Control evolution...conquer worlds...rule the galaxy

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-10-02 06:40pm

Did I grab your attention with that mindlessly cliched title? Good. Because Spore is shaping up to be THE most kickass game ever. You start out as some sort of primitive sea animal, and gradually gain new characteristics over the course of generations. The most amazing part is how freakin adaptable and versatile the game itself is. It can figure out how a 3-legged creature would walk, how a top-heavy creature would shuffle, and what appendage would be best for picking shit up. You can build your species all the way up to sentience, and then even get to war and conquering; the highlight of any game.

namdoolb · Post by **namdoolb** » 2005-10-02 07:07pm

Shaping up to be a great game.

That's quite an old article though, I'm sure I've seen it on these boards before.
let me rephrase that.... I have seen that article before, and I'm pretty sure it was in a thread on this board.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2005-10-02 07:16pm

It sounds like a very interesting articifial life simulation, but nothing I've read on the game gives any real clue on how it's actually played. I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.

Lancer · Post by **Lancer** » 2005-10-02 07:22pm

Drooling Iguana wrote:It sounds like a very interesting articifial life simulation, but nothing I've read on the game gives any real clue on how it's actually played. I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.

But it's from Will Wright!!! It has to be good!!!

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-10-02 07:27pm

Matt Huang wrote:
Drooling Iguana wrote:It sounds like a very interesting articifial life simulation, but nothing I've read on the game gives any real clue on how it's actually played. I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.
But it's from Will Wright!!! It has to be good!!!

This is why I wait for the game to come out an read the reviews before buying it (if I even bother).

I got burnt really baddly on a few games and no longer trust what the publisher/developer says.

I bought MoO3, feel my pain

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2005-10-02 09:08pm

Matt Huang wrote:
Drooling Iguana wrote:It sounds like a very interesting articifial life simulation, but nothing I've read on the game gives any real clue on how it's actually played. I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.
But it's from Will Wright!!! It has to be good!!!

And John Romero's about to make you his bitch.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-10-02 10:02pm

If this works, Will Wright will have made me his bitch. In fact, something like this would make everybody Will Wright's bitch.

But I doubt it. Bacteria to Galactic Civilization means it'll likely be a very simple and very undetailed game made just so that the box can say "Abstracts 10,000 Years of Dynamics Into An Easy-To-Learn Interface!"

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-10-02 10:46pm

I don't see what's wrong with Will Wright releasing something that's more like a box of Legos than a board game, as long as there's entertainment value to be derived from it.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2005-10-03 01:01am

My sister is not much of a gamer (she only plays Dance Dance Revolution, Roller Coaster Tycoon and The Sims), and she is interested in Spore. I'm not sure what to make of that, though. It could be an interesting game.

ggs wrote:I bought MoO3, feel my pain

I don't feel you pain, and I bought it too. Perhaps it's because all I was expecting was Civilization, in space, with real-time battles, and less micro-management. Though it is somewhat telling that the single player game that I'm currently running has been around for 3 years (Why did the research tree have to be so dammed big? Why? I'm still waiting for my Stellar Converters, dammit!).

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-10-03 01:10am

The game is old news and there should be a year or two left till it's release, Still Wright has a very impressive track record (Although I didn't like the Sims

) It's just a pity Molynux isn't doing this as an spiritual evolution of Black and white. (Although B&W 2 should be out soon

).

EDIT:

he could add claws or extra mouths, whatever he wanted.
More importantly, all the creature animations weren't hard-coded; they were dynamic.
If he put six tails on his creature, the game would figure out how a six-tailed creature would move. The critter was completely his.

The 2D creature editor allows you to add bones, limbs, etc. in whatever configuration you can dream up.

After hatching his next-generation creature (who had a spike on its head), Wright was able to swim around the sludge a little faster and now he could eat the brown cells as well as the green. One step up along the food chain!

Then Wright skipped ahead past these early stages of the game to show what would happen after you evolved several generations down the line. Here, the goo was replaced with a 3D water environment, and his creature -- now a 3D model -- was swimming around. He had no legs or fins, and swam like a snake.

Here he was able to eat little yellow critters, and Wright pointed out that the yellow creatures he was snacking on were actually created by other players and pulled off of a shared creature database. Once again, after eating enough, his creature could lay an egg, which would open up the editor and allow him to spawn another generation.

The 3D version of the creature editor was amazing, in that the creature was totally configurable. You could stretch and pull and tug or fatten it any way you liked, almost like working with clay. More importantly, you could add functional elements, like heads, mouths, eyes, tails, fins, claws, even legs and feet. Wright proceeded to add not two, but three legs to his creature. Then he let it loose.

The 3D editor automatically figured out how your creature moves based on the way you design it...

Now, suddenly, his creature could walk. And he did so -- he walked right out of the sea and onto the land. This incredible moment in the history of evolution was made even more remarkable by the technology behind it: the game had figured out, procedurally, how a creature would walk if it had three legs (it was a kind of lopsided gait, if you're curious, with three steps: left, right, then middle.) No 3D modeler created the creature, and no 3D animator was required to make it move around -- it was all created out of a gamer's whim and a computer program smart enough to make it work.

Now Wright's creature strolled around the land, using a claw attached to the end of its tail to attack other creatures. We all thought this was great. But Wright wasn't done yet.

WoW, if it really is that independant of hard coding and works out how a creature would move/behave....
Couldn't this be used for archeology?

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2005-10-03 05:38am

Sounds like another Sim Earth, though it might actually be good this time. Maybe.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2005-10-03 05:58am

Origional thread Waaaaay back in march when the article came out.

It still looks pretty damn cool though.

Luzifer's right hand · Post by **Luzifer's right hand** » 2005-10-03 06:11am

I remember seeing a video of it on the DVD of the game magazine I read.
A little UFO destroyed a planet in it.

Max · Post by **Max** » 2005-10-03 11:53am

When does it get released?

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-10-03 03:09pm

I just had a genius idea-

Ur-Quan! Start as a sea snake thing, add tentacles and pincers as you grow and move up. Who wouldn't love to have 30 foot long Caterpillars ripping through local lifeforms? And then ripping through the galaxy! Find new lifeforms and kill them all! See if you can BDZ your entire neighborhood-scale cluster, or even the galaxy in the name of the Eternal Doctrine...

=We are self-sufficient. We need nothing. We want nothing beyond the total destruction of all non-Ur-Quan sentients.
=Our Path of Now and Forever is self-justifying, it needs no confirmation. We cleanse. That is all. There is no more.
=The cleansing ensures our freedom and security. Threats to this freedom and security are confined to non-Ur-Quan intelligent life forms. To preserve our freedom and security, we cleanse such threats.
=We do not have to stop. No one can make us stop except the Kzer-Za and they have lost the war. Our doctrine is now dominant. The cleansing will continue.

Edit- Better yet, cleanse people by firing terraform tools at their planet. Oops, you have 200 volcanoes covering the southern continent? Is all that smoke supposed to be there? What about a water tool like ice comets and play Atlantis with their cities? Sounds expensive but fun!

The slower, the better- is there a Supernova Torpedo? Sit back and watch the fireworks. Coat the planet in blood by killing every lifeform you see, burn the surface to a crisp with the volcano gun, and then explode it and the sun if you really dislike somebody elses' creation.

Will Wright's video demo made me drop the soap, and I'm expecting despite all cynicism the game will make me his bitch.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2005-10-03 03:45pm

I intend to make tentacle monsters.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, either.

Glimmervoid · Post by **Glimmervoid** » 2005-10-03 04:12pm

MRDOD wrote: Will Wright's video demo made me drop the soap, and I'm expecting despite all cynicism the game will make me his bitch.

I could not see a vido could you link to it please?

Ps Wow I want this game.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-10-03 04:18pm

From the old thread

Use bugmenot or just enter a fake E-Mail (worked for me). Demo actually starts at about 12:30, and lasts with intermittant breaks for sources of inspiration and talks on content and player creation over the cours of 50-odd minutes.

Will Wright I guess was trying to convince you the game doesn't go farther and everyone laughs after the planetary Civilization-like game when he pulls out to the Solar system, colonizes and terraforms a moon, and then pulls back to the galaxy's nearby stars. Afterwards at the very end he pulls back to an entire galaxy and shows you a tiny square where your world is. The others are all either blank or other players creations...

Interesting thought- if our civilization doesn't emit radio signals yet (being at the tribal level), do they still appear in others games? What about just animal-level games? Could you hunt for them by visiting stars with no SETI signals? Are some of the blank planets actually bacteria-level games being updated as their player plays and downloads it to the net? I would assume so, unless whenever you reach City tech they magically appear.

Glimmervoid · Post by **Glimmervoid** » 2005-10-03 04:23pm

MRDOD wrote:From the old thread

Use bugmenot or just enter a fake E-Mail (worked for me). Demo actually starts at about 12:30, and lasts with intermittant breaks for sources of inspiration and talks on content and player creation over the cours of 50-odd minutes.

Will Wright I guess was trying to convince you the game doesn't go farther and everyone laughs after the planetary Civilization-like game when he pulls out to the Solar system, colonizes and terraforms a moon, and then pulls back to the galaxy's nearby stars. Afterwards at the very end he pulls back to an entire galaxy and shows you a tiny square where your world is. The others are all either blank or other players creations...

Is it "Will Wright discusses his new game creation called "Spore" "?

And Should i just make up a Company.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-10-03 04:24pm

Yes, and either make up some company up or just put "None" or some alphanumeric gibberish.

Controlling a 3-d fish creature would probably be a bitch unless Wright has a relaly good way I can't think of... perhaps mouseroller for Z axis?

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2005-10-03 04:31pm

Intend to try and recreate the evolution of the Lekgolo (Hunters.) If the game was so elastic and adaptable that I could guide the development of sentient creatures consisting of colonies of sentient worms, it would be the greatest game ever.

Glimmervoid · Post by **Glimmervoid** » 2005-10-03 04:33pm

I would just love to build a fleet of UFO’s fight a real time tactical war against other races with UFO’s. You would like send space ships to attack there planets with the volcano gunetc but then go back home and build a few new buildings.

I really hope you can get multiple UFO’s.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-10-03 04:38pm

Noble Ire wrote:Intend to try and recreate the evolution of the Lekgolo (Hunters.) If the game was so elastic and adaptable that I could I could guide the development of sentient creatures consisting of colonies of sentient worms, it would be the greatest game ever.

Probably more likely that you could create all the other covenant excepting Engineers and Drones. And if they have a gasbag adaption (unlikely), you could do Engineers, too. And Drones would need wings, which is slightly mroe likely. Actually, Will's Tweetybird had vestigal wings, I believe, and there was a second-long glimpse of dragonflies in the Animal stage so maybe there'd be wings.

However, Lekgolo could probably be created using solid bodyparts in the shape of the colony...

I wonder how much you can change a creature each generation- presumably once you make something it costs points to change it so you have to go slowly (relatively, considering the abstract millions of years between each of the early generations).

I wonder how much biodiversity the environments will have? We only saw three species in every demonstration areas before tribalism. (Character, Brown Worms, Spined Cells; Fish, Jellyfish, Character; Tripod, Hopper, Giant Scything Beast).

Glimmervoid wrote:I would just love to build a fleet of UFO’s fight a real time tactical war against other races with UFO’s. You would like send space ships to attack there planets with volcano etc.

I really home you can get multiple UFO’s.

Didn't he mention something about Star Trek race personality profiles- Borg vs. Klingon interaction = War, Trade, etc.? There'd have to be more than one ship for Space Warfare. After all, we only saw the Spider Aliens fire point defense on the ship before he death starred it- possibly they too were an early spacefaring society (the asteroid ring, he mentioned, was "an accident"... a guess or knowledge?).

Glimmervoid · Post by **Glimmervoid** » 2005-10-03 04:58pm

I cant see a picture and I downloaded WMP 10 is there anything else I should try? I am using firefox if that matters.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-10-03 05:03pm

I had that problem- it seems to lag a lot when you hit play if that is related. Try reloading it and exiting all other WMVs. I just tried a while and it started to work.

I refreshed it again to see if I could reporduce the problem and it happened to me and I can't fix it either

Edit- I have it- if you're using the 300k, it seems like the video doesn't load very well. Try the 100k version and it works for me- it's sucky resolution, though.