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[CreateOn]Spore, life as we know it has changed.
rayofash
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Seven years in the making. Life as we know it has just changed.
Start as a microscopic cell and evolve into a Galactic God!
Start as a microscopic cell and evolve into a Galactic God!
What is Spore?
Wikipedia states
Wikipedia wrote:Spore is a multi-genre "massively single-player online game" by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.
The game starts out on a randomly generated planet with you playing as a randomly generated cell. You eat other cells to gain DNA points that you use to evolve your creautre. Eventually your cell evolves into a full fledged creature, which then forms a tribe, which then becomes a civilization, which in turn sets out to explore the galaxy.
Procedural generation?
Procedural generation refers to the concept of making content on-the-fly rather than prior to it's use. Everything in the game is created by the players. The planets, creatures, buildings, units, everything. When you create something you have the option of uploading it to EA's database where it will be randomly sent to other players to populate their game. One of the most remarkable things about procedural generation though is it's compression. Most creatures don't go over 30kb in size, and most content is under 10kb.
If you want to know more about procedural generation you can download the Creature Creator and experience it first hand.
So wait, the players make everything?
Yup, after only a week of the Creature Creators release there were over a million creatures in their database. Some of them are pretty good too:
What are Sporecasts?
There's a lot of content in spore. I mean a LOT! How are you supposed to sort through BILLIONS and BILLIONS (sorry, couldn't resist) of creatures, vehicles, and buildings? Easy. If you see something you like in the world, simply add it's creator to your buddy list and everything he creates will be prioritised. Want creatures with a certain aspect? You can set it to automaticly download creatures with a certain tag. What about a community or your friends? This is where Sporecasts come in. A Sporecast is a collection of various users, and their content, think an RSS feed. Whoever maintains the Sporecast just needs to add the user to it, and everything he creates will be sent out to everybody who has that Sporecast.
The stages
The game has 5 stages: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space, each stage is unique in its gameplay.
Cell
The Cell stage is Pacman. The goal is to go around eating other cells to gain DNA points and parts that you then use to evolve your cell (this may be more eyes, mouths, weapons etc..) As you eat, your cell grows in size and complexity. After you've filled the progress bar (this is usually done by collecting DNA points), the game kicks you into the Creature stage.
Creature
The Creature stage has been compared to by Will Wright as the friend making min-game in The Sims. The objective of this stage is to progress your brain development by collecting DNA points and creature parts. You do this by either socialising with the other creatures (this is done by singing, dancing, or posing), or by completely annihilating them. As your brain grows, you are able to add more people to your pack, which allows you to take on larger, more dangerous creatures. This is the last stage in which you can evolve your creature and collect parts.
Tribal
The Tribal stage is a slimmed down Populous. The goal of this stage is to progress your society by socialising with the other tribes. Similar to the Creature phase, this is done by either playing instruments and giving gifts, or by killing them. Instead of collecting DNA points, in this stage you collect food. The food is then used to either increase your tribes population, or enhance the village by adding buildings. There aren't any creature parts to collect in this stage, instead you are collecting technology either given or taken from another tribe. You may also clothe your creatures in this stage.
Civilization
The Civilization stage is a slimmed down version of Civilization and Age of Empires. The objective of this stage is to progress in society, technology, and to take over the world. You do this by assimilating the other nations, either through conquest, religion, or economics.
Space
The Space stage is Masters of Orion, and SimEarth. At the beginning of this stage you try to complete objectives to gain badges to unlock tools for your UFO. After that this stage is completely open-ended, there is no goal except for the ones you set yourself (although there is a secret ending by reaching the center of the galaxy). You will run into other creatures who have achieved space flight, and you can make peace with them or conquer them, but the real fun (at least for me) is in expanding your own civilization by terraforming planets and abducting other creatures. You can completely wipe out other races, destroy planets, uplift under-developed creatures, expand your content library, you name it.
This OP is a work in progress, more to come...
rayofash on
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List of currently known PA Buddies
http://pawii.pbwiki.com/Spore <- you can add yourself to this list, the password is 'wang'.
rayofash
Dyvion
TwistedFate
Kobeblackcat
Hayasa
PuddinTaim
Galielmus
BlueDestiny
sonarogre
Projeck
Caedere
DredZed
FlayD
RomanticUndead
Bitstream
IHNIWTR
beckylee
JamWarrior
Demiurge3
Harvest
Roundboy
Joshua1987
BeastZero
Life as we know it has changed.
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
Stoled.
You're quick!
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
Kobeblackcat
to the buddy list
Hayasa
Don't worry, I didn't share any dongbeasts.
they are for my own private use.
"A world where men evolved from Batmobiles!"
"Get your hands off me, you damn dirty Batmobile!"
Spore needs to be mixed with "The Movies" right now.
Check out "How to Break Into the Industry. Any Industry."
"I thought this was solid and I will shamelessly steal it. Hope you don’t mind." ..... Paul Barnett, Design Manager of Warhammer Online
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's a vehicle, not a creature.
Are you sure about that? Is that a distinction that the game makes, or that you are making?
Check out "How to Break Into the Industry. Any Industry."
"I thought this was solid and I will shamelessly steal it. Hope you don’t mind." ..... Paul Barnett, Design Manager of Warhammer Online
Battlenet: Judgement#1243
psn: KupoZero
It was created as a vehicle for your creatures to drive around in.
Um...you do know there are vehicles in this game...right?
Battlenet: Judgement#1243
psn: KupoZero
i thought only the creature creator had been released?
I saw the PAX presentation but didn't know people were playing around with that already
No I don't know. Hence the question. It still hasn't been answered, but I won't derail the tread with a minor quibble.
Check out "How to Break Into the Industry. Any Industry."
"I thought this was solid and I will shamelessly steal it. Hope you don’t mind." ..... Paul Barnett, Design Manager of Warhammer Online
Yes but those bastards that have the actual game currently (some of them are among us!), have been playing the game and making vehicles. Yes the game is out. Not for us in the states. Not YET.
Edit:
Baz - The game has a vehicle editor as well as a building editor. You basically create EVERYTHING about your planet and universe in game. The creature, while its a significant part of the game, is but one element.
Battlenet: Judgement#1243
psn: KupoZero
Aww, really? Are the huts identical at tribal then? Or do you at least get to choose from dung bricks and tents?
Battlenet: Judgement#1243
psn: KupoZero
I think there's variation based on some unknown factors....I'd have to go back and look at recent footage. But what I mean is that there is no longer a "hut" editor.
Maxis has said they'd like to put the flora editor in later, and maybe a tribal hut editor, but neither was quite up to snuff for release.
Everyone go check the Sporepedia if they want to see all the vehicles and buildings now up for sharing.
Other vehicles
Glorious
Also, you can add me to the buddy list as BlueDestiny.
That is amazing.
Normal 3D models are stored as a collection of vertices and faces, with textures applied to them with a certain offset etc. Procedural ones are more like saying, ok, the monster's back starts here and slopes down at a 45 degree angle with a bit of scaly texture applied to it. The computer does most of the work in figuring out how to actually make it in 3D.
It's like the difference between raster and vector art. Raster art says, this pixel is white, this pixel is black, this pixel is white...etc. Vector art says, there's a line that starts here and ends here. That's why it saves so much space, instead of a ton of individual pixels being saved, you just have something that describes the data and it is interpreted on the fly.
caffron said: "and cat pee is not a laughing matter"
Unfortunately, this is where I have to tell you it's a little disappointing.
Will Wright is my hero, but this doesn't live up to its potential. I don't know if they were overly focusing on the casual market or what, but the mode's I've played in Spore aren't revolutionary at all. They're dumbed down, tedious, and predictable.
First of all, the cell stage. You'll probably play this twice and never touch it again. It's a little bit of a rip off fl0w in some aspects. You can customize your cell, but not much, and the gameplay is very shallow. You have to re-find any parts each time you play which I found a little annoying. I thought I was 'unlocking' them for future play, but you only unlock them for the current cell.
Anyway, cell's gameplay is extremely shallow. And that's not just because it's a tide pool.
Once you head out on land, you're in the creature phase. This -should- be awesome, but it's a big let down! You have two options - kill other creatures' nests, or befriend them. Moving your newly created creature around in the world is interesting at first, but the limits in actual fun things to do is disappointing. Once you realize that killing a nest, or singing to a nest is really all there is, this mode falls flat on its face.
Don't get me wrong, the premise is wonderful. Crawling out of the sea, seeing land for the first time, meeting new creatures. The reality is thats a lot of smoke and mirrors on what you can actually do -- not much.
It was during the creature phase that I really started to get worried...
Tribal phase. You do essentially the same thing as creature phase. Kill tribes or befriend them.
The problems with these modes isn't that the 'idea' isn't fantastic. It's the implementation. They're dumbed down. In the tribal phase you have very limited buildings. These never change. How many times can you actually play the tribal phase and enjoy yourself when the gameplay options are so limited.
Imagine a RTS with 9 buildings total. And one unit type.
You can design your tribe's clothes, which looks (at first glance) like it's going to be fun. The reality again is that the options for clothing are really, really limited. This isn't like the creature creator. You can't even design the colors of the clothing.
I haven't given Civilization mode any quality time yet, but I can guess it's not going to surprise me in depth of any kind. For a game that's suppose to be limitlessly replayable, the majority of Spore's modes won't be touched after you complete them for the first time.
So that's leaves space... I've only had the game a day so I haven't gotten into it. Space is rumored not to suck. It's possible that Spore's only real mode is Space, but I'll have to shelve that opinion until I play it through.
This pretty much sums up most of the stuff that I've read about it.
So far I've played through the cell stage and am playing through the creature stage. I like what I'm seeing but I agree with you that the implementation is somewhat "off."
Most of the stuff I've heard from other players is that the game modes before space are supposed to be fairly short and somewhat shallow. The "meat" of the game lies in the space area...
If you're expecting an MMO or Morrowind, yeah, Spore will bore you.
In play terms, you hit the Evolve button when you have the minimum amount of DNA, and there's basically a cutscene of you leaving the water and invading land.
Cell becomes