Spore

[CoolColJ]

starting a new Spore thread

spore presentation - lots of new info, man they sure have fleshed out the game a lot!

E3 was two weeks ago, but the news are still coming from it. Now Gamereactor posted a new ingame footage, with the narration of Stephen Lim, Spore developer.

Around the middle of the video, we cas see clear examples of flying, (that is called "gliding", but there is no difference).

creature

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLl6nS8Q1Iw&e

tribal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyc9b-ToK2Y&e

Civilisation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3btyCZ5Amzo

still waiting on part 4...

gamespot gameplay movie - tribal - cool sounds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVS0zyAv8bA

[CoolColJ]

Cell stage presentation

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36760.html?type=%20Tribal

3 game difficulty levels. I like the time line display as well

[CoolColJ]

A new, 63 minute long demonstration of Spore

(Don't worry, the english narration starts a few minutes later)

http://www.vimeo.com/1438941

even more info unleased!

hmm your allies in creature stage, ones you befriend - evolve along with you

[CoolColJ]

Gamasutra has an interesting (and in-depth!) interview with Soren Johnson regarding Spore

Interview: Soren Johnson - Spore's Strategist

Designer and programmer Soren Johnson came to work at Maxis on Spore in late 2007, after more than 5 years working as a designer on the Civilization series at Firaxis. Most notably, he programmed the AI for Civilization III and then stepped up to lead designer and AI creator on the acclaimed Civilization IV - so adding him was a significant coup for Will Wright's Emeryville-based team.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3722/interview_soren_johnson__spores_.php

[CoolColJ]

some real creative types out there!

PNG

[CoolColJ]

Maxis has made some Spore prototypes available for download

Maxis made two new prototypes available. Instead of weird simulations, now they released the whole prototypes of the creature and space stages.

In SPUG, the player controls an avatar creature on a simple planetary terrain where they may hunt prey, evade predators, eat, rest and level up their stats.

In SPACE, the player explores a galaxy of stars with a spacecraft, discovering new worlds to terraform and colonize and encountering alien species to fight or befriend.

[commercial link edited]

[Moon]

Hi CoolColJ,

you gotta watch that you don't cross the line with your posts. I don't mean posting commercial links (you did it above but I assume it's just been a mistake), but becoming an advertising agent. Reading this post I feel like I'm reading some kind of press release section for Spore. Tone it down, please, or you're going to begin getting infractions as Spammer. And I don't Spore only, as you're post history shows that you've been doing that for a lot of other games, too. Thanks.

[PanzerkwVIIIMaus]

i was excited for spore for awhile. but there are other games i'm liking that should be coming out soon

Call Of Duty:World At War

NHL 09

Tom Clancy's Endwar (starting to lose interest)

Left 4 Dead (losing interest)

Men Of War

and some coming out in a few months

Empire:Total War

ToW2 (of course)

[PanzerkwVIIIMaus]

on second thought i love spore! i checked out the creature creator and I LOVE IT!!!!! you can make all kinds of stuff! with the full editor of course. worth the 10$ in my opinion. if you get the full creature creator, be sure to check out my creatures at filefront.com from my profile all ya gotta do is go to your my documents when you get the full editor, download my creatures, and put them in the creatures folder. and yeah, this is faster than making a spore account. http://hosted.filefront.com/M38Wolfhound

[MeatEtr]

**Bump**

Well, Spore is finally gonna be on store shelves this Monday. It's already raking in some impressive review scores, check out it's gameranking. I did get a kick out of the creature creator demo awhile back. Also the whole idea/premise of taking a single cell organism all the way to conquering the universe sounds different and fun. So I'll probably be picking this one up next week.

[**YK2**]

My husband got his copy today and is still engrossed in it now. (5hrs later) lol

He's been messing around making little creatures for weeks and now there's no stopping him. It does look like fun, and really brings out his creative side, so I don't mind how much time he spends playing..

Lol.. just as I am about to post this he's telling me one of the creatures he made is roaming around.. it's name is scraps.. so if you see him/her/it.. say hello.. he he

[ParaBellum]

I'm not really interested in Spore. The Creature Creator is fun, but the game basically consists of a series of rather simple mini-games that seem to cater to the industry's newly discovered best friend, the "casual" audience. I can't really see any kind of long-term motivation for me in Spore.

Back to Medieval II for me. There's some Heathens that need killing. Oh, and the Engländers are getting uppish, again...

[Ssiissuu]

The fun may not last for him once he hits the 5th stage of the game; the space phase has a huge amount of potential but is mired by constant attacks on your colonies by pirates and rival empires. There is a fair amount to do in the space era, but you'll have scant opportunity to explore the possibilities because there is no automation for rebuilding your colonies so you'll not only be constantly pressed into dropping whatever you're doing in order to save yet another useless colony, but you'll then have to manually rebuild everything that was destroyed.

I can get over the shallow gameplay of the other phases, Spore is light gaming. But the 5th stage is just frustrating due to bad design decisions. The space stage is probably going to frustrate a lot of the casual gamers as they're dealt event overload from the constant events and attacks on their colonies in the space era. The more hardcore gamers are just going to get annoyed with the lack of tools and empire management options, meaning you'll be mired in a micromanagement nightmare and forced to abandon the fun aspects of the space age.

Spore isn't all it was cracked up to be, but I can forgive it the flaws, mostly. What I can't forgive is a seemingly deliberate choice on the part of the devs to create a frustrating 5th stage that'll have all segments of the gamer population ripping their hair out. Exploring, trading, colonizing, even the fetch questing are all quaint and amusing, but the near constant war, raiding, and random events sap the fun out of the 5th stage. I gave up after I spent nearly an hour just shuttling back and forth from my homeworld to the moon orbiting my homeworld; I’d destroy all of the attackers on one, only to be immediately informed someone was attacking the other, so I’d set off for the other body and swat down all of the pathetic enemies, manually rebuild all the stuff they had blasted, and then head back to do the same thing over again. Wouldn't be so bad if I also didn't have to manually replace all of the destroyed buildings in each city, or if you know, my powerful space empire which was being attacked by hordes of enemy ships had say, more than a single starship, me, defending all of the known universe from diseased livestock and enemy star empires. I always figured NASA was about exploring the depths of space, but Spore has shown me the error of my ways. NASA is just part of the Cattle Rancher's Association, or so Spore would have you believe.

When a fix is released, I’ll look at it again. Oddly enough I was expecting the 5th stage to be the least attractive stage to me, but in truth it is the one which captured my interest the most once I had an opportunity to play the game. Pity about the problems though.

[MeatEtr]

Thanks for the feedback Ssiissuu. Yeah I heard the last stage was pretty frustrating. I'll probably still give a whirl though

By the way, I think you would love Sins of a Solar Empire. I never did buy it, but I played my friends copy. We thought it was great, it got great reviews as well.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[MeatEtr]

Wow, just got the game over the weekend and am having a blast. I just made it to the tribal stage for the second time, forgot to save my original. Had fun playing through the creature stage again though. I thought I would be turned off by the early stages simplistic nature, but I dig it. It's hilarious watching my prey freak out and shake and run away as I eat the corpse of their buddy.

I also saw a spaceship on my second run through the creature stage, was pretty neat. I realized I have a lot of evolving and advancing to do before making it to intergalactic space travel.

I see it turns into a more traditional rts at the tribal level. I'm looking forward to the rest and will eventually try a peacefull herbivore on my next playthrough.

[Ultraman]

I was fairly interested in getting it until the reviews came out. Still, looking at some of the creatures makes me want to grow a few. That looks like more fun than actually playing the game.

[Subvet]

At first I thought the space stage might be frustrating, but once I got the hang of it I liked it. I think the problem some people are having with it is that they are playing "turtle" too much. If you are content with just staying on your homeworld and moon I can see why you would be very frustrated. You have to explorre out a little bit and either defeat or become friends with your neighbors. That should take care of most of your problems of constantly being under attack.

[Ssiissuu]

I don’t know ‘cause I became frustrated when I had to travel from the galactic core back to my colonies for the hundredth time to halt yet another bio disaster. And if you don't stop by the races you know on your way, you'll eventually end up at war with them all 'cause you ain't showin' them ya care enough to stop in an say hello. Every alien race is like your in-laws in this frickin' game. This results in near constant attacks against your colonies.

Once you've pushed out a long ways and travel is a lengthy process involving more than mere seconds, the mechanics begin to grate. Looks like there are some mods out now to allow for a bit more of a concentration on the terraforming and exploration portions of the space age with only the occasional ‘event’, so I may try 'em out with a new race to see if the game is any better.

Also, the more I think on it, the more I wish that the cell stage had influenced more of the actual game. That is to say the creature designs and such. In the cell stage if you place 10 flippers on your creature, you'll propel yourself along at a much faster speed than a creature with one flipper. Yet in the later stages they abandoned the location based effects for the parts, and the quantity. In the creature phase you end up abandoning most of the creature aesthetics and design choices in favour of an RPG like play element so that you can 'max' out a stat to remain competitive, sometimes anyway.

I suppose I was just hoping for more. I know quite a few people who're really enjoying the game, even some not normally given to spending hours engrossed in gaming, so the creators of Spore have done something right. In the mean time, I'll check out Sins of a Solar Empire, thanks MeatEtr for the suggestion.

[Subvet]

Also, the more I think on it, the more I wish that the cell stage had influenced more of the actual game. That is to say the creature designs and such. In the cell stage if you place 10 flippers on your creature, you'll propel yourself along at a much faster speed than a creature with one flipper. Yet in the later stages they abandoned the location based effects for the parts, and the quantity. In the creature phase you end up abandoning most of the creature aesthetics and design choices in favour of an RPG like play element so that you can 'max' out a stat to remain competitive, sometimes anyway.

I agree with all of that. I too found those things disappointing.

There is certainly some room for improvement in this game. Overall I enjoy it though. The cool thing is that it's a game that appeals to both me and my 9 year old daughter. I can't think of any other games I can say that about.

[RSColonel_131st]

It sounded interesting, but not if EA limits my installs to three.

[MeatEtr]

It sounded interesting, but not if EA limits my installs to three.

To be more clear, that's three different installs on three PCs. So I'm pretty sure you can uninstall/reinstall on those three machine all day long. But the biggest complaint is that you can't unlock the game from any of those PCs. So they announced there will be a patch in the future which will give you the ability to unlock/de-authorize from PCs. Details here.