how to make a speech bubble in scratch

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Say () (block)

The Say () block is a Looks block and a stack block . The block gives its sprite a speech bubble with the specified text — the speech bubble stays until an another speech or thought block is activated, or the stop sign is pressed. This block is identical to the Think () block, except that this block gives a speech bubble, while the other gives a thought bubble. This block immediately moves on to the next block when it is activated, unlike the Say () for () Seconds block. This mechanism is similar to the Start Sound () block.

• 1 Example Uses
• 2 Character Limit
• 3 Common Mistake
• 4 Debugging
• 6 References

Example Uses

As this block gives an optionally everlasting speech bubble (see common mistake for how to stop the speech), it is often used for a speech bubble that is desired to end after an unspecified amount of time, such as a triggered event or statement.

Some uses are:

• An object always making a sound
• A picture or a sign
• A message that is not wanted to go away
• A message that flips to the next when the space key is pressed
• An ending message (for example, 'You win!' or 'Please comment your thoughts!')
• A message that the viewer can choose how long it stays for
• Variable length speech (such as waiting for a player's action before moving on)

Character Limit

A character limit was added for Scratch 3.0 , limiting all text to 330 characters or less. [1] This limitation also applies to the following blocks:

• say () for () seconds
• think () for () seconds

Common Mistake

The "say" block is often misunderstood to stop saying the message when the script ends or moves on to the next block, but instead, the sprite continuously says the text until it says or thinks something else. To make a sprite stop saying a message, it must speak a blank message, which triggers the speech bubble to stay hidden and the sprite to say nothing.

The following script is an example of making a sprite say a message for an unspecified amount of time, and then stopping the message.

A proper script would look like this:

This script waits for 2 seconds before taking further action, making it possible for the user to see the dialogue.

The say block can be useful for debugging projects, as it can monitor certain values that the user needs to know about, by putting it in a Forever loop. For example:

• Say () for () Seconds
• Say Nothing
• Think () for () Seconds
• ↑ https://github.com/LLK/scratch-vm/blob/22645391cb69b1ed9ae01bb96ec67bfe8736a358/src/blocks/scratch3_looks.js#L77
• ↑ https://github.com/LLK/scratch-vm/blob/22645391cb69b1ed9ae01bb96ec67bfe8736a358/src/blocks/scratch3_looks.js#L144
• Looks Blocks
• Stack Blocks
• This page was last edited on 19 December 2023, at 02:59.
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Adding Speech Bubbles and Making Sprite to Talk in Scratch

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In this tutorial let’s learn how to make your sprites animated for your own Scratch comic strip, animation, or TV show. 

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During this lesson, students will learn how to make their sprites animated for their own Scratch comic strip, animation, or TV show. You will learn to record your voice or make your sprites appear to speak or make your sprites appear to think. Finally, you will learn to synchronize and coordinate your dialogue.

Laptop/Computer along with audio and video exchange Notebook and Pen (To keep note of important parts in the session)

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How to Build a Simple Bubble Animation Effect in Scratch

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Say bubble appears far from sprites with empty space in them #1568

BryceLTaylor commented Mar 6, 2018

Successfully merging a pull request may close this issue.

Need speech bubble on top of front layer sprite

I have many projects where a sprite glides in front of another sprite. In Snap, e.g. https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=s_federici&ProjectName=sunglasses , if the lower layer sprite has a speech bubble, the bubble is hidden behind the front layer sprite. This doesn't happen instead in Scratch, where speech bubbles are always on top of other sprites, e.g. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/410615611/editor .

Is this something that could be taken into consideration in Snap? Or there are reasons in Snap to allow speech bubbles to be hidden by other sprites?

If this is a desired behavior, can someone point me to the methods to look at in order to allow my own personal copy of Snap to easily run projects imported from Scratch where speech bubbles are always on top of all sprites, without having to keep switching sprite's layers?

I'm sorry, Stefano, but I cannot confirm your claimed behavior in Scratch. From what I can see the layering of Snap's speech bubbles behaves exactly the same as in Scratch, i.e. it depends on the sprite's layer and only changes when the sprite's layer changes.

[edit: ] Oh wait! In current Scratch it's even worse, the speech balloon's layer does not change when the sprite's layer changes. Geez, that's clearly a bug in Scratch, don't you think?

in scratch, when a speech bubble appears, it goes to the top layer, so when a sprite says "hello" and there's another sprite in the front layer and it's on top of the spot where the speech bubble appears, the speech bubble is on top of the sprite even though the sprite that the speech bubble belongs to is in the back layer. If the other sprite goes to the front layer, the speech bubble is under that sprite, but when the parent sprite (the owner of the bubble) is moved, the bubble doesn't move. So speech bubbles go to the front layer when they appear. Here's another thing, the bubble layer only changes if the bubble is unloaded, then it resets, so when a new say block is run, it really changes the bubble text instead of creating a new bubble. That is so confusing.

This is certainly bad. But in Scratch a sprite cannot hide a speech bubble (do you have a counterexample?). In Snap instead sprites can hide speech bubbles (as shown in the two sample projects cited above that I have now correctly shared)

if you look at my post you can see that it is possible to hide a speech bubble in scratch.

In Scratch you can hide a speech bubble if the sprite simply moves behind another one with a speech bubble.

Yes, sure, in Scratch speech bubbles can hide other speech bubbles. But sprites cannot hide speech bubbles. This is different in Snap as you can see in the example project I prepared.

If this is a wanted behavior (even if I don't see the point of hiding a speech bubble behind a sprite) this is fine with me. In this case, can you point me to the correct methods I should change in order to get the exact Scratch behavior?

Do you a sample project showing this behavior?

yeah, I just forgot to give you the link https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/410626187/

This doesn't happen in Scratch 1.4. The bubbles always stay on top. In any case, this happens in Scratch 3 if you change the layer after the bubble has shown up. In Snap instead this can happens as soon as the bubble shows up, even if you don't change the sprite layer in the meantime.

And this is what I need: that the bubble stays on top of all sprites if you don't change the layer of a sprite.

In Snap! speech balloons stay ontop of the sprite they belong to, at the sprite's layer. That's an easy to understand, consistent rule. You can change the sprite's layer, and that also affects its speech balloon. Again, easy, consistent and predictable, giving you all the tools you need to control them via their sprites. Technically speech balloons are parts of their sprite, implemented as submorphs. I guess you could theoretically implement another architecture, treating balloons as separate morphs. But you'd run into a lot of complications if you did that, and you'd need to change very many things. I wouldn't encourage it. Also notice that Scratch's bugginess in this regard is an indicator that another architecture might not work any better at all.

I understand that the rule is technically ideal. But speech ballons are there as you are supposed to be able to read them. Hiding a ballon behind another element (except when it is really difficult doing something else if you keep dinamically changing the sprite's layers) it is not something that I would suppose someone could want as a standard behavior.

So, I guess I have to dig into this mechanism to try to square the circle.

Unfortunately I cannot understand the flow of Smalltalk code, but the treatment of speech ballons in BYOB is exactly what I need and what I think anyone would want. Ballons in BYOB are always on top.

Turn your images into speech bubble memes with ease!

Drag 'n' drop your image here, or click to select one

Frequenty asked questions

What is Speechmeme?

Speechmeme is a tool that allows you to easily turn images into trendy and popular speech bubble memes, often seen in chat messages on social platforms like discord.

What type of images do you support?

You can currently use any image format such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, SVG, WEBP, TIFF, AI, PSD, EPS, PDF, SVG, and more.

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I made this tool because I often found content on Discord and other social media platforms that needed to be turned into a speech bubble meme. However, when I tried to find a reliable speech bubble meme generator on Google, I couldn't find any suitable websites. Let's be honest, nobody wants to search for a template and then go through the trouble of editing it to fit their needs. That's why I created this tool.

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Discord only permits you to star/favorite gifs. Since many people enjoy favoriting speech bubble memes, I concluded it was the optimal choice to make.

Can I delete my images?

Images uploaded to our public gallery can be easily deleted by clicking on the little trash can icon in the top right corner of your post.

Is this free?

This speech bubble meme maker will forever stay free. I hope you enjoy using it!

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speech bubble posistion problem

scratchcat12321 wrote: my sprite which is a dog is programmed to say ‘bark’ but for some reason the speech bubble always comes from its ears how can I get it to come from its mouth? =/

footsocktoe wrote: Many cartoonists draw speech bubbles pointing to the top of the head. There is no reason to point the bubble at the mouth. People aren't stupid. They know it's the mouth that does the talking. The point of the speech bubble is merely to indicate WHO is doing the talking.

DiscordTheWolf wrote: footsocktoe wrote: Many cartoonists draw speech bubbles pointing to the top of the head. There is no reason to point the bubble at the mouth. People aren't stupid. They know it's the mouth that does the talking. The point of the speech bubble is merely to indicate WHO is doing the talking.

DiscordTheWolf wrote: scratchcat12321 wrote: my sprite which is a dog is programmed to say ‘bark’ but for some reason the speech bubble always comes from its ears how can I get it to come from its mouth? =/

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