Archive for the ‘Spore’ Category

One thing I love about MaxisCactus is her enthusiasm for Spore contests.  Every week she thinks of another fantastic idea for one.  As much I enjoy reading and posting them, I kind of hope that we’d get something different for once.  I don’t know, perhaps a sneak peak video around their office, random discussions with their developers, talks about their upcoming projects.  But I suppose having a contest is better then nothing…we’ll soon find out what they have been up to anyways.

This week’s contest is the Stegavaar Template Challenge.

Challenge Details

In this fixed morphology challenge it’s up to you to modify our template creature to fit the bio provided below. Entries will be judged on creativity, adherence to creature bio, and how well they animate. Show us what this creature should look like in the Stegavaar Template Challenge!

Creature Bio:
Name: Stegavaar

A solitary, dangerous creature, Stegavaar burrows through the eternal rock of its planet’s mantle and crust seeking the loren, the rare and precious underground rivers in which to spawn millions of creatures like itself in hopes of one day conquering the surface.

Stegavaar has the power of devastating bio-electron beams–living lightning. Charging at speeds that belie its cumbersome appearance, and protected by its impenetrable bio-armour, Stegavaar is nothing less than a living tank. Should Stegavaar ever fall in battle, its final act will be an electron explosion of vengeance that slaughters all who are nearby.

Stegavaar’s adaptations:

• Lightning based creature.
• Charges at its enemies.
• Tendrils emit electric current.
• Explodes in electricity on death.

Suggested colors: White, red, and/or blue. This is just a starting point. Feel free to deviate if you come up with a color scheme that better suits your creation.

To use 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.

What will the challenge winner(s) get?
A chance to be featured on Spore.com! Maxis will hand pick the winner in this challenge. Finalists will be posted before the 1st place creation is announced.

Challenge Rules:

• Your creature must use the provided template
• To submit a creation, just publish and tag it with: mcStegavaarChallenge
• You can submit as many creations as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT Mar 1, 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

All 3 EA games – The Sims 3, World Adventures and Spore fell from their normal positions in the UK charts.  At first I was wondering where was The Sims 3 Design & Hi-Tech Stuff…then I realized it was only out for a day in the UK, so that is understandable.  Hopefully next week will provide better results.  It doesn’t help when there are new games bumping them down as well

Source:  Chart-Track

I love Pie!  But in this case, we are talking about the numerical pi.  You know the one that never ends – 3.14159265358979323846264 33832795028841971693993751058 20974944592307816406286208998 62803482534211706798214808651 32823066470938446095505822317 25359408128481117450284102701 93852110555964462294895493038 19644288109756659334461284756 48233786783165271201909145648 56692346038610454326648213393 60726024914127372458700660631 55817488152092096282925409171 53643678925903600113305305488 20466521384146951941511609 and so on…

Pi day is fast approaching, March 14th to be exact!  The Spore team would like for you to celebrate the love by sharing a Pi creation of your own.  Here are the details from MaxisCactus.  Good luck and have fun!

Challenge Details

Give some irrational love to the number pi. Pi day is coming on March 14th, and to celebrate, we want you to help us pay homage to the wonderful constant.

Make a pi related creation (or cook up an exquisite pie in the editor) in the Pi Day Challenge and you may be featured on 3/14!

Resources:

• wikihow.com: How to Celebrate Pi Day
• Wikipedia: Pi
• exploratorium.edu: Pi

Some themes to get you started:
Archimedes, pi, pie, geometry, piems, Feynman point

What will the challenge winner(s) get?

A chance to be featured on Spore.com! We’re going to choose a few of the top voted creations to share the glory here.

We’ll post our favorite submissions here, then YOU get to vote for which one is your top pick! The winner(s) may be featured if they meet our criteria for featured creations

• Creation must not have any parent authored by a different creator
• 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

Submissions that do not meet the above criteria will not be considered for the poll

Rules:

• Your creation must be related to pi (or pie )
• Your creation may be made in any editor, including the adventure editor
• To submit a creation, just publish and tag it with: mcpichallenge
• You can submit as many creations as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT Mar 9, 2010
• Optional: Post screenshots or YouTube movies of your creation on the forum

Example creations:

A portion from a review for Spore Creatures by Slide2Play:

The levels have cute names, like Lumpet Cove and Beetle Basin, and the graphics and animation are excellent. The problem is that there’s not much to do beyond eating and evolving. Sure, each level tracks how many of the available bugs you’ve consumed, and you’ll come upon herds of animals that you can decide to fight or befriend, but once you’ve cleared a few stages you’ll have seen most of what this game has to offer.

If nothing else, Spore Creatures offers an easy, user-friendly introduction to RPG elements. Playing this will acquaint young gamers with navigating menus and choosing upgrade paths. However, anyone who has played through a Final Fantasy or Fallout won’t find anything new or compelling here.

review here

Mass Effect 2 is the new ‘hotness’ in the gaming world, which explains why it knocked The Sims 3 and World Adventures out of their normal spots.  That’s okay though…unlike The Sims games, Mass Effect 2 will not hold its spot for long!

Source:  Chart Track

Because of just flat out boring and repetitive gameplay, it appears that the Spore franchise and EA may have some evolving to do before they carry on this franchise’s name. It was cute the first time, but it turned into something just oh so bleeeeeh. For $6.99, “Spore: Creatures” is a worse choice than week old leftovers.

I don’t think it’s boring – but then again I’m a boring person in real life, so it’s possible that it could be to others.  But I do agree on the price…for a reskinned version of Spore Origins, I think it should of been priced at $4.99 instead.

read the full review at 148Apps

That’s the only iPad joke you’re going to get from me.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few hours, the biggest topic of the day is Apple’s new iPhone XL iPad, their revolutionary tablet designed for media and entertainment in mind.  By looking at the various photos and information, I cannot see a justified reason why this really exists.  It looks beautiful and I do kind of see myself wanting one…I just don’t have a reason good enough to warrant owning it.  Have to say that the prices aren’t that bad… $499 for the 16GB, $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB.  3G models are an additional $130.

Now let’s get to the important part – gaming.  EA stepped up and introduced a new ‘Need for Speed’ game, which for only 2 weeks, looks quite nice.  No Sims/Spore related games were discussed but they did mention that the games from the iPod Touch will work with the iPad – the resolution may be distorted a little bit but other then that things are dandy.  Apparently companies can update their games to make them compatible with the iPad, so that will solve that problem.  Kotaku gave it a test drive and reports that games that use menus (like The Sims 3) or that uses the tilting movement (Spore Origins) plays very nicely:

The games that were successful were ones that relied simply on touching and tilting, not a complex combination of both. PopCap’s gem matching casual hit Bejeweled 2 was, unsurprisingly, easy to play with its simple taps and small swipes. Super Monkey Ball, admittedly not the easiest game to control via accelerometer anyway, worked as well as it does on the iPhone platform.

I was less successful with Tetris, which I played with the iPad resting flat on a table, tapping and swiping tetrominoes down screen. The iPad’s rounded posterior reduced some of the reliability of touchscreen control

Need For Speed: Shift was one of the more positive control experiences, as it relies only on tilting and braking with a touchscreen press. EA’s other offering, The Sims 3, was also completely playable, relying less on twitch gameplay and more on menu based controls to play.

The biggest downfall in my opinion with the iPad is the fact that after 2+ years, Apple has yet to give a damn about supporting flash on the phone.  Hello!  What about Hulu?  Flash based websites?  You know how pathetic it looks for not getting around to supporting it?  If a $299 netbook can do it then so can you, Steve Jobs.

Eh, guess I’ll wait a few years until they are on the 4G setup and slap on a camera for video conferencing.  In the meantime I’ll stick with my iPad Nano aka the iPhone.

oops I meant to show this video

I’m a fan of the Spore games and have played others on both the iPhone and Nintendo DS. After spending a couple of hours with Spore Creatures, I enjoyed navigating the terrain and the challenge of helping my creature evolve. I did find the gameplay repetitive and a bit frustrating at times as your creature can get stuck roaming around in circles looking for food or avoiding the bad guys. But overall, Spore Creatures offers a very cool, colorful environment–one that I’ll definitely be exploring further.

full review here

EA wants to make sure you are aware that Spore Creatures is now available on the iPhone.  So enjoy the following factsheet and images!

Product Description
SPORE Creatures picks up right where SPORE Origins left off. Your Spore has evolved to a land based creature faced with a world of unique environments to explore. Through exploration your creature encounters predators to befriend or attack, obstacles and hazards to overcome, and new parts to add to creature inside the Creature Creator as it climbs the evolution ladder to become the top of the food chain and discover other species like itself.

Key Features

• Explore 20 fun and challenging levels within 4 unique Land Zones
• Tilt, turn and twist your way through fun and challenging environments with your iPhone’s motion-sensing accelerometer
• Choose how you evolve by befriending or attacking unique creatures
• Overcome epic bosses to earn an epic skill
• Solve environment puzzles and obstacles as you climb the evolutionary ladder
• Max out your abilities (Offense, Defense, Movement, Perception, and Social) to gain super skills
• Unlock and collect creature parts to evolve your creature
• Collect DNA to evolve and obtain new evolutionary skills
• Customize your creature equipping parts that tailor to your specific gameplay style (Offense, Defense, Movement, Perception, and Social abilities).
• Pinch, pull, and poke your creation in the Creature Editor, customizing the texture, shape and body parts to fit the way you play. You can even skin your creature with photos from your photo library.
• Play your favorite music from your iPhone/iPod touch as your roam new environments

Product Specifications
Publisher: Electronic Arts Inc.
Ship Date: January 2009
Genre: Sim & Strategy

The finalists have been chosen, its now up to you to decide which creations are the winner!  Put in your vote by logging into the Sporums!  I like the Charles Darwin Bust, Theory of Evolution and Book of Origins.  Hope one of them gets picked

Finalists:
Vote by 2/2/10
1. Book of Origins By Rebecca1208
2. Darwin’s Dimorphism Theory (fB) By LOLAJANE
3. Darwin and the beagle By Berbert77
4. Charles Darwin Bust By Andeavor
5. Sorry, Road Closed By Mavor

6. Variation By kekenkenka
7. Blue-footed Booby By AJP44
8. Darwin and the Earthworms By Cyanobacterium
9. Evolution By rocketdog1234
10. Theory of Evolution By Vilageidiotx

11. History in the Making By stevendude21
12. The Natural Selector By Jaguar5o5
13. a gouldian finch’s adventure By DROIDEKA129980
14. The Greatest Show On Earth By Sammy39O
15. Silurian Period By dinofan

Subscribe to this Sporecast to play these adventure finalists before voting for them.

As there were only a few Sporecast submissions, we’ve chosen our favorite as the winner, which will also be featured on Darwin’s birthday: