spore-creature-creator posts

In 2008, Electronic Arts and its Maxis development studio under Will Wright released the highly anticipated Spore, which used an innovative Creator Creator to allow players to create a near infinite amount of creatures and units for use in the game. While the final product perhaps didn't live up to its high expectations, Spore still managed to sell millions of units.

In 2009 Wright left EA but that's wasn't the end for Spore. The Maxis studio decided to take the franchise in a new direction with a sci-fi themed action RPG called Darkspore that's due out in the first quarter of 2011. Big Download got the game's executive producer Mike Perry to give us some more info on the title.

The announcement that Electronic Arts was taking its Spore game franchise to a new direction with the upcoming action-RPG title Darkspore took some people by surprise. Now it looks like the development team at EA Maxis is giving us yet another surprise with a new viral marketing site.

The site's URL, www.helpedna.com, was discovered in the source code for Darkspore's offcial web site. As you can see from the above screenshot the site goes into an old school text adventure game mode where you have to input commands to discover its secrets. If you want some help, there's a message board post on the game's official forums that has some hints. Meanwhile the game itself it set for release in 2011.

[Via Voodoo Extreme]

Electronic Arts put in a ton of money and time in what turned out to be Will Wright's last game for the publisher, the alien evolution sim game Spore. While the game sold well when it was first released it has not reached the sales success of Wright's Sims series. The last expansion pack for the PC version of Spore was released nearly a year ago.

EA has already announced plans to release some like of Spore-related project sometime in the first quarter of 2011. Now superannuation has spotted some new trademark filings that EA has made for a title called Darkspore. Could we see EA take a totally different take on this franchise? Perhaps at E3 we might get some answers.

It's not a shock to learn that the best selling PC retail game of 2009 will be getting some follow up releases in the next year. As part of Electronic Arts' financial results today, their schedule of games for their next fiscal year shows some kind of new Sims game due for release in the first quarter of 2011 for the PC. From the placement on the schedule this may be some kind of new Sims game rather than just an expansion pack for 2009's The Sims 3.

Also due for release at the same time is a new Spore game from the publisher. EA hasn't been as generous about expanding 2008's alien evolution sim for the PC as they have with their Sims titles. The last expansion pack for the game was released last summer.

If you still haven't tried out Spore yet and don't feel like downloading the free version of the Spore Creature Creator, Electronic Arts has something planned for you. They are supposed to launch a Flash-based version of the creator in a 2D format on the spore2d.com web site. We say "supposed to" because at the moment the site doesn't appear to be working yet.

Once the site is operational, EA said you can use it to make any kind of creature you want or import any creature to the web from the Sporepedia site and even play with them in the Spore Creature Trainer mini-game. You can show off your 2D creature via email or your favorite social networking site as well.

Update: The spore2d.com site appears to be working now.

This patch updates Spore to v1.04. It addresses a number of gameplay issues and includes game enhancements. Additionally, there's a patch for the Spore Creature Creator, bringing it to v2.01. The Creature Creator demo can be downloaded here. Continue reading after the jump for a list of changes.

Download Spore v1.04 Patch (84 MB)
Download Spore Creature Creator v2.01 Patch (173 MB)
Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo (205 MB)
Check out all Spore downloads

Will Wright's latest game Spore may not have been the be all and end all of PC games but it's character creator tools and its animation features that make those creations move with no pre-generated movements is certainly a huge accomplishment.

That's likely the reason why the game was given a Jim Henson Honors award this week. What? The late and beloved creator of the Muppets has his own awards? Well, sort of. The Jim Henson Company launched their awards in 2005 to, in their words, honor "organizations, individuals or products that reflect the core values and philosophy of the legendary Jim Henson and the company he founded."

For the 2008 edition, the technology category award was given to Spore. In giving out the honor the Jim Henson Company stated, "The game is meticulously conceived and executed with infinite detail, allowing a gamer to design and create his own character – a digital alter ego - providing for an unprecedented level of user creativity as his being evolves from a single-cell organism to a galactic god over hundreds of millions of years." It also might not have hurt that a lot ot the creatures created in the game happen to look like Muppets but we could be wrong.

However you may feel about Spore's gameplay, the creature creator tools for Electronic Arts' alien evolution sim are indeed very impressive and easy to use. Now EA has announced a way for Spore players to have their creatures made into real miniature sculptures via the Z Corporation.

Players can upload their Spore creations to the Sporesculpture.com web site and pay $49.50 to have their creatures created into 3D miniatures using Z Corporation's 3D printers. Here's some more info on the actual making of the sculptures:

Z Corporation 3D printers use a powder-binder technology, to create parts directly from digital data. First, the 3D printer spreads a thin layer of powder. Second, an ink-jet print head prints a binder in the cross-section of the part being created, mixing color as it does. Next, a build piston drops down, making room for the next layer, and the process is repeated. After printing, the Spore Sculpture is cleaned off, given a quick dip in a resin bath, packaged and shipped.

Spore continues to stay atop the best selling list of PC games and today the game's publisher Electronic Arts announced a new contest where one person could win a trip to next month's Spike TV's Video Game Awards just by creating a 60 second movie using Will Wright's alien evolution sim game.

Using Spore or the Spore Creature Creator (either full or trial version) you are asked to create a wild 60 second video and upload that movie to the Spike TV site by Dec. 2. The winning video will be selected by a panel of judges (which will include Wright himself) and the winner and a guest will be flown to Los Angeles to attend the awards show and meet with Wright himself. He will also be getting Spike TV's first 'Game God" award at the event.

As promised last week, Electronic Arts has released a new patch for their best selling alien evolution sim Spore (the patch is only available via automatic in-game downloads or through the EA Autodownloader program). In addition to fixing some bugs the patch also adds 24 new and free creature limbs that players can use in their creature editor to customize their creations some more.

You can see what the new free limbs look like in the above image. Of course you can also make the lead and actually buy the Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack which ships out this week in stores. This first Spore commercial expansion adds even more creature parts for use in the editor.