SPORE

HazMask

Join Date 04/2008

SPORE

...from the mind of Will Wright.

Out of curiosity, has anyone else out there been waiting years for this title to release? If so... fear not, for September 7th 2008 is upon us. Finally. But, all we can do is hold our breath. Those who know, this game's release date has been pushed back year after year. Month after month. However this time, we have a specific day. Not just a quarterly prediction, or a general month.. a month, day, and a year.

http://www.spore.com

The best way to describe SPORE is to call it a "evolution simulation". You start off with a microscopic organism.. and you simply eat other smaller ones. And once you've earned enough points, you can evolve your creature via the "creature creator". Now.. how you evolve it is totally up to you. Defense? Offense? It's all very basic... or so we thought.

Eventually, your organism becomes a full fledged creature. Your creature emerges from the tidal pool, and sets foot/feet/paws/flippers/whatever-you-want on land. Boom, Hello World! But becareful... other creatures have evolved too. Some may have evolved into herbevorous dwellers.. or multi-toothed vicious carnivores. In any case... life must go on.

This leads you to the Tribal Phase, Civilization Phase (i.e, take over your planet), and furthermore... the Space Phase.

The following are direct quotes from Spore.com commenting on each phase of the game.

Tide Pool Phase
Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. It's survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.

Creature Phase
Venture onto land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your nest. The only way to grow is by taking chances!

Tribal Phase
Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for an entire tribe. Give them tools and guide their interactions as you upgrade their state of existence.

Civilization Phase
Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. Make contact with an olive branch or a war cry. The goal for your creatures is to conquer the planet.

Space Phase
The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make contact, colonize, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems. A 'mission' structure provides new goals in your quest for galactic dominance.

Sound neat right? It is. Imagine the GC2 Ship Builder... but for creatures. And for ships. And buildings. And cities. Yes, that's right. Not only can you totally customize your creature...but you can customize their building style, vehicle style, etc. Awesome.

But.. how crazy can you get with the creature editor? I'll show you.

The following are different fan concepts submitted to the SPORE team. They put the crew to the test, just to see if the editor can actually give you as much control as you want. So let's take a look...

Fan Submitted Graphic

Creature created in the SPORE Creature Creator

Wow.

Fan Submitted Graphic (looks like maybe an attempted 3D render)

Creature Creator

Amazing... And.. just to be real crazy...

I'm sure this fan thought he stumped them...

And he was wrong.

(There are more at the official website for everything SPORE, http://www.spore.com )

But.... that's not all. The game not only lets you builder whatever you want, but it recognizes the creatures structure, and it customized how the character would move. Bipedal? Walks. Lots of little feet...they all work together, like a centipede.

It also recognized the offensive/defensive abilities of your creature. It will use what is on it's body to attack. For instance, if you have a claw hanging off of the top of your creatures head, it uses that to attack.

This has been displayed numerous times in videos of SPORE, whichare all displayed on the SPORE website.

Here is a quick glimpse of the creature creator...

Are your creative juices pumping out yet? Already itching to try your hand at this?

Well... coming on June 17th, 2008 you can download a 25% enabled demo of the creature creator, or..for $10 (yes, EA are a bunch of moneygrubbing ..ehrm.. yeah. ) you can purchase the full Creature Creator. It lets you do everything fully to create your creature, and offers you a small little area to see your creature in action. And of course, these are importable to the retail version coming in September.

Now... on one final note. They have categorized Spore as a Multi-Single Player experience. Or some kind of catch phrase like that. What this means that, if you have an internet connection, your game will actually pull down other peoples creatures and use them in YOUR game to populate the planets in your game. This is done via the Sporepedia. Basically, all of your creatures are uploaded to it, and will populate other people's games. And vice versa. This ensures you will never run into the same creatures over and over again. There will always be something new.

Anyhow... this is my little spill about the game. It's gonna be good. There are tons of screenshots, team created creatures, and videos all at the official website at http://www.spore.com

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Achronous

Join Date 03/2006

+29

Come on, even Windows which costs at least 5 times more than the game does not need to re-activate every 10 days! It's this kind of mentality that drives people away: they are treated like criminals from the very first moment. They are guilty before the trial. How much freedom has to be sacrificed for 'security'? And don't they realise it's only legitimate users that are going to be affected? Pirates would crack it and not have to deal with it. As theInquirer says, that's what makes Piracy: The Better Choice(TM)(R)(C). Even though I don't agree with piracy, why would someone who paid for something have a worst experience from someone who stole it?

The Inquirer news article on this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/07/mass-effect-wins-award-worst-pc

Successfully updated karma reason!

Achronous

Join Date 03/2006

+29

(Please delete duplicate post)

Successfully updated karma reason!

This game sounded like a dream come true to me when I first heard of it. I had to have it. I did not know it was years away, imagine my unboundedness when I couldn't find it a gamestop.

Since the "I have to have it" moment years ago, I have been steadily leaning towards disappointment. When I heard EA was publishing this, I had a cold chill crawl across my back. Like I just found out my family has been killed during a brutal home invasion.

I hate EA! If it were a person, I would employ all forms of black arts to bring misfortune upon them. That is if I could persuade myself from committing homicide. My beef with EA goes back 8 years, and I wont get into details. I consider them destroyers of gaming worlds, and the scourge of the one form of entertainment I really enjoy, video games.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Does EA really think that I'm going to play my LEGAL game one day, and then go out and get a pirated one and play that the next day?!

In the Mass Effect forums, a Bioware official said that the reason for the continuous activation was that they will deactivate the game for people who make their CD keys public.
See here (post no. 9): WWW Link

This will get very interesting once some pirate makes a keygen and starts publishing generated CD keys that are identical to those of legit customers.

Or when some worker in the business that prints the keys notes some of them down, and sells them to pirates who publish them. If the key of your legit copy happens to be one of those, bad luck. You won't be able to play your game.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I'm very disappointed to read about the DRM scheme that Spore will use. I was looking forward to buying it, but I'll have to pass if that's what they're planning to do.

I don't play any Valve games any more because I refuse to install that Steam abomination; I didn't buy Bioshock because of the DRM, so I guess I can live without Spore as well. It's a shame though.

Keep up the good work Stardock; I will continue to buy everything you release because you don't treat me like a criminal. I wish other companies would follow your example.

Successfully updated karma reason!

It's not like it will be a long wait, hackers like a challenge and this new SecuROM feature will simply be hacked. It is just a matter of time. I don't necessarily support hacking, but there is a non-Steam-Steam - So I highly doubt it will be long before there is a non-SecuROM-SecuROM. It's inevitable when customers get treated this way.

Successfully updated karma reason!

i just heard great news, ea decided that the 10 day validation will no longer be required, it will only require validation when downloading content from the internet such as patches and other people's creatures.

Successfully updated karma reason!

very good info on this thread i "was" gonna buy it but after hearing the 10 day activation it seems like too much trouble i mean what happens if im switching my internet connection and i coudlnt use the internet for 11 days (for some unknown reason as to why 11 day wait) this would really be annoying to deal with but at least i can save some money for other games like W40k2,SC2,D3,Demigod(pre-ordered already) space seige still pending i hear its not as good as it should be so im looking up alot of info on it

Successfully updated karma reason!

"I still prefer to be able to play my games without being watched by the Valve mothership"

Successfully updated karma reason!

psychoak

Join Date 07/2007

+225

They got rid of the 10 day requirement. Unfortunately the real problem is the limit of 3 activations.

Successfully updated karma reason!

They got rid of the 10 day requirement. Unfortunately the real problem is the limit of 3 activations.

Yeah, that and SecuROM 7.

Successfully updated karma reason!

who is going to be putting it on 3 computors anyway. its not like this game is going to be uncommon. what is the problem with a 3 comp limit?

Successfully updated karma reason!

who is going to be putting it on 3 computors anyway. its not like this game is going to be uncommon. what is the problem with a 3 comp limit?

It's a three activation limit and it's tied to your hardware profile. So if you upgrade your machine you burn an activation. If you have to reinstall your OS, you burn an activation. I've been following the MEPC boards and seen some of the troubles people are reporting with this. Some people have installed once and been told they've reached the activation limit. One guy changed video drivers and installed a new monitor and burned his activations.

EA won't (or can't) tell you what will trigger an activation, they refuse to tell you how many you've burned or how many you have left, and you have no way of finding out if you've burned one. To top it off, once you burn your three activations, you have to contact EA support to get another one. Then you have to do that every single time you need another one. One guy reported it took almost 2 weeks to finally get a new activation so he could play his game again.

Many people have two or more rigs they install games on (I have two), maybe a home desktop and a laptop.

Now, imagine if all upcoming games had this type of asinine DRM on them. Would you want to deal with that if you're a hardware enthusiast (as many gamers are) and upgrade your components regularly on your rigs for every game you own?

No thanks.

Successfully updated karma reason!

what is the problem with a 3 comp limit?

Reinstalls, new computers, and hardware changes.

Edit: What Coelocanth said.

Successfully updated karma reason!

All this talk about Spore's copy protection makes me depressed. So why don't we cheer up abit by watching this:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36435.html

Successfully updated karma reason!

For me convenience is key. I put Stardock at the top here. If I want one of their games I just log onto their Impluse thing enter a few card details and download. Then reinstall whenever like.

Second to that is deciding to play a game, going on Amazon, enter a few card details and I get the game a day later. I am fine with that. I'm also fine with keeping the disk in the machine when I play, why not.

Where I absolutely draw the line is renting a game for a short duration. That duration being how long it takes me to upgrade my machine or reinstall my Operating System. I'll do that for £10 ($20) maybe, but not the £40 ($80) they are going to want for this when it comes out.

Successfully updated karma reason!

They'll probably remove the 3 activation limit like they did with Mass Effect, if they hadn't already.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Even if they remove the activation limit, there's still the "activation on install at all" issue. What if they take their activation server down next year when I buy a new computer? I can guarantee you that EA will put "we can do that and whatever the fuck else we want" (translated to legalese) in their EULA.

Oh, and there's the SecuROM 7 close-to-rootkit monitoring software. Yick.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well, that's a given

But the chance of that "what if" is quite low. It's one of those things.. if you want the game enough (like me and Mass Effect) you suck it up and eat its protection. Spore, I'm still not sure on

Successfully updated karma reason!

If your computer isn't hooked up to the internet you are doomed

I don't think that not having internet should be considered a crime, or a path to crime

If you complain about Impulse, you get a free tin foil hat, but if you let your internet expire, EA will send you to Guantanimo, where you can play SPORE on their internet!

Successfully updated karma reason!

2 years, I've been waiting for this game *twitch* *twitch*

Successfully updated karma reason!

psychoak

Join Date 07/2007

+225

Annatar, they haven't removed it from Mass Effect.

The latest bitchfest on SecuROM is on page 42 in the OT section of the Bioware forums.

Perhaps you're thinking of Bioshock? The shit hit the fan there and they dropped it like the raging inferno of a fuckup it was. EA is just ignoring the issue completely and giving everyone the silent treatment. Even Bioware is shafting people by excluding the discussion to the OT forum.

Successfully updated karma reason!

They'll probably remove the 3 activation limit like they did with Mass Effect, if they hadn't already.

As psychoak noted, the 3 activation limit is still alive and well on MEPC. It has not been removed. Spore, like ME, isn't going to touch my machine until they get their heads in gear and get rid of this asinine 'copy protection' scheme.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Wait, I thought they said that they'll do away with it before the game ships, because of said thread (and others)?

Successfully updated karma reason!

No, that was the recurring 10 day authentication, which they did nuke. But the three activation limit is still in.

The whole problem with the release was when they nuked the recurring activation, everyone thought "Oh, they dropped the DRM" and websites far and wide were saying the same thing and proclaiming "Power to the people". Unfortunately, they were completely hoodwinked. I don't know if it was planned that way by EA or not but if they did, it was a masterstroke because tons of people fell for it.

Successfully updated karma reason!