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Spore [PC/Wii/Mac]

I have seen Pig mention this game but I think it more than deserves it's own thread.

I am incredibly excited about this game, as I'm sure many others are.

For those who don't know...

Spore is a simulation computer game designed by Will Wright. It is currently being developed by Maxis and will be published by Electronic Arts, in Q4 2006.

Spore is, at first glance, an evolution game: the player molds and guides a single-celled species across many generations, until it becomes intelligent, at which point the player begins molding and guiding a society into a spacefaring civilization. Spore's main innovation, the basis of its scope and open-endedness, is that Wright has returned to procedural generation.

n a speech at the 2005 Game Developers Conference, Wright revealed the game to the public and said "I didn't want to make players feel like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins. I wanted them to be like George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkien."

At E3 2005, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Simulation Game. More information about the game will be revealed at E3 on May 10 to 12, 2006.

For further information..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(game)

and

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-262774490184348066&q=spore

The google video is an hour long, so if your only mildly interested you might not wanna bother, however I would thoroughly recommend it, after the first then minutes there is alot of game footage.
 

Sweey

*RETIRED*
Spore

Now this sounds like a superb game:

LOS ANGELES--It's that time of year again: the Electronic Entertainment Expo is in full swing and so are private demonstrations of Spore, the upcoming hybrid strategy game from Maxis and EA. We had a chance to take an updated look at the game, which has had a fresh coat of paint added to what we saw at last year's demonstration, along with much more fleshed-out content.

The demonstration began with a cursory view of what we assume is a temporary game interface, one with six primary icons to represent the different evolutionary stages of your created critters: cellular, creature, tribal, city, global, and finally, space. Presumably, most players will want to begin at the beginning by creating an all-new critter from scratch. We skipped the cellular stage of development this time around and jumped right to the creature editor, which started us out with a mostly formless torso that contained a backbone with a few connected vertebrae. Wright demonstrated that shaping the creature's trunk was simply a matter of clicking and dragging the edge of the torso; he pulled the torso's spine upward and around to create a curved, slender neck, reminiscent of a swan's. Wright then slapped on a pair of legs with adjustable clawed toes--the designer explained that all appendages will have "morph channels" that will let you tweak the size and width of hands and feet, which will help govern their function. The designer then added a beaklike mouth to the front of the creature's body; apparently, the type, size, and shape of a critter's mouth will determine its diet (whether it's an herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore), as well as the sound of its voice (in our case, a birdlike squawk).

Wright finished off his creature and then jumped to the world view, where various other bizarre-looking beasties prowled through grasslands and forests. Wright affirmed that the flora in the game will be created procedurally (that is, automatically created by the game's artificial intelligence systems) or custom-created by other players, while other creatures will mostly be generated by other players and uploaded by Spore's online world server. We then took control of a specific critter, a comically scrawny, bug-eyed, six-legged critter with red-stripped yellow skin that might've been an evolutionary predecessor to Sesame Street's Big Bird. Wright took direct control of the creature and immediately began the all-important quest for food, first by attacking a flock of smaller, weaker critters. At this stage in your creature's evolution, combat seems to take place mainly by hammering on an attack key, which causes you to manually attack your targets until their health depletes to nothing from a vertical meter that floats over their heads (a meter that looks oddly similar to the motive bars from The Sims). Unfortunately, these little guys were too strong for us, so we fled in search of other creatures' eggs and were chased off by a protective couple of warthoglike creatures, but we were successfully able to take advantage of the gentle nature of a herd of zebralike herbivores to sneak past them quickly and gobble up their unborn offspring.

Wright explained that successfully eating earns you "DNA points," which then lets your creature mate and create offspring, which can, in turn, be edited again with the creature editor. Wright's creature sent out a mating call (indicated by a high-pitched squawking, as well as visible "rings" of sound emanating from the creature), which another critter of our species answered (with little Valentine hearts floating above its head, no less). The game's ambient music then switched to a romantic instrumental tune as the two critters bumped and ground against each other in a ritual that Wright described as "procedural mating." About two seconds later, the female was done and caused a pair of small nests to appear out of thin air, full of eggs. Wright then clicked on an egg and jumped into the creature creator to redesign his next generation to look tougher and meaner--and to have an extra pair of claws to fight with.

Apparently, once you hatch a new creature from an egg, you must begin life as a "baby" version of that critter. Wright navigated the tiny little monstrosity about the world, "annoying the neighbors" by encroaching on the territory of the same protective herbivores, then using another kind of "call" to gather other creatures of the same species to itself, thereby creating a herd. Herds eventually form the basis of the game's primitive societies at the game's "tribal" level of evolution--apparently, once you go tribal, you'll be able to use a "hut editor" to design the look of your creatures' dwellings, and once you advance to the city stage, you'll be able design more-modern-looking buildings and even ambient flora.

We then skipped ahead to the very end of the city stage, at which point your advanced civilization can research space travel. Wright clicked on his original town's "city hall" building and, with much fanfare (that is, tiny clusters of fireworks that seemed to greatly amuse our citizens), launched his civilization's first UFO. Apparently, once you launch your first UFO, you can then directly control the little spacecraft, flying along your planet's surface and using an "abduction ray" to pick up any other living creatures you wish, either to kidnap them (to try colonizing another planet) or simply to give them a little flick of your wrist while you've got them hovering in midair, which flings them off into the distance. But we're sure no one would ever misuse the awesome power of space-traveling technology for something so trivial as repeatedly picking up and hurling little creatures off into the horizon.

We then zoomed out our view past our planet to the solar system, and later, to the universe view. Wright claimed that the universe we were seeing in action contained about half a million different stars, each with about four different planets, which means literally millions of different worlds to explore, colonize, treat with, and/or conquer. The habitability of different planets can be gauged at a glance by checking a series of "slider" gauges that presumably indicate criteria such as temperature, atmosphere, and other things, as well as whether intelligent life already exists on that planet. We zipped past a more-bizarre-looking world with green oceans and purple landmasses and attempted to colonize it by dropping one of the creatures we had abducted from our home planet among a colony of indigenous creatures. That didn't work out so well, since our gentle home-planet creature was torn limb from limb by the distrustful inhabitants of this new planet. Apparently, all creatures in the game are cataloged in an in-game reference known as the "Sporepedia," which catalogs the power, speed, senses, stealth, and social abilities of different critters with numerical values on what appear to be trading cards (and may possibly open the door for some kind of collectible card game).

We then tried our luck at communicating with a new planet inhabited by intelligent life forms. These green humanoids came out of their homes as we hovered our UFO over their city, waiting and muttering to themselves in wonder. Wright first attempted to be diplomatic by setting off some fireworks from his UFO, which the inhabitants seemed to love. With enough fireworks, Wright apparently impressed the indigenous population so much that the people of that world began to bow down and worship his mighty UFO. Wright then decided to press his luck by abducting one of the planet's citizens, which the once-adoring inhabitants interpreted as a hostile act. Immediately, these folk ran to their planetary armaments, blasting at the UFO with laser beams that Wright was able to subdue with the advanced laser weapons on his own ship. This caused the remaining citizens to flee in panic through the streets as though they were being invaded by hostile aliens--because, in fact, that's exactly what was happening.

Wright then decided to pull out of the fight, claiming he preferred to keep things diplomatic between his race and that race of inhabitants. However, he quickly received an interstellar transmission from that population that demanded an explanation--the transmission then offered a few dialogue options, including an apology and a declaration of war. Wright attempted to apologize, but the damage had apparently already been done; the critters he had attacked were so incensed that they immediately launched a counterattack against Wright's home planet, which sent his ship another transmission, this time a call for help from invading forces. Rather than helping his home planet, however, Wright retreated to deep space to explore more celestial bodies, including a deserted lava planet not capable of sustaining life (but housing hidden items that could upgrade his ship). He also flew past a black hole, which, with a more advanced starship, can actually be used as instantaneous interstellar transportation across different ends of the universe.

Spore continues to look even more promising and intriguing, and the fact that we were able to see so much more of last year's hinted-at content for ourselves has gone a long way in quelling our natural skepticism. In fact, if the game actually supports just half of what Wright and his team aspire to create, it could be absolutely ground-breaking. Spore is scheduled for release in 2007.
 

Kirby#9

Registered User
Interesting, its looks like it is designed for online play. I think the possibilities are endless. The presentation was pretty slick, but well have to wait for the finished product.
 

martin_cranie

I blue myself
If spikedhumor.com hadn't crashed for the night then I'd provide the video links for you. There is the unveiling, in three 20 minute videos, and another teaser or two. The game looks fantastic, and I'll certainly be buying it upon release.
 

Kevthedrummer

Alive in the superunknown
oh some geeky dudes showed me this at uni months ago, it does look rather good! A groundbreaking game by the looks of it!
 

Sweey

*RETIRED*
Updated release date: September 7.

Updated hands-on impressions from GameSpot

It's a sign of the anticipation surrounding a game when you're a developer visiting a foreign country and passport control asks you about its release date. That's exactly what the developers of Spore were met with when they entered the UK for the London demonstration of their game. Thankfully for both immigration officers and the gaming public at large, Spore is now "pretty much finished" according to EA, and a worldwide release date of September 7 was recently announced.

The game itself is looking much more complete now, although it has been six months since its last showing at Leipzig in August 2007. With the game now in fully playable form, we got to see the life sim as its gameplay progresses from single-cell organisms to intergalactic warfare and everything in between. It was also a good opportunity for us to put our questions to the development team about Spore's many community features, and to take a look at the Nintendo DS version of the game.

Jumping straight onto one of EA's demo PCs, we wasted no time in getting a hands-on with the game. Spore will offer five evolutionary stages in its duration, and given that we've covered the early parts of the game in other previews, we decided to jump forward and check out space exploration. As with the creature-creation tools, you can customise your spaceship to a highly advanced degree. We chose to use a flying-saucer-shaped vessel as a template, and from there we altered the proportions, applied different colours and patterns, and adorned our creation with various cannons and lasers. Although there was no way that an advanced civilisation would be caught dead in such a monstrosity, it's clear that the tools will let players create pretty much anything they can imagine.

When it came down to playing the game, our hastily designed creation was no match for the toilet-shaped vessel that had already been designed by the Spore team. The game holds your hand with a tutorial on the basic controls and abilities of your ship, both those needed for flying low over planets and abducting creatures, and for interplanetary travel. Controlling the ship in the air was simple. You use either the WASD keys or a right-click of the mouse to move around, and the mouse wheel to ascend or descend. You select weapons and tools by clicking icons at the bottom of the screen. Equipped with a tractor beam, you can click on unsuspecting creatures and pull them into your ship with the left mouse button.

Spore has a very dry sense of humour, and it calls on you to collect creatures for your own nefarious ends. However, there's a downside to your scientific experimentation, and in our demo we managed to introduce a rogue infection to our city by collecting bug-ridden creatures. The result: You have to eradicate the surrounding colonies with your onboard laser, using the left mouse button to fire. Before you can start exploring and colonising other worlds, your final task on your home planet is to colour it purple, although we couldn't quite understand why.

The first planet that we visited was completely barren and needed development before life could inhabit it. We equipped our ship with a variety of plants and used the tractor beam to drop them on the ground. With vegetation available, the next step was to introduce herbivores, with the setup complete once carnivores were dropped on the planet.

Aside from actual gameplay, the big theme of EA's presentation was user-generated content. It's clear that Spore has learnt much from Facebook and MySpace, and instead of being a separate component, the online community features are very much woven into the fabric of the game. In fact, much of Spore's terminology borrows directly from Web 2.0 vernacular; sporecasts let you subscribe to other users' creations, whereas sporepedia is the in-game directory for all of your content. Sporecasts will let you transmit and receive user-generated content, and you'll be able to search the entire Web based on ratings or specific tags (for example, "Doctor Who" or "purple"). We were shown how one of the designers had created a series of animals based on letters from the alphabet, and then put them in a set that can be downloaded by any Spore player online.

Don't expect the online aspect of Spore to be limited to the gameworld, either, because the creators want it to spread to your browser as well. Although no specific announcements have been made, it's clear that the team wants to develop a variety of badges and links that can be embedded into blogs and social networks to show your activity in Spore. Of course, with so much encouragement for user-generated content, it presents an interesting proposition for the creators of The Sims. With so many add-on packs helping to make their previous game one of the best-selling of all time, can we still expect the same sort of support for Spore? The answer that's being hinted at by Maxis is that rather than directly making stuff for the game, the company will release more tools to help users produce it instead. But whatever happens, Spore is clearly a franchise title for EA, and the game is bound to be heavily supported once it finally makes its way to store shelves.

Speaking of franchising, Spore is also being released on the Nintendo DS. Though you can still build creatures and explore new worlds, the handheld version is much more task-oriented than its PC counterpart. The character-building aspect of the game is used to solve problems. The game boasts Phantom Hourglass-style cel-shaded visuals, and the characters have some of the colourfulness of the animals from Viva Piñata. You control your creature by touching the screen, and you use the stylus to shake trees for fruit or attack other creatures.

Spore is shaping up very nicely, and from what we saw in London, it's well on its way to completion. EA has now announced a worldwide release date of September 7--in the meantime, should it drip-feed any more information, we'll be sure to keep you updated.
 

Sweey

*RETIRED*
No confirmation, thankfully. It can only be insinuated from comments.

I'm fed up of us (PC gamers) having to make do with second-rate games because of console limitations. At least with Assassin's Creed they're reworking the game for us having failed to fit everything in on the 360 and PS3 versions due to limitations.
 

Sweey

*RETIRED*
The first review in the UK version of PC Gamer has given this 91%. More interviews to follow soon no doubt as the September 5 release date looms (Sep 7 in the US).
 
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