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Spore is a video game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright, released in September 2008. The game has drawn wide attention for its promise to simulate the development of a species on a galactic scope, using its innovation of user-guided evolution via the use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-ended gameplay.
Spore is a god game. The player molds and guides a species across many generations, growing it from a single-celled organism into a more complex animal. Eventually, the species becomes sapient. The player then begins molding and guiding this species' society, developing it into a space-faring civilization, at which point they can explore the galaxy in a space ship. Spore's main innovation is the use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-endedness. Wright said, "I didn't want to make players feel like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins. I wanted them to be like George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkien."[1] During the 2007 Technology Entertainment Design| (TED) conference, Wright added that he wanted to create a "toy" for kids to inspire long-term thinking, stating, "I think toys can change the world."[2]
History and development[]
Spore was originally a working title, suggested by developer Ocean Quigley|, for the game which was first referred to by the general public as SimEverything. Even though SimEverything was a first choice name for Wright, the title Spore stuck. Wright adding it also freed him from the preconceptions another Sim| title would have brought, saying "...Not putting 'Sim' in front of it was very refreshing to me. It feels like it wants to be breaking out into a completely different thing than what Sim was."[4][5]
Spore's development began in 2000, around the time that development began for The Sims Online.[6] The earliest version was inspired by the SETI Project, as Wright admitted, "The original concept was sort of a toy galaxy you could fly around and explore."[5] Spore's design documents were published in an issue of Wired| in 2004 as a layout portraying the cycle of evolution, unbeknownst to the magazine and the general public at that time.[1] At the 2005 Game Developers Conference (GDC), Spore was first revealed and demonstrated to the public during a speech on procedural generation.[1]
It was officially unveiled two months later at E3 2005, the industry's annual trade show. GDC 2006 featured two Spore related talks, Building Community Around Pollinated Content in Spore[7] and Spore: Preproduction Through Prototyping.[8] A video released on YouTube[9] shows "unedited footage of Spore that will be going to TV networks covering E3 2006", and includes an overhauled creature editor, a first look at the texturing tools, as well as glimpses at other aspects of the game. Such things were discussed on G4|'s Attack of the Show numerous times.[10] Will Wright has said that the game was also influenced by many TV shows, films and toys, such as Lego and Star Wars. By E3 2007 and GDC 2007s, the game's look had changed again, with major changes to the graphical style.[11] The Sporepedia was inspired by Web 2.0.[5]
At the DICE Summit, Wright playfully introduced four designers according to their design team personas, dubbing designer and senior art director Quigley as The Scientist, Chaim Gingold as The Toymaker, Jenna Chalmers as The Mastermind, Alex Hutchinson as The Cowboy, and himself as The Traffic Cop.[13] Quigley revealed at the Summit the difficulty of making the editors (the creature and vehicle editors in particular) extremely accessible, stating it was like "art directing a million incompetents... [Gamers] don’t have good sense as to what makes a good character, so you have to put in all these techniques and tools, so when they do something, it looks good."[13]
The New York Times reported a projected development cost of twenty million United States dollars on October 10, 2006.[14]
In April 2007, Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson joined EA Maxis to work on Spore.[15][16] Soon after, some video game sites theorized that this news indicated that the release of Spore might slip to 2008.[17] A projected 2008 release was revealed three weeks later at an EA conference call, corroborating the speculation that a significant amount of development was still left to be completed.[18] In a GameVideos interview with Garnett Lee, Wright explained, "I credit him with, basically, you know, being able to present [the Civilization phase] that has that many, ah, strategic possibilities but not have it being overwhelming from a gameplay mechanic sense."[19]
By July 2007, the game was a complete, fully-featured alpha build undergoing closed play testing.[20] On August 23, 2007, a closed door demonstration of a playable build was featured at Games Convention 2007 in Leipzig.[21]
At the 2008 DICE Summit, Electronic Arts CEO John Ricitiello stated, "It's probably the greatest creative risk maybe going on in the game industry today...I believe it's going to be one of the greatest franchises in our industry and will rival World of Warcraft or The Sims or Rock Band. It's going to be right up there."[22]
Promotion and advertising were ramped up in May and June 2008, as the YouTube Spore channel opened, new trailers focusing on each phase along with developer interviews were released, and the Creature Creator was released, allowing players to upload their creations to the revamped official site.
Will Wright announced at E3 2008 that National Geographic would do a television documentary on Spore, as scientists use the game to explain real-life biological, physical, and evolutionary science; this is the same documentary that will be included with Spore: Galactic Edition. He also announced a partnership with SETI, taking part in the Celebrating Science 2008 activity on July 16, 2008, where Spore betas were available for play.[23][24]
On August 14, 2008, Spore was declared to have gone gold|.[25]
Gameplay changes[]
The gameplay itself had numerous changes during development. The most striking was the shift in realism, from the gritty depiction of cellular and animal life in the GDC 2005 debut, to the current iteration of a more round, softer edged depiction of the creatures. The most visible change was in the cellular phase, which transformed the unicellular organisms into strange insects with cartoonish, human-like eyes, which were used "to make it cute", according to Wright during the 2007 TED| seminar.[2] According to Wright, the Spore development team was broken into two camps, the "Cute" camp that wanted to skew the game's focus towards a The Sims-type of game, and the "Science" camp that wanted to keep the game as realistic as possible. The final version was more or less a compromise between the two; Wright stated, "We ended up with a very nice balance of the two factors."[26]
Another constantly changing aspect was the number of phases in the game. Initially, in 2005, the game consisted of six phases: Cell, Underwater, Creature, City, Civilization and Space. During the annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences DICE Summit on February 7, 2007, a slide was displayed (see image, right) which listed a total of eight phases. The Underwater phase had been removed, and Molecular was added (which was likened to Tetris), as was Tribal (likened to The Beginning). Furthermore, the Space phase was split into Terraform and Galactic phases; terraforming represented a limited form of power to slowly change planets within one's own system, whilst the galactic phase represented a more god-like power upon the acquisition of the interstellar space drive|: being able to travel outside of one's solar system. The 2007 TED| seminar in March 2007 displayed only five phases. The Molecular and Cellular phases had been condensed into one Cell phase. The City stage had been removed, and from Wright's demonstration it appears that the stage has been assimilated into the start of the Civilization phase. Furthermore, the two last phases were condensed back into the single Space phase.[2]
In Wright's 2005 demonstration, the creature with which he began looked remarkably similar to his earlier microbe. This led many people to believe that the creature was based upon the microbe's appearance. However, in a 2006 video from E3, narrated by a senior programmer, it was said that the player will initially begin as a slug-like animal. The narrator further stated the reason for this was to allow for more player creativity. It is unsure which method will be used in the final game however, as a new video demonstrates the essence of the cell creature emerging from a pond. The 2007 TED| Presentation in March 2007 depicted a legless, slug-like creature emerging from the water, leaving a trail of slime in its wake.[2] The cellular phase was renamed as the tide pool phase,[27] then called the cell phase months later.[28] The final phases: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization and Space were the five available stages at the final release of Spore.[29]
Two notable locomotive abilities for the creatures were also the subject of speculation during the long development:
Flight[]
A flying creature was seen briefly in the GDC 2005 demo, but for a long time since that appearance, it was unknown whether it would be possible to make flying creatures in the game, though it is now known that it is. Many Maxis-developed default Spore creatures feature feathersTemplate:Fact and wings,[30] and it is now known that they are functional and not simply decorative. Wing types include butterfly-like wings, as seen in the IGN Evolution video, bat-like wings, and bird-like wings. In a Gadgetoff 2007 seminar demonstration, Wright made a bird-like creature with large, feathered wings; but it only flapped its wings and did not fly.[31] However, on February 13, 2008, a hands on preview revealed that wings still give creatures the ability of limited flight.[32] The Creature Creator and subsequent videos revealed that creatures have a limited form of flight: gliding. A creature's ability to stay aloft was dependent on two factors: the jumping ability (to get in the air) and gliding ability (how slow the descent is).
Swimming[]
Similarly, the underwater phase featuring swimming creatures| had vanished since its appearance in the original 2005 GDC demo, which led to fears that it may have been cut.[33] However, in the July 2006 issue of PC Gamer (UK) their preview of Spore suggested that players would not only be able to create aquatic creatures, but would be able to develop them into a fully underwater civilization.[34] More recently, in the SXSW 2007 demo,[35] each phase has a mentioned text goal on the screen and the stated goal of the tide pool phase is "become large enough to move onto land", by implication omitting a creature-underwater phase. The opening Flash player cinematic of the official site does feature underwater evolution of a creature,[36] so it is possible that the underwater phase is simply a part of the larger tide pool phase.
During the SXSW 2007 demo, Will Wright said that the underwater phase was on the verge of being cut out. However, he has also said that, if cut, underwater civilizations would be one of the first things to add via an expansion pack. The final version of Spore released to stores had indeed proven the underwater phase had been cut.
Release date delays[]
The game had undergone numerous delays to its release date throughout its development, having appeared at three straight E3 shows with the promise of a release that year.
On May 8, 2007, Electronic Arts CEO| John Riccitiello said that the release of Spore is "right on the bubble with Q4 [January–March 2008], if not, for Q1 fiscal 09 [April–June 2008]". CFO| Warren Jenson stated that the game will not be included in the company's financial plan for its current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2008.[38] Later that year, on August 1, 2007, Riccitiello reaffirmed his previous statements in another conference call, saying the release "is sort of squarely targeted against March, April, May of next year", but cautioning that "intellectual properties like this and games like these are so large and so complex that we chose not to put it in our fiscal year guidance because these things are pretty hard to predict, and the outcomes can be volatile […] So our best guess right now is Q1 of next fiscal, but we're not actually providing guidance for next fiscal at this point."[39] Maxis VP Patrick Beuchner revealed on July 10, 2007 during a G4TV interview that the Nintendo DS and mobile phone versions would ship the same day as the PC version.[20] In October, Wright stated that Spore would be ready in roughly six months (around April 2008).[40]
Wired News gave Spore the second place in its annual list of vaporware awards — that is, an award to projects that have been prolonged too much already.[41]
Gamasutra reported on January 29, 2008 that Spore might be delayed until fall or winter 2008.[42] Two days later, EA| CEO John Riccitiello stated that Spore would be released sometime before the holidays.[43]
On February 12, 2008, Electronic Arts announced in an official press release that the official release date would be September 5, 2008 for Europe and September 7, 2008 for North America.[44] Later it was announced the full version of the game was due to be released on September 4, 2008 in Australia and Nordic regions, but Australian stores prematurely broke the street date on September 1, 2008.[45]
Spore Creature Creator[]
Template:Infobox VG The Spore Creature Creator is software that allows players to create their own creatures with a standalone version of the Creature Editor from Spore; the software was one of the first aspects of the game to receive focused development, and underwent ten rewrites since the start of development.[19] It was rated E by the ESRB| in early March 2008, indicating that the editor would be released separately well before the game's release as a utility program. Electronic Arts told MTV Asia that "EA Screen will provide visitors a chance to interact with EA's game producers hailing from the studios, and unveil the hugely anticipated SPORE Creature Creator demo version to gamers for the first time in Asia."[46] Electronic Arts VP Mark Buechner stated on the Spore Facebook page that the editor would be released in June or July 2008, saying, "We are looking at releasing it two to three months before the launch of the full game."[47]
The SimCity Box artwork showed a blurb stating that the creature editor would be included with it.[48] IGN revealed that the Spore Creature Creator utility will be available in two different versions on June 18, 2008.[49] There was a paid version (for $9.95) and a free demo that was downloadable from Spore.com and included for free, bundled with The SimCity Box. The free version of the editor only contained 25% of the available creature parts that were found within the full version. In Australia, on August 30, 2008, three state newspapers owned by News Limited offered the full version either free or for $2.[50]
The utility includes a test environment for players to see their creatures go through animations and allowed the player to import other user-created creatures through the Sporepedia at Spore.com. The utility included screen capture and video tools as well,[49] including YouTube functionality.[51] The editor also gave the user the ability to create animated avatars,[52] and output in RSS and embeddable HTML code to facilitate easy incorporation into such sites as MySpace and Facebook.[53] The software is automatically superseded by Spore when it is installed, since the Creature editor is already present on the game.
Shortly after its introduction, the Creature Creator was used to create creatures with oversized genitalia, either stand-alone or engaged in coitus (a phenomenon quickly dubbed "sporn").[54] EA responded with e-mails sent to those who made pornographic machinima from its demo, and has flagged certain on-line accounts for "TOS| violations".[55] Furthermore, YouTube has pulled several such videos for violations of its own TOS.[56]
By June 24, 2008, users had already uploaded over one million creatures to the site.[57] During Electronic Arts' E3 2008 presentation on July 14, 2008, Wright humorously noted that fans had done God's work at 38% efficiency by creating the same number of currently known species on Earth, 1,589,000, in about 18 days, compared to God's 7 days|.[58] When Spore debuted on September 1, 2008, over 3 million creatures had been added to the Sporepedia via the Spore Creature Creator.
Spore Comic Creator[]
The Spore team worked on a partnership with a comic creation software company to offer comic book versions of a personalized Spore story. Comic books with stylized pictures of various creatures, some whose creation has been shown in various presentations, can be seen on the walls of the Spore team's office.[59] The utility was revealed at Comic-Con International on July 24, 2008 as the Spore Comic Creator, which would use MashOn.com and its e-card software.[60]
Platform announcements[]
Microsoft Windows,[61] Nintendo DS[62] and mobile phone|[63] versions of the game were initially confirmed.
Wright expressed the desire to release the game on other platforms, such as seventh generation consoles|, the PlayStation Portable and the Apple Macintosh.[64] In a GameSpy interview, Wright stated, "Well, actually we are going to go on all platforms, but we will come out on PC first. We will even come out on cell phones and stuff."[65]
In a Videogamesblogger.com interview, Wright said that the game will take different forms on the different consoles. As for the Wii, Wright also said that it offers a lot of creative opportunities so the Wii may receive a different game.[66] On October 26, 2007, Wright expressed a desire to develop for the Wii because the console was his "favorite platform" (though he did not elaborate any plans for a Wii version), in what was called an "off-the-cuff" statement; as of February 13, 2008, no official announcement from Electronic Arts has been forthcoming.[67] In a February 12, 2008 interview with N'Gai Croal,[68] Wright talked briefly about the Wii version and how they plan on making the Wii controller a factor in that version of the game. In addition, representatives by EA and Maxis confirmed in an interview that a Wii version of Spore was in the early design process.[69]
Electronic Arts announced on January 15, 2008 that the Mac OS X version would be released on the same day as the PC version. The announcement was timed to coincide with the MacWorld Conference & Expo 2008|, which showed Spore running on Macs.[70][71]
On February 13, 2007, the Nintendo DS and mobile phone| versions were revealed to be spinoffs of the main game to be released on the same day as the main version, and each focusing on a single phase of gameplay. The Nintendo DS version was titled Spore Creatures, a 2D story-based RPG based in the Creature phase in which the gamer plays a creature kidnapped by a UFO and forced to survive in a strange world, with elements of Nintendogs.[72] The mobile phone version of Spore, called Spore Origins, was based on the tide pool phase, in which players try to survive as a multicellular organism, with gameplay similar to flOw.[73] On March 6, 2008, an iPhone version was demonstrated at Apple's iPhone SDK press event,[74] though there was no commitment to ship such a product given at that event.[75] The iPhone-Spore demo made use of the device's touch capabilities and 3-axis accelerometer.[76]
Electronic Arts confirmed on March 31, 2008 that Spore would be receiving post-release wikipedia:expansion packs. No other information is currently available as to what sort of content the packs will feature, but EA hinted that it will be similar to The Sims expansions.[77] One of the expansions promised is the Flora editor, allowing players to edit plant life.[78]
Special edition[]
On June 24, 2008, the Spore: Galactic Edition was announced. This special edition game is priced at $79.99, and will include a "Making of Spore" DVD video, a "How to Build a Better Being" DVD video, by wikipedia:National Geographic Channel (not included in all countries), a "The Art of Spore" hardback mini-book, a fold-out Spore poster and a 100-page Galactic Handbook.[79]
Procedural generation[]
Spore extensively uses procedural generation, rather than individual objects. Wright mentioned in an interview given at E3 2006 that the information necessary to generate an entire creature would be only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright, who presented the following analogy: "think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game, like a womb, builds the 'phenotypes' of the animal, which represent a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc."
In Spore, all creature animations are made on the fly. "The game automatically knows how to animate your creature based on how you put it together. For example, if you give your creature four equine legs, you can logically expect it to gallop around like a horse."[80]
In Wright's first public demonstration of Spore, he created a tripedal reptilian creature in the creature editor (this creature was dubbed the Willosaur by fans, after Wright, and became one of the mascots for the game, appearing prominently in the game's first trailer.[81]). The game then determined how a lizard with three legs and a prehensile tail should walk. Other animations of the lizard including hunting, eating, swimming, dragging objects, mating, playing a drum and dancing, all of which were procedurally generated based on the model that the player created. Wright then revealed several pre-made creatures which moved realistically, despite their exotic design: large, insectile creatures with multiple heads and six legs, Tweety Bird the SUV: a walking bird whose massive head caused it to tilt while turning, and a dog-like creature with a set of unusually branching limbs. Wright also humorously demonstrated a creature that looked like a Care Bear| (claiming it would be a vicious carnivore), indicating that players could create animals similar to those found in nature or popular culture.[1] This also applied to vehicles such as space ships, as demonstrated in the Gadgetoff video, in which Wright was seen piloting a UFO similar to the USS Enterprise|.[31]
Chris Hecker, who currently works on Spore (including its early prototypes), gave a presentation at GDC 2005 and Futureplay entitled "Why you should have paid attention in multivariable calculus", in which he describes the mathematics of an wikipedia:implicit surface and various methods to apply texture projections to such surfaces. Sean O'Neil worked as a consultant for Maxis "to assist with R&D involving dynamic generation and rendering of a fractal-based world".[82] He maintains a website with a demonstration of procedural planet generation and a simulation of dynamic atmospheric scattering.[83]
Wright noted that he hired a handful of demoscene programmers and artists because of their familiarity with procedural generation. An example of software they used was ParticleMan, which simulated gravitational attraction between particles in a cloud, which would be incorporated into the space phase. It helped orchestrate such gravitational dynamics as orbits, nebula formation, star formation and particle streams from sources like pulsars and black holes. ParticleMan was developed internally at Maxis by Jason Shankel and uses the GLUT OpenGL app kit developed by Mark Kilgard and the GLUT-based GLUI UI library developed by Paul Rademacher.
The official site allows users to sample a number of Spore prototypes, which include ParticleMan, SPUG, City Maze, and other software, all under 1000KB in size, save the 20MB Space, and the 45mb Gonzago.[84]
Technologies[]
Some of the advanced animation technologies used in Spore are described in the research and papers published by Steve Capell (and others), who made his Ph.D dissertation on Interactive Character Animation Using Dynamic Elastic Simulation[85] and is now employed at EA. The papers were submitted and presented to SIGGRAPH. Specific papers which cover the animation techniques are:
- Physically Based Rigging for Deformable Characters[86]
- Interactive Skeleton-Driven Dynamic Deformations[87]
- A Multiresolution Framework for Dynamic Deformations[88]
all part of the Deformable Objects and Characters projects[89] with example videos.
Other elements of the animation synthesizing techniques are presented in the Motion Libraries for Character Animation projects[90] at the University of Washington and contain more videos.
The video[91] of the skeletal editor in the project offers insight into the theory behind the animation technique.
Will Wright names the wikipedia:demoscene as a major influence on Spore,[1] which is largely based on procedural content generation developed by many demoscene veterans. Specifically, as the demoscene was originally limited by the hardware and storage capabilities of their target machines (16|/32 bit home computers such as the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga ran on floppy disks), they developed intricate algorithms to produce large amounts of content from very little initial data. Wright showed pictures from demoparties| like Assembly demo party to great applause at GDC 2005.
On August 9, 2007, SIGGRAPH 2007| featured a seminar titled Spor(T), including segments Player Driven Procedural Texturing, Creating Spherical Worlds, Fast Object Distribution, and Rigblocks: Player-Deformable Objects, given by Spore development team members Andrew Willmott, Ocean Quigley, Henry Goffin, Chris Hecker, Shalin Shodhan and David DeBry.[92] Andrew Willmott has made available slides and videos from the seminar detailing the techniques.[93]
Frank Gibeau, president of Electronic Arts' Games Label announced that Electronic Arts may use the underlying technology of Spore to develop eclectic software titles, such as action|, real-time strategy and role-playing games|, focusing on player-creation concepts. Gibeau stated,"What's so beautiful about Spore is that it's extremely malleable... you could take it to different platforms, like (Web-page) flash games, the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii. It really travels well to other platforms."[94]
Music[]
The music for the game was designed by Brian Eno, an artist famous for his work with wikipedia:ambient music. Eno has worked with Kent Jolly and Aaron McLeran to implement a simple piece of software in Spore called "The Shuffler", which procedurally generates fragments for the soundtrack from a number of samples, based on the programming language Pure Data.[95] Eno appeared in the aforementioned June 2006 lecture to give a talk alongside Wright at the Long Now Foundation. In January 2007, Eno confirmed his involvement in a lecture given at the Berlin University of the Arts.[96] Eno was involved with Wright and Spore at least as early as June 2006.[97]
Marketing history and demos[]
2004 to 2006[]
Wright snuck a Spore design document into an issue of Wired Magazine in February, 2004 (see the "Evolve! Will Wright's Grand Unified Theory" linked below). Spore was not shown two months later at E3 2005, the industry's annual trade show. GamingSteve, however, had received a few concept art images of the tribal stage.
GDC 2005[]
The 2005 Spore Tech Demo was an infamous early prototype for Spore showcased at Game Developers Conference 2005.
Cell Stage[]
The demo begins with a cell in a tidepool, who begins eating green objects as Will Wright begins to control it. Not long after, brown clouds of smoke begin to attack the cell, who steers into some bacteria, causing some damage. Will Wright makes the cell lay an egg, allowing access of an early version of the Cell Editor. Will adds a spike to the front of its body, which in turn allows the cell to kill the bacteria that hurt it prior to evolution. Will Wright explains that over time, the camera will pull out farther as the stage progresses and the cell becomes larger, before moving on to the next stage.
Aquatic Stage & Creature Stage[]
The video skips ahead to the early creature stage, when the cell has become a more complex creature. Will Wright explains that the camera has shifted from 2D to 3D, and begins to swim around. He notes that the entire underwater world is procedurally generated, and explains how the player character's animation is generated as well. He later notes that all of the creatures were created by other players, bringing the creature to a pod of jellyfish-like animals. The creature lays an egg, bringing Will to the Creature Editor. He removes the fins of the creature, replacing them with three legs and a hand at the end of its tail, as well as shortening its snout. After he is done, he brings the now terrestrial creature onto land.
Will notes that it walks in a way that conforms to the way he built the creature, and instructs it to hunt a striped one-legged creature. Will points out that his creature is attacking the creature with its tail; the area he added its weapon. After a short chase, Will's creature takes down the prey, the killing blow implied to have been inflicted to the head. After the hopper is killed, Will's creature begins to drag the carcass to a safe place to eat, only to be interrupted by a much larger predator, who gives chase to Will's creature. Wright moves the creature a far distance from the predator, stating that it would most likely rather kill a hopper instead. He guides his creature to a nest with other members of his kind, which he finds by performing a mating call. Will's creature is taken over to the other member of its kind, and the two begin to copulate (much to the delight of the audience), and an egg is laid, giving access to the editor once more. Will shows off a few creatures he had created prior to GDCe. He returns to his avatar creature, and notes that as creatures evolve, they would have to invest money for a larger brain, and once the creature's brain is large enough, it moves on to the next stage.
Tribal Stage[]
The video skips to a section of the Tribal stage, when Will's creatures have become sentient. Will states that at this stage, the game switches from a "first-person eater" to a Real-Time Strategy. He then brings up the concept of weaponry, primarily "monkeys with guns," saying that there is something "cool" about the idea. He explains that the creature is now at the "top" of its evolutionary ladder in terms of body plan, though at this level he can now purchase various weapons and other tools for the tribe. He spawns in a spear rack, prompting the tribe to investigate.
Will notes that more elaborate procedural verbs are beginning to come into play, stating that many of the actions you make will garner some form of response from the creatures you control. Some of the tripods equip themselves with their new-found weaponry, and Wright decides to buy the creatures a campfire before they "get in trouble." The creatures go to investigate the campfire, with Will noting that the tribe is rather excitable.
Will explains that, depending on how the player works their way through previous stages, their creatures may behave in different ways, noting becoming an emotion-based society and a logic-based society in particular. He proceeds to buy the tribe a set of drums, as the tribe begins to dance, prompting the audience to cheer. He compares this stage to the game Populous, buying tools for a tribe and controlling groups of creatures which he can send out on skirmishes. He brings up that later in the stage, he will have to compete with other tribes of creatures. Finally, he notes that the main focus of the stage is to upgrade the main hut, a mechanic that works in a very similar way to upgrading a creature's brain. He purchases a better hut for the tribe, and explains that as he upgrades the hut, it will become possible to buy more advanced tools, aadd more slots for tribe members, and have more space for food. After this, he says that the final upgrade of the hut will bring the player to the next stage.
City Stage & Civilization Stage[]
(Under construction)
Space Stage[]
(Under construction)
GDC and E3 2006[]
In 2006, a flurry of information came in. GDC '06 showed working prototypes of Spore and several talks were held. One of these talks concerned self-pollinated content, the mechanism of the massively single-player style of Spore. An issue of Computer Gaming World featured a few pages concerning Spore.
E3 2006 saw several demos given by Will Wright himself. At this point, it was clear the game was working and very well might represent the final version. Differences from GDC '05 included:
- More creature parts
- Walking vehicles
- New heads-up displays
- New UFO style
- A working texture editor
- Different terraforming tools
- Planet and city differences
- Diplomatic consequences
2007 to 2008[]
June 17, the Spore Creature Creator was ready for release.
September 5, the game was finally released in Europe. In other places across the world, it was released 2 days later.
October 15, Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack announced was the first Spore Add-on. Article
November 18, Spore Creepy and Cute was released. Article
References[]
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- ↑ NSFW: Horny Gamers Upload 'Sporn' To YouTube | The Underwire from Wired.com
- ↑ Spore Creature Creator Spawns "Sporn" and Upsets EA, eFluxMedia.
- ↑ Free EA software release spawns 'sporn', MSNBC.
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- ↑ Template:Cite web
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- ↑ GameSpot, Oct. 26, 2007.
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ 1Up Spore Creatures preview
- ↑ 1Up Spore Mobile preview
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Live coverage of the iPhone Software Roadmap announcement
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
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- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
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- ↑ http://grail.cs.washington.edu/theses/CapellPhd.pdf
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- ↑ Template:Cite web
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- ↑ Deformable Characters
- ↑ Motion Libraries for Character Animation
- ↑ http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/deformation/Capell-2002-ISD-divx.avi
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web