Currently in Early Access in PS4, dreams let normal people create music, models, animations, puppets, sound effects, games, scenes, …
The game combine the usual tools available in “creative” modes of games/mods, with a amazing voxel (probably not voxel) rendering engine. Jumping from a creation to the next is quick without loading screens. The ability of some content creators is amazing, but the tools themselves are hard to use because of the difficulties of moving objects in 3D with a console control pad or the move controllers.
For release the devs plan multiplayer and VR, and that alone is going to make this thing very interesting.
I think is because mouses work on 2D surfaces, so you would be limited to move objects in 2D. Where the controler and the move controller can move things in 3D. The PS4 controller is kind of a mouse moving in 3D space.
I’ve been playing with this, and it’s really impressive in terms of what you can do. Regarding controls, it works well with the DS4 controller, but if you’ve got a couple of PSMove controllers… wow. 3D sculpting, navigation, etc is excellent.
I’m putting together a simple Marble Madness type game to help me get up to speed on how to do things in the editor. It’s all er… flowchart based? Like Blueprints in Unreal I guess. I’m currently more comfortable with scripting so the learning curve is a bit steep. Still, making progress and having fun.
It’s really hard to search for this thread! But it must be bumped because the game finally launches on Friday this week. Those of us who bought the early access version were upgraded to the retail code today which includes the single player story content from Media Molecule themselves. And I just finished playing through it tonight!
The “campaign”, if you will, is called Art’s Dream. It’s about 2-3 hours long to play through all the way. They pitch it as a source of inspiration for other creators, giving them an idea of what is possible, because the entire experience was crafted with the game’s creative suite. In short, it’s about a jazz musician in crisis, and the gameplay cuts between different things he is dreaming about as he works through his issues. Lots of it involves his childhood toys which you’ll control in a series of action platforming sequences. There are also point and click adventure sequences and a number of straight up music videos included.
And it’s amazing. The visuals, art design, voice work and especially the music are all simply astonishing. The technology in this game is next level. Everything is beautiful and there are effectively no load times. The environments are so intricate and varied and a delight to explore. The story is touching and emotional and funny and sweet. It’s an absolute joy to control and there is always another clever touch waiting around the next corner. I can’t recommend it enough.
Has anyone else jumped in yet today? Can’t wait to hear other people’s thoughts and start to see creators tearing apart the assets to figure out how everything was done.
Finally spent some time with it, only the Surfing mode so far no creating. Art’s Dream is the main single player campaign and is very cool but a bit short (maybe 2-3 hours). It’s basically 2 different platformers and a point and click adventure game with musical interludes for the bulk of it, though it also has behind the back runner sections and a shmup section. I enjoyed the core story, and the point/click sections the most, which reminded me a bit of Double Fine/Lucasarts. The song segments are awesome, and can be pretty funny.
Then I tried a random sampling of dreams, what people have produced so far is rather impressive (it was in early access for a while so it’s not just a couple of days though.) There’s a wide array of things, lots of minigames, and recreations. There’s a full on Fallout 4 thing that is really quite impressive. Ruckus the Godzilla like minigame I really enjoyed too.
Overall it really seems like a full on game making toolset on the PS4 with built in collaboration and community features. It will be interesting to see where it all goes, there’s no revenue model for creators at the moment so it’s just creation for creation sake.
Worth pointing out there’s a companion website for sharing etc.
So this is on sale in the PSN store for $10 USD ($13 CAD) for PS+ members. I couldn’t help myself, since my son loves trying to build games in Roblox, I figured that we could have some fun in the build mode, even if we don’t end up enjoying any of the user created content.
Anyone else jump on the deal? Anything I should know before diving in?
Qt3ers will probably want to check out Project Enterprise.
People also remade PT and Disneyland rides in VR.
There’s some showcases by mmDreamQueen that link to a lot of cool creations. All Hallows Dream was neat, but might be too much for a kid. I haven’t tried making anything yet.
Trying to buy this game on the new PS Store is a nightmare. Firefox doesn’t even let me see the price, as usual. So I cut and paste the address into Chrome and log in, and it lets me see the price, and lets me hit “buy”, but then shows me a blank page.
What browser do you guys use for PS Store? Edge?
Edit: Reloading it made it work on Chrome this time.
Spent a couple hours browsing dreams this morning. Here’s some I enjoyed:
Lock - Logic puzzle game / escape rooms thing. I liked the first few, but then the rest were beyond me. Winner of the big community awards. Walkthrough with tiered hints & answers.
I’ve been playing with the editor. It’s quite nice, I like it.
Quick thoughts if anyone else was thinking of trying to make their own stuff:
Editor works in VR!
Basic platformers are easy to create and fun immediately.
Clickable GUI (and GUI in general) is expert-level. Button prompts and text are easy.
No debugging tools or easy backups. Be careful, remember where you put your gadgets.
They did some changes to the dream surfing this week. It’s a lot easier to find new, interesting things. I released one last night and woke up to it being featured in the score-challenge section. Someone is even playing it right now :)
I don’t think anyone tried most of the others I made though.
