice 2.x and Alice 3.x are not compatible. It is not possible to import Alice 3.x models or worlds into Alice 2.x. It is not possible to import Alice 2.x models or worlds into Alice 3.x. 

 

 

  • Alice 3.1 projects that have been transferred into NetBeans (converting them to Java projects) cannot be transferred back to Alice 3.1.

 

  

 

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.

 

  • Alice 3.0Beta had an export to YouTube menu feature that is not available in Alice 3.1, but will soon be reintroduced.

 

  • Alice 3.1 has implemented Java's localization feature, which is available in the Window/Preferences menu. . Some languages have been worked on but are incomplete. Anyone interested in being part of the translation effort into other languages should contact an Alice Team member.

 

  • 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.

 

 

 

Copyright

 

Go to Alice.org home page

 

 

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