Will Wright's New Game: Spore

[FrostyBoy]

Oh and does anyone happen to know the creature with the strongest survival capabilities? Including Sci-Fi creatures.

What about that Sandworm from Dune?

I wonder if I can create a creature that eats planets...

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by Sn00py
What about that Sandworm from Dune?

Can't large enough quantities of water kill them? Or am I misremembering? That wouldn't be a very tough creature except on the right planets.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


There was a Sim Town, but it was Sim City for Kids™.

simtown (Which I bought for POTM, and played myself) was at the neighborhood scale that i beleive was intended for simsville, but was not designed to link to either Simcity of the Sims - it predated the sims as a matter of fact.

[Kuciwalker]

It predated the Sims by a large margin. I remember playing it on my old Windows 3.1.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sn00py


I can see now, that having these stages is a good thing; if the player is asked to create the entire and final creature from scratch on the spot, it would feel like a large task each time you wanted to start a new game.

I think these stages will allow the player to slowly create their creature in small steps, which wouldn't be such a huge task.

Isnt that kinda the point? evolution, and all that?

[MarkG]

ok so how many months of playing will you need till you reach the galaxy level?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Isnt that kinda the point? evolution, and all that?

Yes, but it has the additional advantage of not confronting the player with an immense task all at once.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
There are two kinds of images: bitmap and vector. All Wintel graphics are bitmapped, AFAIK.

Untrue and irrelevant. Where was it said that this game wants to store any bitmaps, anyway? I mean, sure, it has to *render* bitmaps to show on the screen, but... ah, I'm not even going to try to explain anything here, I just want you to tell us why you think the game should need to store high-resolution bitmaps anyway.

(that I called that "true" at first was a complete stupid braino... I mean... it doesn't make any sense at all to me to say that "all Wintel graphics are bitmapped")

Hm, anything the computer "knows" how to do is programmed. For example, a game uses some kind of collision detection algorithm to see if somebody gets shot.

True, but basically as vovan said, in the end only to the same extent as it is true of any other information-processing system. That includes, for example, humans. I consider the burden of proof to be on you - if you want to disagree with me about this, please do it in the off-topic forum, and only after meditating intensely on the Church-Turing Thesis.

No. All the work still has to be done by graphic designers. If the graphics are to be generated programmatically, you still need the designers to layout what the program is to generate.

Untrue. The text I'm typing out here wasn't layed out in advance by a programmer, yet my browser splits it up to lines just fine. Figuring out the inverse kinematics for arbitrary animals created by a whole bunch of people is the same problem - a hell of a lot more difficult and complex, but in the end, quite possible with enough calculation power and good programming.

Note that I might have seemed to use the argument that "this simple problem is solvable, therefore this complex problem must be solvable, too". Please disregard that argument. What I'm claiming is a bit more direct: I simply don't see a reason why it should be impossible for a computer program to calculate plausible-looking IK for a plausible human-created model. The reason why I mentioned text layout is not that I think its solvability makse this problem solvable, too, it's that you should tread carefully because someone might think that you implied that all nontrivial data analysis problems are unsolvable.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ari Rahikkala


True, but irrelevant. Where was it said that this game wants to store any bitmaps, anyway? I mean, sure, it has to *render* bitmaps to show on the screen, but... ah, I'm not even going to try to explain anything here, I just want you to tell us why you think the game should need to store high-resolution bitmaps anyway.



True, but basically as vovan said, in the end only to the same extent as it is true of any other information-processing system. That includes, for example, humans. I consider the burden of proof to be on you - if you want to disagree with me about this, please do it in the off-topic forum, and only after meditating intensely on the Church-Turing Thesis.

The Spike-Skanky thesis, OTOH, says that anything that can be discussed in the on topic forums should be

[vovan]

Originally posted by Kloreep
This means we'll have a limited number of organs and appendages for the creatures, I imagine?

I imagine so too. Might be some expansion pack material right there, though maybe there will be some way to edit the appendages as well.

Originally posted by Kloreep
Don't know how the buildings would work (i.e. if the player's graphical design will have any effect on what they do).

I think it works much the same way as animals. You basically shape the building however you want, and then also add these functional "appendages" which determine what the building does. But during the demo, Wright didn't reallly touch on that very much, he only customized the look of a single building to show how easy it is to do, but he didn't go into the whole form vs function thing.

Originally posted by Kloreep
Still, so long as they spend enough time polishing it, and devote enough manhours to creating the kind of general content needed for a variety of options in these editors, it could be very nice.

Yup. I imagine much of what will ship with the game will be the content created by the testers and programmers over the course of creating the game.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by lord of the mark



The Spike-Skanky thesis, OTOH, says that anything that can be discussed in the on topic forums should be

Hell yeah, leave it here. It's all interesting; I especially liked the part where UR missed the point entirely.

[vovan]

Originally posted by Sn00py
I have another question that you might be able to answer for me vovan. Can or does the creature evolve by itself?

I don't think so, because there was nothing to indicate any autonomous evolution in the demo, however, there was nothing to indicate that there won't be any such thing... Everything is possible, but I imagine all the change will be done by the player.

Originally posted by Sn00py
And if one creature has 20 powerful arms and 10 Jaws each with the power of a Hippo's jaw, does that creature have more of a chance of killing a civilization of Smurfs? The reason I ask is because this game's engine is based on real life physics I presume, so if one creature's physical attributes are more powerful than anothers, then the weaker creature is going to die no doubt?

I think this is certainly true for lower levels of development - especially the non-sentient existence. During the demo, when Wright's creature came out to the surface of the planet, there was this round brown thing (which you can see on one of the screenshots) which he killed and ate - it didn't respond with anything, because it didn't have any weapon appendages - it only tried to run, but its short legs didn't help much either. When Wright's creature was full, there appeared a huge spider-looking thing, from which the player had to run for dear life, because apparently he couldn't defend too well from them.

Now, a more interesting development is in the sentient levels. Here, I am not sure about the answer. When Wright's city was attacked, basically what happened was that these other creatures rolled up in tanks and started bombing the living daylight out of the city, to which Wright tried to respond with aerial attacks from some fluffy air-balloon looking thingeys. So, here, of course, the shape of the creatures doesn't play much direct role. There was no hand-to-hand combat to be seen between the creatures of the different civilizations, so I don't really know whether that will be in the game... It would make sense if it was.

Originally posted by Sn00py
Also, I'm curious, what would the disadvantages be if I had an extremely powerful creature? Would I have to feed it a lot maybe?

I don't recall Wright mentioning anything about that during the demo... It would make sense... I don't think he said anything much about the importance of feeding and how the daily life of the player goes. It was more of a high-level concept overview kind of thing.

Originally posted by Sn00py
Does it have to be a creature? Can I make an insect that stings people with deadly poison? Or what about a virus? Ok, a virus can't travel the universe by will, but I might be able to hitch a ride on another UFO that happens to land on my planet.

Yeah, I've been wondering that too. I was sort of less extreme about it, for example, I was wondering whether you could make a herbivore instead of eating animals. As far as stinging, I am sure there will be some kind of stinging implement. But as far as radically changing the form of the organism, I don't know...

[vovan]

Originally posted by MarkG
ok so how many months of playing will you need till you reach the galaxy level?

I think you can blow through it in a day. Though of course I don't know for sure...

Also, @ Ari.

[Tassadar500]

Vovan, you seem pretty excited about this game. Care to make a wager?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Hell yeah, leave it here. It's all interesting; I especially liked the part where UR missed the point entirely.

Which one?