What's Spore, you ask? You could call it the game version of the 'Powers of Ten' movie. It starts with you in control of a single-celled organism floating around, trying not to get eaten. If you survive long enough, you'll evolve your creature all the way up to sentience and the stars. At each stage in the evolution of your species, you'll be able to enter the 'creature editor', which lets you add or remove cilia, fins or legs, change the bone structure, attach defensive weapons or whatever else you want to do. Through all this, Spore aims to incorporate gameplay elements from PacMan, Diablo, Populous, Simcity, Civ-- and that's all before you manage to build your UFO and zoom around your planet, your solar system and galaxy.

This might sounds ludicrously ambitious, but that's not all the game promises: by generating your creature's model, textures and animations procedurally (on the fly), the code needed to reproduce your rampaging killing machine will take up a tiny space. This means that the game can populate yor universe from a massive pile of species either pre-made by Maxis or created by other players, choosing the ones that it thinks would best fit a world's ecosystem.

Another neat twist that the game will bring is that while the game will start out really goal-based, the farther you progress and the closer you get to being a 'galactic god', the more like a giant sandbox the game will become. Imagine diplomacy with other star-faring species, bloody interstellar conquest or Uplift/2001-style genetic meddling!

Oh, and if there's something about the game you were wondering about, you can always email Will Wright himself: WWright@maxis.com

Also, awesome video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...559198&q=spore , go to around 25:00 for astronomical stuff.

Wow. Just wow.

Watch that video!

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

This will be an incredible awesome game. I can't wait to pre-order it!

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"4th Law of Modern Thermodynamics: Where Mihoshi is, Chaos Reigns." ~W. Hakubi
"Gun control is hitting your target; Recycling is reloading your brass." ~ Lex of Dirty Work.

Well, that is very interesting. They're saying Q3 this year. It looks very good but I've been disappointed before when it came to games with a great concept but not so great execution.

I did watch through the entire video. You start out with a single celled creature and get up to galactic interaction with alien species. I do like how they've done the galaxy - one of my pet peeves with many of the space games is that the galaxy/universe is usually so tiny and uninteresting. Of course, from a gameplay point of view, "large" can also be a problem, so it is tricky.

I got a kick out of the Star Trek and Star Wars inspired bits.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Well, if anyone can do it, it's Will Wright(Simcity, the Sims, etc.).

If there are any ideas you have, you really should e-mail him, he usually answers people within a day. I sent him a question about whether asteroids will be in the game, and if they might be able to hit planets, and he said it is a possibility!

Seriously, e-mail him, we might be able to get some more good astronomy into the mainstream common knowledge!

I especially liked the use of the TOS "fight" music. Hilarious!

Hey, is it bad that I want to create a species in this that will be the scourge of the galaxy? It'll be automatically downloaded into other people's games... bwahaha!

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I know that's what I'll be doing. All who oppose will be killed and prisoners teleported into space.

What do they mean by "other players"? Do they mean that this will be a massively multiplayer game (with possibly a monthly fee?), or they mean that this will be a generaly single player game where you can download other players creations?

Anyway, this game looks awesome! I hope my computer will be able to make it...

Got my answer on Wikipedia:

Wright calls the game a "massively single player online game". Simultaneous multiplayer gaming is not a feature of Spore. The creatures, vehicles, and buildings the player can create will be uploaded automatically to a central database (or a peer-to-peer system), catalogued and rated for quality (based on how many users have downloaded the object or creature in question), and then re-distributed to populate other player's games. The data transmitted will be extremely small, only 1 kilobyte according to Wright. (Think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game builds the animal itself, which represents a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc..)

When the player progresses to a new stage, Spore will import creatures as needed. For example, if a flying carnivore is needed to balance the ecosystem, a creature that fits that description will be downloaded. The editor also allows the player to design things ranging from species to custom buildings and vehicles. That includes tanks, aircraft, submarines, boats, and UFOs. If the player has no internet connection, Wright mentioned, it is possible to fit tens of thousands of objects and creatures on the game's disc itself, due to their small size. This means that people with no Internet connection should still have a balanced ecosystem, even if it happens to be far more limited in diversity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_%28game%29

Yes, it will be free.

That would be awesome if when it comes out we could set up a league or something here.

Yes, the Amok Time battle music. I liked that, but I have to wonder if that is just in the beta and whether it will make it to the retail version. I got a laugh out of the "Close Encounters" and "Deathstar" moments.

Here's the music online if you want it:

http://www.startreksoundtracks.com/s...-doomsday.html

I've played that a couple of times while reading a book with a good fight sequence .

You aren't going to be the only one that will try to come up with some nasties. It looks like it will be possible to customize a galaxy quite a bit. I'm really hoping they did this right, there are a number of SF scenarios I'd like to play out.

By the way, my all time favorite computer game is Master of Orion followed by Master of Orion II. However, Master of Orion III is painfully bad - when it was announced it sounded amazing, but they kept reducing the feature set while stretching the delivery date. In that case, they bit off more then they could handle. In some ways it was painfully incomplete, in other ways there was too much complexity: There were so many details the game wasn't fun.

"Ascendancy" was anothor horror. That one was especially painful because there were some really great ideas that I've yet to see matched in another game, but a completely braindead AI.

There are some other examples of games like these that had some good (even great) concepts but failed for one reason or another.

The upshot is that I would love to find a new good space simulation/competition game bit I've been bitten often enough that I need to see the final product before I get too excited.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Absolutely correct, though I still liked it in spite of the bad AI. I even still play it once in a while.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

I predict Wright will evolve into a zillionaire! You know, there's no more need to keep in check with reality.
;^D

In the video, he put the volcanoes on that one moon with the UFO to give it an atmosphere.

Is there possibly a way you could somehow create an artificial volcanoe?

In real life?

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Start drilling. Keep drilling. Drill some more. At some point, volcano.

Assuming, of course, a molten mantle.

Added: This comes out Q3 this year, right? Now is that April 1 - June 30 in the US? Q3 in Canada is October 1 - December 31.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I watched the whole thing. I think it will be fun, and I was searching for something like this. My hopes were really high when I read that you are basically making life and then go through the entire evolution etc. etc. However, it's too arcadish, I thought it would be more serious... He did a good job though.

If they made it too serious, then the programming would be too large, it would take up a ton of space and be hard to run, and also it wouldn't be very fun.

SOme sites say Q3 some say Q4.

Also I think Q3 here is later than that.

That is awesome... Will there be a UNIX version? Does it work with Unichrome graphics? Does it object to a 2.2 GHz processor with 256 MB L2 cache? Is there a CVS version available?

Edit: Grr, stupid Flash plugin keeps crashing on me...

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If ignorance is bliss, why is the world so full of misery?