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Will Wright's E3 Spore Presentation

Posted by Zonk on Wed May 10, 2006 06:37 PM
from the you-say-you-want-an-evolution dept.
E3
moto writes "ThinkGaming is reporting from E3, and had a chance to take a look at Will Wright's Spore during the early-hours press access. From the article: 'To start, Will showed an overview of the latest creature editing system. He mentioned that almost all parts of the editing system, from hands to the mouth, control the creature in its entirety - from its personality to the way it sounds, etc. In addition, the color system is a procedural texturing system that lays initially colors, then various textures (scales, etc.) and more all on top of your creature model. It looks like an incredibly intricate system, as has been seen quite a bit so far in previous videos. It looked like it was nearing completion and would allow for endless possibilities.'"
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[+] Spore Promo Video Leaked to YouTube 63 comments
Khamura writes "As E3 draws near, those of us who have been following Will Wright's newest brainchild, Spore, are abuzz with expectation. And lo! Someone posted to YouTube a video that shows 'unedited footage of Spore that will be going to TV networks covering E3 next week'. It includes a look at the overhauled creature editor, a first glimpse of the texturing tools, and various other exciting things that had not been shown this clearly in the early prototype seen at the 2005 GDC. One of them is the ambient music when the UFO visits different planets." It certainly looks like the game we saw last year, but take with a grain of salt just the same.
Offsite: Conquering the Universe
Offsite: Spore Creature Editor Hands-On
[+] Spore Coming to Consoles? 61 comments
Wowzer writes "EA was previously planning to bring Spore from PC to handhelds. In an interview this week Spore creator Will Wright was quoted as saying they are looking at bringing Spore to all platforms. From the article: 'You might be playing part of the game on a handheld platform, you might be playing the entire game but maybe more avatar-based on a console. The consoles are getting kind of different now, I think there's a really interesting distinction between the Wii and the Xbox 360 and PS3. Something like the Wii offers a lot of interesting creative opportunities for the editors, with the controller.'"
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  • If I hear the word procedural one more time from this guy...

    • Re:Procedural (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have 4 words for you: procedural procedural procedural procedural...

      • Re:Procedural (Score:5, Funny)

        by Tackhead (54550) on Wednesday May 10 2006, @07:21PM (#15305182)
        > > If I hear the word procedural one more time from this guy...
        >
        >I have 4 words for you: procedural procedural procedural procedural...

        Oh, crap. Will's just procedurally evolved a Steve Ballmer.

        Oh, double crap. The procedure's viral, too.

  • Wahoo!!!

    I'm not a big gamer myself... heck, I've touched my xbox once in the last year (and still haven't finished Halo 2) but this game... bo ya! It's one of the few I am truly looking forward to.

    I may need to save my vacation time so that I can avoid work and sunlight for a week or two after things baby comes out.

  • Video of presentation Words (Score:5, Informative)

    by Suddenly_Dead (656421) on Wednesday May 10 2006, @06:45PM (#15305026)
    IGN has a nice video [ign.com] of Wright demoing Spore at E3. I'd kill for a high-res mirror, though.
    • I waited in line about 1.5 hours to see this demonstration. The line moved very slowly too, since about 2/3 of the audience in the room of about 30-40 people were invited, so they could skip the line. I didn't even know WW was going to be demoing it himself, and at first I didn't realize it was him (he didn't say his name).

      The parent's linked video is pretty much the exact same demo I saw in person, with only some minor differences (i.e. he said that the ability to toss things with your abduction ray was
  • If your computer downloads content produced by OTHER players.... And then populates the world with them, I could see a problem. Look ma, my creature just got eaten by a giant goatse!

  • Expectations (Score:4, Insightful)

    by reldruH (956292) on Wednesday May 10 2006, @06:56PM (#15305074) Journal
    No real new information other than that progress on the game is... well, progressing. The screen shots look absolutely amazing. My only fear is that all this publicity will do the game in. I think it will be a great game but even I realize that my expectations are so flagrantly high that there's almost no way he'll be able to meet them. Maybe we should all take a step back, remember that this game will not take the place of wives, kids or food and give the game a chance to be succesful. Because with expectations running as high as everybodys are right now, there's no way it will be able to meet them.
    • Honestly....I'm starting to get the same feeling in my stomach as when Black & White was about to come out. So while I may doubt the expectations I have for this game, I still have really high hopes that this game pulls through, because this concept is absolutely FASCINATING to me as I love evolution in general and to put it in game form....capturing gameplay from all the main genres...well, its just awesome. Then you throw in the fact that Wil Wright is behind it and it will be humorous as well and
      • honestly get the 10min video and watch the midle 5 min and it will answer your question

      • Re:Expectations (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Roguelazer (606927) <Roguelazer AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday May 10 2006, @07:39PM (#15305252) Homepage Journal
        Perhaps, if your attention span is so short that you are unable to focus on a 10-minute video, a complicated strategy game spanning billions of years of evolution isn't the right game for you.
      • As far as I know, formal advertising has yet to start. All the hype right now is coming from those 10+ minute videos. I'm sure there will be much shorter videos released closer to when the game comes out (it's not slated to be released till 2007). If I was you, I'd ignore it for now. Wait until the holiday season to start checking it out. Getting as excited as a lot of people are this far in advance of the games completion sounds a lot like a recipe for disaster.
        • We, the excited people have had better reasons to be excited than in the case of many other games. Rarely does one see hour-long videos explaining the game in great detail, displaying it in what seems to be an almost-complete -- or at least a very much working -- state.

          Now we get, what, 10 minute videos, and of course when the marketing starts there'll be 30-second spots etc. And this is supposed to be a _better_ reason to get excited than a nearly complete walkthrough? 30 seconds of shallowness?

          Attention s

      • Re:Expectations (Score:4, Informative)

        by Yi Ding (635572) <yi@NoSPaM.studentindebt.com> on Wednesday May 10 2006, @07:40PM (#15305261)
        Check out their E3 video [spore.com]. It's a nice condense introduction to the game.
      • You can also design your war machines..

        http://thinkgaming.org/articles/spore_e3/211.jpg [thinkgaming.org]

        excited yet?
      • Dude, don't even be QUESTIONING this game. The Mod Jihad will bust you down faster than a pair 110-storey buildings. It's worse than dissin' Apple Computers around here. Folks like you and I, The-Bus, see, we're too stupid to appreciate this, so don't even say anything about it.
  • Dang. . .is that a new record ?

  • Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)

    by darkhitman (939662) on Wednesday May 10 2006, @07:43PM (#15305274)
    A popular game?

    Complete control over all aspects of the creatures?

    Textures that could possibly be construed as flesh-colored?


    I think we have a Hot Chromosome scandal coming up. Jack Thompson, get your subpoenas ready.
    • Next target: MS Paint.

    • Oh, I am sure that when travelling the galaxy in Spore, you will encounter multiple instances of the Planet of the Hot Nymphomaniacs. If only real space were like that, humans would have conquered the galaxy by now.
      • If real space were like that, humanity (at least the male half) would more likely have found the first of those planets and then suddenly discovered better things to do than space exploration.

  • Drat (Score:5, Funny)

    by aztec rain god (827341) on Wednesday May 10 2006, @08:57PM (#15305700)
    "In order to move from one step to the next in terms of evolution and generations, you must find a mate."

    Looks like I won't be getting very far in this game.
  • Don't get me wrong... Spore looks AMAZING! The whole creature-creation stuff is like nothing I've ever seen.

    But will the game be FUN?! I guess maybe it's kind of like the Sims, where users create their own fun...?

    Can someone explain it to me?

    Adman
    • But will the game be FUN?

      That depends on who you are. I expect it will be fun for me.

      • Nintendogs has various "scores" (trainer points, competetion scores, and money), and various things that might be considered win conditions, although the designer's real goal was to get the gamer playing in perpetuity.

        Animal crossing, similarly, has a few different score-like things, as well as different win-conditions depending on user preference. A "perfect town," a full catalog at Nook's, museum collections, HRA scores, etc. Depending on your goals, it's entirely possible to "win" at Animal Crossing.

        You'
      • I don't think the game's going to be "scored" per se. The impression I've had from what's out there is that the motivation for playing is simply to advance to the next stage of evolution, which would be fine by me. Of course, I don't know for sure, but considering that The Sims didn't have attempt to score your character or their life, I'd bet that's going to be the case again here.

        Really, how WOULD you score the game? Number of times your creature mates? ;)

  • This game goes a few steps beyond all of those first-person shooters that are open to modification by skilled designers. It literally makes the all the tools needed to create fully custom, playable characters available to the average person using a highly intuitive interface. Combine this with the possibility to create several hundred thousand variations in character design, each with their own custom world for them to populate in a virtual universe open to millions of users around the world via the interne

    • Re:The Future of Gaming (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Flyboy Connor (741764) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:37AM (#15306843)
      I am really looking forward to this game and the uproar it'll inevitably cause with the "intelligent design" proponents.

      Why would there be an uproar from them? Basically it simulates a universe that is constructed as they think it actually is.

    • I doubt this game would cause any sort of uproar with proponents of "intelligent design" ... mostly because this game is all about intelligent design, and maybe even includes some aspects about the heritability of acquired traits. I'm still excited about playing Spore, both personally and professionally (I'm a high school biology teacher and a biology education researcher). I'm hoping to get this loaded on all of our laptops in school (that is, if they have the horsepower...) and have the students play as
  • Obligatory Penny Arcade link [penny-arcade.com]. I just hope it's better than Black & White. For some reason, I could never get into that game. The ideas were great, but it never jelled for me.
    • How boring does: 1. Hack 2. Slash 3. Repeat sound?
      • Great point. What about
        1) walk around.
        2) shoot.
        3) repeat until sick and tired.

        The variety comes from all the different colors of keys you can find.
    • Yeah, substitute "yourself" for "your creature", and eliminate step 3, and it sounds pretty much like my life.
    • Well, my suggestion to you would be not to purchase it, then. That's the nature of the sandbox game; build something and play with it. If that's not the kind of game you enjoy, it wouldn't be worth your money.

      Speaking as someone who keeps a small tub of Legos by the computer, I think I can probably say that I've got it preordered!

    • You missed

      5) Form tribal society
      6) Advanced technologically to a city based civilization
      7) Interact with other civilizations on your homeworld
      8) Advance to space faring race
      9) Colonize and terraform other worlds
      10) Search for and find other intelligent life in the universe
      11) interact with these civilizations (trade, combat, etc.)
    • More like

      1. Move around
      2. Make a creature
      2. Move around
      3. Change your creature
      4. Play civ
      5. play sim earth
      6. play sim galaxy

    • Re:Boring (Score:4, Funny)

      by OakDragon (885217) on Wednesday May 10 2006, @10:00PM (#15305908) Journal
      This game sounds somewhat boring.

      1) Make your creature
      2) Move your creature around doing everyday things
      3) Mate

      Okay, stop right there. The first two may be boring, but when I'm bored with number 3, I'll go to step 5: death.

    • Thats pretty much al you do in The Sims, which ended up being one of the most popular games of recent years sales-wise.
      • I think that understates the case; the last I saw, The Sims was the best-selling computer game franchise of all time, not merely one of the best of recent years.

    • Does this sound excessively boring to anyone else?

      I'm sure it does to lots of people; that's why they make different kinds of games for different tastes. But games with similar profiles have been popular (most notably, of course, The Sims), so I don't see why this wouldn't be.

      I know I'll be buying it when it comes out, and then fighting my wife for the computer to play it, even worse than with The Sims 2.

      Maybe it'll justify keeping two good desktop systems.

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