Achievement Unlocked 07.02.09: Fischer Price Game Design

Posted by Rod Oracheski on 07.02.2009

411's Rod Oracheski takes a look at Kodu, the newly-released game design software for the Xbox 360. The first question on everyone's mind - can it do porn? Plus, thoughts on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood! And new game videos!

Kodu hit the Xbox 360's Community Games label this week, bringing low-level game design tools into the hands of amateurs around the world. Let's see what the first comment on the article Scott J. Simpson (no relation to Homer J. Simpson) posted was:

Can you make porn video game's?

Thanks for classing the joint up, Scottyieoittie.

Hmm...Scottyieoittie. Scott J. Simpson. Probably no connection, right?

In any case, we're not going to get into the answer to Scotty's question here (If you were wondering, the answer is 'kind of' though. Also, you're a pervert.) as Kodu is primarily aimed at kids as an intro to game design.

Kodu

Tile-based AI routines

What you can do with Kodu is primarily limited by your creative muscle, so I'd expect a great deal of those who pick it up for the $5 entry fee will probably gravitate more towards the 'Share' options than the 'Create' ones.

Don't get me wrong, it's not really that hard to create using the simple 'wheel of options' menu system that's the heart of Kodu, but people generally aren't as creatively inclined (or, perhaps more accurately, motivated) as they think they are. Look at LittleBigPlanet, for example. The majority of people download content, not upload it - it's a condition that plagues most 'create and share' concepts, whether they be software-based or not.

Still, for $5 it's likely you'll get your money's worth just by checking out the demo games and tutorials. The game has, like all Xbox Live Community Game and Arcade offerings, a free demo - available here - but be aware you might have to play the time-limited demo a few times to get the hang of what's going on.

There are two basic sides to Kodu's creative options: world building and behaviour programming. Let's handle those one by one:

Kodu

LEGO's going to sue somebody.

Those familiar with landscape generating programs like Bryce or Terragen, or even other games with map editors like Far Cry Instincts Predator (yeah, THAT game had a map editor!) should be fairly comfortable with what you'll find in Kodu.

You start by choosing what material you want to lay down, and there's a fairly large assortment of terrain types ranging from the standard grass and sand all the way to wild patterns that have no place in nature. Then you choose what size your 'brush' will be - this is the cursor that'll paint the terrain down anywhere you move it - and then just start painting. Once you have a basic layout of land you can start raising or lowering areas until you're happy with the general shape of the map.

Once the busywork is out of the way, it's time to get down to brass tacks and start laying out objects like trees and castles - even enemies and players get dropped onto the map at this point. Simply choose a location, open the menu and choose what you want to put there, perhaps what color you want it to be, then move on to the next object.

If you want to fancy the map up a bit, you can add water - raising or lowering the water level at will. Even the lighting can be changed to one of about a dozen different presets to give your map a more personalized feel to it.

With some thought you can make a wide variety of designs using fairly simple tools. I've seen some early designs of side-scrollers that seem perfectly functional, as well as a top-down view remote control car track that I'm hoping the designer can tune into playability soon.

But once you've got the world built, it's time to make all those objects smart enough to be worth playing with or against. So how are your AI programming skills these days?


Fortunately, Kodu doesn't require you to really know anything more about AI programming than you did about terrain generation, texturing, lighting, physics, or collision detection. The game handles it all in the background, leaving you with - once again, a circular wheel of options to choose from.

Kodu uses a tile-based AI system where you choose to link various tiles together to provide context for actions. Movement, for example, can be linked to a 'sense' like vision - seeing an object (in one tutorial, it's a castle) can be linked to movement. The movement tile offers up several sub-tiles as well - you can choose to move towards or away from the castle, as well as a handful of other options.

It reminds me a great deal of an old PS1 game call Carnage Heart, a short-release game that didn't garner a whole lot of appreciation. You could program your fighting machines in that game using tiles, and the tile AI patterns got complicated - fast. A lot of hours were sunk into making machines that could outperform the competition on that game, and Kodu offers up the same challenges.

In any case, Kodu is definitely worth a look for those interested in game design - particularly for parents who want to find something constructive for their kids to do in their time on a console. At the very least it'll teach logical thinking, especially if you can get them interested in the programming side of things.

Who knows, maybe Jack Thompson can use Kodu to make a game where he actually accomplishes something in the end.

I'm curious to see if helper websites start to spring up for Kodu users, offering tips on AI or layout. How much the community gets behind it is the make-or-break for these 'create and share' style games.


This might seem a little bit out there, but it will have a big impact on the video performance you're getting from Netflix on your Xbox 360 (also on your PC) and possibly even on some other aspects of the 360 UI.

It's Silverlight, which is pretty much Microsoft's answer to Flash. It's an upgrade to Adobe's product, as this demo shows, but lacks market penetration. I suppose adding 30 million Xbox 360 units to the potential userbase bumps that up a bit.

The smooth streaming tech will likely be the secret behind this fall's 1080p on demand video streaming. The stream can start at 720p for the opening logos and FBI warnings, then transition smoothly into full 1080p before the actual feature starts - assuming you've got the bandwidth needed to support 1080p streaming, of course.

The tech (Microsoft's Expression Encoder) offers some big advantages for the consumer, but it does require some significant backend work to make it function. The movie has to be encoded and stored at each level of detail - which can stack up pretty quickly. Still, if we're just the ones watching it, that's not something we need to worry about.


While Project Natal hasn't got everyone on board (myself included) it's captured the interest of at least one fan-favourite developer - Goichi Suda, head of Grasshopper Manufacture. In an interview with 1UP, Suda had this to say:

"Hardware-wise, it was all about Project Natal. It's hard to really understand it unless you use it, and it remains to be seen what you can do with it, but I think it'll be a huge device. We developed No More Heroes with the Wii remote in mind, but now I want to think about games with Natal in mind. I have to ask myself, as a game designer, what new games can be done with this, what can be an interesting experience and challenge, and I'm looking forward to that.

Suda has been linked to an action-horror game that EA will be publishing, rumoured to be coming for the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, and PC. Maybe that's where he'll unleash some Natal ideas on the world, or maybe he's got an XBLA game brewing around in that strange, strange brain of his.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

Up to no good.

A pair of new games crossed my desk this week: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from EA, and Ubisoft's Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. A fantasy tale and a wild west shooter...how much more different a pair could that have been?

I haven't had much time to spend with Harry Potter's newest adventure, but I have to admit that it's already grown on me far more than any of the past ones did. The right stick wand gestures work pretty well, though I still don't like having to hold a button down to swing the camera - why couldn't that have had some auto adjusting going on?

The likenesses are dead-on, from what I can remember of the movies at least, and the flying (you get to try that out right off the bat, possibly to keep people engaged through the following scenes, which are a bit more sedate) is rock solid this time out. I might talk about this one more next week, but I have no doubt Harry Potter fans will be more than happy with what's here.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, on the other hand, I've spent a bit more time on and I'm really enjoying my run through this Western. The original game had a fairly good reception, but I think this one will be even more of a hit - if for the graphics alone. The character models and texture work (particularly on the faces of the two 'heroes' and several of the key players) are outstanding. There's some screen tearing - enough to annoy those who are particularly intolerant of it - but the graphics are top-notch aside from that.

The starting levels are a bit linear and you're handheld a little too much in the early going, but the game opens up after an hour or so to become a lot more engaging. At points you get to choose which brother you want to play as, and I'm favouring Ray whenever given an option on my first playthrough. I'm not sure it really makes much, if any, difference to the storyline - I just find Ray the more appealing 'Western-style' character.

I'll try to get some multiplayer in before next week. Apparently they've done some interesting things there, but I'll have more on that another time.


A number of videos this week, including more from Fight Night Round 4. I'm still not happy that the game doesn't sport the same precise 'feel' that it had last time out, but there's really no other top-tier options out there for boxing fans. If you can deal with the occasional punch you didn't want to throw (though EA has talked about possibly providing fans with button control in the future, so you could always wait for that) I'd say Fight Night Round 4 is a pretty good buy.

Also up for viewing is a mission from the new Ubisoft title Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood that I talked about in TWiA. This is another one where fans of the genre (Westerns, in this case) don't really have a whole lot out there for them, so they'll pick up anything. Fortunately the game is pretty good anyway, a bit more linear in execution than I'd expected, but still a pretty good pickup.

If you'd rather try your hand at making your own game, there's Kodu - the new Community Game release I talked about earlier that gives you access to a slew of low-level development tools. The video is a single tutorial, one of the fairly simple early ones.

And then there's Tiger Woods 10. As I said last time out, this game is going to feel like more of the same for long-time Tiger fans. After finishing a tournament in second, watching Tiger charge from 14th to first on Sunday, I've made it my goal to beat him one of these days.

Enough talk, here's the videos:
















If you have any questions or want to request any videos, leave a comment below. Until next week, I'm out.