Spore
 

Has anyone ever heard of this game in development called "Spore"? It looks supa-cool.

Here's the basic premis of the game: You start out as a teeny-tiny like one-celled organism. The game starts out with you avoiding being eaten by bigger organisms, and eating other organisms your size.

Eventually, you start to grow. You can get flagellae, pseudopods, or any other means of transportation you feel neccessary. Best of all, the games coders are geniuses. They made a game engine that can figure out how your species/character should move depending on the number and position of limbs and mass of the creature. It's totally cool!

Eventually, you evolve into your own race and start to build towns and buildings. You can build spaceships and fly to other planets to see what kind of races live there. You can even have dogfights in the spaceships!

To me, this game epitomizes ingenuity and creativity. I am totally physced for it. :D

Here's some more info about this totally rockin' game.

That sounds really cool, Kimon. I hope it comes out for GC.

It kinda sounds like a combination between Pikmin and Fishy.

You can do that? Sounds sweet, definately getting it.

It is coming out for PC and is fabled to be on some next gen consoles. Not current gen.

This is thoooooper old news, though the game looks cool. Hopefuly it wont be as hugely mainstream as The Sims was...

It was even old here. :p

Nah, i doubt all of this. It's going to be another overhyped game that is just shockingly poop. Especially the travelling to other planets thing, as you need the internet for that.

Hmm. I am also inclined to doubt the practical excellence of this game. It just doesn't sound feasible.

Plus it sounds like it could become a sort of RTSG. I hate those with a passion.

Well, I'm really fascinated in the bacterial cell structure anyway. And, since it's also coming out for the PC, I can still get it! Yay! :spin: :devil: :) :cheer: :beer: :bow: :lol: :blush: :kiss:

Chien chaud on a shingle. 2 ml_lcl-l sm1L13z omg!!!

Hopefully it will come out on one of the upcoming platforms as well. In addition to RTSGs, I loathe games that are strictly PC, because inevitably, they either suck or they're insanely awesome but my computer is too crap to play them.

It was planned to be an internet game.

Also, I believe that there was a demo at E3 this year showing the lead designer making a totally rondom creature and colonizing and stuff. It's in one of the articles I linked to in the original post.

I like Runescape. For a free low budget MMORPG it does alright. I don't play anymore though.

Ummm... teh RoNg thrEd?

Oopsy noodle, sorry boot that.

I couldn't find the E3 video but I posted this in my forums about 2 months ago. It's a video from a small game convention where Will Wright did a talk on various things. Including some pretty sweet looking gameplay footage.

http://www.pqhp.com/cmp/gdctv/ Scroll down a bit until you find his one. You'll have to register to look at the video but it only takes a few minutes to register.

The video's an hour long so those of you on dial up will have some problems viewing it. Although, it only took a few seconds on my 1 meg broadband (which I was very surprised at). So it shouldn't be too bad.

Also, the official site is http://spore.ea.com/

Anyway, the idea of the world being populated with other people's creatures sounds very interesting. Just incase any of you don't know. When you get to being a fully 3D creature and out of the cell stage, during the loading screen the game connects to the internet and downloads various creatures (predators and prey) from the internet that fit into the ecosystem of the planet the game has generated for you.

I really am going to give this one some faith that it will be as good as it sounds. I mean I've always been a huge fan of the Sim City series, even the Sims (minus all the gosh darn expansions, since I only bought one of them). But this looks very interesting. I hope it delivers.

Nah, that's not right is it? While you can populate your universe with creatures designed by other people downloaded from the Internet, you don't need it for the space travel, do you? I'm sure you can populate the galaxies yourself.

It's not an online game in the traditional sense. If you bomb a world to oblivion, you don't affect another player's game, as that'd be dramatically unfair once you gain the UFO.

Anyway, it looks completely fabulous. Trust Will Wright to devise a fantastic idea and take the world by storm. Hopefully this one can entertain people for a long time, though. SimEarth was a kickass idea, but failed to have any longevity, but perhaps that's only because it had very little personality, whereas The Sims was almost nothing but.

Indeed. You shouldn't need the internet. If you do have the internet, the game will just extract different species and put them into your game. I doubt it's a necessity.

Now, I've seen the entire demonstration of this game, and already, the video doesn't look as good as the write-ups made out. Sure, if I was writing up the demo I saw, I'd probably do it the same way, but currently, there appears to be almost zero depth in each 'stage'.

I hope he makes it good.

I believe the longevity of the game is going to fall down to creativity in evolving creatures and designing their buildings. Apart from that, I imagine the gameplay gets stale quickly, and even the novelty of that's going to drain, especially for the kids who take things to extremes by adding just those few hundred extra legs.

I wouldn't be surprised if the gameplay did get quite stale. Some other features to make the game more enjoyable and playable would be quite cool and, I think, neccessary.

However, creating and evolving my own species would be incredibly cool and interesting, and that alone would keep me entertained for tens of hours.

Spore
 

Can anyone else no wait for this game? It has everything I've ever wanted, except Oddworld, but due to the unique nature of the game, that can be easily remedied.

Is anyone else as excited as me?

Okay, that's not fair. You take over my thread, then bung my starter at the bottom? I look like an idiot! ;)

Spore is what is being called a "Massively single player game", in that peoples games are independent, but your creatures are uploaded to the internet, and others are downloaded from it. You can also go about and "Shop" for player created items, which of course can be modified. Coz its not just creatures that are made and evolve, but houses, items, vehicles, tanks, weapons, spaceships and even worlds, once terraforming is unlocked. When space travel is achieved, other peoples planets are also downloaded, and it can even be played on dial-up, because there is a compression ratio for exported data of about 20000/1, so creatures can be shared on just 3 kilobytes of data. Basically, only the basic "Blueprint" is transmitted, so it is rebuilt from scratch on other machines following the instructions.

All player created content gets a trading card, displaying the stats and popularity. Spore was really once called "SimEverything". I think it has huge potential, as stories and legends will appear spontaneously- very quickly the spore universe will be far larger than the Star Wars and Star Trek universes combined!

The tools for making creatures are so flexible, I wouldn't be surprised if there were lawsuits, like the ones filed by Marvel against City of Heroes. Ultimately we will find Spore n00bs crawling out of the primordial ooze with a lovingly created creature, only to be set upon and ripped apart by scrabs, ant lions and rancors.

The first phase is called the "Tide Pool" phase, a homage to Pacman where you play a single celled organism that must evolve to escape predators and beat the competition. You can only evolve when you have grown large enough, and in later stages, when you find a mate. You adjust your design and then play as the next generation.

Next is the creature phase. The outcome of the tide pool phase indicates where you'll be at the start, but you always begin in the ocean. You can decide whether to evolve legs or not, and leaving the sea is entirely voluntary. Each generation must be played from hatchling upwards. When sentience is reached in the tribal phase the game type changes, as you develop their knowledge, designing and building tools and huts. Depending on what you give them, the species will become aggressive or intelligent, and what you make them do is encoded into the species. Everyone else with you species will suffer their wrath or benefit their ingenuity. When you have the biggest tribe in the area (by merging with or eating the other tribes) you move into the city phase

Much like SimCity, only you design the buildings, among other things. This gives way to the civilisation phase, where you build long distance transports and meet other cities and races on the planet, again, you can form diplomatic ties, or annihilate them (if they don't beat you to it)

Taking control of the planet, you move into that last, sandbox phase: galactic. You design ships and leave the planet. Further research gives you terraforming, Genetic engineering, galactic meddling etc. All the editors are opened, and you can land on other peoples' planets.

Sorry about all this, but I'm just so excited about it, plus I was being paid to endorse the game ;)

Wait... Spore is affiliated with EA? **** it, I'm off this bandwagon. :D

EA owns Maxis, which is Will Wright's studio. But, being who he is, he pretty much gets full rein to do what he wants.

read this review or die http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/spore/616537p1.html

Don't worry about EA messing it all up. Will Wright has EA's entire upper management tied up and gagged in his office. They won't be messing up his game.

I can see this being another version of The Sims. Every year or so there's going to be an expansion pack. You can all spank me if there's not one expansion.

That's not saying I don't like the game, I can't wait to play it. But I can just tell EA are going to turn Spore into it's bitch

Ooooh and Salamander, since the game isn't out yet, it's a preview not a review :). A review is after the game comes out, preview is before.

Actually there is already a Spore forum.

There may be expansions, but really, if they get it right the first time, there will be no need for any. All the new content will be player created, and believe me, there will be a shit load of player created content.

Yeah, the only reason for expansion packs is more content and WW has stated that content is going to be tiny in size (I think he said ~12KB) and downloadable.

X_X preview, review, interview, there all views of some sort.

My only concern is that i will get bored of Spore fairly qucikley.

I don't think anyone can get bored of a game where you can give your character a few extra heads just because you feel like it.

Getting bored of a game where you can colonise tens of thousands of planets, each with their own unique ecosystem, seems pretty impossible.