Spore FAQ First of this FAQ was originally created in Gamefaqs by tommytcph, i just Updated it a little i think? Spore... What is Spore? I suppose the better question would be, What isn;t Spore. Originally titled SimEverything, Spore is a simulation game from tidepool to space.The best place to start would be at the beginning. In the beginning, there was a cell.You swim around in a little pool, eating things. Every time you eat things, you grow.This is the tidepool phase. Eventually, after enough growth, you evolve onto land. You are a slug. Go around eating things and obtain enough DNA points to where you go into the creature editing phase. Enter the most open ended editor ever. Morph your creature any way you want. Do you want a duck-dog? Make it. Want a giraffe-rhinocerous? Make it. Even morph the parts you put on your creature. After you are satisfied with the look of your creature, expand its brain and move into the tribal phase. Create a hut with tools just as open-ended as the ones in the creature stage. Buy tools to shape your creature's culture. After you grow large enough, enter the city-civ phase. Use the open ended tools to craft buildings for your city and the city itself. Will Wright describes it as, "a simplified version of SimCity" Craft your vehicles. Wage war on neighboring cities or be a peaceful diplomatic nation. Either way, your goal is to rule the world. Once the world is conquered, you are far from done. In fact, you could say it is just the beginning. Craft a spaceship and sail into your solar system. Visit other planets in the system. Look at new life forms, possibly even intelligent life. After a while, buy the interstellar drive. Move out into the stars and visit 500,000 other stars, each with an average of four planets. You are sure to find other intelligent life. Craft a web of diplomatic relations or just conquer them all. On the other hand, you can just leave them be, but what's the fun in that? Here are explanations of key features in the game Online System Your creations will automatically be compressed to about one kilobyte and sent out to Spore servers. Other players will receive your planet somewhere in their galaxy, but you don't control it in other players games, so if they blow up your planet, it does not affect you. Instead, your creations are copied, and they act based on your actions in the game. For example, if you are a peaceful diplomatic nation, then it will act like that in other games. If your ecosystem needs a key predator, Spore automatically goes on its servers and chooses one. When you don't feel like building your buildings, that is okay. You can go to the buy buildings menu and choose one. Spore will automatically recommend buildings that are similar to your building style. SporePedia Sporepedia is a system of cards which save all the content you have seen. Each star is one card. Click on that card, and it brings up the cards which show the planets. Click on a planetary card, and it shows the cards of the creatures and plants that you have scanned. Genetic Engineering Genetic Engineering is a technology you can research in the space stage. After this, you can create creatures and plants for free! No DNA points needed. Here are some videos http://media.pc.ign.com/media/735/735340/vids_1.html Estimate of Optimum Performance 2.0 Ghz Processor 265 Mb Capable Graphics Card With T&L Capability 512 Mb of Ram (1 Gig will be best with the algorithm) DirectX 9.0 Windows XP/2000/Vistaw 2.5-5 GB of Space (Good to have extra afterwords) Most computers can be upgraded to this level for about $150.00 - $200.00 *Note, even though it is commonly stated.. LCD screens aren't required for this game.* Estimated Supported Graphics Cards ATI Radeon 9000 and Better NVidia GeForce 4 and Better Thanks to PinkPantherous for that --- QUESTION AND ANSWER Q: Can I make invertebrates A: No, but you can make their skeleton so small that it appears as one Q: What is this coming out for A: PC, Nintendo DS, and mobile phones are confirmed, however, Will Wright said it is probably coming out for all consoles Q: how big and how small can I make my creatures A: As big as an elephant and as small as a Hamster Q: How many things can I edit? A: In its E3 2006 video it showed 7 editors: Creature, Hut, Building, Vehicle,Flora, Terrain, and UFO. It is unknown if there will be more or if the vehicle and UFO will be one editor or if the Hut and building will be one editor Q: how many stages of the game are there? A: Five. Tidepool, creature, tribal, city, space. Q: When is it coming out A: After April 2008 Q: What are the system requirements? A: Will Wright said they will be a little less than The Sims 2 Go to spore.com, snootyspore.com, planetspore.com, or sporewiki.com for more information Q: Is there a demo A: Not right now, but WW confirmed that he wil release at least one editor before release. Q: is this an MMO A: No,but after you finish evolving your creature, it will be uploaded to the official spore site and sent out to other players. Q: Oh so I need an Internet Connection to play? A: No! The game comes with thousands of premade creatures. Q: Couldnt someone make an innappropriate creations? A: Yes, but you can mark their creation and possibly have it taken down Q: Can i make aquatic or flying races? A: No aquatic creatures, but probably in an expansion pack. Feathers and wings have been seen in the editor, but it is unknown if you can fly. Q: In the Space Stage, how many stars and galaxies will there be A:One Galaxy and 500,000stars in it. Q: How many stars will be visible at once? A: 10,000 Q: Does my creature have to eat meat? A: No. Your creature can be carnivorous, herbivorious or omnivorious, depending on the kind of mouth and teeth you give it. Q: Whoa Whoa Whoa. Wont that take like 40 gigabytes of space to hold all that? A: No. This uses Procedural Generating which can compress large files into 1 kb Q: Will there be naming of your creations? A: Yes Q: Will there be weather A: Unknown, but Will Wright said he would like to add it in Q:Will there be bionic arms and legs? A: concept art shows them with it, but it hasn't been confirmed Q: Will my creatures have personality such as warlike or cultural? A: Yes, depending on how you handle them in the Tribal Stage Q: Will there be religion A: No, But you can make the creatures to praise you like a god. Q: Can I create the world in six days? A: No. Q: What about the eight stages I saw at DICE 2007? A: Those were only early conceptual stages. They do not exist. Q: What about the gas giants? Can I visit those? A: Unknown Q: Will planets have moons? A: A gas giant was seen with a moon and the moon was visited, however, it is unknown if rocky planets will have rocky moons. Q: Will spore support dial-up? A: The created files are supposed to be compressed to only a few KB anyway, so it should only take you a second or two to download or upload them individually. Q: Will there be a timeline of your creature's appearance? A: Yes, Golden_Dice of Gamefaqs.com emailed Will Wright a while back, suggesting he put it in but, he said that it was already there. Q: At what stage does it become impossible to edit your creature? A: After the Creature Phase, evolution ends. You should be sure you have the species how you want it before moving forward. It's not until some point in the Space Stage that you'll get some genetic alteration technology. Q: Will your creature be able to release waste A: Unknown Q: If you killed a small creature and tried to use it like bait by leaving it, but still watching it, would a bigger creature come to eat it, so you could kill that one too, and have much more food? A: Possibly, it could open up whole new strategies for the creature phase. Q: Will there be cheats like boolprop from Sims2? A: the entire point of the game is to advance in your own way. Just about everything in the game is player made, cheats are one thing that can't be altered.To save the typing, they would completely mess up this game. on the other hand the TED video did show Will putting some kind of cheat to get DNA points. if there ARE cheats it would most likely be the simple ones like getting a bunch of DNA points.
Preview by Gameinformer during our visit to Leipzig’s Game Convention 2007, we got a chance to check out EA’s upcoming game Spore. It was a fitting place to see the game—the last time we’d seen anything new about the game, it was at last year’s GC. While the focus of that presentation was about showing off the ambitious life simulation at the cellular level and giving an early look at the game’s creature editor, this time around we got to see a whole lot more. Our guide told us that the build he would be demoing was complete enough that a player could start from the cellular level and work all the way through the point where the game’s creatures discover space travel. He even teased us by saying that we could probably even do it ourselves, with the only limitation being one of time. So, he took the controls and started the game. Rats. Spore, if you don’t know, is the brainchild of Will Wright, the man behind the insanely popular SimCity and Sims games. With Spore, he takes on an even more ambitious concept, with a game that lets players guide an entire lifeform. Players will guide and nurture their budding creation from single-celled organisms to intelligent beings capable of exploring—or dominating, should you prefer—other planets across the galaxy. At the heart of the game is a set of easy-to-use creation tools that allow players to design their own creatures, buildings and vehicles. In our demo, we skipped past the cellular stage and went right to the second phase of gameplay. If players were starting from scratch, we were told that it would take players about 30 minutes or so to evolve to this point. We started off with our creature taking its first tentative steps—or wiggles—onto land. Its beginnings were truly humble, as a wiggly little pink thing with four tentacles on one end and a pair of oversized cartoonish eyeballs on the other. After getting onto dry land, it blinked its peepers a few times, shook itself dry and made its way further inland. At this point, the goal of the game is to further evolve your character into an intelligent being. One way is by interacting with other creatures and either instigating a social or aggressive stance. Since you are, after all, only slightly more impressive than a little pool of goo, you don’t have a lot of other options. As you successfully complete these interactions, you acquire new parts, which you can use to evolve further. You can also score the precious parts from skeletal remains strewn throughout the landscape, though these seemed far less common than living creatures. The first thing we walked up to was a similarly lowly creature, and we took the friendly approach—singing a little song, accompanied by a little swaying animation and emanating musical notes. For some reason, our song made quite the impression, and we made a new friend—snagging precious new parts in the process. As you interact with creatures, a meter pops up. Fill it up, and you’ve got a new friend—complete with a smiley-faced icon that will make Sims veterans feel right at home. After a little more exploring, including some foraging from a bush, we attracted a mate. Following a little dance, our coupling ended with the birth of a brand-new baby egg. Finally, a chance to use our new parts! We saw the creature editor again, and were reminded about how flexible the whole setup is. Players start with a basic sausage-shaped torso, which can be stretched, pulled, bent or sculpted in a variety of other ways. In our demo, the creature had the semi-upright stance of a gorilla, with stocky legs and arms. Limbs can be similarly manipulated, with players having the option of turning joints inward or outward, bulking them up or shrinking them down, etc. With the basic shape and posture defined, it was time to tweak the creature a little more. A pair of hands were placed right where you’d expect to see them, though they could have been jammed just about anywhere on the thing. It really is up to the player to design their own creatures. The hands we saw had the special abilities of being able to strike and gesture—things that would be useful in either a friendly or aggressive encounter. After adding some eyes on long stalks, an omnivore mouth was placed on the head. Finally, the creature got a little extra something, in the form of some offensive weaponry. A pair of spiked balls were mounted near the elbows, then stretched and shrunken so they more closely resembled spur-like appendages. Unconventional, yes, but sometimes it pays to experiment. The next step in character creation is deciding on a color scheme. Players can either color in their creature layer by layer, making sure everything is just the way they like it, or by selecting a pattern from a library of sample colorings. We settled on a spiffy yellow and blue getup. Before setting our creation into the world, we got to see it in action—kind of a last chance to make changes. The creature popped into a fenced-in pen area and walked around for a bit. Players can check out their gait (generated automatically depending upon how the character is designed, not from canned animations) as well as their other actions, such as their dance or attacking animations. Once satisfied, it’s time to explore the world. Now that the creature is a bit smarter that before, its goals are suitably more ambitious. Whereas before the goal was to find a mate and evolve a little more, now it’s all about organizing your creatures and making sure that they’re the dominant lifeform on the planet. How can you do that? By forming tribes, of course. There’s something to be said for having safety in numbers. You can’t just take a few guys and say they’re a tribe, or at least you can’t do that in Spore. Here, you’ll need to get three creature types in your posse (the official Spore term) to form your tribe. You can do it the nice way, by being social, or by intimidating your quarry into submission. It’s up to you. We started off by testing a new social move, dancing, on a curious Jackylope biped. It was not very impressed, so its meter only filled slightly. After a few more attempts, it was time to try the aggressive approach. Our new hands and mouth allowed our creature to strike and bite. We ended up being quite the scrapper, and our first battle was a success. After moving up a grassy hill, we saw a craggy, rocky area, dominated by huge curved spires. Before we could admire the scenery too long, we met up with an Orcy—or more accurately, we were charged by an Orcy. The thing was full of teeth and not afraid to use them. We tried to placate them by dancing, which seemed to work. At least, it did until Orcy number 2 showed up and wanted to continue the chomping. After a few unsuccessful attempts at getting both of them to shake their thangs, we decided it might be best to run away to relative safety. For the sake of moving the demo along, we skipped ahead to the tribal stage. Here, the game plays like a stripped-down RTS. We won the evolutionary race at this point. The other creatures we into remain dumb animals, while we, with our larger brains, are capable of building structures and items. The goals here is similar as before: Convert or intimidate enough rival tribe members so yours numbers 15. Our tribe started off humbly, with a communal tent and a shack filled with fishing spears. Tribe members snatched up the spears and started hunting the waters for prey. Their patience quickly paid off, and they brought their fishy bounty back to the village. After a little cheating with the game’s monetary system, the tribe quickly built itself up into quite the mini-metropolis. A welcome totem was built, which would attract nearby rival tribes over to socialize. While fish is tasty and all, our creatures yearned for something a little more substantial. After a quick trip to the character editor, our guys were dressed up for the hunt, with special hats, war paint and ornamental shoulder spikes. (Players will be able to design specific outfits and styles for each of the characters main actions, should they be interested in doing so.) Our creatures made good use of their big brains and upgraded weapons, bringing back huge piles of meat. With that, it was time to do some recruiting. We followed a colored blip on the minimap to a rival village. Since we wanted to do our best to impress our new friends, we brought along gifts of meat and fish. They seemed pretty happy about the whole thing, but who wouldn’t? When we tried to recruit them by singing and playing instruments, however, their response was less enthusiastic. Once again, the aggressive approach is always an option. Here, you can convert rivals by destroying their tent. Once it’s gone, their now-homeless tribesmen can be assimilated by your tribe. Of course, creatures don’t take that kind of stuff sitting down, so you can expect a fight. After a short fight—did I mention those upgraded weapons?—we converted the tribe to our side. Our wounded went back to the village to heal themselves at the nursing stations automatically. Meanwhile, that big stack of meat attracted some creatures to the village—creatures that were quickly converted into meat. After another quick skip, we were at the civilization level of gameplay. This is where the game’s scope really starts to shine. The camera pulls back a bit once more, this time enough so that you can see the curvature of your planet. Here, the goal is to dominate the planet. Easy, right? The character editor returns in spades, though this time it’s used to create buildings and vehicles, instead of meat puppets. You start off by building your town hall or selecting one from a bank of previously created samples. Some of the more outlandish developer designs were shown in the demo, including a building that looked like a pair of enormous Lego blocks. We picked Gandalf Hall, which was appropriately shaped like a towering version of the famous wizard. The next step is designing or selecting a harvester, which is used to gather spices. A similarly crazy selection of developer creations was present, including a Tron-like Light Cycle, skull or gigantic red stapler. (Lawyer-types, take notice—the samples were just examples of what players could themselves create. These are not likely to be in the game’s official release.) Once build, the harvester tooled around looking for puffs of smoke, which are sure signs of buried spice in Spore’s world. This spice is the centerpiece of the game’s economy, which will be familiar territory to anyone who’s played an RTS in the past. Players can then build houses for their residents, and eventually land vehicles, air vehicles and spaceships. In the demo, we saw a car get build from the wheels up. The process took about a minute, and we saw it go from an eraser-like body to something you might expect to see in a toy store—complete with headlights, a spoiler and other cool little details. Here, past player actions come into play. If you played with lots of aggression in the past, your civilization will likely be a militaristic one, with specialized units designed to destroy enemies and inflict pain. If you were more peaceful, your civilization might be based on commerce, with units designed to create trade routes and woo followers that way. If you take over a civilization of another type, you can then build their specialized units, so you won’t be stuck playing Rambo if you’re really an entrepreneur at heart. With that, the demo ended. While we didn’t get to see the space portion of the game, where players explore other planets and interact with native species, we definitely got a better understanding of how all the various parts fit together. The game’s scale is truly massive, and people who love to tinker with things are going to be in heaven. The game’s stylized look is sure to win the hearts of new players, too. While it doesn’t look like something you’re going to want to load up specifically to show off your gaming rig to your buddies, the whimsical feel definitely fits the game. After spending time with this version of the game, we’re excited to see more. People may have been skeptical that a game would be able to fit so many disparate parts and gameplay styles together under a single banner, but it seems that Wright and company have done so in a typically elegant and innovative way. People have a lot to look forward to when the game ships in spring 2008.
