Kodu: WHABAM! offline co-op game creation on your Xbox

darleysam

Kudo?



Kodu!

This is Microsoft's happy family funtime game creation thing available right now through Xbox Live Community Games (soon to be Indie Games) for 400 points.

Taking this from Eurogamer

Microsoft Research's Kodu Game Lab has launched on the Xbox Live Community Games channel.

It costs 400 Microsoft Points (GBP 3.40 / 4.80) and grants the tools to build - quickly and simply - the game of one's dreams. A bit like LittleBigPlanet, but without the restriction of building within an existing game's framework.

There are over 200 different programming features to pick, an image-based creator to prettify with, and the ability to share your creations with any Xbox Live friend.

Kodu packs several tutorials to walk creators through the process, plus a handful of sample games to use as examples. Co-op play for up to four friends can be used, as can multiplayer for up to eight. There's a choice of 20 different characters each with unique abilities as well.

Apparently there's a blog with more info, but it doesn't want to load for me at the moment
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/

And a rather empty wiki (fill it with useful information!)
http://koduplayground.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Go! Download and make stuff!

GAMERTAGS FOR PEOPLE WHO MAY CO-OP WITH YOU
Aoi - Kirin
brynstar - Xander51
darleysam - DustAndEchoes77
Octobot - octobot

brynstar

I played around with this a bit last night and it's actually not too shabby. I definitely need to fiddle with it more, but it does more than I thought it might.

I'm not really sure why this is a community game and not an XBLA game.

Dangerous

I think this comment from the youtube video of the press demo sums it up nicely.

I hate when someone says:
"this is not LBP rip off cuz it is a different game"
because THAT SENTENCE DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK !

Seriously though, the interface looks really intuitive. 4 player co-op sounds awesome and I could see a lot of time being wasted making insane levels and just messing around in them with friends.

darleysam

Yup, that's making it more appealing to me. I figure I could start pooling some gamertags if people wanted to do that.

Does it mean you can have 4 people working together on making stuff, or is it 4-player co-op on your created game/level/whatever?

Aoi

Co-op game creation for up to four people, and in finished games you can apparently set it for up to 8 players.

darleysam

Aoi wrote: »

Co-op game creation for up to four people, and in finished games you can apparently set it for up to 8 players.

.... everyone get on this now. We need to make games.

Aoi

It shall be purchased tonight. Anyone wanting to play with this, add me. If we get enough people interested, an actual Live group might not be a bad idea, either.

darleysam

My friends list is kinda full, but I'll try to clear some space and run a network cable to my xbox tonight so I can be on for this.

DustAndEchoes77 is me.

Aoi

Hmm, apparently the games made with this work on the pc and 360. I wonder if/how you can send them back and forth.

Octobot

i picked this up last night, gamertag is octobot. I played around with it real quick befor egoing to bed last night and am super excited to jump into it today and really start making stuff

darleysam

Played around with it for a while this evening, and I like it! The demos show off a bunch of cool things you can do, some of which could be used to good effect in a game. Having a go at putting some rudimentary controls together seemed a bit more awkward.. you seem a little limited in what you can tell something to do. Trying to get a little ball of light to fly around has me confounded Still though, with a bit of ingenuity, I think there's a lot can come out of this.

Just needs a central server to upload your games to.

Octobot

playing with it today i got a rough version of my first game idea done and wa squite satisfied with the results. its a chop-lifter/tower defense hybrind where you control a blimp which cannot shoot and you can move turrets and drop them to defend stars from kodus. i still need to work on it, but its amazing what you can turn out pretty quickly.

Turkey

I'm hoping that this game will help influence the addition of certain features for Indy Games, such as centralized servers.

Also, image searching 'Kudo' is definitely NSFW.

darleysam

Yeah, just while looking through the options, I was hoping to find some way to upload your saved games to a server and look at stuff other people have made. As far as I can tell, you can only share things with people on your friends list who you've specifically invited into a session? That's a shame if so

darleysam

Sorry for the double post. There's a wiki that someone's put up which I hope gets filled with information. This is something I'd really like to see have lots of documentation and community discussion around it, so people can swap tips on the best way to do things

http://koduplayground.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Alfred J. Kwak

Man this looks awesome. I'd totally jump on it ...

... if Microsoft finally provided Xbox Live Community Games here were I live. Like somebody else said in this thread, I'd rather have it be a Live Arcade game.

darleysam

I'm also curious about why it's not Live Arcade, but I guess there are reasons. What do you do about achievements, for one (not that that's a good reason on its own). It's also not a game, so that might cause some confusion. Maybe they're hoping it'll promote Community/Indie games?

MrDelish

I'll probably get this after the weekend when I get back

Scoota

After messing around with it a ton yesterday and making a multiplayer game, I can pretty much confirm it does NOT have online play. It's offline only, one console only, play. The 1-8 players 'online' means you can share your creation with up to 8 of your friends online. Then when you start to play it closes the session and puts you back on your console.

Can anyone else confirm this?

darleysam

Scoota wrote: »

After messing around with it a ton yesterday and making a multiplayer game, I can pretty much confirm it does NOT have online play. It's offline only, one console only, play. The 1-8 players 'online' means you can share your creation with up to 8 of your friends online. Then when you start to play it closes the session and puts you back on your console.

Can anyone else confirm this?

Really? Man that's a shame

Octobot

i tried it last night too, and was just able to share stuff with people online. its still pretty cool to download an idea from someone, play around with it and then add something to it and send it back. i hope we can get some good collaborative game making going on.

right now im working on a pin-ball game just for fun

darleysam

I want to make some kind of platformer, just because you can!

PatboyX

All the press makes this look like a more friend LOGO or Microworlds.
Thoughts?

edit: although it seems to have a lot more in common with new programmable lego engines that use flow-charts to program.
Is this only on XBL? The one page said something about it running on PCs.

fragglefart

OOO saw this on the Marketplace, good stuff. Has the potential to be very interesting, especially co-op. I'll have a tinker tomorrow night.

Allforce

I will buy this too. Gamertag is Allforce.

If you send me a friend request and it bounces back post here and I'll clear some riff-raff off and make room for you.

darleysam

fragglefart wrote: »

OOO saw this on the Marketplace, good stuff. Has the potential to be very interesting, especially co-op. I'll have a tinker tomorrow night.

Apparently it's only offline co-op, but I've not tried it yet.

Lindsay Lohan

Just bought it myself - Gamertag is n8littlefield. Still doing the tutorials but I'll do more tonight after me and the boy watch Empire for the first time. Last night was A New Hope - kind of bad when every new character is met with the comment "Daddy - you have that toy!"

Serious_Scrub

So do you need a gold subscription to share levels?

SirUltimos

Hmm, this looks pretty cool. I think I might try it out.

Octobot

good to see more people getting into kodu, im hoping we can have a good sized group to share games/ideas and collaborate on things.

my newest work was a recreation of space invaders (the only thing it doesnt do right is the waves of aliens, but its still a really fun little game). i find that recreating old games helps learn how kodu works things out and what little tricks are needed to get things done

LogicReason

Picked this up. Need to work out what sorta game to make.

rayofash

It seems incredibly limited in content.

Lindsay Lohan

rayofash wrote: »

It seems incredibly limited in content.

It's limited in terms of the aesthetics - only one missile, sub, ship, etc. However the engine is very flexible. I'm not going to have time to play with it that much tonight, but my son and I made an island surrounded by lava and a turtle that swam around eating any stray fish and it only took about 30 minutes.

darleysam

I like playing with the lighting and stuff. Made a very simple but cool-looking city-like backdrop for a sidescroller, used the nighttime lighting and put a light on a path instead so it moved with my character.

Hawk

So I finally checked this out, got the Trial, thought about it and grabbed the full version.

I'm excited to create some new games, but I gotta come up with some ideas of what I want to do with it. I'm pumped at the idea of it.

I'm trying to get my friends on board ("hey it's $5 bucks" is a great arguement) and sharing games.

Octobot

have the start of a prtty cool game coming (was making it with my wifes son who is 10) what we have so far is a player controlled wisp which can possess the robot creatures we have made (just a cannon and a sputnik so far) the cannon will shoot anything blue (which the wisp is and the glow colour that anything takes on when possesed) there are also trees (which you can possess and cause to drop apples (which in turn can be possessed for no real reason). the theme of the game will have to do something about pollution or something, right now the sputniks go and turn green trees into black trees and report back to a factory. alot more work to do with the game (still havnt made a player 1) but its coming along good

Hawk

Yeah I'm thinking I want to make a 3rd person (or maybe 1st person) survival horror game...

Octobot

you can really get the right atmosphere going with the lighting options. only real hard thing would the "enemies". I need more people on my friends list with the game so ill be adding anyone from this thread that i havnt yet. We really need to start a collaborative project.

Turkey

I got it on launch, but haven't really given it much time. It's kinda overwhelming.

SirUltimos

Oh, this is a 3D game creation tool? That makes me a lot more interested, and it makes a lot more sense now as to why you can't create your own assets.

Hawk

Yeah you should give the trial a try