Spore (video game)

Spore is a computer and video game designed by Will Wright that simulates the complete history and future of life. Its concept, scope, and development philosophy (broad use of procedural generation) have drawn wide attention.

Spore is, at first glance, a "teleological evolution" game: the player molds and guides a species across many generations, growing it from a single-celled organism into a more complex animal, until the species becomes intelligent. At this point the player begins molding and guiding this species' society, progressing towards a spacefaring civilization. Spore's main innovation portends to be Wright's use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-endedness. Wright said "I didn't want to make players feel like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins. I wanted them to be like George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkien."

The game was first revealed and demonstrated to the public during a speech on procedural generation at the 2005 Game Developers Conference. It is currently being developed by Maxis and is to be published by Electronic Arts.

Release date

There is much speculation and confusion about the release date for Spore. As of mid-2006 no official release date has been announced, though Will Wright has said in interviews that it will be released in April or May 2007. Electronic Arts, the publisher, has said only that Spore will not be released in the 2006 fiscal year (which ends on March 31 2007) and that they will not be showing the game at E3 2007. Many retailers have listed specific release dates; for example EBgames.com lists the release date as June 2007. Several Spore fansites list the release date as November 2006, which was Spore's original planned release date. Will Wright had said in an earlier interview that Spore would be released in Fall 2006.

Phases

Spore will be a simulation that "ranges from the cellular level to the galactic level". It will consist of several long phases, each with its own style of play. In his GDC speech, Will Wright likened the style of game-play of each phase to an existing game:

Tide pool phase, similar to Pac-Man
Creature phase, Diablo
Tribal phase, Populous
City phase, SimCity
Civilization phase, Risk and Civilization
Space phase (a.k.a. UFO stage or Invasion), with some elements reminiscent of Destroy All Humans!, and later, sandbox gameplay.

Each phase of the game determines the starting point of the next phase. In the GDC presentation, the creature that Will Wright was presenting during the creature phase was based on his earlier cell creature (in having two legs, a tail, eyes and mouth in roughly the same positions) that he had evolved through gameplay. He also mentioned that how each phase is played develops the creature's personality, referring to whether the creatures would be logical or emotional, peaceful or violent, among other attributes.

Tide pool phase

The tide pool phase is the starting point of the game. The player guides a simple micro-organism (microbe) around in a 2D environment, eating other, weaker cells. There are at least three other types of cells, two of which can eat the player's microbe to begin with. Once the microbe has eaten several cells, it lays an egg which, when clicked, opens the creature editor which allows the player to modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe. This includes adding offensive abilities, for example in Will Wright's 2006 demo, he added a small spike which allows the player's microbe to attack the organisms which would previously eat the player's microbe instead happens later in the game in more detail. Each time the player's microbe progresses to the next generation, it grows larger. Once a currently unknown objective is achieved, the player leaves the 2D world of the microscopic and enters the creature phase.

The tide pool phase is sometimes referred to as the microbial stage or the cellular stage.

Creature phase

While the tide pool phase introduces the player to the game and its editor, the creature phase plays a big part in terms of what the player's creatures will look like in the later phases. It is similar to the tide pool phase, but there are several important differences. The most obvious one is that it is a 3D environment. There will be other creatures inhabiting the world and most, if not all, of them will have been created by other players. If there is a lack of predators in the ecosystem and weak herbivores are everywhere, the game will automatically download a new race of predators that another player has created and load them into the currently playing player's world.

The creature phase begins under water. The appearance of the player's creature is based on the microbe the player created in the tide pool phase. The basic goal is the same: Hunt food to earn DNA points and avoid being eaten by predators. Unlike the asexual reproduction in the tide pool phase, the player must now locate a mate. There have been rumors of asexual reproduction within the creature phase as well, but these have not been confirmed (or even hinted at) by official sources. Once the player's creature has laid an egg, it does not hatch straight away. Scavengers will attempt to steal the eggs and the player must defend them. When your egg hatches, you become a baby version of the creature you created with realistic higher voices and weaker abilities. Once the player's creature evolves in the creature phase, the fins may (optionally) be replaced by legs and feet, provided the player has collected a sufficient amount of DNA points, which allows the creature to move onto land.

The ultimate goal of the creature phase is to increase the creature's brain capabilities. Once they have increased sufficiently, the player's creature becomes sapient and the player progresses to the tribal phase.

Tribal phase

After the player evolves their species brain capacity far enough they enter the tribal phase. At this stage physical development is ceased. In the tribal phase the player has a hut and several of the creatures designed in the earlier phases. There is also a tribe dance, depending on the creature. New tribe members can be acquired from other tribes or found in the wild ^*. The player may build tools such as weapons and instruments. The creatures' behaviour is affected by what tools the player decides to give them. Once the tribe's hut has been upgraded to a high enough level, the player will progress to the city phase.

City phase

Most of this phase can be described simply as "SimCity like". The player's tribal camp has grown to a city, which must be cared for. Players can use a building editor to change the appearance of the buildings in their city. As in the creature phase, the game will attempt to detect what style of content the player prefers, download similar content created by other players and add it to the buy menu. Although no clear goals for this phase have been revealed, it appears that once a player develops a large enough city the game will advance further.

Civilization phase

After the city phase comes the civilization phase. In the civilization phase, players focus on relations between their civilization and other civilizations on their home planet, whether peaceful or war-torn.

The 'Civilization Phase' is where a player is expected to start seeing the results of his influence on the budding species. Players can still access the building editor and buy new buildings, and once players reach this point they are allowed to zoom out further for the first time, and view at the entire planet from space. Once the player zooms out past a certain point, the city changes from a properly-scaled view with all the buildings visible to a more 'cartoony' view. As in the tribal stage, players can meet other creatures of the same species in other cities and either try diplomacy to open trade routes and eventually form an alliance or attack them. At this point, a 'vehicle editor' is opened, allowing the player to construct land vehicles, aircraft, boats, and submarines.

The goal in this phase is to gain control of the entire planet, whether players conquer it with war or make an alliance through diplomacy. Once players have gained enough credits in this phase they unlock the UFO and the UFO editor, and can proceed into the Space Phase.

Space phase

After the civilization phase, the space phase, or 'sandbox phase', begins. At this stage, the player controls a vehicle (known as the UFO) capable of traveling throughout their local star system and visiting other planets. The player may also terraform uninhabitable planets with special tools that are purchased with credits (water tool, volcano tool etc.). The player's civilization can travel between star systems at this point, meeting other civilizations on distant worlds, most of which are created by other players. The Space Phase is sometimes referred to as 'sandbox' mode, since the player has near complete control of anything and everything. Planetary zoos, alliances with other races, and interstellar warfare have all been mentioned, and are all believed to be possible in-game. Every race will have a 'personality' that will change how a player interacts with them (According to Wright, the races of Star Trek are the basis for these "personalities").

Also, players can go and abduct other creatures, make fireworks and get other cultures to worship you.

As is traditional with most of Will Wright's games, the game never 'ends', and the Space Phase continues for as long as the player wishes.

Other elements of gameplay

Editors

Spore's major concept is that nearly everything is created by the players. Will Wright has stated that all the editors will be as similar as possible for easy use. There are several different editors, each one dealing with a different type of content.

At E3 2006, Wright showcased the creature editor. It allows the player to take what looks like a lump of clay with a spine and mold it into a creature of their choosing. Once they are done molding the main form, they can then add legs, arms, feet, hands, eyes, mouths, decorative elements, and a wide array of sensory organs like antennae. Once the creature is designed to the player's satisfaction, they can paint the creature using a large amount of textures, colors, and patterns. After the player feel their creature is complete, it can be tested in a small closed area.

There is also a building editor (city phase), a hut editor (tribal phase), a vehicle editor (civilization phase), a flora editor (space phase), a UFO editor (civilization/space phase) and a terrain editor. Once the player has access to the UFO, it becomes possible to terraform entire planets.

Procedural generation

In Spore, all creature animations are made on the fly. "The game automatically knows how to animate your creature based on how you put it together. For example, if you give your creature four equine legs, you can logically expect it to gallop around like a horse" In Wright's first public demonstration of Spore, he created a tripedal creature in the creature editor. The game then figured out how a lizard with three legs and a prehensile tail should walk. Wright then showed several pre-made creatures which moved realistically, despite their exotic design: insectile creatures with multiple heads and six legs, a walking bird whose massive head caused it to tilt while turning, and a dog-like creature with a set of unusually branching limbs. He also demonstrated a creature that looked exactly like a Care Bear, indicating that players could create animals similar to those found in nature or popular culture.

There has not been much direct information released regarding the technology Spore uses to procedurally generate its creatures and worlds. Wright mentioned in an interview given at E3 2006 that the information necessary to generate an entire creature would be only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright, who presented the following analogy: "think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game, like a womb, builds the "phenotypes" of the animal, which represent a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc".

Chris Hecker, who currently works on Spore (including its early prototypes), gave a presentation at GDC 2005 and Futureplay entitled "Why you should have paid attention in multivariable calculus", in which he describes the mathematics of an implicit surface and various methods to apply texture projections to such surfaces. Sean O'Neil worked as a consultant for Maxis "to assist with R&D development involving dynamic generation and rendering of a fractal-based world". He maintains a website^* with demonstration of procedural planet generation and a simulation of dynamic atmospheric scattering.

Wright noted that he hired a handful of demoscene programmers and artists because of their familiarity with procedural generation.

"Massively single-player"

Wright calls the game a "massively single-player online game". Simultaneous multiplayer gaming is not a feature of Spore. The creatures, vehicles, and buildings the player can create will be uploaded automatically to a central database (or a peer-to-peer system), cataloged and rated for quality (based on how many users have downloaded the object or creature in question), and then re-distributed to populate other players' games. The data transmitted will be extremely small — only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright.

Development

Following several years of development, Spore was first introduced to the public on March 11 2005 in Wright's lecture about "procedural content generation" at the Game Developers Conference. It was officially unveiled two months later at E3 2005, the industry's annual trade show. GDC 2006 featured two Spore related talks, Building Community Around Pollinated Content in Spore and "Spore: Preproduction Through Prototyping. A video released on YouTube shows "unedited footage of Spore that will be going to TV networks covering E3 [2006", and includes an overhauled creature editor, a first look at the texturing tools, as well as glimpses at other aspects of the game. Will Wright has said that the game was also influenced by many TV shows, movies, and toys, such as Lego and Star Wars.

Will Wright originally intended to call the game Sim Everything, but needed a codename to use during the development process (so far having taken approximately 5 years and thirty million US dollars). Over time, however, the team came to prefer the name Spore, as it suited the game very well. He went on to state in an interview that "not putting 'Sim' in front of it" was "very refreshing".

Influenced by demoscene

Will Wright names the demoscene as a major influence on Spore, which is largely based on procedural content generation developed by many demoscene veterans.

He expressed admiration for the demoscene because of the things they can do. He showed pictures from demoparties like Assembly demo party to great applause.

Awards

At E3 2005, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Simulation Game.

At E3 2006, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best Original Game, Best PC Game and Best Simulation Game.

References

External links

Demonstration videos

Original GDC 2005 video- 36 minute video shows some of the main fundamentals of Spore and gives a lot of information into the game.
Will Wright giving another Spore demo - 20 Min presentation of Spore at E3 2006, not as general as the GDC video and goes into specific depths about the creature editor, creature stage and space stage.
5 minute video G4 talking with Will Wright about his latest innovation in video gaming. From E3 2006, series 1 of 2 videos.
1 hour video This is the entire demonstration of the upcoming game "Spore" given by Will Wright at the GDCe.
Spore E3 2006 Gameplay Demo 18minutes
Robin Williams demonstrating the creature editor at E3

Fan sites

GamingSteve.com's Spore Forums - An active Spore forum
SporeWiki.com - A wiki dedicated to all things Spore.

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Spore (video game)