f13.net

http://uk.reuters.com/article/technology-media-telco-SP/idUKWEN784620070508?feedType=RSS&pageNumber=1

Maybe until Fiscal 2009. Heh. Thank god I don't care about Spore.

My guess is that they saw the true multi-player community aspects of LittleBigPlanet (none of this single-player planet-sharing crap) and EA said "We need that too".

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hahahahahahohohohohohohohoho.

/me draws a line through Spore on the big white board.

Too much hype + too Many Delays = Consider me completely unimpressed at any innovations that anyone may have come up with.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who thought that when I first heard about it.  Sure, it's Will Wright and the guy has an impressive resume of games, but until it's on the shelf and actually something you can play, it is nothing more than just some zany idea that likely won't work (just like every other unmade game out there).

You guys are hilarious. Bitch if it's shoved out the door, bitch if they take time to finish it properly. Luckily you've got a gazillion shitty console games to fill your time.

When It's Done. Will Wright is no Pete Molyneux.

I never bitched. I never really gave a shit either. Go back, go see how much I ever hyped Spore. Answer, zero.

I'd like to take things way too personally for $500, Alex.

Heyo. There was a 50% chance he was talking about me. And there's no hard rocking in my avatar, so 75%.

My two cents:

Either it's going to suck or it won't. If it's going to suck, it doesn't matter if they launch it now or keep fucking with it for another year or two. It's STILL going to suck.

On the other hand, if it's not going to suck -- launching too soon could turn "not suck" into "suck".

So all in all, I don't mind them taking their time. Rushing just increases the odds of 'suck', and if it sucks already, I'm not in any hurry to find out. :)

This also means that I can postpone upgrading my desktop machine for a while.

I can wait. If they do add in multiplayer, all the better. I hope it's not the disappointment the Sims was for me. I really thought that game was gonna be awesome to the max, but it gagged me with a spoon.

I don't see how Spore lends itself to a multiplayer mode. You could fight it out with flying saucers but, frankly, there's no actual strategy or anything involved. I can't think of any realistic way to give Spore a working multiplayer mode without significantly altering the game, or 'pasting on' the equivilant of an entirely new game.

Yes.
(http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2006/hosts/alextrebek.jpg)

While I'm the resident spore fanboi, I don't have my expectations built up too high. I just figure it'll be a fun game, and I hope Wright can muscle enough to keep some science in there to keep it interesting. The sims was ok, but it was just soap-opera crap, if you don't like the premise, you won't like the game, eh?

I hope no multiplayer. Git off mah galaxy.

The good news is this pushes my need for a new PC back a few months, which will make it easier to sell to the wife.

This is a game I'm interested in, but not in love with. When it's released and what the requirements are will decide if I buy it or not. DX10/Vista would be a deal-breaker.

When it's done?  Will Wright's games always crash if you play them long enough without a restart.  Don't get me wrong - I like sim stuff but I'd like it a million times more if the games didn't tend to have memory leaks.

It's not published by Microsoft so assuming it comes out sometime this decade it's highly unlikely it'll require Vista/DX10.

Did they ever scrap the idea of DX10 only being available on the "Ultimate" vista version?

Not sure what you are referring to but DirectX 10 is standard with all editions of Vista.

(http://home.arcor.de/alternativ-traffic/ThreadNecro.jpg)

Maxis VP giving interviews at E3, saying Spore is full-playthrough-complete and in internal alpha testing. I hope they take all the time they need, but 2008 would be cool.

Is it sad that I blocked the window during the video interview so I wouldn't see any of the gameplay? Like Bioshock, it's one of those games I want to discover on my own without spoilers :) Before I hid it, I did see the cellular game was revamped again, this time with 100% more googly-eyes. There are interviews available at places like G4, and also some new gameplay footage if you're interested.

I'm not sure I understand :  What's to spoil ?

I don't even want to see it, I just want to experience everything fresh. Spoil may have been too strong a word. I mean it in the sense that it would no longer be fresh, I'd have seen the different planet types and whatnot. Also, I don't want to see any cool stuff that will inevitably get cut before it's released (like the original cellular game vs the current more cartoony one).

Ok, cool beans.

I watched the last 'big' video of the gameplay.  I was kinda impressed, but I wondered what kind of longevity it had.

I haven't seen anything on the cellular game in a long time, but I was always hoping it would turn out kind of like fl0w, but with more complexity in the "design your cell" sense.

I personally get the impression that this is a string of mini-games with a somewhat coherent theme.  I've never seen what all the hype surrounding the game is about, really.  Then again, Will Wright has never really impressed me overly much as a designer.  Out of his entire stable I like SimCity 2000 and SimAnt.  For such an extensive development history, that doesn't impress me much considering that even though I liked those two games, I was never really ga-ga over them.

Looking at the increasing amount of newer screenshots since the GDCe presentation, it looks a lot like Maxis is cutifying everything, making things more cartoony. E.g. remember the cellular stage presented like it was on GDCe? More or less 2D with a remotely natural look? Now it's bugs with eyes. Like what the fuck? Or any higher gameplay stage? Lots of brownish and greenish color, and if something else, rather pastel than anything else. The newest feature bright colors all over the place, including things like cartoon eyebrows, mouth and other appendages.

I do not approve.

I blame the Wii.

(http://www.barhah.com/images/smilies/getitoff.gif)

Props to Triple on the avatar.

zomg Signe!!!! Look out!

Is that the e-surance girl getting it from behind, or is it just me and my dirty mind that thinks it?  There a source for it I'm missing out on?

Richard Dawkins would disembowel Wright at this point, I'm thinking. He's all against cutifying and dumbing-down science to give it 'mass appeal'. I'm with him. Though I kinda had a feeling from early on that the more hardcorish science aspects would be weeded out by launch :(

I haven't seen any of the new screenshots, but I more or less expected the cutifying. Just take a look at early descriptions and images from the vehicle editor, and the "Populus" style of the world-game.

Wright's own talks stress the important of a unified UI, and a unified "look and feel" for the entire game and ALL the editors. Frankly, I don't care about "cute" so long as the gameplay works like it's described. And if editors are as flexible as Wright claims, what can make "cute" can also make "covered in spikes with four-foot teeth".

I'd expect ad campaigns would mix and match -- cute to appeal to the Sims type, nasty to appeal to the teenage boy wanting to creature land-sharks that don't stop to chew (and that will eat the cute things), and both together appeal to the guy that wants to put together something really out there. (The kind of guy who, for instance, bought Gal Civ 2 solely because of the ship editor...)

Now I'm torn.  I don't like most of Will Wright's games, but I really fucking hate Richard Dawkins.

Decisions, decisions.

Just showing the journey of life from amoebas to civilization in a fun, easy to understand format is a win against those who would have us return to the Dark Ages.

Using logic and reason isn't enough. You have to be a dick to everyone who doesn't think like you.

Logic and reason get pantsed by uberdickery every time they meet. People might not like uberdickery as a result, but it's a lot more entertaining.

Using logic and reason against people that can't or don't want to understand it, makes you already come across like a dick.

So it's a safe bet neither TripleDES or UnSub saw that particular 2-parter South Park episode then, yah?

- Ed:  Oh, also DES, found the full pic of the avatar.   :roffle:

Bunch of savages in this town.

I haven't watched South Park in years. My animated viewing is limited to the Simpsons, American Dad, Family Guy and Drawn Together (occasionally).

Please explain the joke to me, becuz I iz laccking n pop culcha smatz.

Dunno I'm still excited for spore, but my heart now belongs to Little Big Planet...we shall see...

The joke is much less funny out of context, but here's the Wikipedia article for that episode. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go_XII)


Also, my previous post was a Clerks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks) reference, but you should really just watch that movie if you haven't.

No

There's a full picture? Stole the avatar from someone else.

Totally different game and genre.

The end result is the same. You build something and share it with other people. The end result of LBG planet however, is a game and something you play instead of being a zoo and something you look at.

It's very easy to compare them. Very Easy.

Different platform. Sure. Different genre, ehhhhhhhhhhh, I don't know about that.

It's not at all in the same genre as Spore (puzzle vs rts/civ).

Fixed.

Either way, other people have always been way more interested in Spore then me. I'm kind of interested in it, but LBP seems awesome.

Little burlap bag people are awesome.

Spore isn't going to be Civ level detailed. More like small ecosystems.

Where'd this puzzle shit come from?

I dunno... I've seen a lot of people tack the label on, in regards that people are going to make physics based puzzles using large weird pieces of terrain and whatnot.

I think I can agree, in that respect.

Puzzle.

Not really buying that.

Both of them are simulations of an environment, one of them just results in fun gameplay and the other results in the same nebulous half-promised result of one of Will Wright's wet dreams.

Mind you, I'll probably play the shit out of SPORE, but it's all but guaranteed that the game will provide no fun for me whatsoever.

Yes, the e3 trailer for LBW showed puzzle stuff. I had some stuff about being a platformer (almost 2d with pre-rendered background), too, but I didn't want to get into the whole console/pc thing.

WW has said he's shooting for a Civ phase, but that it will be more like Civ-lite with some RTS-like gameplay. Small ecosystems, of course. But within each planet there is a civ-like thing going on with multiple civilizations researching tech and building cities, etc (the simcity part of the game has been merged with the civ part of the game).

Yea and like with every WW project, take what he's shooting for, ratchet it down to reality, and you'll get the final product. An ant farm with animals that vaguely resemble what you intended. And the ability to zoom out and look at other people's planets.

And then mess with them. Drop in the killer crocs or drop a nuke on the capitol or ratchet up the temperature. Therein lies a lot of the fun imo, just flying around the galaxy screwing around with other planets.

Of course it's not going to be everything he said at the earliest showings (which were more heavily science-based). But it's certainly looking to be way more than you're setting it up for. Not sure why you've got the hate-on for it.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Also, I don't have a hate-on for it. I'm just don't trust superstars anymore. And WW is a superstar - who has been jerking our shit with this game for years now.

I think I can guess which of you two have played The Sims.

I bet you can guess which of us has thumbs also...

This guyyyyyy!

It's been in every gameplay demo from the original GDC05 talk to the latest TED07 talk. It's safe to say that fucking around with planets is the end-game, both terraforming and creating ecosystems.

If they cut the planet-destroying ray, it will be very :sad_panda:


As a summary, what's changed the most is the cellular level, which went from a 2D version of the Creature level to being a very simple, cutesy "eat the dot" game. The Creature level has, most noticeably, had a bunch of gamey stuff that they'd previously talked about exposed in the UI. They haven't shown the village and Civ levels much, so those are likely to have changed as well. The space level is very similar to the original demos, primarily different in the UI.

He said in the GDC05 demo that the big inspiration for the cellular game was Pacman.  So it's not really that big of a change.   :-)

This thread title just keeps on giving.

They were probably concerned about the cell level because it played like a simpler version of the next level and wanted to differentiate them more.

True, although they seem to have taken away the editor and egg mechanic. Probably because they were making that stage too similar to the creature level.

Edit: Damnit, beat to the punch

It looks like the water phase was removed entirely, although I bet something pops back up in an expansion.

The hell with everything but the endgame.  Having an entire little virtual galaxy full of planets and civilizations and shit sitting on my desk to play with gives me a stiffy.