Introduction to Computer Science with Scratch and App Inventor

Mole Mash Game
To learn App Inventor, we are going to step through one of the Google tutorials to build a simple Whacka-Mole
game. We’ll also add a few bells and whistles of our own. The first thing we will need to do is to
start App Inventor and create a new project.
A new project looks like this:
This palate contains
the different user
interface elements
that you can use in
your programs
The middle portion of
the screen is where
you lay out the
interface for your
application
To start App Inventor, go to
http://appinventor.googlelabs.com.
Click on the My Projects link at the top of the page.
Click on the new button in the upper
left hand corner of the screen.
In the dialog box that opens, give your
new game a name. I will call mine
MoleMash*
This section shows you a
list of the components and
media items that have
already been added to your
project.
Here you can see and
change the properties of an
individual interface
component
*The name that I gave my game might look a little funny. I wrote “Mole Mash” with no spaces, and I capitalized the first letter
of each word. This kind of formatting is called camel case. Camel case is used extensively in programming for naming different
parts of projects. When you learn a new programming language it is always important to learn the conventions (like camel case)
that programmers use in that language. It is also important to learn whether a language is case sensitive. In some languages
MoleMash, molemash and MOLEMASH would all be the same thing – those are case insensitive languages. In other languages
each different combination of upper/lowercase letters would name a distinct entity.
mbrace Game Development Workbook Page 34