Here are some thoughts by Prof. Andrew Kinley on creating environments and stories in Alice.
I have created my own final version of this assignment for you to examine and use as a model and guideline for the things you will need to have.
Right click on the following link and choose the Save As option to save my story to someplace on your computer.
In Alice under the file Menu select Open World, and open the world you downloaded.
Play the world to see what I accomplished.. A more detailed description of the important points are given below.
When I decided to start with my world, I selected the New World option under the File menu.
From the templates I chose the grassy template to form the basis of my world. Once my new world was loaded I chose the Add Objects button that is in the bottom right hand corner of the image of my world. In this editing environment there are a wealth of pre-made objects that you can drag and drop into your world in a location of your choosing. In addition, if you have images of your own that you would like to put in the world then you can go under the File and select Make Billboard. This will allow you to browse for any image file you have stored on your machine and add it as an object to the world.
If you right click on any of your objects you can perform actions on them that occur before the story begins. For example, I did not want my spider robot to appear on the screen at the start of the story, so after adding it to my screen, I moved it 10 meters up so it would disappear for the story start.
Once you have your characters and scenery in place, click the Done button and begin writing your story.
Writing your story line is as simple as chaining together several methods just as you did with the Snow People.
Your story always begins with the World.firstMethod. Where it goes from there is up to you. Examine my world and you will see what I have done.
In firstMethod, I chain together the following events:
Stan says something
Cartman says something
And Kenny makes a sound
But, after these three things, I decided I wanted to have the spider robot fly in and kill Kenny. This action is important and also complex so I decided to make a new method with the spider object called killKenny. Clicking on the spider robot's name in the upper left corner of the screen and then looking at its methods in the lower left hand corner allows you to look at this method. Click on the edit button next to the killKenny method and you can see how it too is just a bunch of events put together. Finally I returned to the firstMethod and dragged the killKenny method over to complete the task.
Continue to examine my story to see what things I made as methods when I told my story. It is important to remember that the methods only give a level of organization to the events that occur in the story but they do not necessarily provide us with additional capabilities.