So the other day I was going through my old games and found my copy of SPORE for PC, the game that promised us everything but came up rather short. But it isn't a total loss, the one thing I really had fun with in the game was making creatures, and playing them in creature stage. SO I decided to go back, test a few of my old creatures. I load up a new game and find, every last creature in it is Maxis made. I guess I never noticed it before, but there are over 1000 Maxis creatures to my 100 or so. I would make a game over and over, and virtually every time, virtually ever creature was Maxis made.
Eventually, I found out about a feature called "Themes" aha! I thought! This will evidently let me choose what creatures I want in a game! Naturally however it says "No Theme" and gives no hint on how exactlyi MAKE my own theme. SO I look through some game forums and all I find are messages similar to this:
The theme you choose means only creations and creatures that fall under a certain theme will populate your worlds.
If you've subscribed to any Sporecasts, for example, you can choose one of those, and only creations from those Sporecasts will populate the planet.
If you choose "My Theme," only creatures and creations you have made will populate the planet.
All very well and good, but it doesn't say a Bloody thing on how I make my OWN themes. Help?
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
Just a heads up: Maxis apparently realized how sucky their pet game was and will release an expansion for the Space Stage. Here's a list of features:
Features:
* Beaming your creature directly down from the UFO
* Adventure creator – where you can create your whole world and share it over the sporepedia for others to play.
* Captain Editor – Make your captains with over 30 new parts to battle it out in adventures made by Maxis or the community.
* Planet editor - This is a essential aspect of the adventure creator, where you can fully customize the planet your adventure will take place.
* Players will be able to choose which flora and fauna they want on a planet using the Adventure creator.
* When a player wins a mission with a number of points higher than another player has ever scored on that mission,they are rewarded with special badges which are shown on the players MySpore page. Badges can be lost when another player beats your record.
* Modify the landscape with monuments and buildings and over 1500 Maxis made objects, including grenades, exploding barrels and more.
* 32 new creature accessory rewards to use with your captain, some of these are: Energy Blade, Jump Jet , Acrobat Dance, Hover, Stunning Charm and many more, all of these will have new abilities.
* Player’s captains and missions will be shown on their MySpore pages along with information on how they played recent missions. It lists how many missions were won or lost,points earned on missions,rewards the player has earned for reaching a certain score before completing a mission and captain and mission stats.
* Players can jump onto a moving vehicle and ride it, however you cannot drive the vehicle.
* Players will be able to beam down only to mission planets.
* New Achievements - Over 50 new achievements are coming with the expansion pack, but it is yet unknown what they are.
* Players will be able to add allied creatures from a friendly empire as posse members.
* Maxis-created adventures.
They just don't get it, do they?
Yeah, this fixes the fact that your creature was reduced to a dialogue window in Space. But we'll still be able to enjoy such incredibly EXCITING parts of the game as "fly around repelling uninterceptable enemies from your colonies" and "trade spice for two hours to use the fun feature of your UFO once" and "fight gazillions of Grox for all eternity!" and "farm achievements to get to fun features" and all the others...
And, of course, Maxis won't let you beam down onto non-mission planets. Why, the game might suspiciously approach actual free-form play then!
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Somebody at Maxis is obviously an idiot. Seasoning the game with 1500 custom-made objects won't make it better if the gameplay is broken.
I do get an impression that apart from Sims, great ideas at Maxis ran out somewhere near SimCopter. And since we're on the topic, no, I don't think SimCopter was any good, it was boring and repetitive. But the idea was great.
People: "Spore sucks. It's like Star Control 2, but with a dose of shitty."
Maxis: "WE WILL RELEASE MORE BODY PARTS."
People: "No, really. The only fun part was the bacteria stage, when things weren't kludged together and it was basically a flash minigame."
Maxis: "YOU CAN NOW WEAR HATS IN SPACE."
People: "What? Seriously?"
Maxis: "WE DELIVER REVOLUTIONARY GAMEPLAY."
Don't forget: you can now mindlessly farm fifty new achievements!
Yay for more flying from system to system 500 times!
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
What the hell is with Achievements anyway? I was playing PC Mass Effect, and I got a dozen 'achievements' by doing tasks that the game mandates you to do anyway.
Sure, okay. Give me an achievement for winning the game, or getting a billion kills or something, but why an achievement for 'You used the negotiate skill once', or 'you made it to this level of the game that everyone plays through'?
Spore has plenty of those 'well no duh' achievements too. Does completing the single cell stage really warrant an 'achievement'?
Nephtys wrote:What the hell is with Achievements anyway? I was playing PC Mass Effect, and I got a dozen 'achievements' by doing tasks that the game mandates you to do anyway.
Sure, okay. Give me an achievement for winning the game, or getting a billion kills or something, but why an achievement for 'You used the negotiate skill once', or 'you made it to this level of the game that everyone plays through'?
Spore has plenty of those 'well no duh' achievements too. Does completing the single cell stage really warrant an 'achievement'?
Turns out nobody could decide if achievements should be 'milestones', 'achievements' or 'things that reflect your playstyle', so they're all of them more or less depending on game.
Speaking of which, I did the same and loaded up my copy of Spore. And I made one hell of a cool looking Enterprise A refit. I forgot how fun the editors can be if you give them a little time...
Too bad I ca't really explore or play the game without having the fun killed rather quickly by shitty gameplay.
"Now let us be clear, my friends. The fruits of our science that you receive and the many millions of benefits that justify them, are a gift. Be grateful. Or be silent." -Modified Quote
So... I hope this inst TOO much of a Necro, but I wanted yo give a full update of my experiences since first asking for advice.
So I did indeed figure out the whole "Theme" business, and at last I finally could play a game populated by MY creations as well as other creatures I actually WANTED there as opposed to random crap by maxis or people online. Things Looked nice and I could actually have fun exploring the world.
Village mod was ok as well, for the first time I won by making friends with everyone instead of my usually steam rolling over them.
Civ mod. Well as well all know Civ mode is pretty much constant war from the start rather your religious money or war, everyones attacking you. I made friends with half the cities and conquered the rest... Best high lite from that mode was having an Epic "Trogdor" Burninate his way through an Enemy city, I got a screen shot of it and hope to post it later.
So that brings us to space mode. First time I got the game, I never really played far in space mode, mostly because I spent so much time creating things and playing in Creature mod... So Space, the big civilization planetary part that is supposed to be the bulk of the game.
I start off as I usually do in most space games, rapid expansion and spamming colonies. Any rock, any world, if it can support a colony I launched one. So that works well, I start meeting some other civs, Making alliances seems ridiculously easy, once again as soon as you meet someone, its either constant aggression, or they love you right of the bat. Usually a bribe and then a 'quest' is all that's needed.
SO I have my worlds, some friends, and that's when I got my first pirate attack, no biggie, easily dealt with. Then, I got my first random Groxx attack... bigger forces, but a few Area of effect missiles do the trick. Then, then I got my first "eco collapse"
SO i go to the world, and in case you don't know, they give you about 5min to find 5 creatures to kill. Five min later, after I learned just shooting ANY creature that is supposed to be infected was the only way I got ANY result, because most of the time you don't see the "virus" markers unless your freaking hovering RIGHT on the ground... The first creature died and it jumped to the next... Then I got a message saying one of my other worlds is under attack. SO screw that. I can pick up some animals and plants, I leave the world to repopulate it later...
Within the next day of playing, A pattern kept cropping up, Eco system collapses. Repopulate, grab animals, kill pirates... And oh yeah, unless you continuously drop in on your allies, not by long range communication mind you, no you have to fly across the sector to their world and talk to them, unless you do that on a regular basis, they up and leave your alliance. So f that...
But I keep gong, after all, this is supposed to be fun, right? Ive got a fairly large Empire, about 65 worlds. Ive got no real enemies close enough to bother me, and, so long as I hold their hands like babies, I have fairly powerful allies. But it doesn't cut it.. No mater HOW strong my worlds are, no mater HOW much I raise their environments from t1 to t3, no mater HOW many things I buy to help protect the planet, to protect the environment, ever 5 to 10min a world is either under attack, or going into environmental collapse.
And you know what, over time I have yet to successfully stop a collapse, because as yet, ive yet to be able to find and kill all five infected animals within the time farm, so it dies, jumps to the next animal, and down the planet goes. And repopulating? Well well most of your worlds have the same 2 plant eaters and 1 carnivore, things get duel... And of course, repairing a t1 is easy, a t2 isn't bad, but a t3 requires 18 Open cargo spaces, 9plants, 6herbavores and 3 carnivores. And if I have to devote 100% to carrying around things just to repopulate worlds, that gets a bit tiresome...
Indeed just about 20min ago one of my Core worlds, a tier3 with 6 cities, one of the few worlds I actually conquered, went into collapse... During the course of about 10min, as I fruitless ran around trying to find the infected animals, two worlds got attacked by pirates, and an Ally left because I hadn't visited in a while...
So, Space phase? Space phase can now officially kiss my ass. I KNOW a large interplanetary empire isn't going to 'run smoothly' but it also Should NOT require me, and ONLY me to solve every problem in the galaxy... Oh sure, I have other ships in my fleet, but THEY cant carry cargo, THEY cant seek out infected animals by themselves. Evidently my population is too stupid to grab some guns, go into the forests, and cull a population on their own. They have to beg for their Empires Flagship to come and fix things for them. It basically reaches a point where you either can no longer explore the galaxy, because you are spending every waking moment babysitting your worlds and allies.. OR you let your empire go to pot, your worlds have all wildlife die off, and YOU get to actually explore the universe... Nice choice.
So there you have it... Ive finally gone through the game fully and found it pissing me off. And you know, what makes me the most upset is it wouldn't take much to fix things, you know? I mean how hard would it be to be able to fix things more then one way? ho hard would it be to, oh say pay a bit more to have a plants population cull a herd, or maybe build more then one ship? Maybe an 'Ark' ship devoted just to gather animals for re population? How hard would it be to have a separate devoted communication bar so, far one, you don't have to fly into otter space JUST to respond to someones interstellar communication? Or how about regional Pirate Lords? A main base that you can actually TAKE OUT to STOP pirate attacks in a give area of space! Amazing concepts!
Yeah, thats my Rant, and I think im through with Spore for a while. Up Yours Maxis!
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
Nephtys wrote:What the hell is with Achievements anyway? I was playing PC Mass Effect, and I got a dozen 'achievements' by doing tasks that the game mandates you to do anyway.
Sure, okay. Give me an achievement for winning the game, or getting a billion kills or something, but why an achievement for 'You used the negotiate skill once', or 'you made it to this level of the game that everyone plays through'?
Spore has plenty of those 'well no duh' achievements too. Does completing the single cell stage really warrant an 'achievement'?
Turns out nobody could decide if achievements should be 'milestones', 'achievements' or 'things that reflect your playstyle', so they're all of them more or less depending on game.
If you're going to have achievements a mix of game related milestones and playstyle isn't bad. Some you get though are just ridiculous.
Don't Move you're surrounded by Armed Bastards - Gene Hunt's attempt at Diplomacy
I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own - Number 6
The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.
Not to defend the game, because I don't want to, but hunting for the diseased critters is really easy--I'm farly certain there's a radar function that shows you where they are. I never had a problem whacking them all in about 2 minutes or so, just by buzzing across the planet waiting for the little markers to tell me where to go, then zorching the entire area with lasers.
However, everything else, yeah. Every few minutes you get attacked, and without you there, your planets will never become hands-off. And without you trading, they'll never build anything. And without you... etc.
Covenant wrote:Not to defend the game, because I don't want to, but hunting for the diseased critters is really easy--I'm farly certain there's a radar function that shows you where they are. I never had a problem whacking them all in about 2 minutes or so, just by buzzing across the planet waiting for the little markers to tell me where to go, then zorching the entire area with lasers.
However, everything else, yeah. Every few minutes you get attacked, and without you there, your planets will never become hands-off. And without you trading, they'll never build anything. And without you... etc.
Bad stuff man.
You know, the dozens ive time ive pulled my hair out trying to find the beasts, I don't think i noticed that... That said there are still many other things that are inexcusable, an intergalactic Empier should not have to have its hand held like a baby
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
Jesus christ...I read some previews for that expansion pack, and they're all raving about how awesome it will be to get a glorified RPG-lite mission editor and that it will "Add a new layer of depth to the original game".
What the hell? It's like game reviewers are completely unable to see Spore's glaring flaws, which are obvious even to totally casual gamers like my wife (LOL colony attack every five minutes! REVOLUTIONARY GAMEPLAY!)
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
I forgot how fun the editors can be if you give them a little time...
