Luke Sparks a Jedi Battle

Meet Luke! He works with instructor Andrew as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. Surprise, surprise, Luke’s a Star Wars fan, and with Last Jedi in theaters he’s definitely got Star Wars on the brain. So when Luke and Andrew opened Project Spark, Luke immediately noticed something that inspired a Jedi game!

Project Spark, a graphical 3D game development program, offers a gallery full of characters – players, champions, followers, and enemies – from which developers can choose. The gallery’s little green Goblin Bruisers, which find a home in nearly every Project Spark design, usually serve as enemies. But Goblin Bruisers also resemble a friendly green Jedi named Yoda! Luke seized on that inspiration to create a Jedi battle in Project Spark. He and Andrew planned what a Star Wars-themed game should include – space ships, robots, monsters, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Stormtroopers, light sabers, blasters, and force powers. It’s quite a list! So for this lesson, the guys focused on bringing to life some of the most important items. The results are amazing!

To have a Jedi battle requires – at the very least – a Jedi. To build one, Andrew and Luke opened Project Spark’s Character Studio to customize the default player into a tall, hooded Jedi knight. They fashioned his light saber using another default prop, a sword, that they set to “Invisible” in the Properties menu. With the invisible sword as a base, Luke attached visible props to accurately recreate the look of a light saber. A scaled-down Ancient Pipe became the saber handle and the Astro Blaster Projectile FX, colored red, became the saber’s blade. Finally, attack and movement Kode in the player’s Brain enabled this new Jedi to fight his enemies just like Obi-wan Kenobi or Luke Skywalker! With the player complete, Luke moved on to design a few classic Star Wars enemies for his player to battle.

Project Spark’s galleries of characters and Brain types (3rd Person Adventurer, Melee Enemy, and Follower, to name a few) gave the very creative Luke the tools he needed to build not one, but two Stormtroopers (can’t get a more classic enemy than that!). Character Studio let Luke dress generic non-player characters in black-and-white space armor that he colored himself. He needed extra creativity to give the Stormtroopers proper helmets, however, since none of Project Spark’s default space helmet featured the necessary masks. Luke used an Army Helmet instead, and attached the Scoundrel Mask to it create authentic Stormtrooper headgear. Next, Luke and Andrew gave the Stormtroopers Ranged Follower Brains, and modified their Kode to attack the player rather than help him. The final touch? Laser rifles! Luke armed his Stormtroopers with these blaster-like guns to at least give them a fighting chance against the Jedi. Watch the video to see the outcome of the battle!

Awesome work here, Luke! You and Andrew make a great team. Thanks for sharing your creativity with us, and enjoy Last Jedi tonight!