Project Spark (Xbox One Exclusive)

[allBthere]

Re: Project Spark (Xbox One Exclusive)

I'll have to mess with this some more, I was in the PC beta but got busy with other stuff and then EQ Landmark happened.

This is a pretty dense month for gaming though, and I have a baby on the way by the end of the month (aka any day now). I have low expectations of my available gaming time, lol.

I haven't even read any impressions online, did you like it? I'm not sure how much they are trying to do with this "game" or if it is more or less world creation.

[mestevo]

Re: Project Spark (Xbox One Exclusive)

Spark? I loved what I saw, just didn't take the time to learn how to best use the tech, the brains, etc.

Sent from my VZW Note 3

[BenGerman]

Re: Project Spark (Xbox One Exclusive)

Got my key! Will be playing a crap ton tonight, so I'll post my impressions here afterwards.

[BenGerman]

Re: Project Spark (Xbox One Exclusive)

Put a few hours into this tonight, so here are my thoughts:

+ The game is incredibly deep. Their moniker is that you finally get to create your own game. That sounds too profound to be true, but it is actually very true. There are thousands of props, binomes, visual cues, etc that you can place in your game. Each and every object can be given an AI.

+ Speaking of the AI, get ready to soak some major time into developing your world. When I started my own world, I created a normal looking knight character that spewed fire balls out of his hand. I mapped the controls and made sure that for everything I did, something resulted from it. Creating an enemy character (or even a non-hostile character) is insane. I made two gigantic Fish that would fire projectiles at me on sight. I could change how fast they swam, who it was they were more prone to attack, etc.

+ The game looks great. You don't notice it in creation mode, but when you go into "testing" mode, you really see it.

+ I'm fairly certain that if you've ever had a game in mind, you could create it here. Adventure, RPG, Shooter, Puzzle, etc.

+ There are tutorials that help get you started.

- That said, there is a LOT you have to learn. The learning curve is going to be huge, and I don't think anyone but the developers will have a true handle on it for a good long time.

+ The upside of that is that user created content is going to get better and more complex as time goes on.

- The menus are extremely clunky on X1. Getting from one thing to another isn't easy, and the FPS frequently drops.

- I ran into numerous bugs with my creations. Not sure if that's on me, or the game. One of my gigantic fish would pop up from one place to another without swimming there.

- I'm a little worried about the F2P model. More than 50% of the objects are "locked". You can either pay coins for them, or you can use XP to unlock them. While the XP doesn't seem to be short on supply, the unlocks are often very expensive.

+ You can create cutscenes, and even do your own voiceovers.

+ You can share, download, and rate other user created content. That's going to be awesome.


Overall, I do not understand why this game has such little hype. The amount of depth that Dakota (who I believe is the developer?) hands the player is enormous and exciting. There are going to be a crap ton of bugs to endure, but I expect they'll be soothed over time. I highly recommend checking out the beta, as it isn't short on things to do. I'd love it if they had sort of a Project Spark pass for a set amount of money so that I didn't have to worry about the F2P stuff.

[allBthere]

Re: Project Spark (Xbox One Exclusive)

will post impressions later when I get to try it out but more a comment on xbone in general is how bad the 'store' is!

Project spark appeared NOWHERE in the store, I had to seach with bing and poof there it was along with purchaseable items.... I really don't get the new design sometimes, where there are products available you literally can't find unless you know about them already and search letter by letter with bing.

SUPER weird imo.

[allBthere]

Re: Project Spark (Xbox One Exclusive)

I tried the tutorial, which really gives a glimpse into the possibilities.

I also recorded a few kinect animations which really opens up an entire world of complexity and possibilities. I'm going to see how I can potentially add them to the player characters and see if it's possible to create contextual things with them like attacks.

My goal is to try and create a simple muay thai match with 2 people, but I'm not sure it's possible.

The easiest thing to create would be a simple adventure game.

[allBthere]

Re: Project Spark (Xbox One Exclusive)

for this game to work they need a support team that answers questions quickly. I don't see where to get fast answers or even a full guide - in some cases you can make a simple game, but other cases it's too steep and no way to get an understanding of how to do certain things.

I left mssg's in their official forums asking how to do something very specific and no response at all.

Roadblocks are hard to get past on this one. It has tons of possibilities though, ...