Microsoft at GDC Next

Project Spark: Enabling and Inspiring the User to Make (Almost) Anything

Project Spark is an interesting initiative by Microsoft to invite all users of their devices to easily make games. A free-to-play game-making software application available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and all Windows devices, Project Spark is a cross between a visual level creator like Minecraft and a full blown game development environment like Unity3d. It provides users with a virtual world to easily fill and populate along with some basic programming tools to create game mechanics.

The speaker talked about the merits of designing games for user-generated content (UGC). Countless examples show that games that allow players to build their own game or level can add massive amounts of value and playability to a game, if done well. Little Big Planet, Minecraft, and even Halo with its forge system allowed players to make more out of the game than the original game provides. Most recently, I have been a fan of Battleblock Theatre, another glowing example of how UGC can add value to a game by letting players create and manipulate levels.

The talk got really interesting when the lecture was over and he pulled up the actual game to demonstrate a couple of its primary features. He showed how easy it was to edit the landscape of a new map and quickly populate it with trees and random animals. It was effortlessly beautiful and fun to watch. Then he briefly showed off the programming logic of the game where each object can have a “brain”.

An example of a brain from Project Spark

These brains are controlled by When-Do programming logic that looks like a fantastic introduction (for the uninitiated) to programming logic. It is a simplistic programming environment based around if-then statements and I could see it being a great starting point to get kids interested in more detailed programming opportunities.

Pros: The game looks beautiful and intuitive, it has an opportunity to introduce many children to programming logic, and it will be available for free.

Cons: The game’s potential is limited by Microsoft’s want to control the experience. There will be no external art support and no new programming blocks for the brains. You cannot bring in assets from other programs and in many ways we are stuck with what they give us. How much of a limitation this is will depend on the quality and quantity of what they give us.

Another potential con is that it is designed for Xbox and PC. I am interested to see how the control scheme works on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One as it seemed like the kind of thing that you would want detailed mouse and keyboard control over. I hope in trying to design it for Windows and Xbox that they did not take away some of the optimization for PC control.

Gamasutra interviewed the speaker before the talk and you can check out that interview here.

The Future of Kinect 

The Kinect is not just a gaming peripheral, it is Microsoft’s attempt to make the most of Natural User Interactions (NUI) and Multi-Modal controls (combining multiple ways of interacting with technology: gesture, vision, voice, touch, keyboard, and mouse) to create better interactions between humans and technology.

Releasing next week, the new Kinect sensor is coming bundled with every Xbox One. Touting facial and skeletal recognition for up to 6 people at once, 4 microphones for voice beam tracking, a wider field of view than the original model, and a full HD 1080p camera, the new Kinect sensor is a large step forward from the current generation Kinect that has been steadily filling living rooms over the last 4 years.

Among the many exciting features is Kinect Fusion, the digitalization and 3D scanning of physical objects. By using the Kinect to scan 3D models of physical objects, the Kinect is able to bring anything it sees into the digital world. They also just introduced Fusion Color, which captures the color and texture of the objects being scanned into the digital realm to further add to the realism.

The overall tracking and recognition abilities of the device are much more impressive than the original model. Unlike the original model, the device has skeleton recognition even when the player turns to the side and the faster, stronger camera allows smoother motion capture. It was easily able to recognize things like mouth open/closed, wearing glasses yes/no, eyes open yes/no and even a heart rate recognition based on color fluctuations of the face due to blood flow. These are all tracked for up to 6 people at once. The quality of the color camera is quite impressive and the Infra Red (IR) sensor provides a much clearer resulting image capture than the previous model as well.

The new Kinect also adds new engagement controls that seem more intuitive and create a wider possibility space for potential movements. Instead of waving to get the camera’s attention, just look at screen and hold palm out. Instead of holding your hand out and waiting to be noticed, press hand forward when hovering. Instead of swiping your hand left and right across the screen, make a grip gesture to grab and scroll.

In addition to the built in features, the Visual Gesture Builder for Kinect for Windows allows building of custom gesture building and capture. This adds the ability to have the Kinect recognize any custom motion that a designer programs in. Overall, there is a lot of exciting potential for the future of the Kinect and we will begin to see more developers using it now that every Xbox will have one.

For the full post and information about gaming in 4K resolution, check out 4KGamer.com