Archive for the ‘Spore’ Category

A new Spore Challenge has appeared!  This time, more than likely it’ll have a lot more entries because of the fact that the Maxis team has announced that the winners may be featured as NPC’s in their upcoming DarkSpore game!  Sounds great to me, read the details from MaxisCactus and decide if you’d like to enter:

Two Part Challenge

Round 1: Submit a template (8/24 – 9/7)
Create a template creature based on the bio below. Your template entry should be in the form of a published creature tagged mcrakthatemplate. Paint your template white!

Templates will be judged on creativity, adherence to the bio, simplicity, and how well they animate.

Round 2: Submit a finished creature (Dates TBA)
We’ll give you more details on this later when round 2 begins. Players will submit creations based on the winning template from round 1.

Raktha

Bio: Rakthae are the children of two epochs of mutation on Cryos: the Crogenitor era, and the Darkspore era. Originally, they survived Cryos’s descent into an ice age, the Rakthae evolved into double-extremophiles. They flourished when the Crogenitors ripped Cryos with rivers and oceans of plasma, gaining the ability to metabolize plasma itself (especially advantageous with the planet’s dwindling food supply).

But when the Darkspore invaded Cryos, they bent the beautiful creatures to their own will. Protected by halos of flame, the Rakthae inflict flaming devastation on any who attack them bodily, and aim fiery vengeance at any target. Whether defensive or offensive, Raktha flames are difficult to extinguish and can quickly turn terrible wounds into terrifying death.

What will the challenge winner(s) get?
The winner of round 1 will be featured. Winners of round 2 will be featured and may be included as NPC designs in Darkspore! Credit will go to both the template and final creature artists for any creations that go into Darkspore.

Challenge Rules:
• To submit a template, tag it with: mcrakthatemplate
• You can submit as many templates as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT September 07, 2010
• Optional: Post screenshots or YouTube movies of your creation on the forum

Winning Criteria
• No parent author in the lineage other than yourself
• No offensive/copyright protected references in entry or parent creation
• No links/references to other sites in submission tags/name/description
• No cheats allowed
• No using the invisible limbs bug
• Asymmetry is allowed, but don’t pose your creature. Entries should be in a default idle stance.

Challenge FAQ

Your questions answered here.

Q: How complex should I make the template?
A: We’ll be looking for simpler creations. Having a simpler template design will boost your entry’s chances of winning.

Q: Will all challenges follow this format in the future?
A: Probably not. We’re experimenting here, and we want to test out some of your brilliant ideas. We’ll see how we like it, we’ll see how you like it, and gauge how best to run challenges after we’ve done this trial run.

Q: Is C&C allowed?
A: Yes, however, if you use C&C and are a winner of round 1, we will publish a duplicate version of your template with alternative parts for non C&C players for round 2.

Is it possible to win with our own template?
A: Yes. If you create the winning template, then make one of the best entry creations based on it, it is possible!

Winning Entries & Darkspore

Earlier we announced that the secret purpose of the Maxis Template Challenges was to allow players to help us design some of the NPCs in Darkspore.

This is THE FIRST challenge since announcement, and I hope we get a huge tidal wave of entries now that you guys know the real reward at stake here.

No Template?

We’re still getting a feel for how best to run these challenges. The feedback you guys have been provided is helping shape the process here. We know you’ve been making unbelievably cool creations based on our templates, but this time we want to give you a chance to spread your wings and really come up with some cool designs on your own.

This is based on your feedback, so I’ve got to give credit to you for helping us redesign our challenge format. This is a trial run, so we’ll see how it goes. Let us know if you like the original template format better, or if you prefer this new style of challenge!

In the past, the templates are based on NPCs in Darkspore that have already been designed, with art and engineering behind them to make sure they work well in the game. We simply skin the current Darkspore NPCs with the models you provide us.

With the new format, we’ll be doing the art, effects, animations, etc. after we determine the winners. This means a team of Maxis folks will be at work making YOUR winning creations shine in the game.

I’m super confident that you guys are going to come up with some work that will blow them away and inspire them as they’re puppeteering your creations to life in the game. Make me proud!

-MC

So all of the template challenges held in the past year actually served a purpose – to help feed the NPC’s for Maxis’ newest game, DarkSpore.  MaxisCactus gave us an inside look of the process of importing the latest Spore template challenge, the Space Barracuda, into DarkSpore for our characters to battle against.  They’ll be holding more contests for Spore players to create NPC’s (note – only Maxis can convert the creations from Spore to DarkSpore as NPCs), so I’d suggest entering if you want a chance for a creation to be featured in a game!

Oh, and considering that they are tweaking this process, these may or may not make it into the final build of the game, set to be released in February 2011.

Space Barracuda: Preview Winning Player Designs in Game

Many of you probably already know about the template challenges we’ve been hosting on the Spore forum. We announced that these may be used to help design NPCs in Darkspore. Today we announced winners for the Space Barracuda Template Challenge!

Players created Space Barracuda designs based on the following brief description, imagery, and template creation. Check out the original thread here.

“Space Barracuda
Bio: Once tiny sea creatures, the space barracudas are now larger and via gravitic powers, able to “swim” through the air on land. Dangerous and unpredictable, space barracudas use their gravitic abilities to teleport themselves and their prey. Prospectors and fighters should exercise extreme caution around these bizarre creatures.”

The creation entries designed by the Spore community were judged by the Darkspore team and finalists were hand picked for preview in Darkspore.

Check out the finalists in the level editor. They won’t all swarm like this in game, but we needed to see all the finalists animate in game to verify viability as potential NPC designs.

We chose our top six and verified that their animation, look and feel all integrated well with the game environment.

Check out the top 6 in game, pitted against Zrin. They look great!!!

The Winners:

1. Space Barracuda By shamar10
2. Starstaidned Space Barracuda By KaluluUchiha
3. Space Barracuda By WforWumbo

Honorable Mention:

1. Space Barracuda By ESquidey
2. Space Barracuda Template By Richardson72
3. Space Barracuda Template By Richardson72

I want to stress that this whole thing is WIP (work in progress). We’re still working out the kinks with UGC, but we want to try to get your creations in game. The images above depict a level populated with a bunch of Space Barracudas, but that was for judging preview purposes. We can’t guarantee that these will be in the final game, but we’ll continue to explore this as an option.

Thanks to everyone who contributed in this challenge. I hope to see you guys enter the next one soon!

-MC

The following was posted by DarkSpore community manager MaxisCactus.  In the following text, she explains how you can participate in upcoming Spore contests in which winning creations may be featured as NPC’s for the upcoming game!

On the Spore forum, many of our Spore players have participated in our template challenges and there has been speculation around why these are happening.

With the huge announcement Tuesday about Darkspore, you may have already guessed that some of the winning creations from these challenges could help constitute the cast of NPC creatures you’ll see in Maxis’ new action-RPG.

Stegavaar Template Challenge Entries

The entries to these contests absolutely blew us away, and we can’t wait to show off challenge winners as NPCs in Darkspore.

During each template challenge judging round, we bring our favorite entry creations into Darkspore to see how well they integrate with the existing Darkspore environment. A group of Maxis artists, designers, and producers analyze your creations, how well they animate, the execution of their design, and their fidelity to the NPC bio we provided to inform your work.

Stegavaar Entries Previewed in an earlier game iteration

Each template challenge is based on a real Darkspore NPC, which has its own specific abilities, unique animations, and personality already designed and implemented. When we drop your models in to skin the NPCs, they come to life in a new way.

Loading up a level where I have to battle Falcore’s inspired triple-spike tailed Scorpiod or flee Potatofish’s barreling armored Stegavaar proves that these creations deserve a spotlight in Darkspore.

While we’re still working on the pipeline, and the process hasn’t quite been ironed out, there’s something magical here that we can’t wait to show you.

Your participation in this is completely voluntary. The Maxis team is creating all of the core NPCs in the game, but we want YOU to contribute too!

I hope you’ll keep submitting entries in future challenges, and maybe some of you will see your creations come to life as mutated E-DNA hordes in the Darkspore game!

Previous and Current Challenge Links:
• Stegavaar Template Challenge
• Lightning Stalker Template Challenge
• Space Barracuda Template Challenge
• Triocular Scorpiod Challenge
• Uklideon Template Challenge
• Quadrakiller Template Challenge
• Toxiraptor Template Challenge
• Necro Template Challenge

-MC

I thought this was nice for Maxis to do – promote the featured creations on the main page of the site for those not logged in at the official Spore.com site.

via MaxisCactus over at the Sporums

Sigh…seriously, come on Maxis…  Contest here

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 mclightningchallenge based on the template provided. Entries will be judged on creativity, adherence to creaturmclightningchallengee bio, how well they animate.

Lightning Stalker
Bio:Lightning stalkers have been the scourge of stragglers and survivors since the planet’s ice-age set in. Heavily armored with terrible claws and horns protruding from across their bodies, lightning stalkers are highly adept at tracking prey for hours, days or even weeks if food is scarce. While they’re quite capable of ripping their targets to bloody shreds with their claws, they more often strike at a distance with blinding bolts of their electroplasma.

Template restrictions: You may not modify (scale, move, remove) the spine, legs, arms, “fingers” or mouth. You may swap out the feet as desired. You may add parts anywhere.

Tag: mclightningchallenge

Template:

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.

Challenge Rules:

• To submit a creature, tag it with: mclightningchallenge
• You can submit as many entries as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT July 20, 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

Half the year gone by and nothing – absolutely nothing new on the Spore front.  Someday…I don’t think the franchise is dead yet.  However, I do want to know if there is a purpose for these contests other than just keeping the game alive…Here’s a new one kicked off by MaxisCactus from yesterday.

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 mcbarracudachallenge based on the template provided. Entries will be judged on creativity, adherence to creature bio, how well they animate.

Space Barracuda
Bio: Once tiny sea creatures, the space barracudas are now larger and via gravitic powers, able to “swim” through the air on land. Dangerous and unpredictable, space barracudas use their gravitic abilities to teleport themselves and their prey. Prospectors and fighters should exercise extreme caution around these bizarre creatures.

Template restrictions: You may not modify (scale, move, remove) the spine or mouth. You may add parts anywhere.

Tag: mcbarracudachallenge

Template:

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.

Challenge Rules:

• To submit a creature publish and tag it with: mcbarracudachallenge
• You can submit as many entries as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT July 13, 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

Remember the special promotion between EA and Dr. Pepper where if you purchase a drink, you’ll get a code to redeem various downloadables for EA Games?  It’s still going on.  A new batch of content has been added for Spore – but it relates to wallpapers and posters only – the digital kind.  I grabbed small caps of the new items, and I redeemed a code for (in my opinion) the best Spore poster they had:

Sad news to report.  The official Spore game on Facebook – Spore Islands – will be shutting down the game’s server early in July.  Such a shame as I still play that game everyday – in the morning and evening.  As of right now I hold the 5th spot for global rating and the 10th spot for global points.  All good things have to come to an end, wish they could keep it up as it’s pretty much the only game I play on FB.

The Sims 3 World Adventures and The Sims 3 are $4.99, Spore Creatures, Spore Origins and SimCity are $1.99.  Good savings for those who’ve yet to own the games!

Okay, if I see one more friggin’ Template Challenge from the Spore site I’m going to take this paperclip in my hand and jam it in my eye.  Seriously, what is going on over at Maxis…Do these templates serve a purpose?  Are they for the rumored ‘DarkSpore’ game?  I’d sure love to know!

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 mctoxiraptorchallenge based on the template provided. Entries will be judged on creativity, adherence to creature bio, how well they animate.

Emerald Toxiraptor
Bio: Centuries ago the rainforests and grasslands teemed with gentle creatures sharing their habitats. Following the invasion, the planet exchanged its serenity for terror. Once tiny creatures with a mild, stinging bite, toxiraptors (striking for their glowing emerald eyes), became tall, lightning-fast attackers that hunted in packs. Aside from the terrible damage their fangs can inflict, it’s their toxin that’s of greatest worry to any being they target, a nerve agent that untreated causes paralysis and death within minutes. Any explorer catching sight of toxiraptors hunting in packs should evacuate or flee immediately… or be prepared to unleash maximum firepower.

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

Tag: mctoxiraptorchallenge

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.

Challenge Rules:

• To submit a creature, tag it with: mctoxiraptorchallenge
• You can submit as many entries as you’d like
• All submissions must be in by 11:00am PDT June 8, 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

Posted via MaxisCactus over at the Sporums