f13.net

Spore & The Creature Creator

UPDATE: Crisis averted. Spore.com is back up and running.

So. The creature creator. The precursor to what will probably be the most talked about game this fall, unless Nintendo adds a taller white board as an expansion to Wii Fit thus making it the Wii Stairmaster, is coming out today. There's a trial available for the uhmm trial. Of the game. I don't even know where I'm going with this. Anyway, I got a copy of it to futz around with and found myself floundering around trying to make a human that didn't fall flat into the uncanny valley.

Lots more after the jump, including my widget where you can access the 21 things I made.

» Read More

Oh right, forgot. One of my favorite features - exporting avatars:

(http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/5416/sporegif20080617063307si0.gif) (http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/4719/sporegif20080617001624ig9.gif) (http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/4716/sporegif20080617043002kr7.gif) (http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1760/sporegif20080617063146qd9.gif) (http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/408/sporegif20080617063250mn7.gif)

The game is seeded with other people's creations. Now they'll have a bajillion seeds when the game launches, as opposed to a few days later :) That's a pretty good idea.
Since they're shooting for social networking, I think the friends stuff should be pretty solid.

I've also been on a self-enforced blackout, except I just call it Molyneux Syndrome, Carmack has always been Carmack but I used to think Petey might come up with something amazing (and fun). I even listened to a video of WW talking and turned off the monitor so I wouldn't see game footage. I'm exploring the galaxy in Mass Affect, wishing I could zoom down onto planets with the Normandy and shoot some womprats in Beggar's Canyon. There's no way it can live up to my internal hype, but it should be a hell of a lot of fun anyway.

They want 10 bucks for the creature creator?  Did I read that right?

Meh.

Takes $10 off the game, also there's a demo of the creature creator. Blah Blah, said a million times in a million places. Anyway, even if it ends up not taking $10 off the actual game, it might as well be considered $3 a month just to get the Sporepedia integration. It's all very neat tech. I just wish the modeling were a bit more... complex. I imagine it will get there by release though. Hopefully? Maybe?

So can you create the complex creatures with muliple mouths, arms, legs, etc like in the Robin Williams demo vid, or just these early protozoa giblets?  If it's the latter, I can't imagine spending the time DLing the demo much less paying $10 for the "creature creator"

You can do multiple arms, lets, etc. But the body itself can not be complex. If we're tied to spheres on a spine at release, Maxis is doing it wrong.

It's been stated multiple times that their creature animation engine is based around the single-spine model, so I don't think we're going to be seeing multiple spines at release.  You can still do a lot of crazy stuff like putting arms on legs, though, which I'm guessing is how people have been able to do complex stuff like the Buttsex Monster linked in the earlier thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u1uRs3Dt7U

This makes it look like you can do some pretty interesting things with the main body you may want to check the vid and see if that helps you out at all.

if you call yourself editor, does that make us commentators?

Thanks for that link, kaid.  I wouldn't have figured out that limb-splitting trick on my own.  Very interesting.

Nothing more complex than my 'human mess' was done in that video.


Uh. yes. >_>

I was looking around their sporepedia thing I saw a really good trogdor critter hehe I may have to make a race of trogdorians to burninate the galaxy.

Some of the techniques open up some new possibilities, though.  If you can make single limb segments and attach them together at arbitrary points there's not much you can't do.

Once you mess with it, you'll understand what I'm saying. Without being able to change the whole base "spheres on a spine" platform (as in, they pick the front back and top and bottom for you), it limits you immensely. I'm not making up limits for the sake of making up limits. That would be stupid.

I'm not sure there's much of a way around that. Given the way they generate movement, dance, all that jazz -- if you didn't start out with the "spheres on a spine" bit, I'm not sure you'd have a solveable problem.

A human animator can make anything work, given time, but procedural generation probably has to have some limits. I'm not sure there's a better trade-off anywhere. (It's really the spine, not the spheres -- you could contract the spheres to basically just outline the spine, right?).

I could certainly see them working on it for an expansion, but I'd imagine doing something spineless would require a whole new set of algorithms for generating animation. But true exo-skeltal insects, or things like jelly-fish or octupi -- I think cutting those out was probably necessary. Multiple spines, or split spines, runs the same set of problems.

I think if I had to wait another year or two for them to work out how to handle multiple spines or split-spines (much less invertebrates), or take "Verterbrates only" in three months -- I'll go with what Maxis did.

If nothing else, hopefully it's a sign they were pretty ruthless about design creep.

I messed with it this morning, actually.  The biggest problem I ran into was not being able to create arbitrary chunks of body with arbitrary joints.  Which is what the limb-breaking would let me do.   :drill:

One of my biggest problems was I needed asymmetry. That's the one thing I couldn't do with the extra stuff (like horns and shit). They pretty much automatically split into two. I fucked with it for for 5 hours and couldn't figure it out.

That goatse thing in the other thread had a single eye, but it was, ahem, centrally placed.

So you're saying that you can't move a single eye out of the center? Once you move off center (i.e. asymmetry) you get two?

Correct.

You using the Trial (locked parts) or an early version of the full thing? one question is once the full game launches are you going to be able to reverse evolve your creations into the sub games or import them somehow? or is all of this just to build a database of monsters for the game world ;)

Early version of the full think. Pretty sure spore.com explains they are importable. The latter part of your comment would be... interesting.

I've been following the development of this game for quite sometime, I've even referenced it in a paper I wrote about procedural generation for a report writing class. But now that I think about it , it is rather a master stroke on their part of have a ready supply of advisories to populate into the "creature phase" when the full game launches. I also just realized that this is only purchasable via the EA store which seems to think my province isn't part of Canada (when it has been since about 1945). I'll try my luck though.

Edit - Yup, no joy on a purchase because of the same error I got when I tried to order WAR CE.

I suspect the creatures won't be usable in the story mode of the game until you've earned enough "body points" to cover the creature you've built.  It seems like the creature section of the game is built around "levelling up" your creature with more/better parts over time, so starting your evolution with a maxed-out Chompasaur would probably mess up the flow a bit.

Want to know the coolest part about the Spore creature creator?

(http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08252/angote481.png) (http://xs.to)(http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08252/edwiffet227.png) (http://xs.to)(http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08252/mittevo764.png) (http://xs.to)(http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08252/pytong958.png) (http://xs.to)(http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08252/viver524.png) (http://xs.to)

See those pictures there? They're also the save files for the creatures. Copy them into your SCC Creatures folder, and they should be ready to be loaded into the editor.

I cant play with the free creature maker.  It requires OSX 10.5.3.  Jerks.

Maybe you should install Windows.

Murlocs! (http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-murloc)

I see your murlocs and I raise you a burninator http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-trogdor (http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-trogdor)

Needs more majesty.

(http://ll-224.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/000/224/500000224838.png)

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-4chan%3Asast-500000224838

searched sporepedia for "4chan"

Ok, this is pretty damn fun with just the trial version.  I know when the wife gets home I'm going to have to buy it for her.  Damn you maxis.

Couple of comments :

You can't change the size of your creature?  I tough you could do small creature that swarm enemies and giant one that obliterate them.

There's lots of clipping.

Remove every hands and feet, your creature will turn into a big bag of uselessness.

From the look of it, it's not a munchkin wet dream.  You can design a useless blob and he'll have the same stats has a mighty predator.  It's just an addition of body part, it doesn't calculate how well they are placed. 

So the only way to get the "complete demo" is to buy it? I don't understand why you don't get the unlocked version for free with a pre-order. Oh wait. EA. Thaaaaaaaaat's right.

(http://ll-587.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/000/587/500000587970.png) (http://mytriops.com/triopsfront.jpg)

Awesome.

Ta daa (http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-stivv)

I whipped these up last night. WoW players might recognize the creatures they're based on.

I like it. The trial version has a lot of blank spaces in the parts menus, which will be filled in "after you buy Spore", but it's definitely enough to get you into the process.

Are you using the free trial or the paid trial?   If the majority of slots all stay blank after paying $10 I can't see a reason to pay for it.

I have the free trial, downloaded from the Spore site.

The demo has about 25% the content of the full disc.

(http://ll-367.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/000/367/500000367968.png)
The might of the guitar empire shall be felt! And the first race we shall crush:
(http://ll-650.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/000/650/500000650051.png)

The one you pay a tenner for comes out sometime today, right?

An hour from now if I'm reading the website right.

I've been messing with it some more. As people get the full version in stores (on the east coast) I've presume, some bugs have popped up with sporepedia. They'll probably get them fixed within a day as htey're little more than annoyances. But now I'm missing some of the goddamn microbes and it won't let me reupload them. Yet. Sigh. I wanted to finish those and move on but now I'll wait since my numbering is out of wack.

(http://images.mmorpg.com/images/latestextracomic_t.jpg?cb=06/18/08)

The paid version can be downloaded now, if anyone was interested.

How does the $10 rebate off Spore work if one buys the Creature Creator? Amazon is offering $5 off Spore for buying the CC, I'm wondering if it's additive.

This is the best ten dollars I have spent in years.   :heart:

Making creatures is very, very addictive.  I love it like I love CoH character creation.  Maybe more.

Definitely more.  I'm just pissed I'm working overtime on the day that we can order the rest of the parts.

Bah. Downloaded the mac trial and it won't run on the shitty integrated gpu in this mini. Threw it on the mbpro but it's totally obvious and I got busted messing with it three times....so probably no more Spore at work :P Lots of fun, though. Can't wait to see the building and ship editors.

Well :

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Gotm9PY4EVg (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Gotm9PY4EVg)

Worth the click.

How do you add bulk to the body?  Once you stretch out the spine its always skinny and its good for making worms but I want something heftier.  It seems if you lose the belly you get at the start you can't get it back?

Sporn (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1947)

lrn2tutorial, n00b.

I'll give you a freebie, though -- mouse over the spine bones and spin the mousewheel.  ;)

Can I buy this, throw it on a flash drive, and take it to my non-net enabled apartment?

Hmm I know I tried that I'll give it another go

Edit: okay its hover over the spine not click on it...now to make a monster

thanks

Once you create your creature what do you do?

Am I the only one who feels like the second phases (?) creature portion of the game dominates the other parts?

ok I've made a couple (http://www.spore.com/view/profile/sa_paperboy)

Its fun, gotta get the full version.  Doesn't seem to be available in Australia yet, what a surprise :uhrr:

In the full game, you make the creature over multiple editing sessions as you get more DNA points, which you acquire by running your creature around a planet and eating stuff.  Once your creature is "done", you move on to the RTS phase of the game, where you're controlling lots of copies of your creature.

For now, though, you just get to make a creature, ooh and ah at it, and then make another one.  All that other stuff isn't in the Creature Creator.

btw more critters:
(http://ll-584.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/001/584/500001584995.png) (http://ll-572.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/001/572/500001572389.png) (http://ll-455.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/001/455/500001455695.png) (http://ll-408.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/001/408/500001408174.png)

I like the bottom feeder.

Here's a new one:
(http://files.blog-city.com/files/J05/90775/p/f/500001728347.png)

So they'll give away the creator at the end of July probably as a pre-order deal so it won't really be free anyway, and the rest of the world has had it for ages and already bored of it.

Fuck EA, Fuck Spore, all I wanted to do was give them 10 fucking dollars.

Typical shit we get in Australia I was definitely going to buy this game, now I wont.

/end rant

Also despite A$1 = US$0.95, it will still be priced as if A$1 = US$0.62. Just like if you want to play it on a Mac, that Mac will cost you 30% more than it would in the US, for no reason. Thank God for cost+$1 Taiwanese PC parts importers.

Even EA New Zealand has it for sale ffs. Either some bright spark in EA Aus thinks its going to get him ahead to fuck around and use the creator in some brilliant promotion idea he's got, or more likely our shitty big chain stores haven't agreed to redeem the payment for the full creature creator as a part payment towards the box.

Building editor for the simcity parts, vehicle editor for the rts parts, spaceship editor for the space exploration parts....The creature part is pretty fundamental in setting up the parameters of what comes after, it's the whole design concept, actually. But I don't think it'll dominate over all the other cool stuff.

I grabbed the full version last night. There's a definite learning curve if you have a certain concept in mind, but I'm getting a little better at it. I feel it's a bit limited in parts available, but even if that's all we get in Spore itself, it will be fine.

Then I forgot to upload the four guys I made...

Its also one of those low hanging fruit for future expansions/versions for spore down the road adding more and more parts. It would be nice to be able to do an exoskeletal critter and not have everything have to be vertebrates.

I originally thought the fun was going to be in coming up with a concept first and then trying to make it, but I'm finding it much more satisfying to just start slapping stuff together and see where it goes.  Which I guess is how it's intended to play out in the full game.

Undoubtably, since "what you're adding" is pretty much going to be dictated by where you are in game play.

Moving shit later is going to cost you, so you're effectively going to be "Adapting" around it.

So you need a weapon, but there's no room for a horn with the eyes, moving the eyes apart costs to much to do AND get the horn, so the bloody thing ends up with a spike sticking out of it's chest. Later on, that's in the way of the arms you wanted, so you have to extend those out some because you can't afford to move the horn (or go without) but you really need better arms..

Once you hit the universe stage, I understand you get free access to the Creature Editor so you can design life as you want to drop on planets and whatnot.

Everything I've seen come out of the creature creator so far has been made of fleshy and suck.  Where are the chitinous, armor-plated horrors of claws and spikes?  I wanna see fuckin' Kryomek/Zerg/Tyranids tearing things up.

They actually do have bone plates and spikes and stuff in there, even in the free version:

(http://ll-587.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/000/587/500000587970.png)

Not mine but awesome prinny, d00d!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sqh0ckQ_LdM

Ha, yes.

One thing I've noticed about myself ... I am completely incapable of making cute things. I'll start out with cute, and then it evolves into this horrible plated monstrosity. I don't want my cute widdle herbivores to be defenseless!

My first crappy attempts:

(http://ll-129.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/002/129/500002129546.png)(http://ll-129.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/002/129/500002129764.png)(http://ll-129.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/002/129/500002129576.png)(http://ll-129.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/002/129/500002129430.png)(http://ll-132.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/002/132/500002132957.png)

Anyone figured out how to download a creature from the sporepedia?

Drag one of those PNGs to your creature folder. Load that png into Spore. Somehow they developed an algorithm to extract creature info from it. I don't know how. I looked at one of the PNGs in Photoshop and noticed nothing weird, just a normal PNG.

I don't get the "load the png into Spore" part.  The png are in my creature folder but I can't access them from the game. 

Ok, got it.  The problem is that the last 3 creatures I did are bugged.  Sad.  I can load other creatures just fine but for some unkown reason 3 of them are bugged.

Do you have the trial or the full demo?  Apparently, creatures made with full demo toolset cannot be utilized by the Trial CC. 

The creature data is cleverly embedded in the alpha channel as a bunch of just-barely-opaque pixels in the background.

I present you Munchkinball - your new overload.

Ugly has hell but he has 5 points in all the figthing skills + 5 sprint, 5 stealth, 4 speed, 4 fly, 5 charm.

(http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/3540/sporegif22062008121223jl8.gif)

Destroyer of world.
Upload it to your world and watch the genocide.

Will Wright gave a demo of the full game yesterday at the SF Apple Store, and I was able to squeeze in toward the back.  He basically ran through everything up to the UFO stage in the course of an hour by using cheat codes to speed advancement, so we got to see a good chunk of the game in action and how it all fits together.

Cell (sea) phase: Yes, it's kinda cutesy.  The creature is 2D during this entire phase, and everything sort of looks like those plush microbes that Schild was laboriously modelling in the creature creator.  As you progress through this phase, the game keeps track of what sort of things you eat and labels you as an herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore accordingly; depending which category you fall into, you get a special ability at the end of the phase that'll help you in the next phase.

Creature (land) phase: The transition to 3D is made at the same time as the transition to land; your "cell" creature (which has been scaling up slowly throughout the cell phase until it's not really a cell any more) gets legs attached to it in the 3D editor and you climb up on land.  During the creature phase you can start having rudimentary social interactions with other creatures and form "alliances" (like symbiotic relationships) with other species.  You can also hunt a species aggressively to the point where it becomes extinct.  Other creatures that you become friendly with will join your "pack" and follow you around helping you out; this can be other creatures of your species or of another species (finding members of your own species tends to be easier, it seems, so it's not hard to build your species up as a pack hunter).  Again, how you play during this phase gives you a special ability to use in the next phase.

Tribal phase: This is the RTS bit.  The cutscene transition between the creature and tribal phases is a very cool 2001 homage that we all cheered for.  During the tribal phase you control a bunch of your creatures, harvest resources (mainly food), build buildings, and interact with neighboring villages of other species, either by trading with them, socializing with them, or trying to exterminate them.  IIRC there were five other villages in the vicinity, and the phase was over once you'd either allied with or conquered each of them; how you dealt with them influences how you play the next phase yada yada.

Civ phase: Bigger RTS bit.  Now instead of hunting animals for food you're planting derricks on "spice" nodes (yay!).  We got to see a bit of the vehicle editor at this point, and it looks pretty fucking sweet.  It's a bit more flexible than the creature editor in that you can texture each part of the vehicle separately if you want to.  There are land vehicles, air vehicles, and sea vehicles.  There are also three different focuses: military (blowing shit up), economic (trading with shit), and religious (peacefully converting shit).  Each city will have a different focus and produce different types of vehicles; Will had a religious city that "attacked" neighbors by sending brightly colored propaganda jeeps over to their borders to project televangelist holograms and blare bible verses from loudspeakers, or something like that.  It was pretty awesome.  During this phase you can also start adding (predefined) clothing to your creatures to give them a sort of uniform; Will slapped a Roman centurion helmet on his creature's head and put some bracelets on its wrists.  I caught a glimpse of a top hat in the clothing palette, so I know Yegolev has something to look forward to.

Space phase: He described this as being the "MMOG" portion of the game, but I don't think he meant that in a derogatory way.  This phase is heavily exploration and quest-based; you actually continue with the Civ portion of the game by managing your cities on different planets (spice continues to be an important resource, for example, so you want to plant colonies that will mine spice for you), but now there are a lot more civilizations out there to interact with, and many of them will have missions for you like "go explore this planet and report back to us" or "go blow up our enemies and we'll pay you".  During this phase you've got terraforming equipment that lets you mess with a planet's climate, paint it a different color, carve canyons and mountains into its surface, et cetera.  (Will mentioned that it was possible to attack an enemy civilization by using terraforming tools to accelerate global warming, lol.)  Planets you encounter will be in different stages of development; you might find some planets that are lifeless, some that are in the tribal stage, some that are as advanced as you, et cetera.

There were a few bits of "polish" that were new to me, such as achievements that Will kept unlocking as he blazed through the game, such as "finish the civ phase without ever building an airplane" or "cause the extinction of a species during the creature phase" or "finish the cell phase in less than 500 million years".  There was also a very cool "timeline" view that charted the progress of your species through the game, including snapshots of each generation of your creature as it evolved, a graph that showed its tendencies over time, labels for milestones and achievements (for example, in between generations of your creature there will be stats on what it ate/fought/killed/allied during that period of time), all kinds of stuff.

So, the good news is that the game looks pretty much done and it looks fun; I'd been worried that the creature creator was the only part that they were really finished with and that the rest was in flux, but what I saw was pretty much a fully functional game with only a few noticeable bugs (and no crashes).  Definitely getting it when it comes out now.

Thanks for the write up!


Quick question that's been plaguing me.  Can you lose?

He mentioned that in the creature phase, if your creature dies you respawn as another member of your species back at your nest.  So not in the early stages, I don't think.  But it seems like it'd be hard to recover from having your village demolished in the tribal phase, so unless there's some clever deus ex machina to save you in that case, I'd guess you can "lose" that way in that and later phases.

On the other hand, if that happens you can just start over from the beginning of the phase with the same creature, since each time you "unlock" a new phase you get the ability to start a new game from there.  So you're not going to get thrown back to the primordial ooze because your city got blown up.

Cool.

I guess, I was asking if it's more like Civ in some of the later phases, like, is there enough AI in the diplomacy etc. to actually make it difficult.  Or can you raise the difficulty. Or something.

Also, lol @ the cheats.  Those are going to ship retail ala Sims.  Good times.  Could probably spend 2-3 hours a day just building creatures/cars/buildings.

There was a "difficulty" option in the "new game" screen, so I imagine you can be fairly masochistic if you want.

Awesome.

Okay, a few cool things I forgot to mention that are now coming back to me:

1) Wings.  Creatures with wings can fly around in the creature phase (although I didn't see Will's creatures use their wings in the tribe phase, so they might be purely decorative after that point).
2) Epic creatures.  These are giant extra-powerful abominations that you start to see in the tribe phase as enemies.  You can't make them yourself until you get the UFO sandbox tools.  In the game we saw, one of the rival villages got attacked by a giant frog monster thing, making them vulnerable to a sneak attack.
3) Domestication.  During the tribe phase you can choose to domesticate nonsentient creatures rather than hunting them.  We didn't get to see this in action because the first thing Will did during the tribe phase was start hunting the creatures around his village, which made them too skittish to tame easily later.

Very cool.

Anyone know if the Creature Creator works without teh netz?

It's got a "play offline" mode.  You can't upload your stuff to Sporepedia in that mode, but it seems to be fully functional otherwise.

Nice writeup Sam, thanks. I wonder though, did it seems pretty linerar to you? Was there much scope to just mess about or did you get the feeling that you had to follow at least a few set objectives one after the other?

When you're blowing through the whole game in one hour-long demo, you don't do a lot of messing around.  I did get the sense that there were lots of opportunities to stop and smell the roses, though, particularly as the world increases in scope in later levels.  It also seems like they took pains to offer multiple non-exclusive ways to advance through each stage, so it's not like at any given point you've got only one thing to do and/or one way to do it.

If I had to assign a "shape" to the game, I'd say it's a funnel, with the narrow bit at the cell phase.  Early on your options are pretty limited (eat stuff, avoid being eaten by other stuff), and the further you get in the game the less you're forced into a linear path.  By the end you're basically in a sandbox and can do whatever you want.

Galactic Edition of Spore announced. Meh, these editions never grab me, a couple DVDs and little books for $30?

http://www.ebgames.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=71826

UNIQUE GALACTIC EDITION CONTENT
·          'Making of Spore' DVD video
·          'The Human Toolkit' DVD video, by National Geographic
·          'The Art of Spore' hardback mini-book
·          Fold-out Spore poster
·          Premium 100-page Galactic Handbook

The first comment at EBGames nailed the problem - Collector's edition with no in-game content?

Waste of money.

Wright's stated goal was a "T" shaped game -- a ladder up the editors, leading into a vast sandbox at the top (wherein, of course, you go dick around with other races using all the editors. I plan to establish my own Star-Trek like Arena, in which aliens battle it out for my amusement).

So that sounds about right. :)

Good enough?  I'm proud of my little bug.

(http://ll-551.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/001/551/500001551672.png)

(http://ll-232.ea.com/spore/static/image/500/003/232/500003232523_lrg.png)
My first one.

(http://ll-232.ea.com/spore/static/image/500/003/232/500003232004_lrg.png)
My attempt at an armored creation.  There's no large pieces of chitin, so you wind up having to add a lot of little ones which puts you up against the "too many parts" wall pretty quickly.

The "boneyknee" piece (I forget what it's called but it's something like that) scales up pretty well.  I was able to cover most of this dude's body with only 3 overlapping pieces:

(http://ll-587.ea.com/spore/static/thumb/500/000/587/500000587970.png)

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/comedy-goldmine/more-spore-creature.php?page=1

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/comedy-goldmine/goons-spore-creature.php

This thing is pretty damned flexible. Want the Alien.

Wow.  Even some of the penis monsters are pretty impressive.

I can't decide if I should make this a sig.

Grief title for Sam: Impressed by Penis Monsters. :awesome_for_real:

Oh god, that fits my current avatar so well I have to do it.

My grief title is ironic with my current avatar. Just noticed that  :drill:

Yours is now perfect!

The penis monster invasion is nothing. Meet the lynching tree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGswmr1mcbg

So...pools open?

Will Wright at E3, talking mostly about reactions to the Creature Creator:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/07/15/e3-wright-on-spore/ (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/07/15/e3-wright-on-spore/)

I do hope, at some point, there is a realtime hardcore mode.

I want to kill out your race, dammit.

The anti-penis jihad?

There is a strong contingent of vagina monsters, too. Don't discriminate. Unless you're into lynching tree monsters, then discrimination is probably intrinsic.

So, decided this looks like fun and worth £5. After about 30 mins of trying I manage to get the UK Spore website to work and pay my £5.

Then the EA Download Manager, after insisting on creating a new top level directory in my C: drive (won't install in /Program Files/ for some reason), will not work. Cannot see the internet. Insists there's no connection. Like wtf? Please don't tell me this shit has trouble with a NAT router?

So, I bittorrent the pirated version of the Creature Creator and install it using my valid, paid for key. Fire it up. Nuh-uh. "There seems to be a problem contacting the license severs. Please check your internet connection is active and try again." Like wtf? Is this thing really unable to cope with NAT?

Anyone else have trouble with it?

OK, heh, sorted it, kind of.

Official, real, paid-for version of Creature Creator refuses to run on my machine. Cannot connect to internet. Disabling firewall doesn't help, not much else I can do, EA's support still haven't replied.

Pirated version of Creature Creator runs fine, connects to web, authenticates no problems, allows me to use my actual PAID FOR account details.

Well played Maxis/EA.  :oh_i_see:

Not saying this is the case here but, to be fair, most companies don't think it's their responsibility to figure out what piece of crud on your PC is screwing up something that works the vast majority of the time.  The 5 - 10 bucks they make off your purchase is generally not worth the tech support cost.

If there are rampant problems that stem from their software, then yeah, they should fix it, but if it's you?  Well, why should EA, or whoever, pay for your maintenance bill?

Sure, but the converse of that is why should I fuck around for hours trying to work it out myself either when:

a) everything else that requires access to the internet seems to work fine,
b) I can just download the pirated version which works flawlessly straight away and
c) they don't respond in a timely fashion to their own tech support page?

This has already been done.  Take it over here if you want to do it again. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13138.0)