Spore

With Spore coming back in fashion at my school, I thought it would be fitting to dig it out of my collection to play again. I was amazed by the graphics it was able to present on my current(gaming) computer. It is far better than I’d thought, though Galactic Adventures crashed immediately after the tribal cutscene, which was a bummer.

One of my friends showed me his creature, which was far more aesthetically pleasing than any which I had made previously, which brought up an interesting part of the game which I had always neglected: the appearance of the creature. I realize that many of them are designed to look cool or resemble some real life creature, but I had never tried this approach. My method was always to build something with an overbearing sense of functionality; usually coming out as giant spindly monstrosities which were monocolored.

This time I hope to actually make something worth looking at, which are the only kind of thing for tribal and civilization stages. If there can be a rational behind the design of a creature, how it should look, then I think there should be, after all it is simply ridiculous to make something as uninteresting as many of my early creations were; despite their effectiveness which guaranteed their survival.

With the advent of Galactic Adventures came a new reason to build cool realistic creatures. Though unlike space/civilization/tribal stages it also allowed some of the original anatomical functions which made creature mode so awesome, to come back. The editor of Galactic adventures also made it so much more interesting because it allows you to make whole story lines and plots which make the game richer, it also created an oportunity to make your creature behave like you designed your creatures to. The entire process takes a long time to get right, though it is usually worth it, a deep plot with developed characters can make even the most tired players to find something new and amazing about the game.

I have the entire series of spore PC games, the Cute and Creepy parts pack is somewhat nice, though I’ve not found any justification for my little brother buying it, but of course, if you really want to make as many diverse and different creatures as possible then its good. However the Galactic Adventures expansion pack is a must, it adds far more replayability than the original game had in itself.

Spore may be an aging game, but if you’ve missed it, then I’d highly recommend you find a copy, it is worth playing and while some of the stages are rather uninteresting, they are usually worth playing, they certainly make important changes to the species history, and eventually come to enriching the space stage further.

Spore Level Design Considerations

IIn Galactic Adventures in spore, the amount of experience/whatever points is determined by the number of people who have played it and their ratings for it. This makes the level design and enjoyability of the level even more important than ever. A good level should usually have some kind of coherent plot, preferably something that would engage player’s interest.

The scenery is also very important, if there is an appropriate amount of scenery present in the level, the level is also appropriately decorated, and the flow of it is coherent, then it will, with luck, become a far more popular level than it would be otherwise. If there is some kind of atmosphere that is desired, then you, as the level designer, must commit to it completely, otherwise you tend to have a jumbled together level which puts off the player.

The creatures used in these adventures should be used only where their designs are appropriate, unless it is designed to be a parody. If you have a planet which is designed to be a Buddhist monastery, you should not have dino-Jesus, unless of course he is trying to convert the creatures to his religion. It should make sense that it would be a bad idea to mix things that have no connection to each other in the plot. another example, if you have a cyborg invasion, you probably don’t want to have a bunch of Vikings defending, unless of course you can justify this as the cyborgs invading the Viking planet, which would probably be an awesome narrative if you don’t mind me saying so.

Overall, the entire thing should work like a well written book, if you are writing about Vikings and Jesus, then you have to find a way of justifying their coexistence, even if it in itself does not necessarily make sense to begin with. Either way be creative, but finish your ideas, don’t release a halfway realized level, finish it before you present it to the world in all its glory.

There was a single amazing level which I played which explained basic molecular biology, it was incredibly creative, it was done really well and if you can make any introduction to any subject, then do so; people will learn about it.

These tools were made for the spore player to use because EA realized that the kind of player it brought was overflowing with creativity. Spore will continue to exist as it is mostly player driven, and as long as the players still have ideas, there will be new content to be found for it.

Please, I implore you to make a Dino-Jesus level which follows Dino-Jesus through the new testament, it will be amazing, and probably do fairly well.