Just tried Project Spark...

Hey Construct Community,

I got into the closed beta for Project Spark yesterday and I shelled out money to buy Windows 8.1 and run it. While Project Spark is neat, it really made me appreciate how powerful Construct 2 actually is. I, probably like other C2 users, take many of C2's features for granted. Project Spark has a very clumsy and unintuitive visual coding interface, for starters. You can only view 5 events on one page at a time, which seriously disrupts the work flow. Creating basic mechanics like inventories and maps can only be done by "cheating the system", and taking the player to a different instance of the map to show them items on a table, which is strange because one of the distinguishing points of PS is the ability to create RPGs easily. Overall, I can only really see using Project Spark for creating a 3rd person platformer or a very light RPG along the lines of the Fable series. Construct 2, however, allows me to create any 2D game I can imagine, and export it to almost every popular device and potentially make a profit. Project Spark is fun to use and quickly make a simple game (it is the best 3D tool for prototyping), but Construct 2 is still the best software to use for creating deep, well designed games with ease.

tl;dr Construct 2 beats Project Spark in almost every way.

If you have any questions about Project Spark, or how it compares to a feature in Construct 2, I will try my best to answer!

Thanks for reading!

awmace5, thanks for sharing. I took a quick look at Project Spark before, but never actually got into it. I'm happy to hear C2 beats it. I also really like how easy C2 is and how much it is like traditional coding.

I've been beta testing Project Spark too and I feel that it does have a ways to go, however I don't see it as a true "game maker" nor trying to compete as one.

Instead, I see Project Spark as something like Garry's Mod, a make-it-yourself game to play and share with friends. It's trying to make itself accessible while also letting people get an idea of how 3D games are made in concept.

However, this does also show that there is a huge demand/market for easier to use 3D game development tools. Personally, I find Craft Studio to be a great filler for this (Unity always seems too awkward to me), but something more like Construct 2 would be awesome in 3D game development.

I would agree that I don't really see Project Spark as a competing "game making tool" so much as a game with heavy built-in modding features.

I actually only played a little bit of the beta because it felt too much like work to me, but I could imagine the sorts of people who it is aiming for as its audience and how they would really enjoy it. I had a similar experience with Little Big Planet.