The Sporedown

[bigjoe]

Barring any unforeseen delays, spore will be out in about a month. I am actually very excited. The creature editor, while limited, was very fun to mess around with. To actually be able to play with your creations, build tribes and civilizations, and terraform/destroy planets will really open the scope of the game up.

Anyone else excited?

[MasterSwordUltima]

Excited to have penis monsters take over planets? Of course.

[Cloral]

Huge fan!

[The_Amaster]

It's gonna be awesome. The building editor especially looks really fun.

[The_Amaster]

Okay, sorry for the double post, but I need to know this.

Does running Spore Creature Creator require a constant internet connection. My ultra ultra paranoid parents won't let me install in on our eMac because they're worried that some hacker might infiltrate the Spore Constant Update system and download stuff to the hard drive.

I tried to explain that the creators of the online program leaving it vulnerable to hackers would be about as stupid as building Fort Knox out of toothpicks, i.e they would surround it with about a billion safeguards, but...

[Mind-Freak]

Oh man. I'm so stoked for SPORE. I can't wait to set my plans for intergalactic domination into motion >:D

[rock_nog]

Nah, heck, you don't even have to be online to use the Creature Creator. All an internet connection does is allow you to upload your creatures to Sporepedia. Heck, you don't even have to be online to play the actual game - well, you do need to register it, but it does come with a lot of creatures right out of the box.

What's surprised me is how amazingly deep the gameplay is. I've been watching a lot of gameplay demos, and while I've been absolutely crazy about this game for years, I expected it to be mostly design toy, with a simply game thrown on top. But man, the amount of options you have in terms of actually playing the game... Building alliances, establishing trade routes and colonies, exploring new worlds - I mean, as excited as I was about Galactic domination, I'm even more excited that you can form an entire fleet of ships with your allies to aid you in your conquest.

Regarding penis creatures - it's unlikely we'll see many, if at all, as they've done a helluva job with banning offensive content, which is a shame, because I was planning on building the ultimate doomsday ship, the Castratinator, and cruise around the galaxy obliterating every penis-infested world I found.

[The_Amaster]

Okay, thanks Rock Nog. That's exactly what I needed to know.

And yeah, it looks pretty in depth. I mean, I'm no expecting Civilization here or anything, but it definitly looks like a solid strategy offering in it's own right, regardless of creative options.

(Wow, that last sentence sounded like a press release)

[rock_nog]

Funny that you mentioned that, since the Spore team brought on Soren Johnson, lead designer of Civ 4, specifically to design the gameplay in the civilization stage.

[The_Amaster]

Oh, yeah, no, I didn't mean that it wouldn't be as complex because they couldn't. I just figured that in order to make it as "user friendly" as possible they'd use kind of a Civ-lite. Same way that the tweaks are so limited in CC; you can just adjust size and do a bit of squash and stretch, instead of the near total modelling control I would have liked.
I mean, personally I'd love something as deep in stratagy and gameplay as Civ, I just don't think it'll happen.

[rock_nog]

By the way, I think Spore is the final proof of evolution. How? Well, Spore is basically a game of Intelligent Design - players create all the content. So, thanks to Spore, we can get an idea of what to expect in a world shaped by Intelligent Design - penis creatures as far as the eye can see. As our world is devoid of penis creatures, I think we can safely conclude that it was not shaped by Intelligent Design.

[ZTC]

I'll have to see if my old computer to run it. Aside from that, I would also have to wait for a crack to bypass activating it over the internet. :/

[Radium]

The spore booth at Comic-con was so small and deserted it was scary.