Creature Creator

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“To build the creatures, you are starting out with parts. We have seven part categories -- feet, mouth, weapons… Each category has four columns of parts, and each column has eight or nine choices. As your brain level increases, you unlock more columns. All in all we have about 400 creature parts. Each of these parts also has morphs.”

- Will Wright

The Creature Creator (known as Creature Editor before it was changed in the final game) is a type of creature creator appeared in Spore series that allows players to create and modify creatures. Creatures consist of a malleable body with an underlying spine, which can be sculpted in a variety of ways. Any of 228 functional parts can then be added onto the body, and be reshaped themselves.

History Edit

The Creature Creator impressed fans so much that many petitions began to spring up, including this one from Petition Online. The concept of releasing a module from a game to serve as its demo, sometimes months ahead of its release, is not unknown. Peter Molyneux's The Movies' Starmaker and Wright's own The Sims 2's Body Shop modules are both example of such a demo release.

• A demo was announced in the interview with IGN shortly after the start of E3 07.
• On 17th of June 2008 the creature creator was released at around $10.99. A demo version is available from spore.com, but it only contains around 25% of the parts from the full version. The creatures made with the pre-release module can later be downloaded into the full game.

Editing Edit

Interface Edit

The interface of the Creature Creator is organized into three portions:

Build Mode Edit

Paint Mode Edit

The Paint Mode is an integral part of the Creature Creator and operates on the simple premise of selecting a color and texture, which the computer will then procedurally apply to the creature. In addition to the basic texture, three levels of overlay are available for things such as Base, Coat, and Detail.

Test Drive Edit

The Testing Drive is a small arena in which the created creature is brought to life. Here the player can preview animations example of movement, action, etc. The player can also change background, add babies, screenshot, and record the creature.

Status Bars Edit

In the current version of the creator, the various statistics of the creature are displayed as icons on the right side of the screen with numbers indicating the skill in that field.

Icon	Name	Max Stats	Description
	Abilities	23	General abilities such as Sight or Mating Call.
	Sight	1	Use eyes to see the world around you. Zero Sight shrinks the area visible.
	Sneak	5	Move about undetected with camouflage.
	Jump	5	Spring into the air to traverse steep terrain.
	Glide	5	Wings give a limited form of flight.
	Graspers	1	Hands allow creatures to pick up objects in the world.
	Mating Call	1	Potential mates will reply from any distance, helping to navigate home. Granted by all mouths.
	Sprint	5	Lets you run very quickly for a short amount of time.
	Attack	20	Aggressive actions meant to harm other creatures.
	Bite	5	An average-strength attack with a short cooldown time, granted by all mouths.
	Spit	5	The only ranged option, it has a medium cooldown and low damage over time. It is provided by certain weapons.
	Charge	5	A weak attach that stuns an enemy. It has a long cooldown. Most feet, especially hooves, as well as horn-like weapons, upgrade this attack.
	Strike	5	Hands and spikes make for a powerful attack with a long cooldown. The only distinguishing feature is that this attack can hit more than one target at a time.
	Social	20	Social actions meant to impress and befriend other creatures.
	Charm	5	Fur, feathers, and other accessories help with this ability.
	Dance	5	Better dancing requires specialized feet.
	Sing	5	Any mouth (except for the mechanical mouths) lets you sing, but some are more vocal than others.
	Pose	5	Adding hands to your creatures lets them pose.
	Speed	5	Adding feet and other parts increases a creature's speed.
	Health	5	Various parts decrease vulnerability to attacks. As brain size increases, so does overall health.
	Diet	N/A	Carnivores can eat meat, herbivores can eat plants, and omnivores can eat both.

Creature Parts Edit

To the left of the Editing screen are the seven palettes (categories) containing 228 functional parts that can be attached to a creature. Each palette contains up to four columns with up to ten parts in each.

Creature Stage

In the Creature Stage, parts are unlocked by rummaging through skeletons, and killing or befriending alphas.

Name	Description	Icon
Mouths	Determines the creature's diet (herbivore, carnivore or omnivore) as well as its ability to sing and bite. The mouth may also be used to spit, with each mouth being more or less efficient at doing damage. All mouths grant a mating call. Every creature must have a mouth; creatures without mouths cannot be saved.
Sensory Organs	Eyes, ears, noses, and other organs that determine the creature's ability to charm and provide sight.
Limbs	Contains a selection of differently-shaped arms and legs.
Hands	Contains a variety of graspers and manipulators that contribute to a creature's striking and posing ability, and give it the graspers ability.
Feet	Determines a creature's speed, dance and charge stats.
Weapon	Weapon parts, such as spikes and horns. They all provide offensive abilities, such as charging or spitting.
Accessories	Feathers, leaves, wings etc that do not fall into any of the other categories.

Other GUI Elements Edit

The editing interface also includes, in the bottom left, an indicator of the amount of evolutionary credits (DNA points) currently available to the player for use in creature creating. All creature parts have an associated cost, which reflects their efficiency and effect on the creature's rating. The further to the right a creature part appears in the list that opens on clicking a category button, the more expensive it is to buy and the higher level ability it offers (in most cases).

Lastly, in the bottom right there are buttons for Undo, Redo and Exit, and the name of the creature in the top right, next to the ranking.

Keyboard Control Edit

• Holding down ALT key, then pressing the part, and holding it will duplicate the selected part.
• Rolling over any part and hold down the I key will display part statistics (available in Patch 1.02 and higher).
• Holding down CTRL and dragging with a mouse lets to detach or attach a node in a limb. (NOTE: To detach/delete a section of limb, drag away the area between the joints -- not the joint ball itself).
• Holding the TAB key while selecting a part will display more rotation rings to better position it.
• Holding the A key will allow the placement of asymmetrical parts (Patch 1.05 and higher).
• Holding CTRL and F and clicking will flip an asymmetrical part (e.g. right hand becomes left hand).
• Pressing B will open the Sporepedia.

Add-ons Edit

Part Packs Edit

It has been confirmed that there will be new creature parts in post-release Add-ons. One has been released so far, named Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack. Contrary to the name, however, it has three themes: Cute, Goofy, and Creepy. There was speculation that the Galactic Adventures would have new parts, however, it is now known that the expansion has no new Creature Editor parts, but does have a new Captain Outfitter with all the Outfitter clothes and 32 new Captain Parts. However, the Creature Editor does have a new paint option for creatures that will be turned into Captains. This paint job is a parody of the Red Shirt from Star Trek.

Spore Mech Parts Pack Edit

Barrakuda mentions that Will Wright would like to have robotic parts in the Creature Creator after advancing to the Space Stage, possibly as a result of research in the game.^[1]

Not recently, as part of a partnership with Dr. Pepper and Electronic Arts, players can enter a code from a bottle or cup to get 14 new robot parts for the Creature Creator. The promotion ended on December 31, 2010.

Trivia Edit

• In the movie Shorts, the Spore Creature Editor Test Drive Mode was shown on a TV Screen while a boy and girl were having a long staring contest. This is inaccurate, however, as Spore is shown being played on a Playstation 3.
• Also, there is a button for having symmetric parts on or off. Where this button is located is currently unknown. However, such a feature has not appeared in the Spore Creature Creator, so it was most likely scrapped, but there is an exploit and a mod to make asymmetrical creatures. Since Patch 5, however, asymmetrical parts are possible by holding down "a".

Glitches Edit

• In Test Drive, If the player holds on the mouse or arrow buttons before the test drive loads, the creature will go a bit faster, if player let go, it will return to normal again.
• A glitch that causes limbs to become invisible. The steps for doing this glitch are shown here.
• There is a tail glitch. The steps for the glitch are shown here.

Gallery Edit

Creature editor's development Edit

The Creature Editor main screen shown at E3 '06

The Creature Editor in GDC 2007

The texturing tools in E3 '06

The texturing tools in GDC 2007

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Example creatures Edit

Here are a few examples of creatures that have been made in the creator, showing the incredible range of styles that are available to the player.

Aawkwaard

Bunzo

Garoupa

Fishface

Orlop

Grumpsnout

Monoptica

Screwtail

Borsch

Lapihorn

The Jolly Lumpus

The Pretty Ballerina

The Eggman.JPG

The Eggman

Gulp

Flirtilla

Borge

Brandy

Debug Squid, the first creature made when the skin script was first being made

Buttface

Tweety Bird

Hangdog

Dilemma

Camoflauge Carnivores (a Care Bear)

CrazvMan

A group picture of creatures that were created in the editor with landscape

A group picture of creatures that were created in the editor

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Edit

See also Edit

• Spore Creature Creator
• Creature
• Figurines
• Spore-like games

External links Edit

• Creature Creator demo

References Edit

1. ↑ http://www.gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?topic=676.0