On the last card you saw the collectable I created. It’s a star that just adds one point when you grab it. That’s pretty boring.

On this card, you’re going to create a new collectable, but you’re going to do it in a way that makes adding more collectables easy, so you can invent your own powers and bonuses and really make the game your own!

Add a new costume to the “Collectable” sprite for your new power-up. I like the lightning bolt, but pick whatever you like.

Notice that I’ve already included some pieces to make this easier for you with the collectable-type variable and the pick costume more block. You’re going to need to improve on them though.

• collectable-type is passed to pick-costume when it’s called, where it becomes type and can be used inside the more block

First, you need to set the collectable type. It’s just a number, used to tell the program what costume, rules etc. to use for the collectable. You’re going to want to pick it at random, to keep things interesting. This example gives a 1/50 chance:

Pro Tip!

There can be a different value set as the collectable-type for each clone. Think of it like creating a new copy of the variable on the main “collectable” sprite with the value that was in collectable-type the instant that clone was created. One of the things that makes clones special is that they cannot change the values of any variables they start with. They are effectively constant values.

Great! Now you’re setting a different value for the collectable type, but none of the code knows what to do with it yet!

First, just teach the pick-costume more block to set the new costume when it gets the new type, like this (using whatever costume you picked):

Now you need to decide what the powerup will do. We’ll start with something simple: giving the player a new life. On the next card, you’ll make it do something cooler.

To create the powerup code, go into more blocks and Make a Block. Expand the Options section and add a number input. Name the block react-to-player and the number input type. Make the react-to-player block either give the same points prize that the star is already giving, or increase the player’s lives, depending on the type of powerup.

Update the when I start as a clone code to replace the points increase with a call to react-to-player, passing collectable-type. Stars still boost points but the new powerup adds lives.