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[Create On!] Spore Creature Creator Thread
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SPORE CREATURE CREATORSpore, the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers.
The Spore Creature Creator gives Spore fans, and those who are creatively curious, the first hands-on opportunity to design their own species and share it with their friends. All creatures designed with the Spore Creature Creator can be imported into the full retail version of Spore for PC and Mac when it launches on 5th September 2008 in Europe and 7th September 2008 in North America.
But you already knew all that! What's really important is that you can use this program to make awesome dudes like this:
Ivegotbaggage by TripKMA
By AJAlkaline40
Raptor Jesus by me!
Then you can create animated GIFs of them (as seen at the top of this post) or you can even upload videos of them directly to YouTube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqSaZ8S6Mqw&eurl=http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=50052&page=77
It gets even better! Starting tomorrow you will be able to upload your creatures to the Sporepedia where people will be able to view and download your best creations. Then, when the full version of Spore comes out, your creatures will be seeded into other players galaxies! So if you want the whole world to see your army of penis creatures, you're in luck.
When naming/describing your creature, you should make one of the tags 'Penny Arcade'. That way we can easily find each other's creations when the full game comes around.
How to get in on this action:
Good question! Well, on June 17th the free trial version of the creature creator, which features 1/4 of the parts from the full version, will be released. Then, on June 18th, you can buy the full version for $10. The full version of Spore won't be out until September, of course.
Don't buy the Sim Cities Box! It only contains the free trial version of the creator.
How to go about makin manz:
Watch this excellent tutorial video from Maxis!
Pay attention to the adding/removing joints bit. The key to making some of the more unconventional creatures is adding limbs and re-shaping them into whatever body part you're trying to emulate.
Now that you've made an awesome creature you naturally want to share it. Spore makes this easier than ever. Your creatures are saved as small PNG files which you can find by going to My Documents/My Spore Creations/Creatures. These are not just thumbnails of your creature. They also contain all the data that the program requires to display it. To download one of these files, all you have to do is drag the PNG from your browser and drop it over the Spore Creature Creator window. Poof! The creature is added to your Sporepedia.
NOTE: Only the small thumbnail images contain the necessary data! These can be obtained in the Sporepedia by clicking the 'download' link just below the creatures portrait. Dragging and dropping the larger image will do nothing.
Want to know more about how the PNG encryption works? Jonxp has done some great detective work into this matter:
jonxp wrote:The creature data is encoded in the actual PNG images not as metadata, but through stenographically altering the image. Each pixel is made of four bytes of data (Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha) to extract the data from the image, one needs to take each byte of the image, divide it by two, and use the remainder as a single bit (this is known as a modulus operation). So for each byte in the decoded image you get a bit of information, each pixel is a nibble, and every two pixels is a full byte. Since the thumbs are 128x128, you can store 8KB of information in this manner.
I have written a program to extract the creature data, unfortunately it seems to be signed and/or encoded in some fashion, so I can't actually manipulate it (as far as I can tell).
I will put up some proof-of-concept "spore rolled" creatures soon that appear to be one creature, but are in fact a different one when loaded.
I'll put those "spore rolled" creatures right here when he posts them.
Common problems:
Can't upload creatures to Sporepedia? That's because after the leak became widespread, EA stopped allowing uploads from the trial version. You will be able to upload them on June 17th!
Are your creatures not appearing in-game even though the number next to "My Creations" displays the correct amount? This is a common problem with no known solution! The good news is that your creatures are not deleted. They should still be saved in your My Documents/My Spore Creations/Creatures folder. Make sure you hold onto them until EA fixes this bug.
Did you try to drag and drop a creature into your Sporepedia, only to have it not appear? You probably dragged the wrong image file. Only the small thumbnail contains data that the creator can read!
Is there some vidal piece of information that I, in my stupidity, have forgotten to include in this post? Message me or let me know in the thread!
Spore Creature Contest!
One very good idea that's been put forward several times is that we have a competition, similar to a Photoshop contest, where we design creatures around a certain theme and then vote on the best submissions. If we can settle on the rules and come up with a good theme, I will put the information here.
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Also: I will try to post all the awesome creatures I can here, but there's no way I'll be able to get them all. This thread moves really fast. Therefor I cannot guarantee I will put every awesome creature up here. Even the really awesome ones.
SpongeCake's 'Crolot'
Utsanomiko's 'Evolution'
Synthetic Orange's 'Samus Aran'
MyCoCo's 'Genestealer'
Modain's 'Ceiling Croc'
Not specifically a creature, but awesome nonetheless: by RCagent
NotACrook's series of vehicle creatures:
CONSUME
My Sporepedia collection.
I would show you guys my Hydra, but I am not very good at this.
No, the zip file is not filled with spoons. It's Spore 5! Shut up, you.
I'm pretty sure the Chocobo was made using a full version of the Creature Creator (i.e. by a member of the press/Maxis) not the demo, so I don't think it would load into the trial even if you had a .png.
I was quite happy with the way this dude turned out.
It was on the Sporepedia :P
Carry me Daddy!
Tell me he doesn't look like he's plotting something...
His Strike animation is quite impressive, and watching him walk is hilarious.
I know, many people have made mass-weapon creatures, but (if you drag him in) just watch his Spit animation. I find it both impressive and terrifying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq7ERpqAjFk
My .pngs.
Really impressive.
He floats using air stored in a giant air tank in his tail.
By putting his mouth on his legs, the animation bugs out so he looks like hes hovering sometimes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ygR9vFLmI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW2sDIURo2U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Fhp2W3DVc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyOsXiSFrPA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWv2qyEGUc4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TUGu-f6izM
Saw a few better versions of this before I tried mind:
Youtube Channel!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpJ8DuV4clc
Also, I can't believe they delayed the full creature creator.
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
If that's done, please include the spelling correction I just added.
3DS Friend Code: 2707-1614-5576
PAX Prime 2014 Buttoneering!
If you get this figured out at all, tell me, since I'm having the same issue. At least with the trial version; I'll see if it's still happening in the full one when it arrives.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JCbZlIcv3yg
It looks so weird when moving.
Quite a few people are running old video cards (mine in particular is a Radeon 9700), which don't appear to be rendering reflections or bump mapping. Spore seems to only require about 2.0 Ghz and 256MB of RAM, on the other hand.
Fuga: what... is that? I can't tell. Ze mandibles are all over ze screen!
I know, its almost CREEPY having a game (well, editor, or whatever) this new run so smooth on my computer. Sure it looks like general ass (particularly with bigger creatures), but it would take monumentally poor graphics for that to matter in my mind, unlike some of my relatives.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
This guy looks like he'd be a huge asshole.
EDIT:
This is my new favourite creature