Archive for the ‘Spore’ Category

I haven’t been keeping track of this contest but I do recall posting about it…I believe back in January.  Well, the winners have been chosen and 3 of the winners used Spore Galactic Adventures for their projects.  MaxisCactus has more with the following press announcement:

Game Changers Winners Announced!

NINE GAME DEVELOPERS TO SHARE $250,000 FOR EDUCATIONAL GAMING EXPERIENCES USING LittleBigPlanet™ and Spore Galactic Adventures

May 24, 2010 (Games for Change Conference, New York City) U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, will announce on Tuesday the nine winning game developers who will share $250,000 for new and educational gaming experiences on the commercial games LittleBigPlanet™ and Spore™ Galactic Adventures. These winners are part of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Competition, which is designed to support the most novel uses of new media for learning. This year, MacArthur teamed with Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), Electronic Arts (EA), the Entertainment Software Association, and the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation to support new and creative user-generated levels and adventures to engage young people in learning in the two games. The intention of the competition is to promote “participatory” learning, which operates under the notion that individuals, specifically young ones, learn best through sharing and involvement. The competition is administered by the virtual network of learning institutions, HASTAC, and is part of the Obama Administration’s Educate to Innovate initiative. More information at www.dmlcompetition.net.

The three winning Spore™ Galactic Adventures projects include:

Creatures Classified! An exploration of cataloging creatures across the galaxy, $40,000
Mathew Powers, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN
Best in Class: Creatures (Spore™ only)
In this Spore™ adventure, fifth and sixth graders, acting as “intergalactic speciologists,” learn how to collect and organize scientific data and employ the scientific method to classify living things. Armed with a science field journal, players must navigate progressively more complex and challenging planets, collecting data, and classifying the myriad species they encounter based on the evolutionary and physical characteristics of the creatures.

DIASTEM: Digitally Integrating the Academics of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, $15,000
Patrick Keller, Albuquerque, NM
Leveraging Spore’s™ powerful ability to personalize gameplay, DIASTEM targets STEM-related content that applies directly to digital game development. Within the Spore™ interface, players will complete challenges—from simple math and logic puzzles to more complex physics and engineering construction projects—that are specifically developed and created to elicit player understanding of game design theory and application.

Mission: Evolution, $15,000
Jennifer Biedler, Blacksburg High School, Blacksburg, VA
In Mission: Evolution, high school students thoroughly analyze the evolutionary science driving the Spore™ game engine and investigate the scientific accuracy of the game. Working together to identify principles of evolutionary change that are absent from the off-the-shelf version of Spore™, students collaborate to introduce these principles into their own missions in Spore™ Galactic Adventures.

Sigh…Come on, Maxis…get to the good stuff and tell us what new product you are working on.  Please?  Pretty please?  Pretty please with a cherry on top?

Overview: In this fixed morphology challenge it’s up to you to modify our template creature to fit the bio provided below. Your entry should be in the form of a creature tagged mcquadrakillerchallenge based on the template provided. Entries will be judged on creativity, adherence to creature bio, how well they animate.

Ballistic Quadrakiller
Bio: When the factories fell silent after centuries of poisoning the planet, only a few things were left moving on the deathfields of the planet Ballistic quadrakillers were among them. Possessing four arms, each capable of unleashing terrifying volleys of lightning projectiles, the quadrakillers were the product of two centuries of fighting over the last natural resources to maintain life. Devastating in combat, quadrakillers possess one flaw their dead makers never got a chance to fix: following attacks, they enter brief rest moves in which they are vulnerable to destruction.

Template restrictions: You may not modify (scale, move, remove) the spine, legs, arms or mouth. You may swap out the weapons at the ends of the arms as desired. You may add parts anywhere.

Tag: mcquadrakillerchallenge

Color/vibe references:
These images are meant to generally inform the aesthetic direction you take especially when painting your creature. It’s not a requirement to match your paint to these colors, but we just want to give you an idea of the vibe we’re looking for.

What will the challenge winner(s) get?
A chance to be featured on Spore.com! Maxis will hand pick the winner(s) in this challenge. Finalists will be posted before the winning creation(s) are announced.

Challenge Rules:

• To submit a creature, tag it with: mcquadrakillerchallenge
• You can submit as many entries as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT May 18, 2010
• Optional: Post screenshots or YouTube movies of your creation on the forum

Feature Criteria

• Creation must not have any parent authored by a different creator (other than MaxisCactus)
• Creation must not have any offensive creation in its lineage (any parent or child creations)
• Creation must not have any links or references to other sites in the submission’s tags, name, or description

FAQ:

How Do I use the Template?

1. Right click on the small PNG above and choose Save as.
2. Open your Spore Creature Creator and drag the png into the editor.
3. Add parts and paint to flesh out the character of this creature. All parts including accessory, mech, C&C, and base game parts are allowed. You may not scale, remove or move any parts of the original template, with the exception that the feet may be swapped out for other feet.

Can I use cheats?
Cheats such as AddDNA and Freedom are not allowed. Asymmetry is allowed on the parts you add.

Is outfitting allowed?
Yes.

Posted at the Sporums via MaxisCactus

Sigh…it’s been long overdue since the last SporeDay (Well over a month) and was hoping to hear what Maxis is currently working on.  Fans are left to wonder Spore’s existence and whether or not Maxis has abandoned it.  While we’re still not sure what they’re up to, MaxisCactus did drop a note to let us know they are still alive with a brand new Spore contest dubbed ‘Triocular Scorpiod Challange‘.  Take it away, MC:

Overview: In this fixed morphology challenge it’s up to you to modify our template creature to fit the bio provided below. Your entry should be in the form of a creature tagged mcscorpiodchallenge based on the template provided. Entries will be judged on creativity, adherence to creature bio, how well they animate.

Triocular Scorpiod
Bio: Prowling the dark ranges and crevasses of its cold domain, triocular scorpiods employ their tails for two deadly functions: night vision for hunting, and plasma-blasting for killing their prey. Also known as “tri-scorps,” they are particularly dangerous for their ability to “ricochet” their lightning attack off one target and onto others. Explorers and others travelling in groups must therefore exercise tremendous caution in their presence, and are advised to kill the tri-scorps on sight.

Template restrictions: You may not modify (scale, move, remove) the three tails, spine, legs, or mouth. You may swap out the weapons at the ends of the tail as desired. You may add parts anywhere.

Tag: mcscorpiodchallenge

Color/vibe references:
These images are meant to generally inform the aesthetic direction you take especially when painting your creature. It’s not a requirement to match your paint to these colors, but we just want to give you an idea of the vibe we’re looking for.

What will the challenge winner(s) get?
A chance to be featured on Spore.com! Maxis will hand pick the winner(s) in this challenge. Finalists will be posted before the winning creation(s) are announced.

Challenge Rules:

• To submit a creature, tag it with: mcscorpiodchallenge
• You can submit as many entries as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT May 11, 2010
• Optional: Post screenshots or YouTube movies of your creation on the forum

Feature Criteria

• Creation must not have any parent authored by a different creator (other than MaxisCactus)
• Creation must not have any offensive creation in its lineage (any parent or child creations)
• Creation must not have any links or references to other sites in the submission’s tags, name, or description

FAQ:

How Do I use the Template?

1. Right click on the small PNG above and choose Save as.
2. Open your Spore Creature Creator and drag the png into the editor.
3. Add parts and paint to flesh out the character of this creature. All parts including accessory, mech, C&C, and base game parts are allowed. You may not scale, remove or move any parts of the original template, with the exception that the feet may be swapped out for other feet.

Can I use cheats?
Cheats such as AddDNA and Freedom are not allowed. Asymmetry is allowed on the parts you add.

Is outfitting allowed?
Yes.

Ok, the following creature that you’re about to see may gross you out!  I’m not even going to bother with the details of what I think it looks like…rather I suggest to visit Ocean Quigley’s Project Blog or just read below.  Once again, special thanks to Jinx from InfiniteSims for passing this info along to me!

The most charismatic creature that came out of Spore’s development was undoubtedly the Intestisaur. It was created by Flux, who interned with us one summer.

The thing was fascinating to watch, but disturbing and creepy. It became our unofficial mascot. Here’s a Maya render of it, after exporting it out of Spore.

And a little animation of it (him? I was never sure about Intestisaur’s gender, but I’ll settle on “him”) walking. The animation system handled him just fine and it was fun to watch him saunter around.

InfiniteSims was watching TV when they caught an episode with Will Wright on the Discovery Channel.  While not the best of quality due to lack of proper tools, it’s still watchable if you are interested in hearing him talking about The Sims and Spore.

Thanks to InfiniteSims for tipping me off on a new update from Ocean Quigley’s Project Blog.  This time he shares with us some insight on the black holes, protoplanetary discs and the galactic core found in Spore.

Here are some animations of astronomical features I built in Spore, using Andrew Willmott’s effect system.

I was going for an aesthetic of caricatured reality. These things had to look more like people expected them to than like they (probably) really do.

Here’s a black hole:

And the galactic core (with huge jets shooting out from the poles)

And a protoplanetary disc, where a cloud of dust and gas is collapsing to form an infant star and solar system:

Creating animated, interactive versions of the things that I read about in Our Universe in fourth grade was a total blast. It’s pretty much the best job I could have imagined having as a 10 year old.

(I loved that book when I was a kid! Especially with those amazing Michael Whelan paintings of aliens floating in a Jovian atmosphere)

Make no joke about it, EA Mobile is dropping many of their game’s prices this week to celebrate Easter. The only two EA/Maxis related ones are Spore Origins ($.99) and Spore Creatures ($1.99). A tad bummed that The Sims 3 did not get marked down. Many other games have also been cut, here’s the full list below.

• SCRABBLE for iPhone & iPod touch – $2.99 (40% off)
  
• MONOPOLY for iPhone & iPod touch – $2.99 (40% off)
• The Simpsons Arcade for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (80% off)
• The Game of LIFE for iPhone & iPod touch – $1.99 (33% off)
• Madden NFL 10 for iPhone & iPod touch – $4.99 (29% off)
• NBA Live for iPhone & iPod touch – $4.99 (29% off)
• Dragon’s Lair for iPhone & iPod touch – $2.99 (40% off)
• American Idol for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• Mystery Mania for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• SPORE Origins for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• SPORE Creatures for iPhone & iPod touch – $1.99 (72% off)
• BATLLESHIP for iPhone & iPod touch – $1.99 (33% off)
• CONNECT 4 for iPhone & iPod touch – $1.99 (33% off)
• Littlest Pet Shop for iPhone & iPod touch – $1.99 (33% off)
• Anytime Pool for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• SNOOD for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (67% off)
• TRIVIAL PURSUIT for iPhone & iPod touch – $2.99 (40% off)
• Clue for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• BOGGLE for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• YAHTZEE Adventures for iPhone & iPod touch – $1.99 (33% off)
• Mass Effect Galaxy for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• Star Trek for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• Wolfenstein RPG for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)
• Lemonade Tycoon for iPhone & iPod touch – $.99 (50% off)

The art director for Spore, Ocean Quigley gives us a look at one of their old prototypes of the Creature Editor from Spore, way back from 2004.

Here’s a screencapture from the first iteration of Spore’s creature editor, from back in 2004 or so.

We had originally experimented with a much more free-form approach to the creature editor. The player could assemble an arbitrary creation out of bones and nodes, and it would hop around using physics and a pre-Chris Hecker animation system. And this was before we started skinning it with a metaball mesh, so it’s just the naked skeleton.

As you can see, we were playing around with a cel-shaded look that ultimately fell by the wayside.

Ocean Quigley, Spore’s Art Director posted a fairly new blogpost about the design of the atmospheres for the various planets in Spore.  Have a read below!

Here’s a prototyping video I did while designing Spore’s planetary atmospherics.

I’ve written about them before, but in a nutshell, the atmosphere needed to be soft and diffuse when seen from above, but make for pretty skies when seen from below.
And the system had to be continuous, so that a zoom would seamlessly take you from the surface looking up at the sky, to orbit looking down at a thin layer of air.

This was a pretty successful mockup.

It only addresses atmospherics and the interaction of atmosphere with the sun, background and camera. Everything else is abstracted away (and kind of ugly). It’s only trying to address a narrow set of problems, and as a result, represents a pretty clear design.

I had talked to the engineers to get a sense of what the capabilities of our engine were. So in creating this animation (within those constraints!) I’d represented an approach that we could use for the game.

And here are a few screenshots from the Spore itself, showing how it looked once we had the whole system working.

What do we have here?  Another Spore contest held by MaxisCactus over at the official Spore forums!  While it is super-fun to participate in, we must, no NEED to know what is going on at the Maxis studios!  Please, give us some insight on the future of Spore

Overview: In this fixed morphology challenge it’s up to you to modify our template creatures to fit the bios provided below. Your entry should be in the form of a Sporecast tagged mcnecrochallenge containing four creatures based on templates provided below. The set of creatures you create should form a cohesive group to have a connected look. Entries will be judged on creativity, adherence to creature bio, how well they animate, and how well the creations in the set relate to each other.
Goal aesthetic for all creatures: Shadowy, purple, dark, spikey

1. Tusked Lamprey
Bio: Indigenous to a nightmare world, the tusked lamprey is a revolting predator. Covered in razored horns, the beast possesses a repugnant mouth-hole ringed with fangs. Forget its small size: even from a distance, the creature is deadly, capable of murdering its target with necrotizing blasts from its inexhaustible lysogenic pustules.
Template restrictions: You may not modify (scale, move, remove) the spine, legs, or mouth. You may swap the feet as long as their size doesn’t change. You may add parts anywhere.
Tags: mcLampreyEntry & mcNecroChallenge

2. Pterodyne
Bio: Beware pterodynes. They’re obscenities capable of ripping the brains and spine from their victims in seconds. Should they approach from behind, they can project their terrorpathic aura to make their prey scream, flail and flee in panic. But if they employ their stealth ability, you’ll never even see the approach of your own death.
Template restrictions: You may not modify (scale, move, remove) the spine, legs, “hands” or mouth. You may swap the feet as long as their size doesn’t change. You may add parts anywhere.
Tags: mcPterodyneEntry & mcNecroChallenge

3. Clawed Spectre
Bio: Seeded on a ruined world as a sick joke, the genetically-modified clawed spectres were ineffective at keeping down the vermin population because there were no vermin to eat. Clawed spectres generally therefore live on diet of each other. Ironically, they also possess ability to resurrect their dead. They slaughter their victims from a distance with blasts of their spectray. Despite their cannibalism, clawed spectres possess sufficient intelligence to use tools, and to employ and revise attack strategies. It’s common for explorers to underestimate clawed spectres. Once.
Template restrictions: You may not modify (scale, move, remove) the spine, legs, or mouth. You may swap the hands or feet as long as their size doesn’t change. You may add parts anywhere. The coiled ram horns may be modified/moved but not removed.
Tags: mcSpectreEntry & mcNecroChallenge

4. Death Mollusk
Bio: Death mollusks crabs are small, vicious parasites of low intelligence, imbued with the horrific ability to drain their victims of energy. Highly mobile and able to strike from a distance, death mollusks are a threat even in death, exploding the moment their disgusting innards cease functioning.
Template restrictions: You may not modify (scale, move, remove) the spine, legs, hands, or mouth. You may add parts anywhere.
Tags: mcDeathMolluskEntry & mcNecroChallenge

What will the challenge winner(s) get?
A chance to be featured on Spore.com! Maxis will hand pick the winner(s) in this challenge. Finalists will be posted before the winning creation(s) are announced. The winning creations will be creatures, not Sporecasts.

Challenge Rules:

• To submit a sporecast, tag it with: mcnecroChallenge
• Creatures should retain the same tags the templates have
• You can submit as many Sporecasts as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT Mar 30, 2010
• Optional: Post screenshots or YouTube movies of your creation on the forum

Feature Criteria

• Creation must not have any parent authored by a different creator (other than MaxisCactus and original author if different from MaxisCactus)
• Creation must not have any offensive creation in its lineage (any parent or child creations)
• Creation must not have any links or references to other sites in the submission’s tags, name, or description

FAQ:
How Do I use the Template?
1. Right click on either image above and choose Save as. (The second is for non-C&C players)
2. Open your Spore Creature Creator and drag the png into the editor.
3. Add parts and paint to flesh out the character of this creature. All parts including accessory, mech, C&C, and base game parts are allowed. You may not scale, remove or move any parts of the original template, with the exception that the feet may be swapped out for other feet.

Can I use cheats?
Cheats such as AddDNA and Freedom are not allowed. Asymmetry is allowed on the parts you add.

Why do some template(s) have different original authors?
Maxis was inspired by some player creations when making these templates. If your entry has an author other than MaxisCactus as the “original” in the lineage, don’t worry. Your entry is still valid. We want to give credit to the original authors as well for making such unique creations that would be used as part of an official challenge! In this case, the honor goes to celloguy and chimerahound!