The Flora Editor, also known as the Plant Editor, is an unreleased editor where the player could create flora. The Flora Editor was cut from the final game, although not completely removed. Its presence is not just a leftover, as the editor is technically used when the player creates plants in the Sporepedia. However, there isn't much functionality left, and the creator is overridden with glitches as a result. The only way to access it is to change the target in the shortcut to Spore on the desktop/start menu. The Flora Editor was hinted by Lucy Bradshaw to be included in a later expansion, but this never materialized.
The Flora Editor was briefly mentioned at E3. Judging by the single screenshot that was shown, it has three mode buttons on the top: test, texture, and parts.
Development[]
History[]
2005 plant editor.
The Flora Editor has most likely been in Spore since 2005, but the variety of plants in Spore has been very limited. Leafy trees were seen in the video with the Willosaur, but after that, the only flora that was commonly seen were tree ferns, until July 10th when new screenshots and a new video were shown. But now it seems as if there is no way to type or paste in the target section of properties.
Current Game[]
A screenshot of a user-created flora.
Two ways to access flora editor
The Flora Editor can be started through "sporeApp.exe -state:FloraEditor". It has 4 different part categories: trunks, leaves, details, and fruits. Various bugs exist in the editor though, such as texture disappearing in Paint Mode, invisible parts, crashing for unknown reasons, and not being able to save the creation.
Having at least (or only) the first fruit part on the plant usually solves the last bug. One part in the "Trunks" section (the only part in the Flora Editor that, like in other editors, rotates when it is moused over), will always crash the game when one attempts to drag it in. Creations that are saved are pollinated throughout Spore as normal.
The "Share" button is available when viewing it in the Sporepedia, but it always displays an uploading error message when clicked. Creations cannot be re-edited via the Sporepedia or in-editor Sporepedia, as the edit button is not available. However, they can still be edited by dragging the plant's PNG image from the "My Spore Creations/Plants" folder into any editor.
Note: It is not recommended to save creations from the Flora Editor, as it is very hard to delete, as well as being known to cause several permanent adverse effects, such as the game crashing when the Staff of Life is used. Although not perfect, adding "gaprop" as the only tag is known to almost completely prevent the crash--though it is still recommended to save before using it regardless. The crash is caused by the game attempting to spawn the plant in a manner that completely covers the planet with millions of plants, likely because the vanilla flora editor does not allow the plant's size or spawning conditions to be specified correctly.
Parts[]
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The leaf section of the Flora Editor.
The parts subsection was the only one shown in E3. It has five categories: trunks, branches, leaves, fruit, and flowers.
Fruit[]
Fruit is a prime food source for herbivores. There have not been any demonstrations of fruit so far, but they have been shown in '06 GDC prototyping slides.
Decorations[]
There are many decorations in the Flora Editor such as flowers, leaves and others. Some of these flowers and leaves look as if they were flowering at different times when looking at some of the flora made by Maxis. Whether this was going to be part of the editor is unknown.
Trunks[]
Trunks are the main body of the plant and have adjustable branches, similar to limbs.
Paint Mode[]
The Paint Mode works similarly to the Creature Creator. It is commonly thought that there were only complete styles, however, this is false. There is a category for partial styles, containing functional, though awkwardly displaced base, coat, and detail tabs, but it is nearly inaccessible, as the category icons don't exist, resulting in the categories being almost impossible to open.
Trivia[]
- There are many glitches associated with the Flora Editor, this is because it is an artifact, rather than a finished product of gameplay.
- All of the parts are invisible. This isn't technically a glitch, merely what resulted from the developers' having removed the part models prior to releasing the game. The pre-made plants, contrary to popular belief, are composed of the part models, just they're baked together at horrible quality.
- Sometimes if the player hasn't logged on and then save a flora, it may have the name of the computer user instead. Attempting to click on the name in the Sporepedia will result in the "Could not connect to the Spore server" error.
- The share button is available for player-made flora; however, the flora can't actually be shared, due to the server refusing to accept them. This isn't the same problem as modded creatures; those share, they just don't pollinate, whereas flora don't even make it up to the server.
- In GA, the Flora Editor's background does not appear at all, and just displays as black, due to the developers having modified the background properties file to reference a nonexistent model, instead of the actual background model. Apparently, the developers sabotaged the editor in GA.
- Mousing over "test" will display "Increases the speed of your vehicle", which is likely a placeholder.
- Occasionally, in the top center of the editor, it will say "You need a limb to attach a foot/grasper", despite there not being any feet or graspers in the editor.
- The Flora Editor may have been scrapped much later than many people think, as there is still a 'Plants' folder in the 'My Spore Creations' folder.
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