MS Kodu game creator - out this month with no love

[Acert93]

I am having a blast with this so far. One negative I see is that it is wonky with my PC LCD: lower resolution, swap between 5:4/16:9, and in 5:4 it obscures some of the menus.

On the positive it seems there is a huge wealth of options (including First Person view; either zoom in with the bumper all the way or go to your script, select ALWAYS, and then VIEW>FIRST PERSON... I am still trying to figure out how to get the camera to pan up and down with the R-stick and have turn left/right and move-forward on the Left-stick, maybe even work in straif on the R-stick).

They have mentioned you cannot necessarily "hook" levels/games together and sharing is done through the budy list (no highly rated yet??) but there are a ton of tutorials and hundreds of options which, in combination with others, can allow you to do all sorts of things. This seems like a first great effort and hope to see the tool mature. It is a lot of fun and it is a nifty little "language" that is very approachable but requires logic. Good fun!

 

[xexuxjy]

I was pretty impressed with the number of examples and tutorials they shipped with it, went through the first couple following instructions then started ignoring them and doing my own thing which I guess is good One big problem I had was the camera which seemed very flakey on some levels, also I couldn't figure out a way to build a script that would allow a kodu to find an object, pick it up and return it to another object (basic resource gathering). Still very cool though and works pretty nicely.

 

[Acert93]

I was pretty impressed with the number of examples and tutorials they shipped with it, went through the first couple following instructions then started ignoring them and doing my own thing which I guess is good One big problem I had was the camera which seemed very flakey on some levels, also I couldn't figure out a way to build a script that would allow a kodu to find an object, pick it up and return it to another object (basic resource gathering). Still very cool though and works pretty nicely.

I believe some of the demos have this sort of behavior, worth a look. That said, have you tried creating a 2nd page for your code?

 

[AzBat]

Anybody still playing around with Kodu? Just found this nice piece of work...

Pretty cool!

Tommy McClain

 

[BRiT]

I was tinkering with it last night but haven't done anything major. Did you find any way of downloading that actual Portal Kodu world to the console?

 

[AzBat]

I was tinkering with it last night but haven't done anything major. Did you find any way of downloading that actual Portal Kodu world to the console?

The game is by HaloX. I would add him as a friend & share when he's on. Btw, I would also add the following GamerTag as a friend too...

KoduGameshare 4

That's the latest GamerTag for sharing & shouldn't be maxed out.

I'd check this forum since it's biggest community & the developers post there...

http://www.moco.net/korum/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=4b098c21477c73b175661f8d7be52fec

Tommy McClain

 

[Arwin]

I wanted to check it out today, but seems like it's still not available here ... bleh.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Not in the EU?! Grrrr.

 

[AzBat]

Well, some countries are supported, but I don't think Netherlands are. I'm trying to get a complete list. BRB.

Tommy McClain

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I see the UK is supported and friend bought it. I'll maybe get a look on Tuesday. Sucks for unsuported countries though. I guess that's a language thing, but it's poor form. The world is small these days!

 

[Arwin]

Microsoft aren't making a lot of progress in non-English countries in that respect - no Indie games here either.

 

[AzBat]

Here's what I found...

These countries can buy Indie games:

• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Singapore
• Spain
• Sweden
• United Kingdom
• United States

These countries can submit Indies game to be sold:

• Australia
• Canada
• Denmark
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Singapore
• Spain
• Sweden
• United Kingdom
• United States

Germany, Singapore, and Sweden were added a week ago to the countries that can buy Indie Games. Japan has to wait for the official dashboard update on August 11. Creators from Japan and Germany were also added to the list countries that can submit games for sale.

Tommy McClain

 

[Arwin]

Ah, ok, so there's hope.

 

[Squilliam]

Here's what I found...

These countries can buy Indie games:


Tommy McClain

It explains why I could never find them!

 

[AzBat]

Yeah, they're always adding countries. However, it might take awhile.

BTW, evidently there are also some countries that are able to buy the XNA Premium Creator's Club Membership necessary to submit the games but are not even allowed to sell their games in any country...

• Austria
• Belgium
• Finland
• Hong Kong
• Mexico
• Portugal
• Switzerland
• Taiwan

So that means that Microsoft is serving less than half the available markets. I would check this FAQ for future updates...

http://creators.xna.com/en-US/faq

Tommy McClain

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Looks like I won't see Kodu on Tuesday, but will at some point.

 

[BRiT]

I think the latest Kodu update added 3 central sharing servers. The Kodu Portal v10 is available there as well as a lot of other game material.

 

[AzBat]

I think the latest Kodu update added 3 central sharing servers. The Kodu Portal v10 is available there as well as a lot of other game material.

Neato! Found the rest of changes...

Health bars of linked-clones did not properly expand when the number of hit points was increased.
Magic brush is no longer active when starting a new empty world, if it was the active brush in the previous world.
Autosave files occasionally stopped showing up.
Start button now toggles the mini-hub.
Sound effect while moving nodes up and down was being triggered too often.
Splash sound effects were being over triggered when water depth was very shallow.
Carried objects now match the couriers’ orientation.
Added an option to always invert the camera.
Mute now only mutes pre-canned sounds, not programmable sounds.
Fixed typo in Path help.
The Soccer Ball thought it could be programmed to move.
Zoom still occurred when in programmatic first person mode, which was disorienting when going back into chase cam.
Crash when opening the virtual keyboard with too long of a string.
Crash when opening example [say] tile from the programming help.
Crash while sharing with friends whose GamerTag’s used unsupported characters.
Softlock when adding more than 8 Lights.
Rock Band/Guitar Hero controllers caused the camera to spin.
Reset World was resetting scores.
Gaps in expressible numbers. You can now use up to 10 tiles, as well as several more number tiles.
The On Water sensor did not work correctly.
Only the first created object emoted.
Launching held objects did not work correctly.
Bots are now able to inflict zero damage.
Various graphical fixes in the Help screens.
"Technique: Change Behavior" showed two win messages.
The player did not lose in "Turnover", when the stick ate Black Apples.

Creatable objects now spawn at their creator’s height.
Don’t play the speech audio effect if the say bubble string is empty.
Corrected Wisp collision radius.
Camera was stuck in fixed offset while game is paused.
There was a problem with the mine’s animation blend weights.

Fixed a crash that would occur if the Xbox ran out of disk space while writing a file. A warning pops up now stating what's happened, and how to fix it.
Detect failure of storage media to prevent disappearing world issue.
Updated Gawlf: Classic Links so that the Kodu no longer displays shield effects.

Blips could leak through walls

Removed unused audio files to free up space.
Slowed down the rate that land is raised and lowered.



Increased the maximum number of programming pages to 12.
Ability to send worlds to friends in a sharing room if they have allowed others to do so.
Added “favorite” world tag.
Option to auto-download worlds marked with favorite tag.
The active tile in the options helix is now highlighted.
Increased the maximum health cap to 1000.
Increased the maximum speed that characters can travel.
Added 26 more score buckets based on the (English) alphabet. These scores are always invisible.
Ability to turn off collision, damage and healing effects.
Tweak to turn objects invisible (not visible to the user, other bots can still see them).
Tweak to make objects ghosted out (able to pass through anything, and are translucent).
If both Invisibility and Ghosted are set, the object will be completely invisible.
Added a dabber tool to make it easy to select terrain types.
Terrain types used in the current world are now placed at the beginning of the terrain picker.
Worlds now contain a credit listing of who worked on them. This is accessed in the World Options screen.
Ability to edit world tags in the Load World menu.

Added glyph for soccer ball: [ball], [soccer ball] (replace square brackets with angled. this editor won't let me use chars that look like html tags).
Added per-character tweak options to adjust the distance used by the “close by” and “far away” sensor filters.
Added per-character tweaks for acceleration values.
Added world tweak option to hide resource meter during gameplay.

Well-known sharing sessions can be joined without a friends list entry, allowing beginners to upload levels and download hand-picked levels without becoming friends

http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/kodu/default.aspx

Tommy McClain

 

[AzBat]

Looks like people are doing things with Kodu that even Microsoft Research didn't even know was possible...

I Didn't Know You Could Do This in Kodu
Tavishhill2003 is one of the acknowledged masters of Kodu set building. He has completely outdone himself. I pulled these screens from a fantastic new video up on the 'tube. Recommend you go see it there because there is some beautiful dynamic lighting and shakycam work. Out. Stand. Ing.

Honestly, we're still trying to figure out how he pulled some of this stuff off. Video link at bottom.

Tommy McClain

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I forgot to mention, I got to try this out a bit last weekend. I was overall very impressed. It is simple to use and really introduces the fundamentals of programming in a pretty intuitive fashion. It is an ideal teaching aid, and would probably serve people better as a PC app. My only beef at this point was the blocky terrain. The ground would work better if treated as a normal triangular mesh. That said, the above shows a different application, Lego-blocks style. Given the avaiability of walls though, I think I'd prefer a smooth terrain and a building-block resource for constructing.

Anyone with an XB360 and kids should get this to introduce them to logical thinking! Especially at the throwaway price.