projectsparkblog

[projectsparkblog]

Projectspark.com under maintanence

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We're doing some quick updates to projectspark.com and expect the website to be back up within 2 hours. (3pm PDT)

In the meantime, why not visit our forums http://forums.projectspark.com/yaf_forum2_Discussion.aspx (which may also have some brief downtime during this update) or just squawk at us on twitter @proj_spark ? :)

[projectsparkblog]

Hippo Update Notes

Available for download today is our latest update to the Hippo build.  We had a few top fixes in this one as well as some continued system-wide changes that tee up our upcoming retail Starter Kit release on Oct. 7th (in the US).

To start off, we’ve got a few small but quite audible fixes for our latest drop.

Whoosh there it is! There was a bug where sound FX levels would default to the loud Gallery state when starting in create mode. This has been fixed.

The ambient wind was way too loud in Crossroads prompting the team to want to add the dialogue stating we’re not in Kansas anymore (we restrained ourselves). This has been fixed.

Pesky Cursor

When using touch and mouse controls on PC there was a bug where the cursor would always display the scale as 100%. This has been fixed.

Combat Calamity

A variety of cool combat hit effects went missing. The hit-stop freeze (hit stall) upon constancy and the camera shake amongst them. Combat should feel a bit better now.

Calling All Creators: Coloring [Display] Icons has Changed

As we head to release, we’ve changed the way tinting works with icons and the [display] tile. Previously the desired color multiplied with the color of the icon. This usually resulted in darkened, muddied and confusing coloring that rarely resulted in the intended color. Now, icons are converted to a gray scale then the desired color is applied to the icon. Unfortunately, with this change, players may need to update their worlds if they are expecting the old behavior.

Contribution Value/Lineage

We’ve learned a lot from the beta community around how we calculate Contribution Value (CV), in particular on worlds that were created before Hippo released.  If you don’t know, CV is the % of work the uploader put into a shared world.  CV is used to determine how many Credits and XP each creator gets as a world is played and up voted.  We started calculating this in Hippo based on how much time each creator spent painting, sculpting, editing brains, etc.  But since we didn’t track these actions in the creation process before Hippo released we had to guess on older worlds and backfill their CV percentages.  Turns out our guesses were a bit off, so we’re going to fix that by taking these steps:

We have discarded all CV data (both backfill and accumulated) that existed prior to today (this update).

We are applying new backfill CV data to all levels created prior to today (this update).

We will start accumulating accurate CV data again from this point on.

The service will be offline for several hours while we complete this operation amongst a few other maintenance and preparation tasks.

  As always, please send any issues and bugs you encounter our way and we will have more updates on our exciting upcoming release over the next few weeks.

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark Takes a Nap.

We here at Team Dakota are going to be taking the Project Spark servers offline temporarily.

  After the release of the Hippo update Team Dakota has many new possibilities open to us in regards to what we can put into Project Spark. However, to bring everyone more great content we will need to update our servers… and there are a lot of them.

  This means:

-Project Spark will be down for about 18 hours starting at 6PM UTC -800 (West Coast USA time.)

-The Project Spark website will be intermittently down as well.

  Once the servers are up it will be back to business as usual. I know how much everyone is yearning to get into Project Spark and create. We apologize for the down time. This update will help us bring everyone more great content in the future, and get us ready for release on October 7th.

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark artwork named 2014 #intothepixel winner

Congrats to Jedd for having his artwork selected! For more details about Into the Pixel check out: http://www.intothepixel.com :)

[projectsparkblog]

To celebrate the One Year Anniversary of Project Spark we will be hosting two special community events on Friday, May 30th and Saturday, May 31st between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time. During the event players will recieve 5x Multiplier on Al

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark at PAX East

Project Spark – The ultimate creation game that lets anyone build unique and instantly playable levels, experiences, and worlds, Project Spark will showcase exciting new content on Xbox One and Windows 8.1 at PAX East. In addition to Team Dakota, the development team behind Project Spark, providing hands-on and guided demos of the game, several of Project Spark’s superstar community members will showcase their own games and levels created within the game. Consumers who come by the booth and try the game for themselves can receive an exclusive “Pinny Arcade” pin (limited quantity).

Project Spark Panel - Playing is Creating: How to transform from an everyday gamer to a creative visionary with Project Spark

Saturday, April 12th 12:00 PM | Albatross Theatre

Have the dream of creating your perfect game? Interested in seeing what an engaged and passionate community can create? Do you love playing new, different, and unique games? Join Team Dakota as we share the vision and reality of the limitless possibilities of Project Spark. We will showcase some of the amazing games, worlds, and content that our community has created. Learn more about Project Spark: Where Players Create and Creators Play. Currently available in beta and launching soon on Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Windows 8.1!

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark Update 4/9/2014 (Xbox One & Windows 8)

Project Spark Update 4/9/2014 (Xbox One & Windows 8)

We're in the process of pushing out an update for the Xbox One and Windows 8 versions of the Project Spark beta to address several issues, including the following:

-Stinger sound files can now play over music files in the remixer.  Have fun adding your drum tracks to your remix of LinkSpark's 'Guilty All the Same' level!

- Fixed several audio bugs related to LP's GATS level.

- Resolved several crashes that would occur in Crossroads.

- Fixed an issue that made the World Picker do all sorts of strange unintended things at times.

- Players are now able to rate a level at any time. (instead of only after playing it)

- Resolved an issue that would sometimes cause level description text to appear cut off.

- Updated the 12 month Spark Premium offer to correctly display the 12 additional permanent upload slot bonus.

- Resolved several issues that could cause crashes on Xbox One.

- Made some overall performance improvements on both Xbox One and Windows 8, with many more to come.

- We continue to tweak our challenge and reward system based on community feedback.

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark - Challenge Changes & Updates

We have some exciting news to share with everyone around some updates to the challenge system that are rolling out at any moment. This change should result in more engaging challenges and enable more players to complete challenges and earn more of their max potential rewards.

As we continue to evolve Project Spark, listen to feedback, and expand functionality we continue to tune and hone in on some key goals.

This update focuses on several of these goals:

Make challenges feel less like a grind and more like a reward for playing, creating, and experimenting.

Provide players with more variety over time.  Less constant daily challenges, and more rotating challenges every day.

Reward great creators in more satisfying ways and reward more creators in general, this includes rewarding every player for every Download and Up Vote they receive. 

While as mentioned above, the potential max XP/Credits players can earn each week should be similar, with these changes more players should be able to earn more of that potential max.

Make challenges more reliable by addressing several bugs.

  Specific Changes

New infinitely repeatable mini challenges for every Up Vote and Download you receive.

New Daily Challenge just for logging in.

New Daily Challenge for adding enemies to a level in create mode.

Daily Up Vote and Download challenges replaced with Weekly Up Vote and Download challenges.

“Spark Power Reloaded” challenge replaced with “Marketplace Hero” challenge.  Get 1000 credits for purchasing your first content pack (excluding Spark Premium) in the marketplace.  Purchase can be made with Tokens or Credits.  Credit Unlocks count too.

Added Challenges for “Knights Combat School” side quests in Crossroads.

Sculpt and Paint challenges reduced from 3 min to 1 min.

Rotating Brain challenges and Tile Experiment challenges condensed into one of the daily challenge slots.

Rotating Sculpt, Paint, Prop, and Add Brain Tile challenges condensed into one of the daily challenge slots.

Some broken challenges removed from the rotation until we can fix them.

  As a reminder, you can view Challenges by clicking on your profile in the top right corner or pressing the View button on Xbox One. From there, select the challenges tab. There are three more tabs in this section, all filled with a variety of challenges to go after. Timed challenges represent daily and weekly challenges that frequently change. Milestones feature more long term focused rewards for players to earn over time during the course of play. Goals feature one time rewards for experimenting and completing specific goals.

We’re excited to roll this update out, and look forward to your feedback.

** Note ** Weekly challenges reset at 2am each Friday

[projectsparkblog]

Announcing Project Spark: The Board Game

Team Dakota, the creators of the highly-popular Xbox One and Windows 8 creation game, Project Spark, announced today that they’ve added a new product line to the Project Spark franchise. “Project Spark: The Board Game” is expected to be on store shelves later this year, in time for the Holiday season. 

The board game attempts to capture the spirit of user creation that is the essence of the Project Spark brand, and will sport many different game modes that allow users the option to play and create in a variety of different ways. 

- Marker mode allows players to color the game board and breathe life into the cards, including a palette of 6 robust marker colors to offer the widest possible range of creative expression.

- Scissor mode puts the power of component creation into the hands of players like never before, allowing them to shape characters, cards, terrain, weapons, and more.

- Brain mode offers players the option to craft their own game rules using plain-spoken language tailored to personal tastes of the player and her friends.

“Project Spark: The Board Game” was designed from the ground up with multiplayer in mind, and will have full out-of-the-box multiplayer support for up-to 4 players. Team Dakota plans to continue growing and evolving the “Project Spark: The Board Game” by releasing Supplemental Rules Content (SRC) packs based on various themes. 

Learn more about “Project Spark: The Board Game” at www.projectspark.com and look for it at your favorite retailer this holiday season!

[projectsparkblog]

LinkinSpark Challenge

LinkinSpark Challenge

Linkin Park and Team Dakota partnered together to create the world’s first interactive music video, and now we want YOU to make your own. Share your own creation with a remix of the “Guilty All the Same” song in Project Spark, (or remix the LinkSpark level itself, if you dare!), to show the world what you can do. Team Dakota will create a video of the top remixes, with input from Joe and Mike from Linkin Park, that will be shown at this year’s E3 Expo.

 - Include [LP] in your level name for inclusion in the special LinkinSpark feed.

- Use the hashtag #linkinspark on social media to let the world know what you’ve created.

- Create a video of your remix for inclusion on the Linkin Spark Upload channel and the Project Spark Youtube channel.

Or ignore our advice completely and make your own rules. This is about you. What are you waiting for?

[projectsparkblog]

Announcing LinkinSpark

  Team Dakota has been hard at work with our close friends from Linkin Park, to create the first-ever entirely remixable interactive music video experience. Check out the official music video below, and jump into Project Spark to put your music skills to the test at remixing Linkin Park's newest single, "Guilty All the Same."

http://youtu.be/IfnhGW2Q_y0

Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park playing the new level with Team Dakota designer Rusty McLellan.

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark Update Notes 3/25 (Xbox One & Windows 8)

Team Dakota is releasing an update to the Xbox One and Windows 8 version of Project Spark.

Features Added:

Spark Time has been removed. Time, time, time is on your side, yes it is.

Searching for UGC will now clearly let the user know when it is “Syncing” and when there are “No Results Found.”

User profiles now show the number of followers.

Bugs Smashed:

Fixed an issue that affected boom camera operation on the Xbox One.

Fixed a crash that occasionally happened in association with new followers.

Changed movement operation to not add velocity to an object, to increase performance.

Updated the UI to reflect the change of “Spark Power” to “Spark Premium”.

Fixed crash caused by using redo operation on a river placed with the Biome Brush.

Improved explanation of difference between types of save operations. (more work to come)

Improved memory usage while using “brush” operations in Create mode.

Made some minor graphic performance improvements.

Made some minor performance improvements to Crossroads gameplay.

Improved the speed of asset loading when the game is first started, since it was annoying everyone, especially us.

Several fixes for undo/redo system issues.

Remixing your own level no longer saves it to a new UID by default. (You should still take care to ensure you’re remixing the level you want to update)

UGC search results no longer return your own unpublished levels.

Renamed several UGC feeds for better clarity.

Stuff We’re Working On For Future Updates:

Cloud Save Re-Architecture – We need to fix this the right way.

Improve Resource Loading At Game Start to make it even faster.

We tracked down and discovered the AWOL audio files.  We are telling them to straighten up, act right and stop disappearing from the game.  We expect after this fix they will act more responsibly.

Holding a button on the controller will skip through menus.

Updating the Safe Zone a small amount reduces the Marketplace pack list to one row.

Lots of additional crash fixes

More performance improvements across the board.

Improved Font size and clarity

Known Issues: 

Investigating an issue on Xbox One where dialog boxes are improperly prompting users to get the latest update.

Some users on Xbox One may need to do a hard boot to resolve any update completion issues. (Hold down power button for 10 seconds or completely power down console for 30 seconds)

In character studio, attachments can be placed, but cannot be moved/scaled/rotated. (in character studio). These actions can be performed outside character studio.

Investigating an issue where some older levels are not opening properly with the new update. HItting the continue button may cause a crash, but exiting the level should return the user to the main menu. (All levels should be loadable from the Project tab)

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark Pinny Arcade Pin

Sure, you could get by with the bare minimum. But just like Project Spark, flair is all about expressing yourself!

If you're at PAX East, stop by our booth to meet Team Dakota and many of our most dedicated community members from twitch.tv/projectsparkcommunity. You just may become the proud owner of an exclusive Project Spark Pinny Arcade pin.  They're sure to go fast so make sure you stop by early!  

You can also check out our panel on Saturday, 4/12 for some insight on the behind-the-scenes making of Project Spark. (http://east.paxsite.com/schedule/panel/playing-is-creating-how-to-transform-from-an-everyday-gamer-to-a-creative-v).  

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark Changes (Spark Time & Upload Slots)

  Team Dakota is making some changes to Project Spark based on beta tester feedback. We'd like to thank everyone for working work with us to help us learn ways to continue improving and evolving Project Spark.

While these changes are our new plan, like everything else, they too may be changed, as well.

Spark Time has been removed

Players will be able to play anything created in Project Spark, without any time limitation or DLC ownership requirement.

 Spark Power is now Spark Premium

Spark Premium bonuses will remain at 200% of credits earned and 200% of XP earned.

We've slightly reduced the price of 30 days of Spark Premium and have added 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month options.

Upload Slots have changed

We changing the number of upload slots to better accommodate both casual and highly engaged creators.

Users who download and play Project Spark as of today (3/18/2014) will have a default three (3) upload slots after creating their free Project Spark account

All accounts activated via beta key during our closed beta program (played the game prior to 12:01am Pacific on 3/18) will continue to have the five (5) free slots. Thanks for your help during our closed beta.

Additional Upload Slots can be unlocked by purchasing Spark Premium

Our long-term creators have been making more awesome creations than they've had upload slots, limiting their ability to share. Spark Premium now comes with a bonus of additional slots:

- Two (2)permanent additional upload slots with purchase of 3 months of Spark Premium.

- Five (5) permanent additional upload slots with purchase of 6 months of Spark Premium.

- Twelve (12) permanent additional upload slots with purchase of 12 months of Spark Premium.

Team Dakota aims to err on the side of doing the right thing for fans

Spark Time has now been removed, and everyone is able to play anything in Project Spark to heart's content, without limitation. Spark Premium (previously called Spark Power) provides great benefit by giving you double the XP and credits earned in the game. And while we technically didn't take anything away, we do realize that there may be some fans that acquired Spark Power specifically because of the unlimited Spark Time benefit.

To do right by those folks, everyone who acquired 30 days of Spark Power within the last 30 days (as of 3/18/2014)  will automatically receive (within the next few days):

- 24,000 credits. (the previous cost of a month of Spark Power)

- Continued XP and Credit bonus until their current Spark Power time runs out.

Thanks for all your help and feedback during the Project Spark closed beta. We look forward to continuing to work with our community to identify areas of improvement during our open beta. :)

[projectsparkblog]

Zombie Outbreak now live on Project Spark

A sinister mist rolls over the hills of Verdia, giving rise to a new breed of monster … the ZOMBIE!

Zombies: undead creatures forced to wander the shadowy lands between life and death. They have an insatiable desire to convert the living into undead. With their numbers increasing by the minute, is there anyone with the courage and skill to rid the land of such terrifying foes?

Unlock this content pack to acquire the ZOMBIE CHARACTER and more. Features include:

 Create:

Customize your ZOMBIE in the Character Studio

All-new ZOMBIE SLUDGE EFFECTS and SOUNDS

New ZOMBIE ENEMY ASSEMBLIES take combat to the next level

Create your own horde of ZOMBIES and watch them convert the living into the walking dead!

 Play:

CROSSROADS: Select ZOMBIES as your primary enemy and battle the undead horde

CROSSROADS: Battle undead at the NECROMANCER’S SHRINE side quest

WORLD WIZARD: Play as the ZOMBIE and wreak havoc across the land

[projectsparkblog]

Weekend Update from Creative Director Henry Sterchi

  We are on our 3rd full day of beta on Xbox One and so many amazing things have, and are happening. People are signing up at unprecedented rates and we are doing everything we can to keep the beta keys rolling out at the fastest pace we can. Newly created levels are flying in, creators are sharing on social media (please share videos, etc. we do not have an NDA on the beta!), kind words are pouring in, and most importantly hundreds of thousands are being entertained by not what we made, but by things made by YOU! One of the best feelings for the team here was being taught how to Kode by a 5yr old on youtube. I think everyone on the team has watched this, more than once.

  We have updated the Xbox One and PC build twice in this short time span to address a number of important issues and even managed to add some new features we really wanted in. Our last build fixed a strong rumble issue while painting on PC that our community immediately brought to our attention live during their twitch.tv/projectsparkcommunity stream. We addressed a color range issue that made things darker than intended, a myriad of audio issues, a few controller rough spots, and some assembly issues on PC. Project Spark is an evolving project shaped by the community and it’s evolving faster than ever.

  With the great comes a few bumps. With the latest patch we made some changes to the save system to integrate Cloud saves and unlock true cross-platform play. Rest assured that the integrity of your work is safe, but this has caused some organization issues within the saves that could easily lead to confusion and we are working on fixing this. Our vision is for our players to never have to worry about synching their work across platforms as their most recent creations are automatically shared between devices and it is easy to see where everything is organized. We are actively making these fixes and hope to have an update soon.

  In addition, we’ve added a variety of new music and audio related Kode Tiles that dramatically expand Project Spark’s audio capabilities. Join us at www.twitch.tv/project_spark where we will be providing examples and more information on an upcoming stream.

  Thank you again to all of our players and creators.

  One more thing. In honor of the 24 hour Creation Marathon by our fans at www.twitch.tv/projectsparkcommunity, we will be making Spark Time unlimited through this weekend, (3/7 & 3/8) so hop on and check out what the world is making. Game on! (Henry Sterchi - March 7th, 2014)

[projectsparkblog]

Project Spark Update Note 3/5 (tl;dr version)

We’ve received a lot of great feedback over the past 36 hours since the Project Spark Beta launched on Xbox One. We’re in the process of releasing an update to both Windows 8 and Xbox One that address many of these issues, with a specific focus on visuals and sound. We’ve addressed several related bugs, such as the darkness issues on Xbox One, as well as added functionality that gives creators even greater control in how and when certain visual and sound effects play (or don’t, as the case may be.) 

The Xbox One update should be live any moment, and the Windows 8 update should be along later tonight or early tomorrow morning. As always, please keep the awesome feedback coming!