Spore Galactic Adventures

Spore Galactic Adventures (also known a Spore Space Adventures) is a Spore Expansion Pack set to be released on June 23rd in the USA and June 26th in Europe. One of its new features will be the ability for your Creature to move around outside the UFO, as well as new missions that will require you to use this ability. Creatures then will be able to use social and offensive abilities on others, like the Creature stage. The textures and graphics are going to be more complex with the Adventure creator. Maxis will have about 20 different premade adventures.

Known content

 * Archetype ‘Campaigns’. Archetypes include Warrior, Zealot, Shaman, Diplomat, Trader, Scientist, Knight, Wanderer, Bard, and Ecologist.


 * There will be special parts available in the Captain editor for different archetypes. When entering a mission from a Space game the parts available are determined by your archetype. When playing in free-play mode, all archetype parts will be available.


 * Players will be able to place buildings and other objects anywhere they want to with the adventure creator. They can be flat on land as normal, but they can also be placed on water, although there will be no underwater editors or features of any kind included. By using the Ctrl key, players can make buildings float in mid-air at any altitude they want, similar to the Building Editor.


 * Players can make dialog for their creatures. Creature languages are determined by their archetype. The player can choose what tone of voice the creature will speak in. Speech will be translated by means of speech balloon text. Also, some items have labeling on them.


 * Players can set the speed of an object, which can range from completely stationary to so fast that it is impossible to catch, or it could even not give you any time at all to turn around to see it coming before it zooms past you. By setting a hollow vehicle to stationary and with even more flexible gameplay, a vehicle can stand in for a building, like a caravan.


 * City makeup can be much more complex in the Adventure creator. Players can design absolutely any type of city they want in the creator, from ancient style stone castles to large metal complexes of the future, by piecing together all sorts of building parts.


 * Players can either enter adventures by requesting a mission from another empire while in a Space Stage game and then flying to the planet and beaming down, or they can use an option called "free-play" that allows players to enter adventures directly from the main menu instead.


 * Player's flesh-and-blood captains can only beam down onto adventure planets. The Hologram Scout will still be in the game for exploration of the planet on foot.


 * The adventure planets are chosen when the player requests a mission from an empire. The game then scans for star systems that have not been visited by the player yet to place the adventure planet. If all nearby systems have been visited, gas giants are converted into the adventure planets.


 * There is an Adventure creator, and sharing missions over the Sporepedia is possible. The Adventure creator enables the user complete and total control over everything on the adventure planet. There are many things the user can mold to whatever extent the player wishes.


 * Molding the shape of the planet's surface by dragging and dropping stamps can be done, and players are able to place any unit(creatures, buildings, flora, etc) into the adventure by selecting it from the in-game Sporepedia, or dragging in a PNG. Units can be placed in any position, and can placed anywhere(After being selected, if there are any buildings on the planet, creatures will automatically pop up on top of them.).


 * Buildings can be placed on land, water, or even in mid air.


 * There is one thing that must be placed in all adventures in order to save. A start point for the captain.


 * The player has control over any unit's size by use of a slider.


 * The player can regulate any creature's level of aggression or level of awareness by use of a slider.


 * Creating dialog for creatures is possible and quite likely since some screenshots show other creatures talking. The tone of voice(e.g: panicky, calm, angry) can be determined by the player.


 * Controlling the health point level of an object. Setting a unit to the highest setting possible will make it indestructible. Choosing the lowest setting possible will turn buildings, vehicles and ships to ruins. Creatures will lie down dead.


 * Regulating the visibility level of an object. Levels can range from perfectly clear, to translucent or vaguely distinguishable, and to completely invisible.


 * Choosing the content that will appear on the planet by selecting the creations from the Sporepedia. PNG files for creations can be dragged directly into your game to load the creation. By properly regulating the size and health of a creature babies, alphas, rouges and epics along with normal animals can be created.


 * Players can make objects perform many different actions. Players can set units to perform certain actions by selecting actions for the unit from a menu. It is also possible to combine actions.


 * Players can set the avatar's range of vision.


 * Deciding if other players can use their own creature on an adventure or if they must use a certain creature when they play (Adventures set with only a certain creature will not be pollinated into other player's space games because it means changing your creature's shape which is not allowed once you reach Tribal stage. They can still be shared, but they can only be played in free-play mode.).


 * Masking already existing objects to look like something else, for example, disguising a laser gun as a magic wand, either for a puzzle game where you have to find an object that is disguised and hidden to win the game or simply to match a theme.


 * The complexity meter for the Adventure creator is very large and allows for many items to be placed on the planet.


 * Players can put effects onto units. For example, by simply selecting an effect of the players choice from an effects menu, you can place a burning effect onto the unit.


 * There are different teams that the player must add units to, for example, like Tribal Stage, where there is a team "Pink Village", and a team "Green Village, where tribesmen, tools and buildings belong to a certain team. Basically, whatever is on the planet must be on a chosen 'side'. Units from one team will be instinctively aggressive towards those of another team.


 * Cutscenes cannot be made, but players can make units perform sequences on cue.


 * Users can choose how many acts and tasks they want to be done in an adventure. The maximum number of acts is eight, and there is a maximum of three tasks per act.


 * Players can set the time of day on the planet.


 * Players can set the Terrascore of the planet by adjusting the temperature and atmospheric level(An adventure planet does not have to be T1 or up. It can be T0 if the player want's it to be.).


 * Players can create museum planets and zoos in which there is no mission objective and you can just walk around and admire the scenery and some lovingly made creations. These are also called by the Maxis staff as "3D Sporecasts".


 * A Captain editor, where players can outfit the that they will use to play missions. There are many new parts and abilities.


 * Terrain editing. Part of the Adventure creator allows the player to use special "stamps" to stamp terrain styles into the surface. A player just needs to bring up the menu and drag the image of the chosen style onto the surface, and that part of the surface will have the shape stamped into it. The same happens with placing formations and monuments. Just bring up the menu, then drag and drop.


 * After the expansion, players will never have to worry about creations being stolen again. The expansion will add 'lineage' to every creation made from then on. Creations will list their history, consisting of every creator who edited it, and their names will be put into a list. The original creator who made the creation from scratch will be the first in the list. If another creator edits the adventure, their name will be added to the list on their new version creation, as well as the one that was edited. Players can then check the tags, description or comments to find out if the new editor has given any credit to the original creator. Now players can immediately identify stolen creations, and if they are not the one who has had it stolen, they can instantly find out who made it originally and notify them.


 * 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.


 * Players can modify the landscape with monuments, dips, stamps and formations.


 * Adventures will have a progress bar on the bottom that looks like the evolutionary progress bars from the other stages. The bar consists of up to eight parts or less, depending on how many acts the player has set for their adventure, with the maximum being eight and the minimum being one, or possibly none at all. Each part can be whole, or divided into two or three parts, depending on how many tasks the player has set for that act.


 * There are 32 new captain parts and abilities, such as the Energy Blade, Jump Jet, Acrobat Dance, Hover and Stunning Charm.


 * 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 captains and mission stats.


 * 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 enter buildings, but only if the building is hollow and has an actual opening. Players must make a hollow building in the building editor, and design the interior. If you were to just place a large cube-shaped block in the editor and gave it doors, windows and a roof, like what many players do with buildings, the captain would not be able to walk inside through the door. He would just walk into a solid wall. Players will also be able to destroy buildings in adventures. All of this also applies to vehicles.


 * Players will not be able to drive vehicles. However, players will be able to piggy back on a vehicle if they are good enough with the controls to jump or fly into the air and manage to land directly on top of it.


 * When playing adventures through a Space game, every 100 points accumulated allows the player to unlock a part from the Captain Editor to place on their captain and use in another adventure. Players cannot unlock parts without unlocking their most recent predecessors in the palette.


 * Players will be able to add allied creatures from a friendly empire as posse members.


 * New creations made by Maxis. Currently it is known that there are new plants in the game, and probably a few pre-made captains, buildings, vehicles, and many interactable objects are being shipped with the game. It is unclear if anything else has been included in the expansion.


 * Over 20 Maxis-created adventures will be included in the expansion, for example, The Arena.


 * Creature, Tribe, Civ and Space stage creatures can also be put on adventure planets and some can be allied with by Captains.


 * When a player makes his/her first Captain, the player will be taken into a pre-made tutorial adventure called "Adventure Town" that will show players how to play adventures as a Captain. This adventure planet is mostly inhabited by a Maxis made creature present in the original game, the Bunny Froo Froo, a pink bipedal rabbit-like creature. In fact, many Maxis made adventure planets are inhabited by Bunny Froo Froos.

Speculation

 * Colonizing Gas planets - Unknown and most unlikely.


 * Mission Types - So far we have only seen missions like fetch this and rescue that and destroy these and that, it is unknown how deep the adventure editor will go. although pre-release videos hint that a variety of missions from getting off a deserted island to getting through a maze before other creatures seem possible.


 * New Badges? - It is unknown if new badges are going to be added.


 * New creature, vehicle, costume and building parts might be featured in the expansion, because videos, screenshots and the box art seem to show them. - Highly unlikely because so far the costume details don't have any.


 * Keeping non-sapient creatures as pets - It is unknown if the player can keep pets, but the player will have posse members. It is possible that one could simply run up to an animal and impress it, then it would join their posse.


 * New Traits?


 * New Paint options?


 * New Animations in Test Drive?


 * New Test Drive Backgrounds?


 * Piggy backing on air and sea vehicles? - Piggy backing on sea vehicles will involve climbing into the water on an inhabited planet. Normal creatures and captains are allowed to enter the water and will probably be able to jump onto sea vehicles. Air vehicle piggy backing could be possible too, but is more unlikely. The player could possibly give their captain a jet pack and fly to just above where an air vehicle would fly, then(this will require very good timing, coordination and luck) drop at just the right time to land on it's back.


 * Other editors appart from adventure and captain? - Originally a Flora editor was due to appear but was scrapped.


 * Editing the inner vehicles so that players can enter them? - You might be able to enter them when you editied the insides.

Unsolved Questions and FAQ

 * Will you be able to make tribal buildings? - No, but you will be able to place existing ones from a selection of special ready-made Maxis props from a menu, or you can find a tribal-looking hut-like building from the Sporepedia, or you could make one of your own in the building editor.


 * How will the new additions/tools/missions and abilities contribute to the storyline of the game?


 * The expansion might introduce a special Grox adventure as an Adventure planet that you can't free-play.


 * Will the makeup of cities be more complex? - Probably not. The actual cities of ones empire will not be changed. However, complex cities can be made on adventure planets.


 * Will there be new philosophies? - No. In an interview with one of the Galactic Adventures correspondents it was stated that the only thing different in space stage will be the fact that you can do missions on the adventure planets. However, the expansion pack may give the Knight empires a special philosophy instead of making it share a philosophy with the Warrior Empire.


 * Will you be able to talk or communicate with tribal creatures? - You will not be able to do this with actual tribal creatures. However, the creator of an adventure planet may choose to place a tribal creature that you can talk to in the mission, or a player could place a tribal creature with a speech balloon above it on the planet.


 * Will you be able to use Grox parts? - GA will not allow players access to Grox parts, but players can download the Grox part mod from a modding site. Links can be found at the Spore Wiki article, Modifications.


 * How will points be awarded and what for? - Points are awarded for certain things that are done in the mission, such as helping other creatures, completing a mission objective, destroying enemies, etc.


 * Will the Grox appear at all? - Fleets of Grox spacecraft can be put into adventures as invaders, but if a planet is not T0, the actual Grox creature will not be able to survive on the surface, so if a player wishes to put a Grox creature on a T1 or above planet, the player must put in a user-made Grox creature. One Maxis-made adventure in the expansion does in fact involve an empire trying to stop a Grox invasion.


 * Will you be able to add your own kind to your posse/crew as well as other species? - Players can put other sapient beings into their posse, maybe also civilized and tribal creatures and perhaps wild creatures too, maybe even babies, alphas, rogues and epics.


 * Will the allowed amount of members of your pack expand? If so, how many can you add in? - Sort of. You have three members in your pack in creature stage. A GA posse can hold up to five people. These are the allied captains of the ships you have added to your crew in space stage. If an adventure is made so that another player will only be able to certain pre-selected posse members, the adventure will not be pollinated into other players space games, because in games the allied ships in your crew are supposed to follow the avatar everywhere, including the flesh-and-blood captain avatar when playing adventures. Exclusion of allies is not allowed, though it may be possible to play a set-posse adventure in space if one does not have any ships in their crew.


 * Assuming every allied ship's captain must beam down in an adventure, who will a Grox ship's captain be? Could he even be Gar' skuther? - Gar' Skuther is very likely not to be riding your allied Grox ship, but it is still possible. The Grox captain will probably be a normal member of their empire without captain parts, or perhaps different from other Grox citizens by having captain parts.


 * Could empires allied with The Grox be able to take them into adventures as posse members? - If no special provisions have been placed in by the developers, it should be possible, but the matter of the Grox's inability to survive T1 and up environments may pose a problem when playing certain adventures.


 * Will the Complexity meter expand in the new creators, reduce a bit, or stay the same as the previous ones? - Maxis has allowed for an uber amount of complexity in GA. In an interview with a GA correspondent it was stated that you will be able to put a little over 100 units(creatures, buildings, plants, vehicles, etc) in your adventure. The adventure can also have up to 5 pages of 10 selected objects and creations.


 * Will there be a new expansion pack after Spore Galactic Adventures? - Most likely. It wouldn't be comprehensible for EA to stop milking the franchise dry after just one expansion. An Aquatic Stage or City Stage expansion, or at least an expansion that will expand the other stages, is highly anticipated, as well as any other editors, such as underwater editors or a properly usable Flora Editor. Several Spore developers have hinted on the possibility of other expansions.


 * Will the new abilities (eg, shield, hover) abilities last forever, or will they be limited to a certain duration? If they are, how long can they last? - Unknown, but durations and cooldowns will be timed when the expansion comes out.


 * Will players be able to create adventures with time limit goals? - Yes, you can, as shown in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaHjUb1_7Gw&feature=channel_page.


 * Can you make posse members talk when reaching a certain point in the adventure? - If a mission has set posse members, then the player can program them to talk at some stage.


 * Will there be new cheats included in the game? - This is quite likely, as new areas of gameplay will probably require new ways to ease the difficulty.


 * What will the adventure PNGs look like in the Sporepedia after they are saved? - They will show the captain start point.


 * Will the Sea Monster appear in adventures when you swim to far from shore? - Unknown and a bit unlikely.


 * Will you be able to use the Planet Buster on the adventure planets? - No, because the player can only beam down onto adventure planets.


 * Before Galactic Adventures comes out and you want to make your models for the game, say hand grenades, which editor should you use? - It appears that most people use the building editors for most of their props, however the vehicle editors, spaceship editors, and even some creature editors have been used for making props.


 * What's a Prop? - An item or object that can be used in an adventure.
 * Will you be able to make your own weapons to put in the adventures(a grenade, a bomb, etc.) ? -  No, but players can build props or disguise objects.


 * What do you mean specifically when you say you can "disguise objects"? - It means that you can make one object look like another. Example: There is a key but it looks like a grenade.


 * Will you be able to add things to the landscape like statues and monuments? - Yes, as seen in the expansion's screenshots. They are one of the many objects in Spore GA, and could probably be built in the building editors as well.


 * Do plants count towards the complexity meter in the adventure editor? - Real flora are part of the planet editor, but prop plants would probably count on the complexity meter. Objects and creations may vary in the complexity meter - it is likely that plant objects are very low.


 * Will you be able to play as non-sapient creatures on adventure planets? - It would depend on the mission, if the mission is to be a sapient creature, than yes, however the mission would most likely have to be a locked captain mission to prevent from breaking the mission by having weapons and such.


 * Could props be used as weapons?  - Yes. In Parkaboy's galactic adventures recap on Sporedum, he said you can shoot barrels of fuel and make them explode.


 * Will all the new achievements be adventure-based? - Unknown.


 * What will happen in an adventure if a captain is blind? - You will probably only be able to see in black and white, and your sight range will be quite limited, like when you are blind in the Creature Stage.


 * Will captains be able to talk to each other? - In one of three goals it is possible to talk to other captains, and the player can also place speech balloons above creature's heads.


 * Can you play as non-captain creatures on adventure planets? - You can play as non-captain creatures. You can probably also take a creature to the Captain Editor, not give it any equipment, and save, effectively making a creature you can use in missions.


 * Will you need patch 1.03 to play? If so, would you still be able to use exoskeleton limbs? - No, only Spore is needed for GA, and the player will most definitely still be able to put exoskeleton limbs on creatures.


 * How many different Species can you place in an Adventure? - Up to 50 species(Five sets of ten creations, also for buildings, vehicles, etc).


 *  Can you play as epic captains?- No. The captain is limited to the size it was given in the Creature Editor.


 *  How much space will GA take on your computer? - About 2GB is required, and about 2KB of space will be taken up per creation, although adventures will probably take up about 5KB. The GA specs can be seen here: http://www.spore.com/what/specs_ga


 *  Will the Captain equipment become available at the main menu when you first play GA in-game? - No, you will start off without equipment at first, and you will earn equipment parts one by one as you complete the adventures.


 *  In Space stage or at the galaxy menu?


 * Will there be a tool to make you run much faster than sprint? - No.


 * When you put creatures in an adventure is complexity determined by the number of individual units or the number of species? - The number of units.


 * Will plants and animals and captains survive in T-0 adventures? - It was confimed that T-Score is irrelevant in adventure planets.

Images
Please also see the Spore Galactic Adventures Gallery

-Go to http://www.spore.com/what/ga_captains to see 3D rotating models of real Maxis-made captains!

Making of: Spore Galactic Adventures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7IjAWUAZsI

NYC Comic-Con 09: Galactic Adventures Walkthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1T7sew9QWY

Playing the Missions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EdVTqiCryU&feature=subscription

Captains Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuEBSY-0xI

Maxis Missions 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmmB7ItRh50

The Space Captain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZZZ1svMqRE

The In-Game Captain Tutorial: Adventure Town
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTSp7IRON8g

Maxis Missions 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvJ8I1uMY2c&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsporedum%2Enet%2F2009%2F05%2F15%2Fspore%2Dgalactic%2Dadventures%2Dtrailer%2Dbahaha%2D500%2Drace%2F&feature=player_embedded

Robot Chicken crossover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLIBPiY4J3I

Tutorial - Adventures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YflmPd_4fUk