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Why use Fermi？
For advanced scratchers, Scratch’s dummy-proof design can turn into a barrier to realizing your masterpiece. The Fermi extension helps you break Scratch's chains. With it, you can:
- create unlimited clones
- hide the system cursor on the stage
- increase the frame rate (for example, to 60 fps)
- turn off fencing for sprites (you can move a sprite to any position you want, even off the stage)
Modules
Fermi contains three modules:
Module | Description |
🎛 Runtime Configuration | Configuration of the Scratch virtual machine, including clones, fps, and fencing |
🕹 Player Configuration | Configuration of the player's view of the webpage, including hiding pause button and hiding system cursor |
🔫 Event Configuration | Configuration of message broadcasting |
Functions and Definitions
🎛 Runtime Configuration
Set max # of clones
Set refresh rate
Scratch runs at 30 fps by default. You can change it to, for example, 60 fps for smoothing the animations in your work.
Fencing
Enable or disable fencing for sprites. When fencing is disabled, sprites can be moved outside the broaders of the stage.
🕹 Player Configuration
Show/Hide the pause button
Sometimes you don’t want players to pause your game, especially when they are fighting with a boss or playing a multi-player game. Use this block to hide the pause button.
Show/Hide the system cursor
Some games, such as “There is no game”, use a customized cursor. If you want to design a game to use a sprite as the mouse cursor, you can use the code snippet shown below:
🔫 Event Configuration
Normally, you don’t need to know what concurrency is. But if you encounter events that cannot be correctly received, try to increase the number to, for instance, 5, or at maximum 10.
Roadmap and Change Logs
Version | Change log |
0.2 | Added:
- enable/disable fencing
- show/hide the system cursor
Shawn at 28 Juli 2022 |
0.1 | Init release
- max # of clone
- fps
- show/hide the pause button
Shawn at June 2022 |
Credit
Why This Extension is Named “Fermi”
“Where is everybody?” the Fermi Paradox asks. The late British sci-fi author, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, described this paradox. He said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
The Great Filter hypothesis, in the context of the Fermi Paradox, proposes that the reason why we have not encountered aliens yet is that a technological barrier or some sort of catastrophe is preventing a civilization from reaching interstellar travel or higher level technology.
Back to Scratch: for the benefit of newbies, Scratch designed mechanisms to prevent dangerous operations, such as a maximum of 300 clones, a requirement that sprites must be on the stage area, etc. This extension, Fermi, breaks those limitations.
If you want to learn more about the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter hypothesis, I recommend you check out the following video series, presented by my favorite YouTube Channel, Kurzgesagt (German, "to explain something in brief"):