New Kojo Release — 2.4.06

I’m pleased to announce a new release of Kojo. Highlights include:

Enhancements for young (~7 year old) learners:
1. Beginner Challenges to get kids going with programming. These are available via the Tools -> Beginner Challenges menu item.
2. Refinements to the Instruction Palette tool to make it easier for kids to write substantial programs with minimal typing. This is available via Tools -> Instruction Palette.
Enhancements to the Linear Equations story (available via Samples -> Math Learning Modules -> Solving Linear Equations). Kids can now type in an equation and then click on an Explain button to see a step-by-step solution of the equation.
Scala upgrade to version 2.11.6
And the big one for this release — gaming enhancements (you can see these in action in the sample games mentioned below):
1. Support for pictures bouncing off pictures:
  There’s a new function – bouncePicVectorOffPic(pic: Picture, velocity: Vector2D, obstacle: Picture): Vector2D
  You give this function a picture, its velocity, and an obstacle, and it figures out for you the picture’s new velocity after it bounces off the obstacle.
2. Support for collision polygons for image pictures:
  These allow you to create a game character using an image, and then specify a collision polygon for the image to enable realistic and efficient collision detection for that character.
3. Support for batches of pictures for more realistic animation (via easily controlled cycling through the pictures in a batch).
4. Support for game timers.
5. Support for updatable text pictures (for easy game scoring).
6. Sample games based on the above enhancements. Three new games are included:
  Car Ride
  
  Collidium
  
  Flappy Ball