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Spore Hands-On Preview
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:27 PM
from the frothing-at-the-mouth dept.
from the frothing-at-the-mouth dept.
cardjoe writes "The release date for Spore has just been announced and what better way to celebrate than to check out the latest build of the game? That's just what bit-tech.net did, spending hours with the full version of the game. The article covers all the different editors and stages in the game as well as providing a brief on the pollinated content and how it may well introduce an entire new genre to PC gaming — that of the Massively Online Singleplayer. The article is in-depth and has a whole load of brand new screenshots too, showing the various stages that the player will go through as they play the game and move their creature from single cells to galaxy-hopping space freaks."
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Will Wright's Spore To Release Sept. 7th 186 comments
After several delays and much anticipation, Spore looks like it will finally be coming out this year. EA has announced a September 7th release date for the game. The only confirmed platforms so far are Windows PCs, Macintoshes, the Nintendo DS and various mobile phones. Wright wants the Wii, 360, and PS3 to have the game, but they're not firm 'yes'es yet. Newsweek's LevelUp blog is celebrating the announcement with a series of interviews. N'Gai Croal spoke to Will Wright, and the man himself tries to convince us why it's been worth the wait, and (oh yeah) why it has taken so long. Croal also sat down with the game's Executive Producer, Lucy Bradshaw, who explains how the game has settled onto other platforms like the DS and mobile phones.
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One thing is for sure. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can't wait... (Score:4, Funny)
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Layne
Re:I can't wait... (Score:4, Funny)
I shall create an entire race of Weighted Companion Cubes!
Parent
Or... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is in that custom content IS the content of the game for the most part. Not an external entity you go out of your way to get, but something that you seamlessly create and acquire.
I do hope they let you put some kind of restrictions in there, just because I think it would be more fun to be able to join a pre-made group (say, your friends or wow guild or cs clan or what have you) and have their creations pulled more often and with preference to others, so that you get more of the social feel in. And some way to see who authored something, so you can rub it in their face when you wreck it.
Parent
It's hard for me to contain my excitement (Score:3, Interesting)
Only a game that gives you that much control over life can satisfy my ego.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I care only about one thing: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I care only about one thing: (Score:5, Interesting)
But sure, we all have our priorities in life. Spore happens to let you control that since we seem to have lost control in real life.
Parent
High Hopes (Score:5, Interesting)
Everything I read about this game makes it seem like this is either going to be the greatest game ever released or the most disappointing.
The thing that fascinates me the most is that the progression through the game's stages seems in some ways to mirror the evolution of video games themselves, from simple Atari games to the modern day. Or to look at it another way, the idea of having an arc throughout the game in both the objectives and the style of gameplay itself sounds amazing.
Re:High Hopes (Score:5, Funny)
You could have saved yourself some typing by just saying "Spore is so Meta!"
Parent
Re:High Hopes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:High Hopes (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Also, I've yet to see an ad that says "This Christmas, WILL WRIGHT will make you his SIMBITCH."
Text of the article (Score:5, Informative)
Author: Joe Martin
Platforms: PC, Nintendo DS, Mobile, Mac
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Spore. Games don't come any more ambitious than Spore and although the premise of the now in-famously delayed game and magnum opus of Will Wright is fairly simple, the actual realisation of that concept has proven incredibly difficult.
The idea behind Spore is this; you are God, the Alpha, Omega and Almighty. You are omniscient, omnipresent and capable of creating a rock so big you can't possibly lift it. Then you can lift it. You're God and that type of feat is your bread and butter.
Specifically, you are the God of a particular species that you will design, craft, sculpt and guide through from primordial ooze to inevitable extinction.
You start off small, designing a single cell and guiding it through the cesspool in which all life must begin. As time passes you use evolution as the tool by which you will shape the destiny of your creature for better or worse. A mouth here, a leg there, and a twist to the torso - you slowly create the creature you want. You can do that. You are God.
From there, the game expands ever outwards and you will move from guiding a single cell or creature to encouraging a small tribe, then a city. In the climax to this universe in a box you'll be aiding your civilisation in spreading to other stars and planets.
Such game concepts are truly the things of dreams - open, sandbox worlds with almost limitless possibilities and completely open setting. The game says to you; "Here are the tools, now do as you wish."
Unfortunately, with such an impossibly complex design even getting the basics of the gameplay right can be a daunting task in and of itself and, even with the full might of Electronic Arts behind him, Will Wright has struggled to get Spore working. The game, which he has reportedly been planning for the last decade at least, has suffered numerous delays. At the start of this year we gave it an honourable mention as a game which we thought would definitely turn out to be vapourware.
Now though, it looks like we may have to admit that we were wrong. Not only has EA confirmed that Spore will be out in time for the holidays, but the game is now in a fully playable state. All that is left to do is polish up a few glitches, test it and load it with content before release.
How do we know that, I hear you ask. Simple; we've played it--nearly all of it.
There are five stages or levels to Spore and we've played them all on the PC, as well as playing on the DS and Mobile versions of the game - though the latter failed to make as much of an impression, to be frank.
The first level is a basic arcade type game where players guide their single cell about its existence, helping it eat other creatures and grow. When it has grown enough it jumps into the Creature Stage, where players zoom their view out and manage the more complex needs of their creation. Survival skills must be complemented by socialisation skills as players enable their creature to build a tribe.
In Tribe stage the game zooms out once more and players are no longer controlling a single alien. In this stage it's more like The Sims as you monitor the needs of a small tribe as they carve out a niche in the alien landscape. The penultimate stage of the game is the Civilisation Stage where it transitions from The Sims into Sim City and you'll be controlling whole cities in cultures.
The last stage is the Space Stage where you hop off your polluted little rock and find new playgrounds to party in.
Share and share alike
Before we delve deeply into the well of never-ending gameplay that Spore claims to offer, we should talk about the Pollination System that Spore uses to keep the game full of brand new content at all times. Pollinated content is something that Electronic Arts and
Look of the game (Score:2)
I liked it so much better in the early stages, like the 2005 GDC video. It was really beautiful then. Now it just looks too cartoony.
Hang on- I think I played this before! (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, wait... I guess there were some minor differences [youtube.com].
Whoops.
W
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Spinoffs & Mods Galore! (Score:2, Interesting)
Overhyped (Score:2)
Re:Overhyped (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. The "massively online single-player" aspect is pretty new (AFAIK), but the "parameterized models" and "procedural animations" are subtly revolutionary. I mean they've DRASTICALLY streamlined the process of creating a 3d model for a game. Do you think the game studios run something as simple as the spore interface to create a 3d model and all of it's animations?
Imagine how other games could benefit from this approach: Imagine, say, a zombie game where instead of randomly spawning zombies from a set of 10 or 20 (or even 100) models, you have a nearly infinite variety of zombies generated from randomly chosen inputs for height, weight, hair, wounds, clothing, state of decay, etc. Now suppose the animations are not all the same, but are randomly determined by the zombie's height, weight, and number of functional limbs. Or imagine characters whose walk or climb animations are based on the actual geometry of the world, so they don't "jump" with every step up an incline or "moonwalk" trying to go through a wall. The game studios have done a very good job of making fixed animations and fixed characters look good, but there is a lot of room for improvement (especially since a high-end CPU is usually twiddling it's thumbs in even newer games while the GPU does all the work).
Parent
With creatures like these... (Score:4, Interesting)
Stop right there pal, you had me sold on "flying toilet"!
I look forward to exploring new worlds and encountering other players' utterly ridiculous creatures. Of course, I'll be disappointed if someone doesn't create creatures/civilizations based on every internet meme ever (oh how I'll enjoy destroying the LOLcats with my spaceship's death ray).
Oh yeah, Spore's Wikipedia article mentions how the galaxy will feature active planetary nebulas, black holes, rotating spiral arms, etc. After acquiring a spaceship, I fully plan on plotting a course to the black hole's event horizon. I wonder how the game will model that experience...
FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE WITH IMAGES; Not on 5 pages (Score:2, Informative)
Platforms: PC, Nintendo DS, Mobile, Mac
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Spore. Games don't come any more ambitious than Spore and although the premise of the now in-famously delayed game and magnum opus of Will Wright is fairly simple, the actual realisation of that concept has proven incredibly difficult.
The idea behind Spore is this; you are God, the Alpha, Omega and Almighty. You are omniscient, omnipresent and capable of creating a rock so big you can't possibly lift it. Then you can lif
Spore's hidden sixth stage (Score:5, Funny)
SimGalaxy Interspecies Brothel
Just remember . . . one race's intimate lubricant could be another's caustic death sauce.
Re:OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
It's fine that the source is closed, for them... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a die-hard Linux user, I wouldn't mind paying retail for a copy of this game, based on what I've seen of it. I give money to developers for their work on other apps I use, why wouldn't I do the same for a game? I understand that it took years for them to develop, and they need to make money for what they've done. I don't need the source to play it.
Game Devs don't have/need to give us their work for free, IMO, but if they'd make it to where *anyone* could use the games they write, they'd sell more, and I for one would sure appreciate it.
Parent
Re:It's fine that the source is closed, for them.. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is absolutely no way to justify the millions of dollars EA would have lost if they delayed the release of Spore for another year, just to port it to Linux, so that they could sell a few hundred more copies of it.
If you really want to play Spore, then you probably can find a Windows or Mac to play it on. If you really can't find a Windows or Mac or game console to play Spore on, then you have much bigger problems, and probably should not be wasting your time playing games, because you should be working on solving your bigger problems instead.
If you've decided never to touch a Windows or Mac box, then that's your decision you made with your eyes wide open, and one of the consequences is that there are many pieces of software you will never be able to use, like Spore. If you made that decision yourself without being forced into it, then you made your own bed and now you must sleep in it, so shut up and stop complaining. If you're disappointed or surprised about the consequences of your own decision to boycot Windows and Mac, then you obviously made the wrong decision, so don't blame EA for not supporting you. You have no right to complain about the consequences of your own decision not to use Windows or Mac.
-Don
Parent
Re:It's fine that the source is closed, for them.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Though apparently you took it that way, my post was not criticism, it was observation. I'm just saying it would be nice if game companies would make their products cross-platform, including *nix users in the mix.
If they started out doing that from the beginning of development, they would have games at the end which they could sell to everyone, *without* needing to port them to different architectures.
There's lots more than a few hundred Linux users out there now, too. And more every day. Emerging market, and all that.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's fine that the source is closed, for them.. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, I worked for Maxis and EA, with Will Wright on The Sims, and also on porting SimCity to various platforms.
I developed a commercial game (SimCity) for Unix, and promoted and distributed it over the internet 16 years ago [google.com], and there is still no viable market for games on Linux. Look what happened to Loki. And look at the sad shape of the modern Linux desktop: Lots of easy eye candy and useless transparency, but absolutely no crucial usability nor simple consistency.
I have done a lot of cross platform development and porting (I also ported The Sims Online server to Linux, and I'm currently developing TomTom Home on Mac and Windows using xulrunner and XPCOM), so I'm painfully aware of how much harder it is and longer it takes than developing for one or a few platforms. It's not easy, it's not fast, and it doesn't come for free.
I've also put a lot of time and effort into writing code, proposals, and working with people at EA and other companies, to convince them to make some of their existing products open source, many years after their release, like Micropolis (SimCity) [google.com]. But I never made the argument that it was worth their development effort for an initial release of a game to support the Linux desktop.
Developing cross platform code and porting games to Linux is not nearly as easy as you make it out to be. It took me many years of work to port SimCity to all the different flavors of Unix, Linux, OLPC, and other X-Windows platforms like Quarterdeck DESQview/X, NCD X terminals, Windows, Mac, etc.
Don't act like nobody at EA ever heard of Linux, and it's up to you to evangelize to them about it and make them see the light, and support it as if it were a mainstream desktop platform. They run it on their servers, and many people at EA use Linux all the time, are experts at it, and understand its problems and limitations.
Trying to argue that EA should release mainstream games on Linux will get you absolutely nowhere. It wastes their time, makes you look like an idiot, and they will never take you seriously again. And representing the Linux community as a bunch of greedy crybabies who just want everything right now and for free, reduces the chances that they will eventually release other games as open source or port them to Linux later.
-Don
Parent
Re:It's fine that the source is closed, for them.. (Score:4, Informative)
But you obviously still don't understand what I wrote.
Plain as day, I wrote that I WILL PAY RETAIL, and DON'T NEED THE SOURCE, and that I think that you and your fellow EA devs *deserve* to earn whatever money your product of work can produce.
From my OP: "I wouldn't mind paying retail for a copy of this game, based on what I've seen of it. I give money to developers for their work on other apps I use, why wouldn't I do the same for a game? I understand that it took years for them to develop, and they need to make money for what they've done. I don't need the source to play it."
I'm all good with that! Not a problem at all. I hope you are getting rich, actually - because I understand that good coding isn't something that just anyone can do.
That makes me neither a "crybaby" nor "greedy". Quite the opposite, I'd think.
Despite your insinuation, neither did I attempt to "evangelize" anyone to use Linux. I just stated that that is what I use (yep, my own choice, made in the full knowledge of what that entails), and have, for 9 years, closing in on 10, on a daily basis as my own source of income. And that I personally would like it (WILL like it, the day is coming) when companies such as yours begin releasing games for the Linux platform.
That, my friend, is just an expressed personal desire, nothing more, and certainly nothing to ream me out over, or to get so upset about. IMO, of course.
Best of luck to you.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, I'm sorry to inform you, but that was a troll.
I bought Loki SimCity 3000 for Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
What was annoying, though, is that being a commercial binary compiled for one specific kernel/glibc version, it now no longer runs on a decently modern Linux. That's a problem that Windows doesn't have so much, with its pretty good binary back-compatibility. It's also a problem that open-source games on Linux don't have either, because they get recompiled. In fact, I have DOS games that run better under Dosbox and Windows games that run better under Wine/Cedega than late-90s ported-specially-for-Linux games now do.
So commercial ports on Linux are in a bit of a technical bind, really - more than an economic one, I think. Linux is fundamentally a closed-binary-hostile environment because it makes no promises of enduring binary compatibility, except under specific retro emulation environments.
Parent
Re:It's fine that the source is closed, for them.. (Score:3, Interesting)
When I used Linux I used to wish more games were released for LInux but then I realized that it isn't that big of a deal to boot into Windows to pay the types of games that I tend to enjoy. Really, what's a 3 minute reboot (or whatever it is) to play a fullscreen game for a few hours? Once you're in, the OS it happen
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Get off your high horse. You don't have the source code to many websites (slashdot included) and yet you don't seem to have a proble
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Design vs. evolution (Score:4, Interesting)
That is may main irritation as a professional designer of the whole "intelligent design" pseudo debate. Any intelligent designer is aware that evolution is the most important design tool, especially for complex systems.
Parent
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Re:I've got mixed feelings (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm getting this game for Wii.
Parent
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