Unplugged Activity | The Big Event

This lesson is called "The Big Event" It's all about how

we can control our programs and actually change
the way a program runs on the fly, using events.

Like the push of a button or like the click
of a mouse. For this lesson, you'll be controlled

with a paper remote control. It's just like
a real live video game. An event is an action

that causes something to happen. It's like
when you click the button on a mouse, and

the web page loads. That's an event. When
you touch your screen on a tablet to scroll,

that's an event also. Events are a great way
of letting the user direct your program, whenever

they need or want to. There are things that
happen that we all respond to.

We feel hungry so we go to the fridge.

We hear the mailman
come, he puts our mail in the mailbox, and

then we go get our mail. Those are just like
the events of pushing a button or moving the

joystick. They are something that happens
that triggers us to do something. Most people

who program video games, there's this one
event that everyone calls "update" and it

happens 30 or 60 times a second. For video
game programmers, that's more important as

an event than the buttons or the joystick.
Because what we tend to do is, the main event

we're watching for is that tick happening.
And then we check the joystick in the tick.

So we say.. oh? Has somebody pushed the button
in this frame? Yes or no? Without events,

the player couldn't move. The player couldn't
jump. You wouldn't be able to control what's

going on. The video game wouldn't be able
to animate anything. It's only because of

the events of time passing that we're able
to make animations and things move.