Spore

Asmodeus · 20th August 2008, 10:07

The Sims creator Will Wright is often praised as one of the most influential game designers of all-time. Developed by Maxis and published by EA, Spore will be releasing September 7 for PC, Mac, DS and Mobile and will no doubt maintain Mr. Wright's reputation.

Trailer

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36436.html

Spore does not fall neatly into any single video game genre. As there are many different ways to describe it. Many journalists describe the game as a real-time strategy or a life simulation game, whilst the game creators and other media sources prefer to describe it as a "god game".

The game is broken up into distinct yet consistent, dependent "phases". The outcome of one phase affects the initial conditions facing the player in the next. As you go through the game each phase gets more and more complex, so much so that the developers have said that each new phase is 10 times harder than the previous.

Also take note that players can take as much time as they need/want to before moving onto the next. Infact the phases can be skipped all together if the player so wishes.

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.

THE PHASES

Cell Phase

In this 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. Choices can be made in this stage, such as choseing if your creature is to be a carbivore or herbivore. The player can also modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe by spending "DNA points". If the player wants to, he/she can remove parts from the microbe, in which the DNA points will be regained. Even choices made at this low level will impact the way your universe unfolds.

Special "golden shields" which are gained from meteor fragments provide new parts for the player to use in the editor, such as spikes, mouths or limbs.

As the player goes through this phase, you will notice that objects in the background move to the foreground, which can mean being eaten by a microbe that had previously been swimming in the background. Then toward the end of the phase the ocean floor becomes more prominent. When this happens, legs must be created ready for the creature phase.

Creature Phase

Here the environment becomes fully 3D. You'll be exploring a lush new world populated by other players' creations, and how you interact with them determines how you evolve. Creatures will automatically be introduced into the environment to maintain a balanced ecosystem.

The basic purpose of this stage is the same as the cell phase. Which is to earn DNA points, reproduce, and avoid being eaten by predators. Unlike the asexual reproduction of the cell phase though, the player must now locate a mate.

Another difference in this phase is the creatures having stats which can be used for Abilities, Attack, and Social, using a numeric rating system. The abilities and attacks correspond to your body parts, i.e having a slug like body will have an ability "crawl" instead of "jump" which creatures with legs can get.

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.

This stage will evolve the creature's social behavior, as the creature may make friends and form a herd or pack. 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.

Tribal Phase

The tribal phase has a number of huge differences to the creature phase. The main change is that you now directly control an entire group of creatures as opposed to just one. The game moves towards a more RTS style of play, and principles of RTS games still apply. The goal is to increase in size and power, become larger and a more significant presence on the planet than other tribes and, ultimately, become the dominant species of the planet.

This stage is where the player develops the creature's general behaviour. You need to take over neighbouring tribes and that is possible through two different paths: hostile or social. Hostile takeovers include attacking and wiping out the tribes as much as possible, whilst social takeovers are accomplished via singing, dancing talking and musical instruments. A tribe which often takes the hostile path will be seen play-fighting with each other, grunting and stomping around the village in a menacing manner. On the other hand, friendly tribes will talk, throw parties, play music and sing and dance with each other.

Within the tribe creatures have specific roles, and their clothing reflects each role. Warriors will carry weapons and armour plating. Farmers take care of the livestock (which is available by taming non-intelligent creatures; that is, any creature not part of another tribe), and wear farming clothes. The most unknown but intruiging aspect of the tribal phase is that the creatures begin to develop a language and it is depending on the type of mouth they have.

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 Phase

Your goal in the city phase is to branch out and earn complete control over the planet. You are now competing against other cities of your same species, controlled by the computer. The way in which you take over the planet is again, similar to all other stages, up to you. The two paths are warfare or unite with neighbouring cities.

The player can for the first time pull the camera back and view the entire planet. As you do so the cities will pop to the form of a "button", giving each a much simpler menu so that you can easily switch between micro and macro management. Within the city you can zoom in and see your creatures going about their daily business. Whilst it may be hard to imagine, they are currently at the same stage as we humans are on Earth. They have emotions, jobs, families and everything we do; a fully functioning civilization. And, true to life, constantly competing with neighbouring civilizations.

The building editor is the first of the two new editors introduced in this phase of the game. Buildings are created similar to Lego structures. Options are available for intersection, stacking, creating holes etc.. Once the building is created you can set it's type (there are a range of different functional buildings) and place it within your city. Your creatures will respond to your new building either by cheering or showing some other response, giving you an idea of what they think of your choice. The game will dynamically generate a list of buildings created by other players in the same style as your own which will populate the "buy" menu allowing you to purchase buildings quickly and place them in the city. Other structures are also available, such as walls to surround the city and defensive turrets.

The second editor is the vehicle editor. You can create land vehicles, aircraft, ships and submersibles. It is speculated that vehicles can have other purposes besides used in warfare, though no evidence of this has been shown.

"Often in Spore videos vehicles can be seen roaming the planet, indicating they may be able to be used for exploring or gathering resources. Vehicles can be fully customized using an editor similar to the building editor, including tyres, weapons, chassis, cabins etc.."

Once you've gained enough Spice and seized control of the entire planet, you will be given access to the UFO editor to create your first UFO.

Space Phase

The space phase provides new goals and paths to follow as the player begins to spread through the universe.

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 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.

Articles

Creature Editor
Gamespy Preview
Ign Hands on preview
"Speaking of sharing content, we learned more about how people will get to interact with each other's stuff. Whenever you create something, assuming you're connected to the 'net, it'll be uploaded for the world to enjoy. But it doesn't just disappear. You'll be able to track how your creations are faring around the universe. You'll get regular "Multiverse Reports" that tell you how many people met your species and how they reacted. Is everyone killing your creatures on sight? Are they using the different buildings you've created? You'll get to see! "

Asmodeus · 20th August 2008, 10:09

Saved for other stuff, movies etc...

Asmodeus · 20th August 2008, 10:10

I'm really looking forward to this game

Mpträ · 20th August 2008, 10:13

....I can see that

melanko · 21st August 2008, 19:07

I'll be getting this game for'sure-hizzle.

I've been following it for almost as long as I have been following Left 4 Dead. Which is a long time.

Bjen · 22nd August 2008, 00:29

September rolls around...
It's mine

Shawk · 22nd August 2008, 03:43

I'm alittle less excited about it than I was a month ago for some reason..

I just have a feeling it will just be like any other sims game, sure you can do all this stuff but you are still confined to their system. The only thing I can really see being anything special is creating you character, and I got damn bored of that in less than a day.

Torrent ftw though.

20th August 2008, 10:07	#1 (permalink)
Asmodeus Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 211 Rep Power: 1	Spore The Sims creator Will Wright is often praised as one of the most influential game designers of all-time. Developed by Maxis and published by EA, Spore will be releasing September 7 for PC, Mac, DS and Mobile and will no doubt maintain Mr. Wright's reputation. Trailer http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36436.html Spore does not fall neatly into any single video game genre. As there are many different ways to describe it. Many journalists describe the game as a real-time strategy or a life simulation game, whilst the game creators and other media sources prefer to describe it as a "god game". The game is broken up into distinct yet consistent, dependent "phases". The outcome of one phase affects the initial conditions facing the player in the next. As you go through the game each phase gets more and more complex, so much so that the developers have said that each new phase is 10 times harder than the previous. Also take note that players can take as much time as they need/want to before moving onto the next. Infact the phases can be skipped all together if the player so wishes. 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. THE PHASES Cell Phase In this 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. Choices can be made in this stage, such as choseing if your creature is to be a carbivore or herbivore. The player can also modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe by spending "DNA points". If the player wants to, he/she can remove parts from the microbe, in which the DNA points will be regained. Even choices made at this low level will impact the way your universe unfolds. Special "golden shields" which are gained from meteor fragments provide new parts for the player to use in the editor, such as spikes, mouths or limbs. As the player goes through this phase, you will notice that objects in the background move to the foreground, which can mean being eaten by a microbe that had previously been swimming in the background. Then toward the end of the phase the ocean floor becomes more prominent. When this happens, legs must be created ready for the creature phase. Creature Phase Here the environment becomes fully 3D. You'll be exploring a lush new world populated by other players' creations, and how you interact with them determines how you evolve. Creatures will automatically be introduced into the environment to maintain a balanced ecosystem. The basic purpose of this stage is the same as the cell phase. Which is to earn DNA points, reproduce, and avoid being eaten by predators. Unlike the asexual reproduction of the cell phase though, the player must now locate a mate. Another difference in this phase is the creatures having stats which can be used for Abilities, Attack, and Social, using a numeric rating system. The abilities and attacks correspond to your body parts, i.e having a slug like body will have an ability "crawl" instead of "jump" which creatures with legs can get. 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. This stage will evolve the creature's social behavior, as the creature may make friends and form a herd or pack. 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. Tribal Phase The tribal phase has a number of huge differences to the creature phase. The main change is that you now directly control an entire group of creatures as opposed to just one. The game moves towards a more RTS style of play, and principles of RTS games still apply. The goal is to increase in size and power, become larger and a more significant presence on the planet than other tribes and, ultimately, become the dominant species of the planet. This stage is where the player develops the creature's general behaviour. You need to take over neighbouring tribes and that is possible through two different paths: hostile or social. Hostile takeovers include attacking and wiping out the tribes as much as possible, whilst social takeovers are accomplished via singing, dancing talking and musical instruments. A tribe which often takes the hostile path will be seen play-fighting with each other, grunting and stomping around the village in a menacing manner. On the other hand, friendly tribes will talk, throw parties, play music and sing and dance with each other. Within the tribe creatures have specific roles, and their clothing reflects each role. Warriors will carry weapons and armour plating. Farmers take care of the livestock (which is available by taming non-intelligent creatures; that is, any creature not part of another tribe), and wear farming clothes. The most unknown but intruiging aspect of the tribal phase is that the creatures begin to develop a language and it is depending on the type of mouth they have. 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 Phase Your goal in the city phase is to branch out and earn complete control over the planet. You are now competing against other cities of your same species, controlled by the computer. The way in which you take over the planet is again, similar to all other stages, up to you. The two paths are warfare or unite with neighbouring cities. The player can for the first time pull the camera back and view the entire planet. As you do so the cities will pop to the form of a "button", giving each a much simpler menu so that you can easily switch between micro and macro management. Within the city you can zoom in and see your creatures going about their daily business. Whilst it may be hard to imagine, they are currently at the same stage as we humans are on Earth. They have emotions, jobs, families and everything we do; a fully functioning civilization. And, true to life, constantly competing with neighbouring civilizations. The building editor is the first of the two new editors introduced in this phase of the game. Buildings are created similar to Lego structures. Options are available for intersection, stacking, creating holes etc.. Once the building is created you can set it's type (there are a range of different functional buildings) and place it within your city. Your creatures will respond to your new building either by cheering or showing some other response, giving you an idea of what they think of your choice. The game will dynamically generate a list of buildings created by other players in the same style as your own which will populate the "buy" menu allowing you to purchase buildings quickly and place them in the city. Other structures are also available, such as walls to surround the city and defensive turrets. The second editor is the vehicle editor. You can create land vehicles, aircraft, ships and submersibles. It is speculated that vehicles can have other purposes besides used in warfare, though no evidence of this has been shown. "Often in Spore videos vehicles can be seen roaming the planet, indicating they may be able to be used for exploring or gathering resources. Vehicles can be fully customized using an editor similar to the building editor, including tyres, weapons, chassis, cabins etc.." Once you've gained enough Spice and seized control of the entire planet, you will be given access to the UFO editor to create your first UFO. Space Phase The space phase provides new goals and paths to follow as the player begins to spread through the universe. 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 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. Articles Creature Editor Gamespy Preview Ign Hands on preview "Speaking of sharing content, we learned more about how people will get to interact with each other's stuff. Whenever you create something, assuming you're connected to the 'net, it'll be uploaded for the world to enjoy. But it doesn't just disappear. You'll be able to track how your creations are faring around the universe. You'll get regular "Multiverse Reports" that tell you how many people met your species and how they reacted. Is everyone killing your creatures on sight? Are they using the different buildings you've created? You'll get to see! " __________________ Don't criticize what you can't understand

20th August 2008, 10:09	#2 (permalink)
Asmodeus Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 211 Rep Power: 1	Saved for other stuff, movies etc... __________________ Don't criticize what you can't understand

20th August 2008, 10:10	#3 (permalink)
Asmodeus Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 211 Rep Power: 1	I'm really looking forward to this game __________________ Don't criticize what you can't understand

21st August 2008, 19:07	#5 (permalink)
melanko Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 82 Rep Power: 1	I'll be getting this game for'sure-hizzle. I've been following it for almost as long as I have been following Left 4 Dead. Which is a long time. __________________ Melanko's Gamer Blog. "See you down in Arizona Bay... " -B. Hicks/MJK

22nd August 2008, 00:29	#6 (permalink)
Bjen Newbie Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 14 Rep Power: 1	September rolls around... It's mine __________________ Just my two half pence...and a quarter pence.... seeing as the title system wont allow for it... Bjen Lurker

22nd August 2008, 03:43	#7 (permalink)
Shawk Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: British Columbia, Canada Posts: 1,503 Rep Power: 5	I'm alittle less excited about it than I was a month ago for some reason.. I just have a feeling it will just be like any other sims game, sure you can do all this stuff but you are still confined to their system. The only thing I can really see being anything special is creating you character, and I got damn bored of that in less than a day. Torrent ftw though. __________________ Unofficial Mortal FAQ Join The King's Dragons!