Spore

[Loop]

My God... has anyone heard of this?

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/595/595975p1.html?fromint=1

Sounds ridiculously excellent.

[Night_Cralwer]

indeed

[Scarface]

Sensational.

This is the kind of game that comes along once every 10 years and revolutionalizes gameing.

I want it now!

[30111987]

its tamagotchi for grown ups

[Loop]

And is all the better for it.

I've always liked these 'evolutionary' games, and thought it a pity I never got to play Evolva.

[thegloaming]

That looks bloody awesome. Gosh! I had heard something about this, but hadn't read his conference on the subject... wow, it's simply brilliant.

Oh, 'Evolva'... it seemed to be a very nice game. I only saw screens and read about it...

[stevengemmell]

nifty :)

[Scarface]

Yes using my considerable influence and a covert network of spies I have the screen shots of 'Spore'

The amoeba stage:
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/images/spore_amoeba.jpg

On land:
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/images/spore_onland.jpg

The Sim City-style mode:
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/images/spore_city.jpg

Planet mode:
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/images/spore_planet.jpg

Solar system mode:
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/images/spore_solarsystem.jpg

Galaxy:
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ludologist/images/spore_galaxy.jpg

Looks better than I could possibly have imagined.

[Loop]

I imagined it much the same, but without the trees in the 'land stage'.

[Scarface]

http://www.spore.com/

[Alexandros]

Looks like the paramecia I've looked at under the microscope.


And dude......this thread is so 2005.

[Phatbowser]

I have seen this before. Not that impressive to me.

[Blondi]

It looks oldish but fun to me.......

[Loop]

I have seen this before. Not that impressive to me.
What could be more impressive? Perhaps creating an intelligent being out of dust and dirt and having them kneel and mutter in gold-plated buildings whilst the poor beg outside?

[stevengemmell]

looks pretty good this game, heard about it sometime ago and peaked my interest.

Glad i upgraded my rig in time for it, also Check Bioshock guys.

[Laughing Man]

It's one of those games that is so massive in scope that it will either be total brilliant or will fall on it's ar*e.

Saying that looking forward to it.

[MHG]

I think for it to suceed, they need to send me a copy right now. And fix my computer while they're at it.

[Scarface]

Nothing a sledgehammer couldn't fix...

Or just let the lupus curse loose on it, the end result is the same :)

[Sapphireruby]

Looks fun to me...:)

[Scarface]

The sims on ET Acid, "Totally take me to your groovy leader, and make me go potty!"

[stevengemmell]

I agree with the dude above, i hope the game dosnt try to be a master of all trades and ends up a failure of them all.

[Laughing Man]

The sims on ET Acid, "Totally take me to your groovy leader, and make me go potty!

Does that mean I can trap my alien in a four walled apartment with no doors and watch as it goes mad, wets itself and eventually dies?

What's wrong with your comp MHG?

[Loop]

What's wrong with your comp MHG?

I fear if he knew, he could fix it. I've seen his hardware specs and apart from windows Xp being on it there's no reason why it should be so slow. Apparently it's been defragged recently so barring a massive malware incursion I'd advise him to just reformat.

[Scarface]

Well it seems the time is near, probably the most anticipated game of the 2000's is due to be released probably with in the next 3 months.

I wonder about system specs and the power needed to run it, although Will Wrights games have been friendly to PC's, both Sims and Sims 2 required PC's that were pretty standard for the time.

A few things from the wiki:

Spore is a massively single player multi-platform god game under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright that allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a multicellular organism, through development as a sapient and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture.

The game is due to be released on September 5, 2008 in Europe, and September 7, 2008 in North America and other territories.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/Spore_cellphase.jpg/180px-Spore_cellphase.jpg

Ending

It has been revealed that there exists an overall objective to which a species works, namely reaching a quasar in the centre of the game's galaxy. To reach this point, the player must find a way past a vast alien empire which blocks access to the galactic center.[32] The player can then choose to continue to play past the end and explore the hundreds of thousands of planets that populate the Spore galaxy in the "sandbox" mode

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/73/Spore_civphase.jpg/180px-Spore_civphase.jpg

"Massively single-player metaverse"

Wright calls the game a "massively single-player online game".Simultaneous multiplayer gaming is not a feature of Spore. The creatures, vehicles, and buildings the player can create will be uploaded automatically to a central database (or a peer-to-peer system), cataloged and rated for quality (based on how many users have downloaded the object or creature in question), and then re-distributed to populate other players' games.[17] The data transmitted will be very small — only a couple of kilobytes per item transmitted, according to Wright. This was due to procedural generation of material.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/85/Sporecreaturephase.jpg/225px-Sporecreaturephase.jpg

[Loop]

Spore... it has been shipped!

:huh:

[30111987]

Spore... it has been shipped!

:huh:

2 days till official release

[Eldandoerino]

It's out on the net already.

[Loop]

That's as well as maybe, but meh.

[Eldandoerino]

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=229057

Eurogamer review looking good i think a i'll download and if i like i'll buy.

[QuizMaster]

I saw a demonstration of the game last weekend. I don't know how I had managed to avoid all information about this until then. The game is the opposite of what I thought it was. I thought it was all about (and just about) making life forms and watching them go nuts.

Could somebody quickly explain (or, take your time if you wish to ramble) what procedural content is?

[Loop]

Computer decides how to animate it, basically. Means filesizes for creatures are very small since it doesn't need to have the code for animations.
Well, it's not just for animations but that's basically.... **** it, have a look on Wiki.

[Laughing Man]

Yeah bought this today, gotta be honest it's not as great as I thought it was going to be. I am at the civ stage now and I am kinda getting sick of the whole, everyone against me and only me idea that this game seems to employ. Seriously during the tribal stage I had two rival tribes turn up at my home, totally ignore each other and attack just me. Now I am at the civ stage they are doing the exact same thing.

[Eldandoerino]

Make peace not war.

[Loop]

It's so much easier to be a pacifist in this game, at least in the space stage. Not that that stopped me being a meat-eating Warrior. Tip; bombs are your friends.

[MHG]

Make peace not war.

Make cake, not broccoli.

[Laughing Man]

So what's the opinion on the DRM issue with this game? Over at Guru3D it seems to have resulted in a massive round of EAs cr*p posts.

[Loop]

I really don't care. In theory I oppose it and all it stands for, but I'm too lazy to find a crack and... well, I'm not not going to play this game I've waited years for.
But I agree, EA is crap. I firmly believe their involvement has detracted from what Spore was originally meant to be.

[Laughing Man]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA

Having just watched that I am starting to form the opinion that the game we finally got is... well a bit crap when you see what should have been in it.

[Scarface]

If I know EA and Maxis there will be endless patchs/updates and expansions.

[Laughing Man]

If I know EA and Maxis there will be endless patchs/updates and expansions.

The thing is the game that's shown in that video looks so much more advanced and it also seems to be a lot more realistic rather than dumbed down cute. If that's what they had a year or so ago then what have they done the last year? Spent it removing a lot of the games features, specifically so they can re release them as paid for patches / updates at a later date.

I don't think so, I paid for the full game not for the first installation of an episodic game. If they do indeed start releasing the rest of the game as patches then I guess I'll have to start hitting the torrents sites for future EA games.

[Loop]

... as we all no doubt do for the Sims.

[MHG]

You can even do cheats the same way as you do in The Sims. Ctrl and C

[Scarface]

... as we all no doubt do for the Sims.

No way am im wasting my bandwidth on the sims.

[Loop]

No, just months waiting for the postie to deliver.

[Scarface]

yep, sounds good to me.

I dotn play that ****, so i dont care how long it takes.*






*As long as its not sent via boat

[Laughing Man]

Right I am out, this game is so bad it almost hurts. The design system is a waste of time and energy since as long as you place item x on your creature it will be able to do action x. Beyond that design of the creature is purely for aesthetic sake and makes not a blind bit of difference to how your creature behaves in the game. Something I am pretty sure the original idea for the game was supposed to allow.

The games from cell - civ are pointless mini games each of which is so simple to complete it takes no challenge at all.

Cell - eat stuff, attack stuff, add bits to creature, repeat until you complete stage
Creature - Dance like an idiot or attack your enemy, add bits that make you dance better or attack better, repeat until you complete stage
Civ Stage - Collect spice, build a vast army, slaughter everyone else. Or if you want waste time with the friendly options


and then you get to the worst part of the game.

The Space stage, when compared to the others at first it seems quite massive, even complex with the vast range of things you can do, but then, after only a few hours play you find out that this is the most tedious form of micro management within a game that has ever been created. You have to do EVERYTHING. Now if EVERYTHING was interesting then fine but seriously ferrying spice about? Dealing with constant alerts, ferrying creatures and plants around, increasing the T score. It is all so horrendously dull. I have an example of just how broken this part of the game is and maybe I will tell you about it one day, if anyone cares that is.

I am gonna keep this game on my PC until after the first patch, if it fails to address the serious dullness of this game then it's going to the great recycle bin in the sky.

[Loop]

I blame EA.

[Laughing Man]

I blame EA.

I am British so by law I have to blame the immigrants.

[Scarface]

The Space stage, when compared to the others at first it seems quite massive, even complex with the vast range of things you can do, but then, after only a few hours play you find out that this is the most tedious form of micro management within a game that has ever been created. You have to do EVERYTHING. Now if EVERYTHING was interesting then fine but seriously ferrying spice about? Dealing with constant alerts, ferrying creatures and plants around, increasing the T score. It is all so horrendously dull.


I'm sorry, but that sounds exactaly like the sims to me, and this game was made by the guy who made the sims so if you wern't expecting that kind of play, I think you were somehow misled although I would have thought it rather obvious that what you described was going to be a large part of the game.

[Laughing Man]

I'm sorry, but that sounds exactaly like the sims to me, and this game was made by the guy who made the sims so if you wern't expecting that kind of play, I think you were somehow misled although I would have thought it rather obvious that what you described was going to be a large part of the game.

Hmm, the best way to compare it to The Sims would be to say each planet you own in Spore would be like a single member of your Sim family. The alerts you have to attended to is like when one of your Sims stats gets low and they have to be dealt with.

Now imagine if all three Sims had one of their stats drop to near zero. You can select each of the Sims in turn and then tell them to go and and do something to solve the issue. They will usually do that thing automatically. Now if you applied the way Spore works to the Sims you would first of all have to select the Sim, wait for the cursor to move to them, mess about zooming in so that you can look at the them closely and then YOU have to actively do whatever is required to solve the stat issue. You can't simply click a button and then let them go off and solve the issue whilst you deal with your other Sims' problem you have to actually stay there micro managing the resolution until it is solved and ONLY THEN can you move on to solving your other Sims' problems.

[the_one]

for all those that paid for this game, don't be trying to make yourself feel better by pretending it's a good game, it's not. just because something takes 10yrs to make doesn't make it worthwhile, look at shenmue, one of the worst games ever with it's years of dev + however many millions it cost to produce.

now c'mon, do the sensible thing, throw out your copy caus it's only good for 3 installs and do the sensible and decent thing.

google: Spore-RELOADED
google: Spore Crackfix-RELOADED

:cool::upto:

[Scarface]

It almost seems as though the longer they take to make a game, the more rubbish it is, the ones that are knocked out in a couple years seem to do better, except shoddy sequels that are only the orginal game with some extra content.

I must admit years ago when we first heard about Spore, it seemed exciting and video-game genre breaking, now I haven't even played it and it seems dull and cliche.

Warning bells should have gone off with the Creature Creator Trial, which for the size of the download was mind numbingly dreary.

[stevengemmell]

I liked it ive gotta admit, *waits for trolls*

But for me Spore was just to tide me over till DOW2 and FIFA09

[Laughing Man]

Lol I hope you ain;t gonna play Fifa on your PC because according to EA

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/41519/EA-PC-FIFA-09-Gimped-Because-Your-Computers-Suck

[Scarface]

I couldnt imagine playing a sports sim on a PC keyboard.

[stevengemmell]

nah man PS3 :)

[the_one]

Fifa?!?!?!

will they ever stop making that rubbish? i'd much rather stick cocktail sticks in my eyes.:thumb:

[MHG]

I've found the best way of dealing with the constant alerts and pirates is just to ignore them. That's how I got to the centre of the galaxy.

That and these cheats I got from GamesFAQ...

universeSimulatorPirateRaidPlunderFrequency # Rate that pirates will steal spice from your systems
universeSimulatorPirateRaidAllyFrequency # Rate that pirtates will raid ally your systems
universeSimulatorPirateRaidFrequency # Rate that pirtates will raid your systems

and of course...

moreMoney Increases your money in Civilization or Space stages.
addDNA increase how much DNA you have to spend.

Cheating is good.

EDIT: BTW, am I the only one who loves this game?

[Loop]

I didn't get my achievement for getting to the centre! CURSE THEM!

Fifa?!?!?!

will they ever stop making that rubbish? i'd much rather stick cocktail sticks in my eyes.:thumb:I'd much rather stick cocktail sticks in his eyes too.

[Scarface]

I've found the best way of dealing with the constant alerts and pirates is just to ignore them. That's how I got to the centre of the galaxy.

That and these cheats I got from GamesFAQ...

universeSimulatorPirateRaidPlunderFrequency # Rate that pirates will steal spice from your systems
universeSimulatorPirateRaidAllyFrequency # Rate that pirtates will raid ally your systems
universeSimulatorPirateRaidFrequency # Rate that pirtates will raid your systems

and of course...

moreMoney Increases your money in Civilization or Space stages.
addDNA increase how much DNA you have to spend.

Cheating is good.

EDIT: BTW, am I the only one who loves this game?

If your not good enough to play the game without cheating, I struggle to understand why people even play.

[stevengemmell]

I like how if you replace eyes with Antennae (Spelling) it goes black and white, nice touch

[MHG]

Does it? Also did you know that if you spin the galaxy in the menu screen, faces appear?

Also, I've got to admit, Spore is flawed, but so is chocolate. I still love it.

I like creating creatures and weird space ships. I made a Dave Duff space ship, a star ship in the shape of a star and a really creepy doll space ship.

I tried making a Wario creature, and even though he looks surreal, it's a pretty good attempt!

Also, someone made a creature based on Starbug from Red Dwarf. It's creepy how accurate it is and even creepier when it walks around killing creatures.

[Loop]

Also, someone made a creature based on Starbug from Red Dwarf. It's creepy how accurate it is and even creepier when it walks around killing creatures.

Especially since Starbug doesn't actually walk. :thumb:

[MHG]

New patch everyone!

Features

* New Cheat: "evoadvantage". Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
* Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the 'i' key.
* New Cheat: "blocksmode". Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
* More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: "stylefilter -microscope" or "stylefilter -norainbows" or "stylefilter -nextgen" to see the new styles
* Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the "hot and high atmosphere" type

Graphics/Aesthetics

* Animation improvements
* Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
* Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures

Tuning

* Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
* Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn't pay
* Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Miscellaneous

* Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
* Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
* Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
* Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
* Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
* Fixed problems with the "Rolling Thunder" and "Déjà Vu" achievements not being awarded as they should
* Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
* Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
* Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
* Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
* Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
* Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
* Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
* Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu

[Scarface]

Why couldnt they wait a week and actually include this as part of the game?

[Eldandoerino]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/218-Spore

[Scarface]

OK that was ****ing awesome!

that and the fact that MHG likes this game has confirmed my worst fears, this game is for children.

[Eldandoerino]

Yahtzee is da man :D

Does spore live up to the sims in short NO

In long nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo:lol:

[stevengemmell]

whats your spore ID MHG :)

[Loop]

I'm somewhat annoyed that after all the effort I put in to getting to the centre of the Universe, i didn't get the ****ing achievement for it. :mad:

[Scarface]

You already moaned about that.

[MHG]

that and the fact that MHG likes this game has confirmed my worst fears, this game is for children.

Dude, where did that come from? :(

whats your spore ID MHG :)

http://eu.spore.com/sporepedia/profile.cfm?sn=MHG_5

Or MHG_5

[Laughing Man]

Can brightly coloured monstrousities really compare to batman? Short answer, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oo!

[Scarface]

I'm gona watch it again!

[Laughing Man]

Uninstalling the game today, dunno if I'll ever play it again.

[MHG]

I think you're taking it too seriously. Meh, but that said, if you don't like it, you don't like it. Fair enough.