1. Smooze 1 5 7 – Animate Your Mouse Pointer Step By Step
2. Smooze 1 5 7 – Animate Your Mouse Pointer Pointing
3. Smooze 1 5 7 – Animate Your Mouse Pointer Mouse

Mouse Pointer Hand. Mouse Pointer Arrow Ps. Empty Coffee Cup. Person Man Woman Faces. Windows Logo Window. Keyboard Question Help. Design Communication. Feedback Cursor. Earth Continents. Arrow Back Previous. Keyboard Hand Google. The problem with the default Windows Pointer is that it’s the same since Windows 7. And if you’ve been using Windows since then, then you might wanna change it now. The smoothness of the cursors on macOS is something that cannot be achieved on Windows. But we can actually get the exact look of it (including spinning cursor, busy and more).

The mouse cursors is the one and only thing that represents our hands inside our systems. Looking at the same dull mouse pointer everyday can seriously increase your boredom and undermine your productivity. Installing a new mouse cursor theme on Windows is fast, easy, and can provide just the right refreshment for your desktop. Here’s a list of the top 11 mouse pointer themes that you should try.

Note: In case you don’t know, you can easily install new mouse cursor scheme at Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointers -> Browse. Also, some cursor schemes include a .INF file that allows you to install the scheme easily by simply right clicking on the .INF file and select install.

Simplify

As the name suggests, simplify is a simplistic design approach that comes in both light and dark flavours. Such designs help with distraction elimination and provide a solid way to interact with your system. To install, just right click the install.inf file and choose the install option. You may then find the new cursor in the control panel and enable it.

Gaia

Gaia is a colourful and refreshing mouse cursor set that features six static and four animated cursors. This set was designed in the context of a community project to raise awareness for climate change. Gaia also comes with an automated installer for easier installation.

Wii

If you are a Wii fan/owner and want to have consistent interfaces and design among your machines then changing your PC cursor is a good first step. The set includes 18 cursors (3 animated) that follow the characteristic tilted design found in Wii gaming consoles.

Entis

Entis is a bold cursor theme that can prove very helpful for people with seeing problems like the elderly. The thick white frame does help with contrast increase, always making your pointer easy to locate. On their website, you can also find a left-handed version.

Polar

Polar theme is another simplistic and clean design approach, yet deeply informative thanks to the rotating load indicators. For those of you who prefer black, there’s also a dark version called Obsidian. To install, you right click the .INF files and choose the install option. You may then enable the newly install cursor from the Control Panel.

Transparency

Transparent cursors may not sound like a good idea for those who have trouble locating their pointers, but they are very suitable for anyone who wants a mild design for a more relaxed use. Transparent cursors stay out of your way when you are using your computer and look quite elegant.

Mac OS X

Many out there believe that Mac OS X is the epitome of elegance. For this reason, there are countless imitations aimed to bring some of Mac’s elegance to Windows systems. This cursor theme is maybe the best implementation available, boasting a comprehensive and colourfully animated Mac OS X cursor theme. To install, copy your new cursor pack to C:WindowsCursors and then enable it from your Control Panel.

Night Diamond

Night Diamond looks seductive and modern in every way. This completely animated theme features many cursors for any action you may need to have one. All pointers look great on this posh blue light that makes them shine in excellence. More versions with different colour tones like silver, bloody red, golden orange, amethyst and emerald green are also available.

Glass

Glass is always seen with positivity from most people as its correct depiction requires accurate and modern design techniques. This cursor is made of glass, but you can hit it on the edges of your screen and click it with fury if you want.

Chrome

If glass is nice, Chrome glass is even better right? This animated cursor theme provides a colouring intuition for users as it changes colours according to actions and system load. The cursor’s transparency is well adjusted and will serve your daily needs just fine.

Umbrella

As in everything nowadays, its all about zombies in the end! If you want a cursor that will make you feel like you are using an Umbrella corporation computer, then this cursor theme is for you. Even if you’re not a Resident Evil fan, you may find this theme interesting as it is very well designed.

This module teaches how to create a goose hunting game. The goal of the game is to “hunt” as many geese as possible before the timer runs out, therefore the instructions include how to keep score, how to set a timer, and how to make the goose appear randomly.

Learning Goals

By the end of this module, students will have a greater understanding of how the functions in Scratch can create a fun, interactive game.

Smooze 1 5 7 – Animate Your Mouse Pointer Step By Step

Vocabulary

Guiding Questions

1. Have you ever played a ‘target’ game where the object is to hit the target as many times as you can within a time frame?
2. Have you ever wanted to create your own target game?

Curriculum Links

This module provides an opportunity to address curriculum expectations in the Science, Computer Studies and Math in grade 5 – 7 expectations. In particular, students will be learn different programming skills in Scratch and build on the skill they have learned in an entry-level assignment. This assignment will also demonstrate how visual cues can help communicate feelings, ideas and understandings when telling a story.

Materials

• Scratch – Download Scratch
• Adobe AIR (required for Scratch to run) – Download Adobe AIR
• Goose Hunt Art Assets – Download Assets Folder (ZIP)

Non-Computer Activity

To introduce the concept of the target game that you will be creating in Scratch start by playing a real-life version of this game with your group. You will need a open pace to run around for this game.

1. Have one person volunteer to be the ‘target.’ They can run from one side of the room to the other…back and forth.
2. Everyone else must stand 10 feet away behind a designated line and throw bean bags at the moving target.
3. Whoever hits the target must switch spots with them.

Computer Activity

Begin by opening Scratch and deleting the cat.

Then, import the background and goose sprite from the Goose Hunt assets folder. It is not important which frame you select as the initial sprite – it resets once costumes are loaded.

The first thing to do is animate the goose, the same way the kayak was animated in the previous lesson. Import the ‘flap’ images as costumes. As we only want the animation to cycle through the ‘flapping’ costumes, and not the ‘hit frame’ costume, the ‘next costume’ command will not work for us here. We want the animation to cycle until the goose has been hunted (by moving the target/cursor over it), so in this case we use the ‘repeat UNTIL’ control command as follows:

When the green flag is pressed, the animation should cycle through the flapping costumes until the mouse touches the goose. It is important to switch the goose flap animations chronologically from 1 through 4, otherwise the flapping looks awkward. Increase the speed of the animation by changing the default 1 second to .1 seconds per frame. (For comparison, an average movie is either 24 or 48 frames per second. Waiting .1 seconds per frame translates to 10 frames per second.)

Now we will tell the program what to do when the cursor touches the goose. Add the ‘Goose Hit 1’ and ‘Goose Hit 2’ frames to the costume. You’ll notice one of them is just white. This is a common visual effect in game animation: when a target is hit, the screen briefly flashes solid white to indicate a hit. Let’s add the following code so that the goose flashes and looks shocked when it’s hit:

Smooze 1 5 7 – Animate Your Mouse Pointer Pointing

We want players to be able to hit the goose multiple times, so we will wrap a ‘forever’ loop command around the entire block of code:

We want the goose to move randomly around the screen to make the game more challenging. So let’s add a ‘Go To Random Position’ command within the ‘Forever’ loop so that every time the mouse touches the goose, the hit animation triggers, and then the goose moves to a random position.

Now that the core function of the game is prepared, we will add a score and a timer. Let’s create a variable called ‘Score’.

Now that you’ve created a variable, you will see see some new code blocks that can be used with that variable:

And you should also see the score in the top left hand of the screen.

We need to do two things with the Score variable: ensure it resets to zero when the game is started, and that it increases by 1 every time the goose is hit. Add a ‘set Score to 0’ block at the very beginning of our code.

Add a ‘change Score by 1’ block after the ‘repeat until touching mouse-pointer’ code so that as soon as the goose is hit, the variable increases by one.

(We don’t have to enter +1 as a number without a negative sign [-] in front of it is assumed to be positive.)

Now let’s add another variable for the timer countdown. The goal of the game is to get as many geese as possible before the timer runs out. So let’s make a 30 second game. (You can make the game any length of time – just think from your players perspective how much time they would want to play. 30 minutes of goose hunting might become a bit boring!)

For our timer, we’re creating a new code block which subtracts 1 unit from the Time variable until it reaches 0, at which point the goose says “GAME OVER”, and then all activity is stopped.

Now some code to turn the mouse cursor into a target. First, import the Target sprite, and then add this very simple bit of code:

Make sure you have selected the target sprite before entering this code, so that the program knows you are referring to this sprite only. If you enter this code while the Goose sprite is selected, that would cause the goose to follow the cursor around which would be very confusing!

The last thing to do is add a sound to the goose when it gets hit. Select the goose, and open the Sounds tab. Click the folder symbol to import a sound, then import ‘Goose Honk.mp3’. In the scripts menu, select the Sound section and add the ‘play sound [Goose Honk.mp3]’ command after the ‘repeat until touching mouse pointer’ block:

Now the goose will honk to accompany the hit animation.

Conclusion

Smooze 1 5 7 – Animate Your Mouse Pointer Mouse

Have each student present their game to the rest of the group. What makes their version a little different?

Resources

• @ScratchEdTeam – The ScratchEd Team at @HGSE supports educators using Scratch.
• @scratch – Programming language & online community where kids create, share and remix stories, animations and games.

You might also like

Throat Singing In Scratch

Grade 4 – Grade 6

Students will gain an introduction to the basic functions of Scratch through the creation of a game. Students will learn about ‘sprites’, costumes, and the use of sounds.