Project Spark

I think there is in the "Other Games" section where non MMOs go.

This game looks incredible.

Too bad it's a Microsoft game, and I wouldn't give them a dime unless there was a gun pointed at my head.

Is there an MMO aspect to this? Can you create an MMORPG in your space and have people connect to it? What are the size limits on the world you can create? How many people can you have connect to your world?

Thanks for sharing this. Any idea if you can design your own combat mechanics? I'll look in to this but can't watch an hour long movie at the moment.

I spent a lot of time making Neverwinter Nights modules and made some good stuff in that. It was fairly easy to make a basic campaign with your own 100% original world, and add your own quests and characters and dialogues and stuff. Pretty cool. But at the end of the day it was still NWN with the clunky ass engine and old fashioned combat that didn't work in a way I wanted, and changing that was just not possible or feasible.

That was the first thing that came to mind when I heard about Landmark and now this. Making a world would be fine but for me to care I would really need to be able to specify mob HP, damage output, and the same for the player classes and how all the spells work and stuff.

Only watched a few vids. This looks really cool. Unfortunately I have serious questions as to if this could ever create a mmo that had any significant depth. Looks better at creating junior RPGs, 3D jumpers, and side scrollers. I could be totally wrong- I'm sure I haven't seen the entire breadth of what the game can actually do yet. I am also not thrilled with the art assets (esp the trees and char models). I hope they have a way to supplement user gen art assets or have a much wider palette than the demos have shown.

Still, it seems worth following

It sounds like the best thing ever. The thing is, even Everquest didn't really have that much going on in terms of 'depth'. If you can make a big world, fill it with mobs for people to kill, fill the database with loots, then you're most of the way there. I don't know if it would be able to do some more modern ideas, but even if the average gamer could just make a good old school style MMO, it could be amazing.

Looks interesting, then I noticed that the beta is for Windows 8.

Really? Are there people who upgrade to this? On purpose? Only people I know with it are the ones who bought laptops with it pre-installed. If it is win 8 / xbox one only, I guess I won't be trying this.

Edit: Messed around with some gifs, they were too large, uploaded one, turned into a jpg, and now when I go into edit or attachments, I can't seem to find a way to delete it. Meh.

Droigan_sl said:

Looks interesting, then I noticed that the beta is for Windows 8.

Really? Are there people who upgrade to this? On purpose? Only people I know with it are the ones who bought laptops with it pre-installed. If it is win 8 / xbox one only, I guess I won't be trying this.

Click to expand...

Most people I know have switched to Windows 8. For the super casual Mom and Pop users it doesn't offer much although 8.1 got a lot better. For anyone that uses computers even slightly more than casually though it is a really nice upgrade over Windows 7.

This seems like a nice midway point between Little Big Planet and Unity. Real games can use Unity (which seems fairly easy to pick up) but for the side hobby group this seems like a potential good fit.

Droigan_sl said:

Looks interesting, then I noticed that the beta is for Windows 8.

Really? Are there people who upgrade to this? On purpose? Only people I know with it are the ones who bought laptops with it pre-installed. If it is win 8 / xbox one only, I guess I won't be trying this.

Edit: Messed around with some gifs, they were too large, uploaded one, turned into a jpg, and now when I go into edit or attachments, I can't seem to find a way to delete it. Meh.

Click to expand...

Do you own a Windows 8?
Do you use Windows 8?

I was like you until I assmebled my new gaming desktop with Windows 8.
I'm happy with it. I always ask people what they hate about it; I can't remember a single legitimate reason.

The "game" looks promising; I like the idea.
Reminds me of RPG maker.


But maybe you do have a legitimate reason (besides "I'm used to other OS and I don't want to try something else" which is still a good reason).

Got to play with Project Spark today. The technology behind it is quite impressive and I am very intrigued by the ability of this game to teach the fundamentals of logic-based coding and elementary computer science. It certainly has the potential to be much more ground breaking in terms of edutainment than Little Big Planet was based on the mechanisms by which the creator has to edit and interact with the content.

That having been said...

JESUS TITTY FUCKING CHRIST!! Microsoft has gone completely apeshit with "microtransactions" for this game. It is as if the creators of the title came up with this amazing procedural based content creation and sandbox toy system and then some executive fresh off a Farmville bender went "so how much money can we charge for each prop / effect / control / tool in the game???!?".

"Playing" the game, which in this context means going through content creation tutorials as well as running through content created by other people and generating your own content, gains you Coins which you can use to buy some rudimentary props but the cost of these props seem somewhat high as in "play for a couple hours and you can afford to unlock a different colored staff to put into games you create". For the big things like different lighting schemes, different NPC and PC models, different palette sets etc you have to spend "Tokens" which are about on par with the cost of old Microsoft points in the Xbox 360 era.

Not only do you need to pay to unlock these things as a creator, but as a player you are only allowed 30 mins of Sparktime a day. What is Sparktime? This is the time you are allowed to play content created by others that contains any object, effect, color etc that you do not yourself own. Now you can, of course, add additional Sparktime to your account... for a moderate donation of $$$. It looked like a monthly fee of $30 gave you bonus experience and also unlimited Sparktime which seems more than a little steep.

I went from being very impressed with the demo to soul-crushingly depressed as soon as I saw the shop. Now the game is obviously still far from primetime and I may be totally off base in my opinion based on what may be placeholder costs, but if not then I fear the game is going to either be painfully expensive or really only accessible using least common denominator assets such that the largest possible pool of players can actually play your level.

Yeah. I got into the beta over Christmas. Played the choose your adventure thing for five minutes then tried to create something and discovered the shop. I uninstalled. Sadly the key is linked to Xbox live account so you can't even give it away.

When i read threads like this all i think is, they really want to take us back to coin-op gaming don't they ?

I wonder if years from now we are going to look back and say to our kids 'I remember the days when you could just buy a game and play it out of the box without paying for anything else.'

I'm really opposed to microtransactions and everything the are doing to the game industry. It may be pointless, but I will happily boycott all games to utilize microtransactions.

I genuinely don't have a problem with microtransactions in the context of actually being MICROtransactions and/or in the context of fluff content. Where I have an issue is when the magnitude of the microtransaction not only rivals but far exceeds the cost of a full retail title or is so ingrained into the content so as to make the game unplayable without it.

Candy Crush Saga or Tiny Death Star are good examples of free to play microtransaction supported titles. You can enjoy them perfectly fine without one thin dime being spent and indeed not spending money makes for A better game. As I browsed the Project Spark store my mental tally of costs put it roughly in Skylanders territory to just be able to enjoy what is baseline content.

Xbox One needs a killer app to move units, I think Project Spark might have been a great way to lure in adoptors but instead will end up as a Little Big Planet clone