Project Spark - First Impressions and hands-on

edg3

Read more on Project Spark at http://projectspark.com

I got a fantastic email yesterday from the ID@Xbox team that quite nicely brandished this image at me:



For greater justice (and because I have been waiting to get my hands on this for ages I will share some of my initial interactions). First impression upon loading up Spark for the first time is that it has very polished visuals. From the juicy effects when hovering on and clicking items all the way through to the 3D models that are available inside the Beta!

I will take a moment to note that this is still in Beta, and as such there are bugs (which is acceptable of course), and due to this there were some things that still felt weird or had issues, I wont dwell on them, rather I will focus on the final product when it finally gets released.


I ran through the demo that is available that sets up a simple (but extremely pretty) PCG world for you to run around in with a character of your choice. The steps to get into it were already simple, but even with them being so simple there was a helper voice to talk you through everything. I have to reiterate that this is something that is in Beta for Xbox One and Windows 8.1 and it seem that the content made is shareable across both of these platforms (though I am not 100% on ANYTHING to do with this project at this stage, so take my observations and thoughts with a pinch of salt for now).

After briefly running around and trying things I decided to look at the development side. With a tutorial to step your through the basics that followed the same simplistic model and method for helping the user learn the tool it took me step by step through creating some simple game mechanics from scratch.



The tutorials are well explained and I found it extremely easy to grasp the concepts. While many concepts seem to have been simplified, this is mostly for use with the “scripting language” called “Kode”. If you ever used Kodu Game Lab you will recognize how it works and find it very familiar.

When creating your own world after the introductions and tutorials there are two main options. The first allows you to build a world by hand for yourself, the other (which is what I tried for the purpose of this writeup) is a wizard of sorts that takes you step-by-step through the rest of the process and gives you various helper modules along the way.

The wizard gives you generation options (e.g. rivers, valleys, mountainous, etc) and you can tweak the world to your liking. You then select up the style of terrain you want, and drop in a character (it asks if you want third or first person, and there are likely many other options). You are then good to go. Take a look at my nifty first-person shooter:



Admittedly this does feel to me like it is aimed at people who want to dip their toes into game development from their couch. Whether on their Xbox One or on their Windows Tablets. Perhaps as the tools evolve over time there will be more direct coding options, I didn’t go too deep into everything so they could very well already be in, but I am impressed. It will be a great entry level tool to game development, much like things like Scratch simplify what you need to know to write programs.

I will be taking this for a proper test drive and trying to build a 3D version of SokoBomber in it if I can, and will let you all know how that goes!

Also posted to http://ernestloveland.co.za/ - all the images are on there, for sanity I only posted 3 here.

Fengol

Is this an Xbox only thing or can you build on/for PC as well?

Edit:

I have to reiterate that this is something that is in Beta for Xbox One and Windows 8.1

Nevermind

It sucks, cause I'm still on Windows 7. I played the hell out of Kodu in the day and get little peudo-RTS going.

edg3

Yeah, and being closed beta at the moment you might need to wait a while to be accepted too (as an added note for people that ARE running 8.1). I will update here with how things go on my side though as I build things.

roguecode

Tried it about a month ago, but my PC at that stage wasn't great, and the game also didn't agree with my internet. So I've been patiently waiting for the XB1 beta.

tbulford

@edg3 I am on the beta but for some reason I can not find it in the store. I click the link store reset to default page. :(

I did send them a support email but if you know the trick that would be awesome.

edg3

tbulford said:

@edg3 I am on the beta but for some reason I can not find it in the store. I click the link store reset to default page. :(

I did send them a support email but if you know the trick that would be awesome.

Switch your PC's region to United States -> download -> activate -> switch back to SA.

tbulford

edg3 said:

Switch your PC's region to United States -> download -> activate -> switch back to SA.

Gotcha fella.

Tuism

I wish someone explained what Project Spark was somewhere here (or even on the very pretty site) :)

edg3

Project spark is a game development tool that's spiritual predecessor was Kodu Game Lab. It is currently in closed beta for Xbox One and Windows 8.1. The idea is to make it really easy for people who don't know much programming to understand how to "program" things using a visual language called "Kode" and through this build their own games. These games are then shareable through their online service within Project Spark and you can play other people's games (and from what I understand you can play them on any platform). The videos explained what it is quite well (unless they changed them) on the main website.

I took a look at a bunch of shared projects yesterday and saw things ranging from full blown RPGs to marble blast clones to pinball. Each one of which you can download and play for free, and which then you can edit yourself to change things or just see how it was done.

EDIT: got to my PC and checked, their fabulous intro video that explained all of this isnt there. Here is something in it:


Will try find the great intro for you.

iceblademush

Thanks am also on beta, couldnt download it, trying now from the "US" :)

Looks very interesting....