Spore (video game)

Phases

1. Tide pool phase, similar to Pac-Man
2. Creature phase, Diablo
3. Tribal phase, Populous
4. City phase, SimCity
5. Civilization phase, Risk and Civilization
6. Space phase (a.k.a. UFO stage or Invasion), with some elements reminiscent of Destroy All Humans!, and later, sandbox gameplay.

Tide pool phase

The tide pool stage is the very first stage of the game.

The tide pool phase is the starting point of the game. The player guides a simple micro-organism (microbe) around in a 2D environment, eating other, weaker cells. There are at least three other types of cells, two of which can eat the player's microbe to begin with. Once the microbe has eaten several cells, it lays an egg which, when clicked, opens the creature editor which allows the player to modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe. This includes adding offensive abilities, for example in Will Wright's 2006 demo, he added a small spike which allows the player's microbe to attack the organisms which would previously eat the player's microbe instead happens later in the game in more detail. Each time the player's microbe progresses to the next generation, it grows larger. Once a currently unknown objective is achieved, the player leaves the 2D world of the microscopic and enters the creature phase.

The tide pool phase is sometimes referred to as the microbial stage or the cellular stage.

Creature phase

The creature phase begins under water. The appearance of the player's creature is based on the microbe the player created in the tide pool phase. The basic goal is the same: Hunt food to earn DNA points and avoid being eaten by predators. Unlike the asexual reproduction in the tide pool phase, the player must now locate a mate. There have been rumors of asexual reproduction within the creature phase as well, but these have not been confirmed (or even hinted at) by official sources. Once the player's creature has laid an egg, it does not hatch straight away. Scavengers will attempt to steal the eggs and the player must defend them. When your egg hatches, you become a baby version of the creature you created with realistic higher voices and weaker abilities. Once the player's creature evolves in the creature phase, the fins may (optionally) be replaced by legs and feet, provided the player has collected a sufficient amount of DNA points, which allows the creature to move onto land.

The ultimate goal of the creature phase is to increase the creature's brain capabilities. Once they have increased sufficiently, the player's creature becomes sapient and the player progresses to the tribal phase.

Tribal phase

City phase

Civilization phase

After the city phase comes the civilization phase. In the civilization phase, players focus on relations between their civilization and other civilizations on their home planet, whether peaceful or war-torn.

The 'Civilization Phase' is where a player is expected to start seeing the results of his influence on the budding species. Players can still access the building editor and buy new buildings, and once players reach this point they are allowed to zoom out further for the first time, and view at the entire planet from space. Once the player zooms out past a certain point, the city changes from a properly-scaled view with all the buildings visible to a more 'cartoony' view. As in the tribal stage, players can meet other creatures of the same species in other cities and either try diplomacy to open trade routes and eventually form an alliance or attack them. At this point, a 'vehicle editor' is opened, allowing the player to construct land vehicles, aircraft, boats, and submarines.

The goal in this phase is to gain control of the entire planet, whether players conquer it with war or make an alliance through diplomacy. Once players have gained enough credits in this phase they unlock the UFO and the UFO editor, and can proceed into the Space Phase.

Space phase

After the civilization phase, the space phase, or 'sandbox phase', begins. At this stage, the player controls a vehicle (known as the UFO) capable of traveling throughout their local star system and visiting other planets. The player may also terraform uninhabitable planets with special tools that are purchased with credits (water tool, volcano tool etc.). The player's civilization can travel between star systems at this point, meeting other civilizations on distant worlds, most of which are created by other players. The Space Phase is sometimes referred to as 'sandbox' mode, since the player has near complete control of anything and everything. Planetary zoos, alliances with other races, and interstellar warfare have all been mentioned, and are all believed to be possible in-game. Every race will have a 'personality' that will change how a player interacts with them (According to Wright, the races of Star Trek are the basis for these "personalities").

Also, players can go and abduct other creatures, make fireworks and get other cultures to worship you.

As is traditional with most of Will Wright's games, the game never 'ends', and the Space Phase continues for as long as the player wishes.

Other elements of gameplay

Editors

Spore's major concept is that nearly everything is created by the players. Will Wright has stated that all the editors will be as similar as possible for easy use. There are several different editors, each one dealing with a different type of content.

At E3 2006, Wright showcased the creature editor. It allows the player to take what looks like a lump of clay with a spine and mold it into a creature of their choosing. Once they are done molding the main form, they can then add legs, arms, feet, hands, eyes, mouths, decorative elements, and a wide array of sensory organs like antennae. Once the creature is designed to the player's satisfaction, they can paint the creature using a large amount of textures, colors, and patterns. After the player feel their creature is complete, it can be tested in a small closed area.

There is also a building editor (city phase), a hut editor (tribal phase), a vehicle editor (civilization phase), a flora editor (space phase), a UFO editor (civilization/space phase) and a terrain editor. Once the player has access to the UFO, it becomes possible to terraform entire planets.

Procedural generation

There has not been much direct information released regarding the technology Spore uses to procedurally generate its creatures and worlds. Wright mentioned in an interview given at E3 2006 that the information necessary to generate an entire creature would be only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright, who presented the following analogy: "think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game, like a womb, builds the "phenotypes" of the animal, which represent a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc".

Chris Hecker, who currently works on Spore (including its early prototypes), gave a presentation at GDC 2005 and Futureplay entitled "Why you should have paid attention in multivariable calculus", in which he describes the mathematics of an implicit surface and various methods to apply texture projections to such surfaces. Sean O'Neil worked as a consultant for Maxis "to assist with R&D development involving dynamic generation and rendering of a fractal-based world". He maintains a website[link] with demonstration of procedural planet generation and a simulation of dynamic atmospheric scattering.

Wright noted that he hired a handful of demoscene programmers and artists because of their familiarity with procedural generation.

\"Massively single-player\"

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), cataloged and rated for quality (based on how many users have downloaded the object or creature in question), and then re-distributed to populate other players' games. The data transmitted will be extremely small — only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright.

Development

Following several years of development, Spore was first introduced to the public on March 11 2005 in Wright's lecture about "procedural content generation" at the Game Developers Conference. It was officially unveiled two months later at E3 2005, the industry's annual trade show. GDC 2006 featured two Spore related talks, [Building Community Around Pollinated Content in Spore] and ["Spore: Preproduction Through Prototyping]. A video released on YouTube [link] shows "unedited footage of Spore that will be going to TV networks covering E3 [2006]", and includes an overhauled creature editor, a first look at the texturing tools, as well as glimpses at other aspects of the game. Will Wright has said that the game was also influenced by many TV shows, movies, and toys, such as Lego and Star Wars.

Will Wright originally intended to call the game Sim Everything, but needed a codename to use during the development process (so far having taken approximately 5 years and thirty million US dollars). Over time, however, the team came to prefer the name Spore, as it suited the game very well. He went on to state in an interview that "not putting 'Sim' in front of it" was "very refreshing".

Influenced by demoscene

He expressed admiration for the demoscene because of the things they can do. He showed pictures from demoparties like Assembly demo party to great applause.

Awards

At E3 2006, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best Original Game, Best PC Game and Best Simulation Game.

References