"Spore" - The Ultimate Sim!

Originally posted by sabretooth at the Skoar! forums here:
*skoar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=745
which was in turn taken from here:
*www.gamespy.com/articles/595/595975p1.html

I thought this would make for a splendid discussion here too. Will Wright, the creator of SimCity and the Sims, has announced the game at GDC 2005, and by the looks of it, its set to be outright revolutionary. He demonstrated a new game that he's developing codenamed Spore, and for the first time in gaming history, the player literally has the chance to play God. The Sims are so passe when this comes out.

Amongst other wonderful things, this game allows you to control a creature right from the cellular level all the way to the galactic level. The game relies on procedural techniques to drastically reduce the file sizes, while allowing the game to automatically decide the outcome of a design, so when you design something with three legs, or something thats top heavy, the game automatically decides how the creature will move, without ever being told how actually to pull it off. You can even invest in more brain power and pull off sentience.

For a small quote to get you interested in the article, here are select snippets:

And here, the game shifted focus. Instead of managing a single creature, you were suddenly in charge of a whole tribe of your creatures. Wright's odd three-legged little critters danced around a hut in the center of a village. You could still evolve your creatures, but now, instead of buying new appendages or physical features, you bought them things like fire or weapons. Wright built a fire pit and his critters danced around it (making up a three-legged dance as they went along.) He built a drum and they started playing with it. Then he placed down a rack of spears, and in a scene reminiscent of 2001, they stared at the rack of weapons with awe and wonder before all reaching forward with their tails and grabbing one. The three-legged critters all danced around, waving spears in the air with their tails. The game was smart enough to figure out which appendage was the likeliest for carrying stuff around in....

Wright zoomed out to show us how at this point in the game you can step back and look at the entire world. It filled his screen with exaggerated mountains and clouds, and iconic, cartoony representations of all the cities......

Then, using the UFO, he zoomed out -- and out -- and out! Away from his planet and into a whole solar system of planets orbiting the sun. He described each planet as "little sandboxes for the player," little worlds to shape and mould. Wright zoomed his UFO into a small rock of a planet, grey and covered with craters. He dropped a creature down on this world ... where it violently exploded. There was no atmosphere yet. Over time, he could terraform the world -- Wright demonstrated his awesome power by hitting the planet with a ray gun that created volcanoes......

Wright went on his merry way, his home solar system shrinking to a speck of white light, and soon his screen was filled with a myriad of star clusters, constellations, quasars, and more. At this point in the game, the mouse pointer becomes like a SETI device...

They responded by shooting him with lasers........It wasn't going well, so Wright flew up into space and then fired off the ultimate weapon. Suddenly, the alien planet exploded in a cataclysmic orgy of molten destruction, forming a new ring of asteroids around the sun. "There goes my reputation as a non-violent game designer," Wright quipped.

BTW, if you want to see pictures of the game video, point your browser here: *www.gamingsteve.com/

I cant wait for the tech demo to be leaked onto P2P a la the Doom 3 Alpha or at least get the video itself!

Is "Spore" not the official name? All along I was wondering thats what the game will end up being called eventually. It makes sense though.

Still no videos in sight. No news about projected relase dates either. And no leaked demos as well!

Thats what the Gamespy article says, that the game is codenamed Spore and is being developed by EA-owned Maxis Studio and will be published by Electronic Arts.

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I liked Simcity 3000 in a huge way, not so much for Sims though ...

This one seems too ambitious though ... I wonder if it will come off...

Oh! I thought it was a pretty cool name and suited the game, though some might take it an action-oriented sci-fi game.

What about the sytem requirements? The "Procedural Techniques" reduce the file sizes, but what about the system requirements? The article did state that the graphics were in some part, cartoonish. So would that mean that the game won't be too taxing on the hardware department?

Again I think I read somewhere that there is no multiplayer component in the offing. Yet Wright many times reffered to cities built by other players. Where from are we supposed to get those cities/cultures/creatures? Are we supposed to download them off the net? Will it then mean that those with no connection wont be able to enjoy the game to it's maximum potential?

How many people in the world cannot access the Net, cody, and how many of them are hardcore gamers?

Chances are that almost all hardcore gamers have a near-decent Internet connection, plus with DataOne making inroads, broadband non-availability should be a thing of the past here on. But yes, if you dont have an Internet connection, you couldn't play HL2 too. I dont think downloading cities and cultures should be a problem, considering how they're all going to be very small filesizes, even if the cultures/planets/galaxies themselves are massive in-game.

Imagine single player maps being offered for download in mere KBs. :lol:

yes its intresting, read it on gamespy 4 days back , the article is by fargo . really intresting . new way to develop and new way to look at games.