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Microsoft Kills Its Game-Building Platform Spark (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes:"Starting 5/13/16, 'Project Spark' will no longer be available for download on the Xbox Marketplace or Windows Store," Microsoft wrote in a blog post, adding that it will go offline for good on August 12th. They thanked fans who have "gone above and beyond supporting 'Project Spark' by uploading hundreds of thousands of creations and dreaming up millions of objects, behaviors, and experiences..."
Ars Technica remembered Spark as the free multi-device, build-your-own game platform that you never knew existed. "Marketing teams never effectively sold the possibilities and power of Spark's make-your-own-game system," reports Ars Technica. "While short teaser videos hinted at the game enabling everything from kart racers to airborne battles, major demonstrations tended to revolve more around generic 3D platformers.
Ars Technica remembered Spark as the free multi-device, build-your-own game platform that you never knew existed. "Marketing teams never effectively sold the possibilities and power of Spark's make-your-own-game system," reports Ars Technica. "While short teaser videos hinted at the game enabling everything from kart racers to airborne battles, major demonstrations tended to revolve more around generic 3D platformers.
Note to self, don't start a long-term indie game project on whatever Microsoft's next game dev platform is.
I guess Spark didn't catch on fire.
They're just trying to keep up with Google canceling their "beta" projects all the time.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Now it's lost some of that punch.
A lot of VB6 programmers got shafted. And now spark.
The ability of vendors to "end of life" development languages is a huge risk.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The Spark has gone out.
Not quite right. Google would completely bugger up the UI, cause it to display content in foreign languages and then kill it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It was inevitable since Microsoft bought Minecraft.
Minecraft is a pretty horrible basis for further expansion, but maybe they'll fold some of these ideas into a future non-Java MC.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can we add a "SPAM" moderation choice, that would send an email/something to the Slashdot admins to manually review and remove the posts in question?
SPAM abuse could be controlled by freezing the account of anyone who falsely flags three things as SPAM.
Why? I simply read that as "Starting 0.02403846153846, 'Project Spark' will no longer be available..."
Another nothing product pulled out from under the handful of users who don't know Microsoft's history with this sort of thing. Go Linux!
oh no, a programmer is expected to learn more than one language now? oh wait, that happens about every couple of years.... seems like that person has bigger problems if they feel they got shafted by VB6 EOL.
A hundred man-years of VB6 code is no small investment.
First they removed the posts from the spammers, but I didn't speak out because I was not a spammer, etc.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I mean I downloaded Conker when it was free and basically found the game unplayable it was so bad. After that I just figured anything else on it would actually be worse since that was supposed to be a killer app for that project.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Some of us read comments at -1 because some moderators seem to think that an opinion different from theirs warrants a "-1, Troll" mod.
Some -1 posts, however, really are spam. By allowing us to flag things as SPAM, it would automatically request a slashdot editor to verify the post to see if it's really SPAM or not.
I'd be against removing, but flagging it as Spam and giving the user the option to not see items flagged as Spam by the moderators, that's something I could definitely see as a "do want" item.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fuck, where does that "of" come from? I honestly don't get it, I'm not a native speaker, so maybe someone could clue me in, why do people write rubbish like "would of been"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ok, but you have to admit, they didn't get shafted by removing but by inventing that language.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And while we're at it, also that sorry excuse of a desktop OS that you cram down everyone's throat.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
English uses contractions for some words. "would have" can be shortened to "would've", which sounds like "would of". people get confused by this.
You must be new here. That would require the editors to actually do something; which is against the editor code of conduct.
Your best bet is to simply use whatever the professionals are using
That depends on what the console maker chooses to make available to developers at any given time. During the Xbox 360 generation, developers in the Xbox Live Indie Games program were required to use a different API from what the established studios were using, namely the C# language and the XNA library. (In theory, any language generating verifiably type-safe CIL targeting the .NET Compact Framework could be used, but in practice, the only usable language was C# because the XNA environment lacked other languages' standard libraries.) The requirement of C# made it far more difficult for an indie to make a game work on both Xbox 360 and any non-Microsoft platform without rewriting it by hand, as C# at the time was tied fairly closely to Microsoft platforms.
Your advice applies better nowadays because Mono is more feature complete (including the MonoGame reimplementation of XNA), and the multi-platform Unity 3D engine is popular, and essentially anyone with a Windows Store publisher account can make Xbox One games, even in C++, so long as they're ported to UWP.
Then spend one man-year writing a transpiler that turns VB6 code into something modern.
Did you try scrolling to the bottom and clicking "Load More Comments"?
In this case, though, "of" is the correct word.
While I have never written "Would of" instead of "Would have". Certainly, I would have never written "Would've"... as it seems just sloppy.
But my use of the "Would of" in spoken language is definitely clear and excessive. I believe I'll make a genuine effort to correct this in the future. I am an American living in another country and regularly make conscience efforts to refine my speech in order to both improve clarity as well as set a good example for those around me, especially my children's friends.
At some point, I should attempt to find a list of "Stupid abuses of the English language that confuse foreigners". I can honestly say that there are many dialects of English that have evolved to borderline stupidity. "Queen's English" is so full of crap and nonsense now it's nearly as bad as Cajun. The language itself is doomed when the Queen herself can't be bothered to say "Football" but instead uses the term "Fudty" with a very special and specific pronunciation of U as well as the DT which sounds wrong and uncomfortably unless a coal miner with no teeth say it.
Over the past few decades a clear decline of the "Queens English" occurred as all words had to either end with a "y" or just be cute. Instead of sausages, there's bangers, instead of "mashed potatoes", there is simple "mash". It's become a language for people to abuse primarily through "cutsiness" and laziness.
The many other dialects of English around the world are equally bad. But as there's a specific dialect which is even named, it's far easier to focus on its shortcomings.
Every recent Microsoft project is a failure?
Exaggerate much?
Pretty sure that's what killed it. The entire Hololens infrastructure appears to be the Project Spark GUI without the backgrounds. When I saw Hololens, it took about 1/4 of a second to realize that the reason Microsoft invested so heavily into Project Spark was to design the user interface for Hololens. They even got wide spread testing of usability by making it a game engine for people to try out and experiment with "VR style" manipulation of the environment.
I kinda knew Spark would die sooner than later as it was obvious where those developers would be placed.
Hmm... American website, American company, American Press Release.. etc...
You know that if it said "5/6/16" it could be confusing which is the month and which is the day. If it says "5/13/16", you'd have to be severely mentally handicapped to be confused by this.
I'll be kind enough to translate for you... 5/13/16 in American format translates to 2016-05-13 in a relatively sane format or 13-05-2016 in yet another fantastically stupid format or 2016-May-13 for a good human readable format.
You get confused by that whole fancy left and right thing too?
> failure
-- Hundreds of thousands of creations
-- Millions of objects and components
Someone is a failure here, Microsoft.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
See the tiny little gray flag in the lower-right corner of every post? You won't believe why it's there! Spammers HATE it!
Required reading for internet skeptics
Now it's lost some of that punch.
I'm not seeing the problem here. It looks correct to me. In this case, the 'of' indicates that the 'some' belongs to or originates from 'that punch'.
We can eliminate the 'of' in most cases, but we often lose some meaning: "Now, he's lost some of his tools." -> "Now, he's lost some tools" (The owner of the tools is lost.) Though, in this case, the meaning can be preserved by writing "Now it's lost some punch."
Required reading for internet skeptics
Why oh why would you give an AC who is threatening to leave a reason to stay!?!?
IMO a more fitting response: BYE! Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Oh, for the love of Cthulhu; read the title of the post!
That's where the error was being propagated, which Opportunist corrected IN ALL CAPS and somehow you still missed it!
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.