• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Project Spark Information Q&A

G

Garrett 2U

Member
Mike_Lescault said:
During E3, we announced that the core Project Spark experience would be free-to-play, and would not require a Gold membership. We'll be sharing more details as we get closer to release. Gold membership generally provides a tremendous amount of value, and for past Xbox titles, has been required for specific product features such as multiplayer.

Hope that helps!
Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks! Watching swan song now :p
 
B

biRdy

Member
Can't wait to get into the beta! But I'm more excited to see what the really creative people are able to do with Project Spark.
 
D

dejay

Banned
Has support for rumble and or impulse triggers been mentioned?

I've stopped watching the streams, because they were starting to get samey. It's still my most anticipated title; especially since I've (almost) gotten GTA out of my system.
 
M

Mike_Lescault

Neo Member
dejay said:
Has support for rumble and or impulse triggers been mentioned?
Click to expand...

Rumble, yes. Impulse, not yet.


I've stopped watching the streams, because they were starting to get samey. It's still my most anticipated title; especially since I've (almost) gotten GTA out of my system.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the streams are really an interesting beast. We have some fans that really just want to see ANY kind of Project Spark gameplay, to the point that they had been watching our community montage trailers over and over countless times. On the other hand, we have some fans that want to see very deep dives into specific details about game mechanics, such as brain koding. We also have people that just want to see more cool "magic moments" like when Claude had the fern trigger the terrain population event that J10 linked to above. And finally, we get a significant number of brand new folks, usually when Twitch promotes us on their main page, that have never heard of Project Spark before.

I'm constantly wrestling with the right way to cater to as many of those folks as possible, and am consistently surprised with what resonates and what doesn't. Swan Song seems to have resonated really well, which tells me that we should consider showing more completed game experiences versus the more creation focus we've been showing.
 
J

J10

Banned
Mike_Lescault said:
I'm constantly wrestling with the right way to cater to as many of those folks as possible, and am consistently surprised with what resonates and what doesn't. Swan Song seems to have resonated really well, which tells me that we should consider showing more completed game experiences versus the more creation focus we've been showing.
Click to expand...

I think an even mix of complete game concepts and the coding behind them would be great. I thought Swan Song ran too long in the gameplay and not long enough in the behind the scenes part. Unless it's some totally unseen genre of game I'm more interested in the technical aspects of the designs than the games themselves.
 
G

Garrett 2U

Member
Mike_Lescault said:
such as brain koding.
Click to expand...
Hehe I like it, Kodu, Koding. Clever :p

But I really enjoyed seeing a full game after all the weeks of seeing the tools. Would definitely love to see more demos of some games, for at least part of the streams :)
Maybe dig into some of the tools and brains used to make the game after demoing it, that would be nice
 
S

Stampy

Member
Great stream with Swan Song.

That level has really well planned art and camera placements. Too bad we haven't seen the depth of brains behind the battles. Although the idea not to have any potions or mana regen items is a bit absurd and totally not in line with JRPGs. :p And to be honest I was hoping we would see a menu screen, where you could check all the stats, change armor and stuff like that....

Also, this level just even more emphasized how important it is to have voice recordings. The audio aspect is really lacking with no voices. I really hope you guys manage to implement the mic recordings on PC, otherwise all the narrative games/levels will really suffer.

As for the stream on Tuesday, looking forward to seeing some of the community alpha builds.:)
 
J

J10

Banned
Does anybody want to specialize in any particular area of game design in Project Spark, or do you fancy yourself a jack of all trades?

Level design
Story/lore/narrative
Character design
Sound design
Mission design
Enemy encounters
General gameplay

I know I'm gonna try to do it all, but I have no idea if I'll be good at any of it. Maybe it could be cool if there were a NeoGAF development team with members assigned to specific tasks for a single project.
 
D

Dead Prince

Banned
jfo6TBCAHEKq2.png


lol. using #rysefacts. whatever works :D
 
G

Garrett 2U

Member
J10 said:
Does anybody want to specialize in any particular area of game design in Project Spark, or do you fancy yourself a jack of all trades?

Level design
Story/lore/narrative
Character design
Sound design
Mission design
Enemy encounters
General gameplay

I know I'm gonna try to do it all, but I have no idea if I'll be good at any of it. Maybe it could be cool if there were a NeoGAF development team with members assigned to specific tasks for a single project.
Click to expand...
At first I'm just going to go all out making brain assemblies. Cant wait to dig into the scripting :p
 
B

belushy

Banned
J10 said:
Does anybody want to specialize in any particular area of game design in Project Spark, or do you fancy yourself a jack of all trades?

Level design
Story/lore/narrative
Character design
Sound design
Mission design
Enemy encounters
General gameplay

I know I'm gonna try to do it all, but I have no idea if I'll be good at any of it. Maybe it could be cool if there were a NeoGAF development team with members assigned to specific tasks for a single project.
Click to expand...

I'm still not sure. I have ideas in my head, but I feel like the brains might be just a bit too advanced for me to truly create what I want. I'll most likely do level design and maybe the lore/story stuff. Hoping a better character creation system is implemented in the future.
 
J

J10

Banned
The brain stuff surprisingly doesn't look that intimidating to me. They've commented more than once that it's designed to teach you basic the logic behind coding and that the system filters out code options that don't make sense depending on the last code tile inputted as each line goes on. It also warns you when a line is incomplete, so at least we shouldn't be writing code that doesn't do anything.
 
G

Garrett 2U

Member
Hmmmmm at the end of the stream, Mike quickly mentions that Win 8.1 comes out Thursday..... You don't think that beta could coincide with that date.... Maybe?
 
G

GayForMaster

Banned
birdhammer said:
Those first four posts are really suspect.
Click to expand...

lol

J10 said:
Does anybody want to specialize in any particular area of game design in Project Spark, or do you fancy yourself a jack of all trades?

Level design
Story/lore/narrative
Character design
Sound design
Mission design
Enemy encounters
General gameplay

I know I'm gonna try to do it all, but I have no idea if I'll be good at any of it. Maybe it could be cool if there were a NeoGAF development team with members assigned to specific tasks for a single project.
Click to expand...

Is there no coding to be done in this game when customizing?
 
Lucent

Lucent

Member
GayForMaster said:
Is there no coding to be done in this game when customizing?
Click to expand...

As far as real coding like Visual Basic or C++, I don't think so. Seems like there's no way for you to really screw up besides the result not being what you wanted. Seemed like every time you selected an option, related options might pop up or tips/suggestions show up.

I'm really looking forward to messing around with this and making deeper and better games as I get used to it.
 
G

Garrett 2U

Member
Lucent said:
As far as real coding like Visual Basic or C++, I don't think so. Seems like there's no way for you to really screw up besides the result not being what you wanted. Seemed like every time you selected an option, related options might pop up or tips/suggestions show up.

I'm really looking forward to messing around with this and making deeper and better games as I get used to it.
Click to expand...
Programming languages all have syntax rules too.
You can definitely program in Spark.

From what I've seen from the streams, you can create what are essentially class implementations (I think they call them "templates"?) and instantiate them as objects.
Hell, you could even link together a set of those classes as an "assembly" and share it like a library...

I mean obviously it's not as deep as a language like C++... But still. It's going to be extremely interesting to see what the community creates in the brains.
 
Lucent

Lucent

Member
Garrett 2U said:
Programming languages all have syntax rules too.
You can definitely program in Spark.

From what I've seen from the streams, you can create what are essentially class implementations (I think they call them "templates"?) and instantiate them as objects.
Hell, you could even link together a set of those classes as an "assembly" and share it like a library...

I mean obviously it's not as deep as a language like C++... But still. It's going to be extremely interesting to see what the community creates in the brains.
Click to expand...

Well yeah that's all I was really getting at. That it wasn't as deep as C++. But I mean I'm totally okay with that. I didn't really like Visual Basic when I took it as a class. But this seems like something I could actually handle. And we've already seen some silly stuff done with the brains. Like that rock shark. lol
 
S

Stampy

Member
J10 said:
Does anybody want to specialize in any particular area of game design in Project Spark, or do you fancy yourself a jack of all trades?

Level design
Story/lore/narrative
Character design
Sound design
Mission design
Enemy encounters
General gameplay

I know I'm gonna try to do it all, but I have no idea if I'll be good at any of it. Maybe it could be cool if there were a NeoGAF development team with members assigned to specific tasks for a single project.
Click to expand...

I want to use Project Spark as a way to better know myself. In confines of my work space I have to constantly respect hierarchy, following myriad of rules and procedures; I crave for a space where I can just let my imagination run free without any consequences. How will this notion actualize is still uncertain, but I would definitely want to create complete packages (even if flawed), realizing ideas and theoretical conceptions. I don’t think I would be happy with just specializing in a specific field.
 
N

nbraun80

Member
Haven't popped in for a couple of days but just wanted to say that the streams have been great(especially swan song) and I'm looking forward to this beta. :). Tell the gang to keep up the amazing work Mike. :)
 
M

MaGlock

Member
Easily my most anticipated game in the foreseeable future. Can't wait for this game really hope we can set up a nice Gaf development team. I dream of big things
 
J

J10

Banned
I feel like this thread doesn't have as much activity as it should. I think when the beta starts in a couple of weeks and people get their hands on it things will pick up.
 
G

Garrett 2U

Member
J10 said:
I feel like this thread doesn't have as much activity as it should. I think when the beta starts in a couple of weeks and people get their hands on it things will pick up.
Click to expand...
Once that NDA drops and more are allowed to mess around with Spark in the beta, word will spread fast :)
 
B

belushy

Banned
Yeah, I'm hoping some popular streamers on Twitch or popular youtubers have been keeping their eye on it and get into the beta early to get some hype built up on it.

edit: Wow, forgot there was a stream today but Jared used the modular dungeon design stuff that a community alpha tester made and made a map that randomly generates a dungeon using the pieces. Added monsters that randomly generate as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKVQtB8soYs&feature=youtu.be

Random dungeon stuff starts at like 25 minutes.
 
S

something fishy

Member
This looks very interesting. My son has been watching vids and is keen to get it to experiment and play and see if he can compliment his comp sci studies at school by doing creation in this (though he's used a piece of software that allows visual design and scripting on pc that's very good, game maker pro or something like that).
 
Lucent

Lucent

Member
Yeah I'm just waiting for some beta details and stuff. Can't wait to see more enemies though besides goblin and troll. I know there were like some squirrels in some of the earlier videos.

I wonder if it'd be possible to make a horror game with it. Imagine weird stuff like Yume Nikki and The Witches House on there. Or Corpse Party. Though I dunno if those types of games would be very effective in 3D or not. Also don't know how far you can go with character creation yet and if you can make party members and other human NPCs.
 
S

Stampy

Member
I bought new computer just for this game (R785OC-1GD video card; 1TB SATA HDD; Intel Core i5-4440 processor; SSDNow V300 120GB; RAM 8GB DDR3 1333MHz). Nothing special, but still hope it's good enough for high performance on mid settings. Still have to get a wired xbox controller and I am ready. :)
 
S

Stampy

Member
What was the announced info for the beta? Wasn't home at the time of streaming, but will watch the recording tomorrow.
 
J

J10

Banned
What makes you think there was a beta announcement? It's just going to show up one day and you're just gonna take it all over your face.
 
S

Stampy

Member
J10 said:
What makes you think there was a beta announcement? It's just going to show up one day and you're just gonna take it all over your face.
Click to expand...

Umm, in the Thursday stream Mike was giving some hints that we can expect new info regarding beta on today's stream. So nothing new was said?
 
J

J10

Banned
It's been pushed back to November. They're still trying to get it stable, same thing he's been saying for weeks. I'm not even waiting for it anymore, just hoping to be surprised by it one day.
 
Lucent

Lucent

Member
J10 said:
It's been pushed back to November. They're still trying to get it stable, same thing he's been saying for weeks. I'm not even waiting for it anymore, just hoping to be surprised by it one day.
Click to expand...

Ah man. Hopefully it doesn't take too long for them to iron it out.
 
M

Mike_Lescault

Neo Member
The video of today's stream is processing on Youtube now. (I'll share the link when it's up) The Win8 beta is close, but it won't quite make the end of October. It will require 8.1.
 
Lucent

Lucent

Member
Doffen said:
@proj_spark:
Click to expand...

Awesome. =D

Mike_Lescault said:
The video of today's stream is processing on Youtube now. (I'll share the link when it's up) The Win8 beta is close, but it won't quite make the end of October. It will require 8.1.
Click to expand...

Awesome. I just updated to 8.1 a few days ago. Hopefully the beta (should I get in) doesn't prove to be too much for my PC to handle. Only really confident in the X1 beta.
 
Lucent

Lucent

Member
Mike_Lescault said:
Today's stream was crazy fun, despite some technical issues and a visit by the pizza guys (who turned out to not have had pizza). The video is still processing, but will be available here: http://youtu.be/KC3V49B2_ec
Click to expand...

I noticed in the other stream (with some beta news) you mentioned something that sounded like, once you can play the beta, you can basically play it into release while it's being updated? Or did I misinterpret that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

There will be No WoW Live Q&A at BlizzCon 2023
Community Cringe
10
1K
lh032 replied
Phantom Blade Zero 30-Min Demo Will Be Invite-Only
News
0
441
Don Carlo replied
Teyon Wants To Work On More IPs After RoboCop: Rogue City
Game Dev 2
74
3K
AGRacing replied
Would you want your player avatar to sound like you, too?
2
54
1K
buenoblue replied
Equinox - Embark on an interactive story among the stars
3
181
ReyBrujo replied
Top Bottom