how to make a speech bubble on scratch

LISA ANNE FLOYD – Following the path to deeper learning

Coding Ideas for Educators

Text to Speech and Translation Blocks in Scratch 3.0

Making Your Applications More Accessible

One of my favourite coding environments to learn to code with is Scratch . Recently, Scratch released their 3.0 version with many new additions and capabilities. I have shared some ideas to make use of the new Text to Speech and Translate extensions. The programs below get progressively more challenging.

You might have students follow along. Afterward, be sure to challenge students with extension/challenge activities. I’ve included some challenges for you to consider trying out.

Adjusting your Scratch applications to make them more accessible…

Part 1 – Text to Speech blocks

I will share with you some simple code that you can include in your applications to make them more accessible. I will show you how to make the character say something in a speech bubble as well as with their voice so the user can hear the same text.

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/vtOuK7PcQLo

Here is what the code looks like…

Translating text in Scratch…

Part 2 – Translate blocks

I will show you how to add code that will translate text from one language to another.

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/3wUhdTllgKk

Part 3 – Including a variable

I will show you how to replace the text that is repeated throughout the program with a variable.

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/DWcn6ZT4MYU

Part 4 – Getting input from the user to translate

I will show you how to ask the user for words or a phrase that will be translated to another language.

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/m2teQygHNoA

Here is what the code looks like:

Using lists to obtain and translate words entered by the user

Part 5 – Challenge: Translating Lists

For this more advanced application, I’ve used a counter, a loop and lists to create a program that asks the user for a number of words and then translates each word one, by one.

You can see that lists are used rather than variables to store each word.  I’ve also made use of creating my own blocks, which are like functions. Can you figure out how the code works in this application?

Video Demonstration:   https://youtu.be/Z4KlzJT-lq0

Application Link: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/280044496/editor/

Other Challenges:

1 – Allow the user to select which language they would like to translate the words to.

2 – Can you figure out a way to remove the word “stop” from the list of words other than deleting the last word in the list as I’ve done?

For help with counters, check out the applications on this link .

Let me know if you have more ideas!

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Think () (block)

The Think () block is a Looks block and a stack block . The block gives its sprite a thought bubble with the specified text. The thought bubble stays until another speech or thought block is activated, or the stop sign is pressed. This block is identical to the Say () block except that this block gives a thought bubble whereas the other gives a speech bubble.

Example Uses

As this block gives an everlasting thought bubble, it is used whenever a thought bubble that never ends must be made (e.g. a character that always thinks).

Some common uses are:

• A creature always making thoughts
• A sort of picture or a sign
• A message that is not wanted to go away
• Variable length thoughts (such as waiting for a player's action before moving on)

Character Limit

A character limit was added for Scratch 3.0 , limiting all text to 330 characters or less. [1] This limitation also applies to the following blocks:

• say () for () seconds
• think () for () seconds
• Think () for () Seconds
• Say () for () Seconds
• Say Nothing

• ↑ https://github.com/LLK/scratch-vm/blob/22645391cb69b1ed9ae01bb96ec67bfe8736a358/src/blocks/scratch3_looks.js#L77
• Looks Blocks
• Stack Blocks
• This page was last edited on 4 August 2023, at 19:23.
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Need speech bubble on top of front layer sprite

I have many projects where a sprite glides in front of another sprite. In Snap, e.g. Snap! Build Your Own Blocks , if the lower layer sprite has a speech bubble, the bubble is hidden behind the front layer sprite. This doesn't happen instead in Scratch, where speech bubbles are always on top of other sprites, e.g. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/410615611/editor .

Is this something that could be taken into consideration in Snap? Or there are reasons in Snap to allow speech bubbles to be hidden by other sprites?

If this is a desired behavior, can someone point me to the methods to look at in order to allow my own personal copy of Snap to easily run projects imported from Scratch where speech bubbles are always on top of all sprites, without having to keep switching sprite's layers?

I'm sorry, Stefano, but I cannot confirm your claimed behavior in Scratch. From what I can see the layering of Snap's speech bubbles behaves exactly the same as in Scratch, i.e. it depends on the sprite's layer and only changes when the sprite's layer changes.

[edit: ] Oh wait! In current Scratch it's even worse, the speech balloon's layer does not change when the sprite's layer changes. Geez, that's clearly a bug in Scratch, don't you think?

in scratch, when a speech bubble appears, it goes to the top layer, so when a sprite says "hello" and there's another sprite in the front layer and it's on top of the spot where the speech bubble appears, the speech bubble is on top of the sprite even though the sprite that the speech bubble belongs to is in the back layer. If the other sprite goes to the front layer, the speech bubble is under that sprite, but when the parent sprite (the owner of the bubble) is moved, the bubble doesn't move. So speech bubbles go to the front layer when they appear. Here's another thing, the bubble layer only changes if the bubble is unloaded, then it resets, so when a new say block is run, it really changes the bubble text instead of creating a new bubble. That is so confusing.

This is certainly bad. But in Scratch a sprite cannot hide a speech bubble (do you have a counterexample?). In Snap instead sprites can hide speech bubbles (as shown in the two sample projects cited above that I have now correctly shared)

if you look at my post you can see that it is possible to hide a speech bubble in scratch.

In Scratch you can hide a speech bubble if the sprite simply moves behind another one with a speech bubble.

Yes, sure, in Scratch speech bubbles can hide other speech bubbles. But sprites cannot hide speech bubbles. This is different in Snap as you can see in the example project I prepared.

If this is a wanted behavior (even if I don't see the point of hiding a speech bubble behind a sprite) this is fine with me. In this case, can you point me to the correct methods I should change in order to get the exact Scratch behavior?

Do you a sample project showing this behavior?

yeah, I just forgot to give you the link https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/410626187/

This doesn't happen in Scratch 1.4. The bubbles always stay on top. In any case, this happens in Scratch 3 if you change the layer after the bubble has shown up. In Snap instead this can happens as soon as the bubble shows up, even if you don't change the sprite layer in the meantime.

And this is what I need: that the bubble stays on top of all sprites if you don't change the layer of a sprite.

In Snap! speech balloons stay ontop of the sprite they belong to, at the sprite's layer. That's an easy to understand, consistent rule. You can change the sprite's layer, and that also affects its speech balloon. Again, easy, consistent and predictable, giving you all the tools you need to control them via their sprites. Technically speech balloons are parts of their sprite, implemented as submorphs. I guess you could theoretically implement another architecture, treating balloons as separate morphs. But you'd run into a lot of complications if you did that, and you'd need to change very many things. I wouldn't encourage it. Also notice that Scratch's bugginess in this regard is an indicator that another architecture might not work any better at all.

I understand that the rule is technically ideal. But speech ballons are there as you are supposed to be able to read them. Hiding a ballon behind another element (except when it is really difficult doing something else if you keep dinamically changing the sprite's layers) it is not something that I would suppose someone could want as a standard behavior.

So, I guess I have to dig into this mechanism to try to square the circle.

Unfortunately I cannot understand the flow of Smalltalk code, but the treatment of speech ballons in BYOB is exactly what I need and what I think anyone would want. Ballons in BYOB are always on top.