Yes, and you can do all that already mate.I mean cooperatively (I'm assuming you can do this at the same time when they say this).
I mean cooperatively (I'm assuming you can do this at the same time when they say this).
Agreed, i'm not shitting on the premise of Project Spark. I've watched half a dozen streams and love the concept and the functionality of the engine is excellent. Heck, I wish I had some of the tools in Spark in CE3!
It certainly is well designed!I used to program mods for mods that stopped that happening, like a lock and key system for that bloody reasonYou can do that in most engines nowadays. Which is a relief, I remember getting highly frustrated modding in the BF2 Engine, one guy would work on it and then you'd some other fella would save and overwrite all the changes I'd made a few hours before!
I used to program mods for mods that stopped that happening, like a lock and key system for that bloody reason
Fair play. Never said it was anything new, mind you! I just don't see anything else out there which is so accessible, so varied and so likely to go viral. Half the excitement is because so many people are likely to use it.
I never did a huge amount of modding or level design like that, I wrote some plugins for maya/max for a couple of teams, but I was more an indie developer on quite a lauded team. It's how I made it pro.
Indeed. Off the top of my head it would lend itself to a cool Worms type game, where you (and multiple enemies) were in junk patches and you had to build characters out of scrap and fight wars in that way. Find enough parts to make big bombs and things, and craters ahoy!
It's not just the story but the amount of effort that would've needed to have gone into laying out the game's philosophy as well. Things like journals/diaries, books, etc would have to be written, diagrams drawn and updated in game, memories and flashbacks created, etc.. The most important thing needed to tie it up was a set of chapters written by two key historical figures from an older civilisation; one of whom was highly influential, if not entirely responsible for a revolution in thought, whilst the other was an obsessive and insecure thinker who feared the truths of those findings. That bit alone would've taken hours and the idea was to subtly hint that the latter was the previous human form of the main antagonist, and that he ended up as he did trying to reject the nature of existence. This guy eventually became something more akin to a being like Sin from FFX, and was sealed up during a huge war between himself and that civilisation (at the cost of the majority of their lives).I mainly just wanted to test the software to see what was possible.
I never went through with it though because the story I had in mind would maybe have taken about a thousand hours for one person to implement.
I'd loved to have made it but it just wasn't realistic when you combine that with the actual gameplay. One of the characters in particular would've taken an age to write - I needed to write in a false surface character development that would've come off as something of an existential crisis (given the sorts of things the group start experiencing), where as in reality it would've been turmoil from masking the impossibility of his deceit. He was to be written as part of a group of individuals (sort of like apostles that were produced by that Sin-like creature) that had previously raised the main character for a large part of his childhood, having already identified him as a reincarnation of that older, lost civilisation, and someone that could eventually release the antagonist from the shackles that were put on him during that era. That group captured the main character at an early age and began to enforce torture and other methods to stop him from developing into the being he was destined to become, whilst also crafting him so as to be able to manipulate him into freeing the antagonist. Long story short...he escaped, was seized by a section of the military, and the deceitful character is given the job of bringing him back in. The whole thing becomes a complete disaster though due to the other people that enter the equation, with him eventually having to befriend them and craftily steer the group towards their demise (too much effort to explain why he was the only person to be able to do this at this point!). One of the key parts of this is the constant undermining of another character who's outlook on life is uncannily similar to that of the lost civilisation's, and as such is a threat to the group's purpose of using the main character to free this Sin-like being (without triggering his potential). The dialogue between these two characters would be quite similar to that an argument between a conspiracy theorist and a sceptic, with the deceitful character ridiculing the other character's beliefs and steering the main character away from that line of thought. It doesn't work, and the deceitful character is reduced to panic and dread as he watches him slowly become what the group was trying to steer him away from becoming.
There are so many other plotlines that sandwich around all this (the whole thing for example is done in context of a hidden, ongoing war occurring either side of something called the 'dimensional veil'), and I didn't really know how to approach the issue of the soundtrack either. I am definitely no musician and would've been reliant on someone else scoring it, but even if that happened I'm not sure what atmosphere would fit. It would needed to have been more Jeremy Soule than Uematsu, but then that wouldn't have been appropriate for some of the more shocking in-game twists. Dumbing down the philosophy and the dialogue was the only thing I could think of, but then that was what I liked most about the idea.
That's obviously going to be no different with Project Spark (more effort if anything) but I'll have a lot more fun trying! There's a fair bit I need to learn about writing before something like that could be pulled off but the idea is there for now.
Aye. The soundtrack is the biggest issue. It's easier to write something like this than a book but it's hard to know how to write if you're not entirely sure of the atmosphere. You can't have something like an Mitsuda/Uematsu SNES structure of melody going over talk of other dimensions, just as you can't have a more ambient Jeremy Soule style going over shocking plot twists. Can't mix them up either because then there'd be no real thematic consistency! It'd have to be something more like a Shimomura soundtrack...but then there aren't many Shimomura's out there. I certainly can't fecking make music like that.
Never mind, I'm just looking forward to playing around now. Was getting a little excited last night even just watching someone programming his character to get shot out of a cannon. Whatever there is to be said about how long it would take to make a truly quality game, the individual tools on this are so easy to use.
Will get it eventually I imagine but that's handy to know.Sorry just noticed this. Cheers Alock, that's good of ya.
Just had a look at that. Primitive by comparison but yeah that really does look very similar in some respects.
Yep, you just told me.
Wasn't knocking the software, just commenting. Tempted to have a go at some point; pleasantly surprised how much stuff like this there is.
it was the way you wrote it, I wanted to be sure.I can't be arsed waiting 5 months or whatever to worry. I'm going to get it out the way with now so it's not a problem when I actually start playing around with it.
It's good point actually, mostly they are protected because it's a user-generated site that they are not responsible unless they induce the infringement of copyright, and have to have a good reputation for actively fighting against infringement.
Techically, with all the multiplayer components going with this game, along with the default properties and easy design tools (object painter etc.) there are plenty of shortcuts you could take. As we saw in the stream above, you could easily just steal an inventory system from another game, you could steal a point/score system, the 'game over' loadouts, the weapon brains etc.etc. and just customize to suit your game and do the story yourself.I need this to come out so I can move on with my life and finally realise I will never be arsed enough to be able to make the game I'd like to with this. I can't stop thinking about plots, sub-plots, characters, bosses, a levelling system, special character abilities, etc... There's no chance, though.
Never mind, when that's all done I can't wait to mess around with this. I found it encouraging on that video that there were mentions of being able to change the physics of the game you were making if you put enough effort in. That'd probably take ages but that's nice to know - maybe some would be a bit concerned about it all getting a bit repetitive if that wasn't the case.
Another thing that came to mind...I'm looking forward to someone making a Super Smash Bros. type game out of this! I was seeing 2D side scrollers and it hit me that it wouldn't really be a stretch to move on from that and make a game like that.
Yeah, it's a good idea and something they should think about. The idea earlier in the thread was to allow people to monetise their stuff when their games are ranked at a certain standard, whether that be by moderators, players or anything else. That standard would have to be high and the list would need be particularly elitist though I imagine, otherwise you'd detract too much from the whole free to play aspect like you say.
That...sounds beautiful. My god.You could definitely see a Super Smash Bros game - and I'm sure we will in no time. You could have a Mariocathalon (but not Mario of course); where you start with a kart race with 8 players, the top 4 going against eachother in a Super Smash Bros game, and could end with a trophy parade cinematic.
