The Spore Creature Creator

[Occulus]

If you've been anywhere but under a rock, you've probably heard of Will Wright's new entry into the gaming world: Spore. Spore is, at its heart, a creation game; rather than putting the player in the role of Luke Skywalker, this game puts the player in the shoes of George Lucas. There's been a great deal of hype surrounding this game, though, and I think we all know that games rarely, if ever, live up to their promises during development.

The heart and soul of Spore lies in its editors. Instead of tools used to alter the game being in the hands of a chosen few (who also must have knowledge of how to use a 3D modeling application, texturing in said application, animation, and so forth), Spore makes those very tools an integral part of the game. In fact, the editors used for content creation in Spore are as much a game (perhaps the better word is "toy") as the game itself.

With player content creation being a major feature, the people at Maxis decided to release just one, small part of the game- the Creature Creator- a few months prior to Spore's release. Since the game uploads content to a Maxis server and populates other players' games with those creations, by the time Spore is released, there should be a vast library of content for people playing Spore to download and use. No two people playing this game, even if sitting side by side over the exact same network, will ever see exactly the same content as anyone else unless they choose to... or something.

Nobody was sure if it would work- until now.

The Spore Creature Creator was supposed to be released on the 17th, but Maxis got overly ambitious and seeded early copied to game reviewers, online magazines, and celebrities. With the Creature Creator thus entered into the wild, it was only a matter of time before the 'free' creator (the retail one costs $10 and features four times the available parts) appeared... well, everywhere. Thus, the retail version goes on sale the 17th, but the free one is already out there if one is so inclined as to go to the trouble of finding it.

This, actually, has ended up being a good thing- at this moment, there are 8898 creatures (several thousand added in the last 24 hours alone!) available for download. Someone made Yoshi- it's creepy how he moves, because it, well, looks and moves like Yoshi- someone else made a walking joint (a nice, big fat one, too). There's a tic-tac somewhere in there, too.

Oops, I lied. Now there are 8970 creatures. By the time Spore is actually released in September, there will very likely be hundreds of thousands of creatures, if not over a million, or more. By the time I get home from work, there will be well over ten thousand.

Drumroll, please: I am very pleased to inform you all, having played it at a friend's house, that the Spore Creature Creator completely lives up to every last bit of the hype around just this little part of the game. If the rest of Spore is this polished, we'll all be putting it right next to Portal on the top shelf of the bar. I haven't ever seen anything even remotely close to this level of customization in any game ever. Just the free, limited-part version enables the player to create so many different and varied creatures that it's hard to see if there is a limit.

The retail version of the Spore Creature Creator, as well as the official free download demo (in the wild now) become available Tuesday, June 17th- and the hours of fun you'll have creating your creatures is definitely worth every last penny of that $10- and a whole lot more!

Oh- 9155 creatures as I hit "post message." This thing is just awesome.

[Occulus]

1. Continuing the Spore Creature Creator Review

Having played with the CC on my own now, I'd like to take a moment to go over some of the HOWTO information, as well as a few other things I didn't get to in my limited review above.

First, the Spore Creature Creator is so easy to use, a small child could easily make a creature. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, it is possible to make a full and detailed creature without ever touching the keyboard except to enter the creature's name. Navigation around the modeling area is a simple right-click/drag operation (I don't know about the Mac and its single-button mouse, but I'm sure it's something like the Option key+click+drag), and all parts are placed via the drag/drop combination. Arms and legs can be placed only on the body of the creature; limbs can then be stretched, rotated, and torn in two (no, there's no blood). CTRL-drag allows you to place new limbs extending from existing joints; ALT-drag makes a copy of a part.

Here's a screenshot of what you might see when you fire up the CC to make a new creature:



Let's take a look at the interface first. On the left, arranged in columns, are the parts and pieces you will use to create your creature. In the demo version, which goes live tomorrow as of this writing, you'll see about a quarter of the total available parts (and please believe me when I say even this is more than enough to provide a diversion each day and never run out of ideas). The palette is organized into tabs containing arms and legs, mouths, eyes, and so forth. Of particular note is that each and every part not only adds to the look of your creature, but also has actual meaning to the gameplay, adding modifiers to your creature which will allow it to flourish in an uncertain world- or die trying.

Below this, starting at the bottom left of the image, are a row of buttons: options, the Sporepedia, and the Spore Guide. Options is pretty obvious- video settings and so forth. The Sporepedia arranges creatures, either on your hard drive or at spore.com, into a sort of trading card interface, making it easy to review or edit any creature you've previously accessed or created. Of note is the Spore Catalog option, available only when the editor is in online mode (logged in). I don't know what will go there, but there have been hints that Wright and Maxis are in talks with a company that will be able to make sculptures of creatures on demand (I bet they're going to use a 3D printer of some sort), among other things.

To the Wright (HA!) of these buttons, you'll see money. Uh-oh. Yes, Spore uses DNA points as a limiter upon how complex your creature can be (as well as another display I'll get to in a moment). In the CC (demo and retail), it seems the player had more than enough DNA to do the job and thus only the second display applies, but it's pretty obvious that in the actual game this September you'll be required to make money to buy parts- and, as an educated guess, also perform quests or achieve goals to gather parts (scavenging them from fallen foes may be another option). In any case, in the demo, as you can see from the image, you begin with 2000 DNA points.

The four gold buttons that are near center bottom of the image are the mouseclick navigation controls. It is not apparent unless you read the readme files, but you can hold SHIFT+Scroll to zoom in. Else, you can use the + and - buttons; the arrows rotate ala a rightclick/drag.

The "Name Your Creature" area is actually a button that pops up a menu, where you can add or change the name, add a description, and (VERY important!) add tags like the ones used over at Daily Kos and other blogs. You can use the tag option to put in single words spaced by a comma and a space to allow other users to filter your creations in (or out) of their own searches. This is but one of several additions to Spore's ancillary capabilities that adds a touch of real-life, multiplayer interaction to what is actually a single-player game.

The next two buttons to the right are what they look like: undo and redo buttons. Again, this is very important to include in this sort of character editor (especially one with the potential for complexity the Spore CC has), and again shows an attention to interface detail that I haven't seen in quite a while.

The four buttons on the lower right are, in order, Save, New Creation, Cancel, and Save and Exit.

Moving to the upper right in the image:

The ! indicator at the bottom is for Diet. This reports, based upon the mouth you choose, what your creature can eat. The next one up (I'll go bottom to top) is Health, followed by Speed, Socialize, Attack, and Abilities. Health, obviously, is how healthy your creature type is, and thus how many hit points it has. Speed reports how fast your creature can move, but the actual speed is determined by where you place the limbs, and in what configuration. Getting a really fast creature is honestly a matter of trial and error, but you'll definitely enjoy the process. Socialize and Attack are similarly guided (or misguided!) by which relevant parts you choose to place on your creature. Abilities report your creature special Ability level, and this is one of the things that took me by surprise: you can add specials to your creature, such as spitting a ball of purple bleagh or becoming invisible or such.

The odd-looking graph in the extreme upper right of the above image is the Complexity Meter. This is really my one and only serious quibble with the Spore CC interface. The complexity meter fills up and turns from green to red as you build your creature. When the bar is completely red, you can't add any more parts. However, there's no built-in context for what the complexity meter is trying to tell you. I for one would deeply appreciate some sort of numerical display, say x/100, so I knew more precisely what I can and cannot add to my creatures. All in all, though, this is a very small and nitpicky complaint.

At the upper center of the screenshot, there are three important buttons. These are, from the left, Build Mode, Test Drive Mode, and Paint Mode. I'll now describe Build Mode in detail:

Build mode is where you will do your actual, um, building. Building a creature's body is pretty straightforward: click the body to move the whole thing around, click the spine to manipulate the spinal column (in any way you please!), and click the ends of the spine to extend it. Interface elements in the build area come and go as you mouse over them. One quibble here is that the individual bones of the spine have no tolerances; your mouse must be directly over a bone to drag it around.

Scrolling the mouse wheel while positioned on any spinal bone (or in fact any interactive part of the creature) causes that portion of the body to grow or shrink. Let's shrink down the bottom of this creature, add a pair each of legs and arms, a mouth, and some eyes:



And there you have it: a Spore creature made in about two minutes. It's not done- there's still paint mode, which I won't go into here; it's very self-explanatory and I won't torture our dialup users with even more screenies.

I should add here that dialup users will not have a problem. Compressed, the creatures are 20-35K .png images which contain all of the information necessary to make the creature- body, bones, decorations, and all. You can literally drag and drop creature images directly from your web browser into the creature creator and see the 3D version of the creature's image, edit it, and walk it around in Test Drive mode (which, incidentally, allows you to see all the actions your creature might take ingame, as well as baby creatures, a screenshot/email postcard system, and a button to allow you to upload a video of your creature to YouTube- right from within the game!).

Here's the finished version of the creature you saw me starting above. If you get the Spore CC, you can copy this exact image from this page into the creator in windowed mode (drag and drop it) and test drive or edit it yourselves! Ladies and gentlemen, I now present Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA):



Edit: here's a picture of Chambliss and kids:



You'll notice, Sen. Chambliss has to perform a reach-around to get anything done. This is sooooo intentional.

:rofl:

Just drag and drop this image into the Spore CC to test drive or edit Senator Saxby Chambliss. :D

As I said in my OP, this creature creator is more than worth the $10 they're asking for, especially when you consider that all of your creations are added to the overall creature database at Maxis (IF you're online), thus adding to the total number of creatures available when Spore is officially released on September 7. Go- download or buy the Spore Creature Creator, and make some wacky, crazy, or just plain wrong creatures for us all to use in the full game this fall!

[Systematic Chaos]

2. WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT!!!!

(Um... the Creature Creator, NOT Saxby Chambliss!)

:bounce:

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

3. Do you need the full version of the CC to drag and drop the image?

I can't seem to get it to work. (Any advice would be great.)
And even though I only have the trial version, just 10 minutes of play and I'm ready to put down the money for the full version.
This game is going to be awesome.

[Occulus]

4. I made that one with the trial version

You may need to go to spore.com and look up the good Senator so you can get it from there, but dragging and dropping it ought to work. You do need to already be in build mode, though. If all else fails, just save it somewhere and drop it in from there. If that fails (it shouldn't), go to the My Documents folder (I'm assuming windows) and look for a 'My Spore Creations' folder, and put it in there. If it says something about unloadable parts, the creature was made with the full version and not the demo.

If you pay for and download the game from EA, like I did, you may need to reinstall DirectX to avoid a crash to desktop; if that doesn't work, install the Spore CC, say no to installing the latest download manager during installation, and then uninstall the EA download manager completely (it'll leave the Spore CC installed), as the EA download manager seems to conflict with Spore. Typical, that...

I'm tagging several of them- Republican Senators all- with the Senator tag on the Sporepedia so they're real easy to find. Thus far, I have Chambliss, McCain, and Lieberman (edit: his seems to be missing for some reason). And senator McCain's is just... precious. Really. :silly:

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

5. Somehow I got it working. Perhaps I needed the full version...

Hey, it's only $10.
And oh man, I love watching the Senator from Georgia walk. Awesome! :thumbsup:

[Occulus]

6. You now need to actually save it to your drive

Just drag it off to the desktop, and drag-n-drop it into the creator from there.