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See the original image at arstechnica.com

Of vast intellect: hands on with Spore Creature Creator

arstechnica.com — Playing with Spore's Creature Creator this weekend was a little surreal. We've seen the feature demonstrated many times before, but actually getting some quality time to play at home was a welcome experience. Maxis and EA arranged for a variety of press and celebrities to take the creator for a spin this weekend, and we got our chance to submit a c

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  • Syphon8, on 06/16/2008, -1/+24I was so pleasantly surprised with how smooth it ran on an older system.

    I look forward to populating a world with sentient mudkipz.
    • d0onut, on 06/16/2008, -3/+1My graphics card can't handle it.
      • HolyChimp, on 06/16/2008, -1/+4If your graphic card can't handle it then you don't actually have a graphics card. Runs smooth as butter on the integrated GMA950 in my MacBook.
      • illmatic8, on 06/17/2008, -0/+0your card must be made out of pure donkey rectum
      • BearinG, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Is it ISA or what..
    • shredswithpiks, on 06/16/2008, -7/+2:(
    • EvilFerret, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1I tested it out on my almost legacy laptop, runs like a charm. 1.6Ghz centrino, 1GB PC2700, 9600 Pro and of course the 4200RPM HDD. I even went into settings and cranked up the options. I'm sure its' not going to be able to run the full game on high, but still it surprised me how optimized it was :)
    • ligyron, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2I'd download Spore, but I really don't want to have SecuROM stuck on my computer. It's there running even after you uninstall Spore and there's no easy and reliable way to remove it.
  • dickrising, on 06/16/2008, -11/+0Second.
  • brentj84062, on 06/16/2008, -6/+0Wow, spore is getting really exciting!
  • kuchino, on 06/16/2008, -1/+15The Evil Care Bears Will Rise! I will make sure of it
    • ZenMojo, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2Don't mind me...just populating the universe with Moogles...
  • venomoushealer, on 06/16/2008, -2/+14This is a beautiful week. Firefox 3 tomorrow, spore creature creator on thursday...what next? could it get much better?
    • kuchino, on 06/16/2008, -0/+33meeting a woman?
      • dickrising, on 06/16/2008, -16/+1I lyke your mum.
      • FredFredrickson, on 06/16/2008, -0/+11Yes, that would indeed make it better.
      • sinurgy, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Temporarily...then she'll become a girlfriend and you'll wonder why they hell you listened to advice on women from the digg community!
    • AdmiralAcbar, on 06/16/2008, -6/+2knowing that the creature creator has already been leaked? the pirate bay baby:D
    • vanishedlight, on 06/16/2008, -3/+4littlebigworld and hl ep 3 are released
    • somon90, on 06/16/2008, -0/+1Thursday‽

      Damn it....
    • Harabeck, on 06/16/2008, -0/+6Thursday? The website says the 17th, which is tomorrow, otherwise known as Tuesday.
    • Elliuotatar, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2This week sucks! I really need to get work done, but between the Spore Creature Creator, Metal Gear Solid 4, the Hulk movie, the pyro update for TF2, and a family vacation scheduled for this weekend, I ain't getting anything done till next tuesday at the earliest!

      Why the hell do they have to release all the interesting movies and games at once? Wtf is wrong with these people? I can't give proper attention to any one! I'd like to go see Kung Fu Panda again but that ain't happening with all this other ***** to keep me occupied!
    • BearinG, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Duke Nukem Forever coming out before this week-end?
    • Tennouheika, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Pyro updates + 2 new maps for TF2. This week is fantastic.
  • Stuart750, on 06/16/2008, -0/+3I'm going to make all my creatures goosestep.
    • Elliuotatar, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1I've seen a worm with the word ***** on its back, I'm sure a swastika creature isn't far behind.
  • Kn1ghtmare, on 06/16/2008, -2/+15They would do better to not sell the creature creator I imagine. Give it away, get people excited for Spore again, then reel them in with the full game.
    • dudefather, on 06/16/2008, -0/+11the free demo version does just that (25% of the parts available in the full creature creator), I must have played it for about 12 hours over the weekend. After that £5 was a small price to pay for more parts

      one of my creatures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ienKZSTMfk0



      • MurderousKitty, on 06/17/2008, -0/+0Almost looks like one of the Garthim from the Dark Crystal...
    • jpop, on 06/16/2008, -0/+2You'd think that, but the beancounters are in charge these days. Money now is better than potential money tomorrow.
  • PopASquatt, on 06/16/2008, -7/+17Take that Christians!
    • dsmx, on 06/16/2008, -3/+10Erm technically spore supports intelligent design.
      • Incomp3tnt, on 06/17/2008, -5/+3I think he's implying that their god is becoming less and less unique. We can already create our own creatures in the real world to a certain extent via hybrid DNA. Glow in the dark salmon is a far cry from Spore and the Christian god, but everyone starts somewhere.
    • SLockhart, on 06/17/2008, -1/+5Not all Christians are young earth creationists. I myself am a evolutionary creationist. I believe what the evolutionists teach us and that God got the ball rolling.
      • dsmx, on 06/17/2008, -1/+2You see my problem is that if you look at god from a statistical point of view he must exist. IF you consider that god existing has a very low probability and the universe is practically infinite it can only imply that god must exist in some form somewhere in the universe. What form he takes is open to question but the odds dictate that a god like being must exist somewhere in the universe.
        • MacSuxWindozSux, on 06/17/2008, -0/+5LOL "statistical point of view he must exist."
          No instead he probably exists.
        • ZenMojo, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1This is why I spent a great deal of my life as an agnostic.
        • dsmx, on 06/17/2008, -1/+1Statistics say he must exist you can argue about it all you want but unless there is absolutely no chance of god existing in any form in any way statistics say he/she/it must exists.
        • d4nie1, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Your argument is pretty baseless. Noone knows how big the universe is or if it is infinite. All we know is that it is very big. There is no evidence, statistical or otherwise, that the universe was created by an intelligent being. All people who believe it was are merely going by faith.
    • MacSuxWindozSux, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2Evolutionary creationists? seems a lot more reasonable than people who flat out deny the possibility of creatures gradually changing over time due to genetic abnormality and natural selection.

      Still when you factor god into the equation it comes down to anything being possible at all without need to provide any supporting evidence. Because really God could have created this world 5 minutes ago with everything in motion as is. You would never know.
      • alecks, on 06/17/2008, -0/+15 min ago? Why not 5 seconds ago? Actually, why not THIS VERY MOMENT? By that logic, THIS VERY moment is god creating the Universe.

        That actually sounds very Buddhist...
        • d4nie1, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Actually I think this is just the staging area. It's all a simulation for God to test his universe before he really creates it.
    • TantrooM, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2Take what? I play games in God mode all the time. Therefore God must exist! For I am IDDQD!

      And plus the creature would not have existed if you did not create it no?
  • goeric, on 06/16/2008, -0/+4My creature, Grabby, can out grab any of yours. 12 arms and counting!
  • Super6, on 06/16/2008, -4/+8"Hands-on" is so much funnier when applied to this creature http://digg.com/pc_games/Herpes_the_best_Spore_Cre ...
  • eqisow, on 06/16/2008, -2/+17http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4239597/Spore_Creature ...

    Creature creator on TPB. Enjoy!
    • ANT1138, on 06/16/2008, -3/+1is there a version for macs?
      • eqisow, on 06/16/2008, -1/+1I don't think so (nor Linux, for that matter) - but I should note that the full creature creator comes out tomorrow for $10 - so remember to check back on the Bay. ;)
    • FredFredrickson, on 06/16/2008, -6/+4Come on guys, this game has literally taken them many years to produce. Put some food on their tables and pay for the goddamned thing. It's only $10.
      • Sakumi, on 06/16/2008, -1/+2Why the hell would you spend $10 on a small piece of the game? I'll wait til the full game that comes with the full creature creator. Retarded to put down $10 as a "down payment" basically.
      • aladrin, on 06/16/2008, -1/+12It's the trial version. You aren't stealing any food from their mouths.
        • FredFredrickson, on 06/16/2008, -11/+2Any time you take something for free that you should normally pay for, you're taking the food out of someone's mouth, somewhere on the chain.

          And I'm not some police-loving, conservative *****, either. I've just seen too many good game franchises get left behind because nobody buys 'em.
        • FredFredrickson, on 06/16/2008, -10/+1Why am I getting dugg down for this? It's ***** true.

          If you think it's okay to take whatever you feel is due to you, price be damned, then you're probably one of the masses of imbeciles out there who has not the will or the ability to create anything worth selling yourself.
        • mroboy, on 06/16/2008, -0/+12What part of "trial version that you don't have to pay for" didn't you understand?
        • otros, on 06/16/2008, -0/+10Because it's the free version of the creature editor.
        • morninglorii, on 06/17/2008, -0/+5I disagree Fred. If I take something for free that I wouldn't have paid for if I COULDN'T get it for free, then not only am I not taking money from them, but I am potentially giving them money. For example, years ago, my "friend" pirated a copy of Photoshop. She would never have paid the hundreds of dollars it would've cost if she couldn't get it for free, so no one lost any money. Now that she's got experience with it, she's been offered freelance jobs, and has bought a real copy. If she had never gotten the free one, she never would've gotten the experience, and Adobe would've been down a few hundred dollars.
        • DyceFreak, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2@morninglorii
          I completely agree.

          I am personally getting sick of the business that follows the hype of these BS games. Paying $10 for a demo is nothing but selling the hype. For so, if you just payed $10 for a god damn creature editor, you'd be stupid not to buy the whole thing in the end. It is literally 100% buying into nothing but hype.

          I am personally sick of this creature editor BS, who actually wants to sit around creating creatures all the f'n time when there is a huge universe to explore? and aren't you supposed to start at like a single cell organism anyways? I mean WTF...
      • Wartz, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Some games like GRAW I pirate, other games like Sins of a solar empire I buy.

        I tried the spore creature editor demo and I went to EA.com and paid for the full thing when it comes out.
  • FredFredrickson, on 06/16/2008, -2/+3Anyone know if you can buy this online to download and play on Thursday?
    • Sakumi, on 06/16/2008, -3/+3www.thepiratebay.org been out all weekend.
      • FredFredrickson, on 06/16/2008, -5/+4Well, I mean to support the game by paying for it... so can anybody answer my original question?
        • Sakumi, on 06/16/2008, -2/+6Well, Fred.. the TRIAL is out on the piratebay. It has been there all weekend. You can buy the game directly from EA's downloader on it's official release date......as with SPORE itself.
        • Ymeg, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1You can buy the full version of the SCC when it releases. The 17th I believe.
  • Logal, on 06/16/2008, -3/+2Here's just one of my creations..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpiIDjb2DtQ
  • thecheatah, on 06/16/2008, -3/+1Does creature creator run evolution?
  • adderx99, on 06/16/2008, -0/+34i give it a week before these things litter the intertubes.
    Goatse creature: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aJY9iAD1rw&NR=1
  • awkwardmoment, on 06/16/2008, -0/+5http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-68 ...
    • solidcube, on 06/16/2008, -0/+2ah hahahaha! The best part was the end... "UNFSPLITCH!"
  • solidcube, on 06/16/2008, -0/+3Does anyone know if Spore supports natural selection, meaning that a creature's progeny may be slightly different from the parent?

    Propagation of creatures across the galaxy based on player preference will be a form of similar selection, meaning that more desirable creatures will propagate better, but I'm wondering if there will be evolution over time on a single planet, like SimLife had.
    • Harabeck, on 06/17/2008, -0/+3Single planets will have many species. But Im pretty sure your species' body is locked once you enter the tribal phase. At that point, its about advancing your culture and technology instead of evolving your creature's body.
    • Risingashes, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Creatures are pretty much fixed currently. Hopefully some variety will be added by expansions. However these slight variations would soak up massive amounts of GPU processing power so that's why they avoided it for the first release.
    • Elliuotatar, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1You know I'm not sure Spore supports any sort of selection at all. I mean people seem to be assuming you can fight your creature with others. And technically that might be true, but don't you just control your creature with the keypad yourself? Its survival would therefore depend more on your own skills than on how fit you made it for the world.

      Does anyone know if your creatures fitness for the world will have any affect on your ability to reach later phases or how big your population becomes?
      • solidcube, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2There's also propagation of critters between planets, which I assume must happen somehow based on user preference in a web-2.0 sort of way.

        In one of his presentations, Wright talked about a certain creature being likely to have low fitness. In playing with the creature editor, leg geometry seems to matter to how your creature moves, so presumably there will be selection based on that.

        Not that it matters much to me, all in all, because overall the game looks quite astounding.
    • ZenMojo, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1You pay DNA points to change your baby's stats and body parts. So children are tiny versions of parents with small changes.
      • solidcube, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1Do races that aren't being controlled by the player undergo a similar evolutionary process?

        It stands to reason that Will Wright would include this because I know that he's fascinated by artificial evolution.
    • arkan, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1What you described isn't natural selection at all - its microevolution
  • SporeCreature, on 06/17/2008, -2/+0Live stream - http://www.ustream.tv/channel/spore-live
  • morninglorii, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2Dugg for the highly relevant thumbnail.
  • nitesoIja, on 06/17/2008, -1/+0i dont understand why one would buy just the editor though....
    • Harabeck, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1There is a free trial version...
    • nitesoIja, on 06/17/2008, -0/+0yea i have it, but still why would they release the editor separately
      • d4nie1, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1So they can make money. People will have fun creating the creatures.
  • Elliottx, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1We played with it too :D

    I'm gonna buy this the day it comes out, if there are any left that is =/
  • Risingashes, on 06/17/2008, -3/+1The editor only has 1/4 of what will be in the full editor. And this 1/4 isn't a lot.

    It's a joke that they made people pay money for it and didn't even give them half of what you would get in the full game. It's a glorified lobby without 75% of the features that you have to pay for.

    As soon as people get over their spore boners they'll ask themselves 'wtf' and wonder where the hell their $10 is. This'll do more harm than good to Spores release imo, it speaks poorly of things to come.
    • MindStalker, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2Calm down..
      1) The free version comes with 1/4 of the stuff
      2) The paid version you can buy tomorrow includes all the stuff (of the creature editor that is)
      3) When you pay $10 for the creature editor you are given a $5 coupon off the full version. So your paying an addition $5 for this full version of the creature editor months before the game comes out or free for the 1/4th version.
    • Elliuotatar, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1The demo version of the editor which is out NOW has only 1/4 of what is in the full editor. But the version you'll pay $10 for will have all the parts I would assume. Why would they release the full $10 editor for free on a magazine CD, early?
  • ZenMojo, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2...I have seen Spore Goatse. The horror....
  • pardonmedoug, on 06/17/2008, -1/+2I no longer remember what it was like to be excited about this game.
  • illmatic8, on 06/17/2008, -0/+0the amount of spore dick creatures on the tubes makes me wanna get this game so bad
  • TantrooM, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1It's amazing you can make so many things, even use arms as legs if you use the palmwalker hands, though looking good in particular motions is not always a guarantee especially in the unorthodox forms, such as backward facing arms the scared animation might mess up since the arms can't hide its face. Though I haven't Robin Williams'd it yet, meaning they got it cookin' pretty well. Can't wait to get the tools involved to see how those things work with it too.
  • madrasmojo, on 06/17/2008, -5/+0still yet to play.. check this blog guys

    http://jetgamers.blogspot.com/
  • EvilFerret, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1I wish someone could dig into the guts of this and unlock some of the restrictions such as the overall size of the spine you can create, along with allowing creatures to be as complex as you want them.
  • ghrayfahx, on 06/17/2008, -4/+0Yes, I'm playing DiggKiller and need all the help I can get, so I don't care if you digg me down.

    Suck Suck Suck Suck Suck Suck Suck Suck Suck ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment IPod IPod IPod IPod IPod IPod IPod IPod IPod IPod Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Colbert Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Epic Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose Kevin Rose

    Yeah, yeah, like I said, digg it down.
  • spazmotron, on 06/18/2008, -0/+1Here's one I made:

    http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-necko%3As ...

    XD
  •  

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