Bubba

http://www.spore.com/what/screensmovies

This is starting to look very cartoonish. I'm having second thoughts about buying it....

Original teaser at GDC 2005:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...03330420559198


What happened?

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If you aim at everything you will hit something but you won't know what it is.

SlyMaelstrom

Yeah, I saw the newer previews a few months back and thought the same thing. Looks like the producers make them kid it down quite a bit. I don't know if it won't be fun, but it certainly feels less scientific and more pop-culture.

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Bubba

I downloaded the creature creator trial and I must say it's very cool. It appears that each piece has its own internal skeleton which allows the programmers to just plop the pieces down anywhere that's appropriate. This makes a lot of sense since the only thing left to do after this is to blend the vertices to match where the piece attaches to the body.

The creature creator doesn't seem to care much about how the character is balanced since I can create a creature with legs far behind it's center of gravity and yet it can still stand and walk.

I highly recommend that those interested in the game download the creature creator trial from their website.

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If you aim at everything you will hit something but you won't know what it is.

Mario F.

What confuses me on Spore is the whole procedural generation thing. From what I skimmed through, the environment is meant to be whole procedurally generated. But this can't happen on the fly can it? I mean, they must have some other servers generating these worlds and stacking them for the game servers to feed on. How else could the game servers sustain such a load while addressing millions of players requests every second?

So... it's not really procedurally generated, right? But pre-generated. Or do you see how this could be done?

There's also the problem of synchronism... what dictates the generation of a world? The first player that enters it? What will happen to the second player who enters just a micro second later? I just don't get the whole thing...

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

Bubba

The pieces seem to be pre-fabs that have parameters than can be altered...to a point. Basic things like rotation, scale, translation, etc. But they all have their limits. Still with enough pieces you can produce some very interesting creatures. I want to see how these creatures fare in the real game, however.

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If you aim at everything you will hit something but you won't know what it is.

indigo0086

I'm totally in it for spore, this and Starcraft two are going to get me back into pc gaming for a while (not that I'm giving up console gaming).

From what I've heard from early early (this game has been delayed for a while) interviews and showcases, the skeletal animations are indeed procedural, based on the overall structure of the creature, it creates an animation for all it's movement. From what I understand of the environment is generated based on your character's needs as an evolving lifeform, including other lifeforms. If you are a dominant carnivorous species your terrain will mirror that, having weaker and smaller vegetarian creatures to sustain your population.

In the early game they were saying that you have your own little galaxy and as you visit the other ones, you see creatures that evolve differently from yours and thati s also generated procedurally. I'm thinking there are attributes or scores that's kept in a database locally or something and that determines how your environment and neighboring planets are going to look.

However it is, they showed some crazy stuff. I just wonder if all the planets will be similar to earth or will we have strange planets which are of different atmospheres.

guesst

You could kind of see it going that way in the old video. Actually, it seems a bit of a reversal to my eyes. As you hit the civilization stage in the old game it changed to being all rounded edges and exaggerated city sizes, more so when you got to space, iconic I think he said in the video. But now it's the other way. The lower levels are cute and the higher levels are serious.

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SlyMaelstrom

One of my creature creations. It's my favorite so far. I just call them Totem, for now, until I can think of a clever name. This is it sitting down.

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Bubba

Sly, I'm sure you can see why I don't think this is completely procedural as they say it is. The paint schemes are following a template to be sure and the skeletons are never different in any of the pieces you attach. In fact you can alter their shape and the underlying skeletons never change. IE: Pre-fab pieces with underlying skeletons already attached. I do think the way the system figures out how the creature walks is procedural.

I'm also experiencing some odd popping and buzzes in my sound effects. I hope the game does not suffer from this. I've got an Audigy 2 so perhaps it may be incompatible or something.

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If you aim at everything you will hit something but you won't know what it is.

Sentral

Here's my inappropriate creation playing with its babies!

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Mario F.

I think I can see the fun factor for some, but not sure if I really like the artwork choice. The theme seems very interesting. Heck, even I could give it a shot ("even I", simply because I've lost interest in most games these days). But if it's to just successfully evolve 3-headed, or 3-footed, cartoonish creatures without introducing fundamental biological rules and to move them to a basic strategy game once they reach space age... then probably no.

I long for a complicated even if pointless game.

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

glo

Weren't you working on a multiplayer roguelike project? I was quite hyped up at the time.

Mario F.

I still am. In fact I plan to post something related to it soon.

My loss of interest relates instead to not finding games these days to be that much interesting. A debate probably I don't want to get into since it's going to lead nowhere. Regardless, war and in-depth turn based strategy games where always my favorite - and Mediaeval sits right in there.

What I don't like is how games are developed these days. Not games as a whole. From the several 4 player variants of Mahjong (my favorite being the Japanese rules) to older computer games (like NWN, Half-Life 2, Diablo II, the Operational Art of War and Hearts of Iron) to even jigsaw puzzles, which I will always be hopelessly addicted, I still play or entertain myself with those.


EDIT: On a side note, something I just remembered...

There is one family of games that I was never interested in, except for ONE. MS Flight Simulator. It's probably my biggest blunder not having followed this game from the start. Today it became a massive game, quiet entertaining from what I see and that I probably have no hope to learn how to play anymore (it apparently takes an inordinate amount of time and dedication, qualities you tend to lose as you get older) and it also became very confusing to pick on a store... one just doesn't know exactly what he needs to play it. I regreat not having became a fan earlier on.

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

indigo0086

Ever play company of heroes? It's a WWII RTS, Awesome game.

h3ro

That is by far the best RTS ever made. For once you dont win by buying X of unit Y and rush the enemy base.