Gameplay
From SporeWiki, the knowledge base dedicated to Spore
[edit] Game-Play
Spore will be a simulation that "ranges from the cellular level to the galactic level." It features several stages that are reminiscent of some of Wright's favorite games:
- Cell stage, similar to Pac-Man
- Creature stage, Diablo
- Tribal stage, Populous and Populous: The Beginning
- City stage, SimCity
- Civilization stage, Risk and Civilization
- Space stage, (a.k.a. UFO stage or Invasion), similar to 4X and space colonization games
The last stage (the Space stage) of the game, in which the player is in control of a space ship (the UFO) with an interstellar drive, has been described as a giant sandbox mode. The player will be presented with the option to engage in wide-ranging missions similar in game mechanics to Grand Theft Auto. This appears to reverse the gaming convention of free-form tutorial modes followed by goal-oriented endgames. Spore is much more goal-oriented (survive, eat, reproduce, etc.) in its early stages and gets more open-ended and free-form as the game unfolds. At the UFO stage the player will have access to tools, such as the creature editor, from previous stages. It was revealed at MacWorld '08 by April Jones that you are able to jump into any stage of the game at any time. For example, you can jump from the cell stage to the space stage.
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, and then re-distributed to populate other player's games. The data transmitted will be extremely small, only 1 kilobyte according to Wright.(The data about the given creature is stored in the image file (a .png file) in your 'My Documents' directory, more than 1 kilobyte per picture. (Think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game builds the animal itself, which represents a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc.) When the player progresses to a new stage, Spore will import creatures as needed. For example, if a carnivore is needed to balance the ecosystem, a creature that fits that description will be downloaded. The editor is also a neat feature in this Spore. With this "editor" you can design everything from your species, to your buildings, to your vehicles. That includes tanks, aircraft, submarines, boats, and UFO's.
[edit] Frequently asked questions
[edit] How does your creature evolve?
Initially from the primordial soup to the Creature stage you have to kill and eat to get DNA Points. When you wish to edit your creature in the creature or cell stages, you may search out a mate and lay an egg; this takes you to the Creature editor or the Cell editor, where you can shape your creature and add / remove body parts. After that, you enter the Tribal stage, where you must hunt, fish, and/or gather food. Your creature seaces to evolve (not enough in-game time) and progress is then meassured by allying/conquering other tribes.
[edit] Is combat interactive?
Fights can be both AI controlled, by giving your creature a command, or you can take a more involved part in combat. For example, if you tell your creature to bite the other creature, your creature will bite the other creature. But it you prefer to be more involved, if you have a creature that can glide, you can bite, fly away to charge range, charge then fly away again and repeat. This allows both new and experienced players to do combat effectively.
Combat is akin to a World of Warcraft type fighting style. You approach a creature and can use a couple of different 'moves' available based on the different parts your creature has. These moves are strike, charge, bite, and spit. Each of these have ranks which, also based on the type of part the creature has, does more damage at a time.
[edit] What does the UFO do?
Wright called it the "Swiss Army Knife" of the Spore universe. After completing or skipping the tutorial and gaining the first interstellar drive, it can fly all over the galaxy and contact other life forms; establish interplanetary settlements and terraform and even destroy planets. Other demonstrations have show the ability to place large monoliths that can evolve nearby creature's stages. Other features include the ability to abduct, change, and even epicize creatures.
[edit] Will you be able to enslave other races, or create pets or other domestic animals?
The intergalactic zoo is confirmed for the UFO stage of the game, in the form of a wildlife sanctuary. Domestication is possible in the tribal stage, where the creatures lay eggs for food. It is not in any other stage that's possible, however.
[edit] Will there be weather, like rain, snow, hurricanes?
There is weather in the creature and tribal stages (primarily rain), tough it is merily asthetic, and has no effect on the game. * The evidence of rain is found in one of the tribal videos here: http://www.simprograms.com/?cat=16. In one of the videos a tribe is defending themselves against a predator while it is raining/
[edit] How does the game progress?
The player moves through a vast, transitional game-world, starting in a 2D tide pool, moving to a full 3D world of land, to simple tribes, to player-designed cities, into orbit around the world, traveling from planet to planet, then between stars, and finally throughout the entire galaxy.
The expression of time changes depending on what stage the player is currently within. Time slows down relative to the player as the game progresses, with the cell stage takinng millions and billions of years, the creature stage taking millions to over one billion years, to the tribals stage taking hundreds and thousands of years, to the city stage going by in just years. Once in the space stage, however time is nolonger measured. No explanation is given for this.
[edit] Will creatures have special abilities?
Will Wright has stated that creatures will not have special abilities (unless you consider flying,built-in weapons(claws, teeth, spines, clubs, spitting, etc.) , specific ability ranks, etc. "special" abilities). However, your spieces gets consequence traits based on the cards that you gather in previous stages.
