Learning Goals 3 min
By the end of this lesson you will be able to:
- Choose backdrops that read as different times of the same day.
- Use
next backdropto move through them in order. - Make sprites behave differently depending on the time of day.
Warm-Up 7 min
Your story goes from day to night in one jump. Real days do not do that — and an audience feels the difference between a story that has a middle and one that does not.
Quick-fire puzzle
Wei Jie has four backdrops in his project. He ran this and expected the cat to end on the last one. It ended on the first. Why?
when flag clicked
repeat (4)
next backdrop
wait (2) seconds
end
Reveal the answer
Four steps through a ring of four brings you all the way round and back to where you started. He needed three.
This is the costume ring from Lesson 27, applied to the Stage. Backdrops wrap in exactly the same way.
New Concept — light as information 15 min
When a film cuts to a dark street, nobody explains that it is now evening. The audience simply knows. Light is one of the fastest ways to tell somebody something without saying it.
Blocks reference
| Block | Category | What it does |
|---|---|---|
next backdrop | Looks | Steps to the following backdrop, wrapping after the last. |
switch backdrop to [backdrop1 v] | Looks | From Lesson 31. Jumps to one named backdrop. |
Order matters now
Up to this point the order of your backdrops in the Backdrops tab has been irrelevant. The moment you use next backdrop, that order becomes the order of your day.
Drag them in the Backdrops tab so they run dawn, day, night. Then one block moves time forward, and it always moves it the right way.
Choosing times that actually read
Two backdrops only work as times of day if an audience can tell them apart at a glance. Two green outdoor scenes will not do it, however different they look to you after staring at them.
The reliable signal is brightness. Something clearly light, something clearly dark, and if you want a middle, something in between. Colour helps; brightness does the work.
Sprites should notice the time
This is what separates a slideshow from a story. If the light changes and every character behaves identically, the change means nothing. Somebody has to go home, wake up, get worried, light a lamp.
Your sprites cannot actually read the backdrop yet — that needs sensing blocks in Level 2. For now they follow the schedule, exactly as they did last lesson.
Why it matters
Time passing is one of the few things every story has. Getting it across without a single word of explanation is a genuinely powerful trick, and it costs one block.
Worked Example — a full day in three steps 15 min
We stretch the kampung day into three moments, and give the cast something to do in each.
Step 1 — Add a third backdrop
From the backdrop library, add Blue Sky as your early morning. You now have three: a pale dawn, the farm at midday, and the stars.
Step 2 — Put them in order
Click the Stage, open the Backdrops tab, and drag them so they run Blue Sky, Farm, Stars. This ordering is the whole reason the next block will work.
Step 3 — Write the schedule
Same habit as last lesson. Three moments, four seconds each.
- 0s — dawn. Cat wakes, hen is already about.
- 4s — day. Both busy.
- 8s — night. Hen roosts, cat is left alone.
Step 4 — Build the cat’s script
The cat owns time, so its script steps the backdrop forward twice.
when flag clicked
switch backdrop to [Blue Sky v]
say [Morning already.] for (3) seconds
wait (1) seconds
next backdrop
say [Busy day ahead.] for (3) seconds
wait (1) seconds
next backdrop
Step 5 — Run it and watch the ring
Dawn, then day at four seconds, then night at eight. The switch block at the top is what guarantees it starts at dawn rather than wherever the last run finished.
Step 6 — Give the hen a day
The hen is around for the first two times of day and gone for the third.
when flag clicked
show
go to x: (60) y: (-30)
wait (8) seconds
say [Time to roost!] for (2) seconds
hide
next backdrop.Step 7 — Break the ring on purpose
Add a third next backdrop to the end of the cat’s script and run it. The sky snaps straight back to dawn, mid-story.
That is the wrap-around doing exactly what it promises. On a three-backdrop project, three steps is a full circle — which is occasionally what you want, and here plainly is not.
Step 8 — Check everyone is visible
Watch it through and look at your sprites against each of the three backdrops in turn. Anyone hard to see at dawn or at night needs moving, resizing, or a different backdrop.
What changed: your story has a shape that feels like a day rather than a switch being flicked.
The full assembled scripts (your reference)
when flag clicked
switch backdrop to [Blue Sky v]
say [Morning already.] for (3) seconds
wait (1) seconds
next backdrop
say [Busy day ahead.] for (3) seconds
wait (1) seconds
next backdrop
when flag clicked
show
go to x: (60) y: (-30)
wait (8) seconds
say [Time to roost!] for (2) seconds
hide
Try It Yourself — three small builds 12 min
Goal: Make a key press advance time, so the audience can move the day forward themselves.
when [space v] key pressed
next backdrop
Think: two blocks and the whole day is under the audience’s control. Press space enough times and you come right back round to where you began.
Goal: Give one sprite a different line for each time of day, so the audience can tell the time from what it says as well as what they see.
Think: a line like “lovely weather” works at any hour and tells the audience nothing. “Is that the sun coming up?” only works once.
Mini-mission: a full circle. Build a day that runs dawn, day, night and then round to dawn again — and make the returning dawn feel like the next morning rather than a mistake.
It works if: the cycle completes and returns to dawn, and a watcher describes the ending as “the next day” rather than “it went wrong”. Keep each stack within 8 blocks.
Think: what could a character say at the second dawn that makes clear a whole night has passed? One well-chosen line does the entire job.
Mini-Challenge — guess the hour 5 min
“No words allowed”
Build a project where a classmate can tell you the time of day at any moment, using only what they can see. No dialogue at all.
It works if:
- Your project uses at least three backdrops as times of day.
- No say or think blocks appear anywhere.
- A classmate can name each time of day correctly from watching alone.
- At least one sprite behaves differently in at least one of them.
Reveal one worked answer (teacher)
Blue Sky, Farm and Stars stepped through with next backdrop and four-second waits, with the hen hiding for the night panel.
The failure to watch for is pupils choosing three attractive but similarly bright outdoor backdrops. Ask them to squint at the Stage — if the three do not separate by brightness when blurred, an audience will not read them as times of day.
Recap 2 min
Backdrops read as times of day when they differ clearly in brightness, and next backdrop steps through them in whatever order the Backdrops tab holds — wrapping round after the last. The light does the explaining, so your characters do not have to. What makes it a story rather than a slideshow is that somebody behaves differently once the light has changed.
- next backdrop
- Steps to the following backdrop in the Backdrops tab, wrapping after the last.
- Backdrop order
- The sequence in the Backdrops tab. It decides what “next” means.
- Time of day
- Information carried by how light or dark a backdrop is.
- Visual storytelling
- Telling an audience something with a picture rather than a line of dialogue.
Homework 1 min
The brightness test. Check that your three times of day really are distinguishable.
- Screenshot your Stage at each of your three times of day.
- Look at the three side by side and squint until they blur.
- If any two look similar when blurred, replace one with a clearly brighter or darker backdrop.
- Bring the three screenshots, before and after any change.
when flag clicked
switch backdrop to [Blue Sky v]
wait (3) seconds
next backdrop
wait (3) seconds
next backdrop
Bring back next class:
- Your screenshots.
- Your answer to: “Which two of your backdrops were hardest to tell apart, and what did you change?”
Heads up for next class: SCR-L01-34 is the arc finale. You polish the whole day into a finished piece and save it to show.