Dountil

In the previous episode, we created a progressively-generated starfield we moved through with the camera turtle, creating a cool flying-through-space effect.

But it has a few issues we should address. Firstly, it is possible for a star to end up flying through the windscreen of our spaceship! Which is cool, but looks a bit strange. Second, as the program runs it piles up all of these stars behind us, which can slow everything down. We need to get rid of those. Finally, it would be pretty neat if we could have the stars ‘pop’ into view, so we’ll explore how we can do that.

What do Steve Wozniak and George H.W. Bush have in common? They’ve both been seriously into Tetris! But who can blame them? The object of the game (as if you didn’t know) is to complete horizontal lines using falling shapes of various configurations. When you finish a line, it disappears, causing the rest of the blocks to fall down a line. However, if you stack up shapes to the point they overflow the top of the playfield: Game Over. When you finish a certain number of lines, the level ends… and in the next, the shapes fall faster, and you need to complete more lines! The insanity never ends.

Myrtle creates a 3D space tube ride for her to fly through…

Sometimes Myrtle needs to take a break and have a little fun! One of the things she can do is make a space tube and fly through it, using the TUBE and TUBEARC primitives:

TUBE makes a straight tube, and takes the parameters and . So, tube 20 10 10 makes a tube with a radius of 20 turtle units, a depth of 10 turtle units and 10 sides.