The Spore Thread
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Akai XIII
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Format: PC, MAC, DS, MOBILE
Release Date: 05/09/08
Websites: http://www.spore.com/, http://www.spore.com/sporepedia, http://www.youtube.com/spore, http://www.wikia.com/wiki/c:spore:Main_Page
Developer: Maxis
Publisher: EA
Best Price: £24.99 @ ShopTo.net
Boxart:
Trailer:
ABOUT SPORE:
Spore is, at first glance, an evolution game: the player molds and guides a creature across many generations of evolution, until it becomes intelligent, at which point, the scope of the game expands to encompass a broader range of social evolution. This is achieved by first giving the player control over a lone creature (designed by the player him/herself) until the creature begins a tribe of his own, at which point a tribal real-time strategy aspect is incorporated into the game by war with other tribes. The player then begins molding and guiding his creature's society into a space-faring civilization, where the player and his creatures begin to colonize other planets and eventually control a galactic empire.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Click to show:
PREVIEWS:
GameSpy
GameSpot
IGN
1UP
Joystiq
Eurogamer
IGN (iPhone version)
INTERVIEWS:
Joystiq interviews Spore's Chaim Gingold and Chris Hecker.
Breakfast with Will Wright.
Will Wright on Breeding Spore.
IGN interview Will Wright
SCREENSHOTS:
Click to show screenshots:
VIDEOS:
Click to show videos:
PHASES:
Start of life
The game opens using the concept of panspermia. A meteor plummets toward a planet and into an ocean. The meteor, now a geode, then splits, from which a tiny organism emerges.
Cell
The first phase of existence, the cell phase, is sometimes referred to as the tide pool, cellular, or microbial phase. The player guides simple protean microbes around in a 2D environment where it must deal with fluid dynamics and predators, while eating weaker microbes or plants. The player may choose whether the creature is an herbivore or a carnivore prior to starting the phase. Once the microbe has eaten several cells, the player can enter an editor in which they can modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe by spending "DNA points". A player may choose to remove some part from the microbe, which will refund some DNA points. If the creature dies, the player may restart from an earlier phase or point in the game. The player must also seek out special "golden shields" from meteor fragments that provide new parts for the player to use in the editor, such as spikes, mouths or limbs.
As the microbe grows, objects that are in the background move to the foreground, which can mean being eaten by a microbe that had previously been swimming in the background. The creature's behavior directly influences its role in the creature stage, and only parts that are fitting for that creature's evolution will become available. The ocean floor becomes more prominent, and the creature editor interrupts, requesting the user add legs. Finally, the creature becomes evolved enough to come up to the surface and start the creature stage. The microbe resembles a strange insect with cartoonish, human-like eyes, which were used "to make it cute".
The main unit of "currency" is "DNA Points".
Creature:
The creature phase is similar to the cell phase, but with several important differences. Principally, the environment is now truly 3D. Other creatures will inhabit the world, and most of them will have been created by other players. Creatures will automatically be introduced into the environment to maintain a balanced ecosystem. If the player creates a bigger, tougher creature, the predators that are downloaded will likewise be stronger than average. It has also been stated by the game's staff that the farther the player ventures from the starting nest, the tougher the challenges and creatures that await there.
In this stage, the basic goal is the same: earn DNA points, reproduce, and avoid being eaten by predators. Unlike the asexual reproduction of the cell phase, the player must now locate a mate.
Another difference introduced is the social aspect which provides means by which a player can earn DNA points. Socialization is the nonviolent alternative to consuming creatures for DNA, as befriending other creatures earns DNA points, allows access to their nests for resting, and makes them allying against attack more likely.
Creatures have stats for Abilities, Attack, and Social, using a numeric rating system. Adding specific body parts grants the ability to perform actions, such as "Call" and "Jump". Creatures can be given a name, description and tags. Evidence of gliding creatures has been seen, and the Spore Creature Creator shows winged creatures to have an ability called "glide", however the description for this ability is that it allows flight for a certain distance (the distance increasing as the level of flight increases). If it has no legs, it will move around like a slug. Body parts can be found during gameplay, which add that part to the editor for future use. These usually come from preying upon other creatures, but herbivores can gain these parts by socializing with other creatures.
This stage will evolve the creature's social behavior, as the creature may make friends and form a herd or pack. Will Wright referred to this as a simplified version of the friend-making mini-game in The Sims. Creatures may also make friends with other species. The evolutionary goal of the creature phase is to increase the creature's brain capacity. Once the creature becomes intelligent, the game progresses to the tribal phase.
The player may encounter Epic Creatures from this phase and beyond. An Epic creature is actually user-created content that is increased to giant size; the content is picked by the software based on specific criteria suitable to that particular world.
As with the cell phase, DNA Points serve as currency.
Tribal:
After the player's species evolves its brain far enough, it enters the tribal phase. Physical development ceases, as does the player's exclusive control over an individual creature. The player is given a hut, a group of fully evolved creatures, a mini-map of the world for the first time, as well as two of six possible "super powers". These are unlocked depending on the species' behavior in the previous phases.
In this phase the game is similar to an RTS (real-time strategy game). The player may give the tribe tools such as weapons, musical instruments, and campfires. Food now replaces "DNA points" as the player's currency, which the player can spend on items and structures, or use to barter with other tribes. Creatures also gain the option to wear clothes that demarcate their professions. The player may also tame other creatures and use their eggs as food Domesticated creatures seem to undergo neoteny in contrasting photos of the same species, but it is unknown whether it is automatic or if the player was permitted to edit tamed creatures in the editor. Contact with other tribes of the same species, or even different species, can take place in this phase, and creatures also learn to speak. Their language is dependent on the type of mouth they possess; primate-type mouths, for instance, result in Simlish.
Tribe members are assigned roles such as fishing, gathering, or hunting. The creatures' behaviors are affected by the way the player utilizes them. If a player uses them aggressively, their autonomic behavior will reflect that; conversely, if the player uses them peacefully, "conquering" other tribes, say, with music, their behavior will be more kind. Even their idle behavior will reflect this; warlike tribal members will practice combat while docile members will practice instruments and throw parties.
There are 5 other tribes along with the player's, which can either be destroyed or befriended. For every tribe befriended or destroyed, a piece of a totem pole is built. When the totem pole has 5 pieces, the player moves foward to the Civilization phase.
Civilization:
When entering the civilization phase, the player's tribal camp is now a city. Players now have two new editors: the building and vehicle editors. The game will attempt to detect what style of content the player prefers, download similar content created by other players and add it to the buy menu. Players can now construct a variety of land vehicles, aircraft, ships and submersibles. If players start at the Civilization phase, they may assign one of three civilization types: militaristic, economic or religious.
In constructing vehicles and buildings, as with most real-time strategy games, there is a capacity limit; building factories will increase the cap, additionally, constructing them adjacent to one another will provide a productivity bonus. Like Civilization III and IV, the player's territory is marked with a colored border that increases as the player gains more power through militarism or influence. In addition to military conquest, players may construct special missionary units that plant themselves outside of a city and attempt to convert other cities via propaganda.
When the player becomes technologically advanced enough, the UFO editor appears. At this point players are allowed to view the planet from space. When the player elevates the camera past a certain point, the detailed features of the planet become more exaggerated. For example, the cities of the planet change from a properly-scaled view with all individual buildings visible to a more cartoon-like depiction.
The goal in this phase is to gain control of the entire planet, and it is left to the player to decide whether to conquer or unite.
The main unit of currency is now spice.
Space:
The space phase provides new goals and paths to follow as the player begins to spread through the universe.
The player may now terraform and colonize neighboring uninhabitable planets with special tools (water tool, volcano tool, etc). The ultimate tool is a technology which Wright dubbed the Genesis device, named after the device in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Terraforming tools include pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to act as a greenhouse gas. Left unchecked this can cause oceans to rise, then eventually to evaporate and transform the world into a desert planet, followed by a molten rock in space.
The player may cause comets to crash into a planet to create water, or force volcanoes to erupt to increase atmosphere. Players may build cities on the surface of an inhospitable planet once they gain the ability to create bubbled cities, similar in function to self-sustaining arcologies. When establishing colonies on alien worlds players have to take care of them as they would any other city and keep morale up.
During exploration of other worlds, the player may scan content and add the information to their Sporepedia. The player may also abduct creatures and transport them to other planets to test a planet's habitability. The player may interbreed species, or place a monolith (in the style of 2001: A Space Odyssey) on a planet, triggering evolution of intelligence. On lifeless worlds, the player may also find strange "artifacts" with unknown purposes.
Later, interstellar travel becomes possible. There are more than 500,000 planets in the game's galaxy, more than anyone can visit in a lifetime. During the 2007 TED Conference seminar, Wright used accelerated time dilation in the zoomed-out galaxy view to show the dynamics of the entire galaxy, as supernovae exploded in brilliant points of light, and the galactic arms slowly turned. He pointed out that the nebulae, which the game features in real-life separate categories of planetary nebulae and reflection nebulae, perform their actual functions in space. He also brought the UFO close to a black hole, keeping a cautionary distance from the event horizon.
Players can make contact with other civilizations, most of which are created by other players. Intelligent species can be found, and when the UFO visits that world, they may impress the beings with fireworks, attack them with weapons, or try to establish a language with the civilization via a Close Encounters of the Third Kind-styled musical mini-game. The player may beam down a holographic image of his/her creature to interact more directly with an alien species. A user-created civilization's AI reacts depending on its behavior and personality, both of which are based on the play-style of its user. The player can unite or conquer the galaxy by creating a federation or sparking an interstellar war. As a show of great force, the player may even completely destroy a planet (similar to the capabilities of the Death Star from Star Wars), which may bring retribution from that species and its allies. The player is sometimes called upon to fight off an invasion of their home planet.
Currency, as with the civilization phase, is spice.
Sandbox:
The space phase is sometimes referred to as a sandbox, because the player has near-complete control of everything. It has been mentioned that the space phase works on two axes: a horizontal axis (the ability to interact with many planets in a variety of different ways) and a vertical axis (the ability to revisit different phases of gameplay).
SPOREPEDIA:
http://eu.spore.com/sporepedia/
CREATURE CREATOR:
Download page: http://www.spore.com/trial
Creature Creator Tutorials (click to show videos):
System Requirements:
"How do you feel about tentacles? Why only two eyes? Bring your imagination to life like never before - create your unique Spore creatures then share them with the world!"
System requirements for the creature creator:
AWARDS:
Game Critics Awards E3 2005:
Best of Show
Best Original Game
Best PC Game
Best Simulation Game
Game Critics Awards E3 2006:
Best PC Game
Best Original Game
Best Simulation.
On October 8, 2006 the game, its development, and its developer were featured in an article by Steven Berlin Johnson in the Sunday New York Times magazine, titled "The Long Zoom".
GameTrailers E3 2008 Awards:
Best PC Game
It also won the E3 2008 Overall Best of Show from GameSpy.
GRCADE SPORE CREATIONS:
Coming soon.
If you've got anything to add to this post let me know and I'll edit it into the OP.
Sources:
Phases = Wikipedia
System Requirements = Spore.com
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Alvin Flummux
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Alvin Flummux
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Jingle Ord The Way
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Mogster
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I'm Let's Playing my way through the Tomb Raider series: https://www.youtube.com/c/JevanMoss
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Mogster
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Anung Un Rama wrote:I just dont think they are taking it as far as they can go with it.
Oh I see. Well, this is from Will "The Sims" Wright, and will therefore have about five thousand expansions to take it there.
I'm Let's Playing my way through the Tomb Raider series: https://www.youtube.com/c/JevanMoss
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Roonmastor
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Fishfingers
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Is this it?
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Jingle Ord The Way
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Nook29
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Roonmastor
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Windswept-Scotsman
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I've preordered the SPORE Galactic Edition from GAME.
But if past arrival times of new releases are anything to go by,
I won't be holding my breath for it to arrive on release day, or the next, but we shall see.
Actually, I think you'll find that PC's ARE better games machines than consoles, one of many reasons being that you can effectively increase the power of your PC by adding new upgrades and parts ( CPU, GPU, Memory), you can't do that with an X-Pox or PeeS3 now can you ?
Pc's are more powerful gaming rigs than consoles, period.
Maybe you shouldn't judge Pc gaming by your ( in your own words ) inept laptop.
But if past arrival times of new releases are anything to go by,
I won't be holding my breath for it to arrive on release day, or the next, but we shall see.
Is this it? wrote:Pity this isn't getting that much attention as it should, because it really does look to be possibly amazing.
I haven't looked at it much myself either, but thats only because I can't play it on my inept laptop. If only this was coming out on consoles as well, I think it would have gotten far more attention. The PC doesn't really seem to cut it as a games machine efficiently, compared to consoles.
Actually, I think you'll find that PC's ARE better games machines than consoles, one of many reasons being that you can effectively increase the power of your PC by adding new upgrades and parts ( CPU, GPU, Memory), you can't do that with an X-Pox or PeeS3 now can you ?
Pc's are more powerful gaming rigs than consoles, period.
Maybe you shouldn't judge Pc gaming by your ( in your own words ) inept laptop.
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