Sporepedia
From SporeWiki, the knowledge base dedicated to Spore
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The Sporepedia is essentially a heads-up-display, cataloging all stars/star systems, planets, creatures, buildings, vehicles and flora you have discovered. It has the look and feel of a pack of cards, with the name of the content in the top, an image and general stats for the represented content, and the name of the creator in the bottom. The player will be able to bookmark or blacklist a certain creator in order to prioritize or ban content from that particular creator.
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[edit] Types of cards
There are several types of cards, each representing a different kind of content.
[edit] Sporepedia card
This is the top card, which does not hold any information by itself, but provides access to all the content currently in your database. For example, it is possible to list all planets you have encountered, or all the creatures in the database.
[edit] Planet card
This card represents a planet. Clicking on the three dotted button (the classic Maxis options button) below the planet's image reveals a 3-D rotating image of the planet next to a star. There is a button in the corner that looks like a compass. Pressing this button will put a tracking marker on the planet and its star. In the place on the card where the creator's name usually is, the name of the star can be seen.If the planet is inhabited by a tribe, civilization or space empire, the correct buildings show up on accordingly on the image, as well as any changes the player has made to the planet using Planet Sculpting or terraforming.
[edit] Creature card
Shows information about a creature. The information shown are icons to represent the stats being imaged and numbers next to the icon to show the level of the abilities. There is an image for its diet, whether carnivore (Piece of half-eaten chicken), herbivore (An apple with a bite out of it) or omnivore. (Both images together). There are also stats for attack abilities, social abilities, general abilities such as sight and gliding, along with speed and and health levels.
Once you have a creature in the Sporepedia, you can duplicate/edit it in the creature editor.
[edit] Flora card
Shows the image of a plant. Plants can only be downloaded into the in-game database through scanning, which is a technology that can only be obtained during space stage.
[edit] Vehicle card
Shows information about a vehicle, such as health, strength and speed in a percentage bar in the upper corner of the card.
[edit] Building card
Shows an image of the building, and whether it is a House, City hall, Entertainment building, or Factory.
[edit] Obtaining cards
In all stages except space you can obtain cards by simply clicking on the content. In the Space stage, a technology called Scan must be used to gain the Sporepedia information on all content except planets. In the space stage, the card for a creature or plant can also be uploaded when you abduct it with your UFO's Abduction Beam.
[edit] Other uses
Long before the original Spore game went out, the Sporepedia-cards were supposed to be part of a future multiplayer game, but that was not made until today. In an article on GameSpy, Will Wright has this to say about the cards:
| Well, actually we are going to go on all platforms, but we will come out on PC first. We will even come out on cell phones and stuff. One of the things in the game is that as you go around and encounter things… creatures and plants, or whatever, you make trading cards of each thing. That is the metaphor for the database -- trading cards. So you can collect your cards. You can print them out. You can now play your own card game. That might be like the cell phone part. That stuff is so light. It's more about collectability as opposed to interaction. Every creature in the PC game is three or four megabytes. But the cards, that is the database that the player is building. |
[edit] The Browser
In the Spore Presentation at NASA it was revealed that the Sporepedia was expanded upon and renamed The Browser.
It included many new features such as:
- Integration with the shop.
- Vote and comment on peoples content.
- Send messages to other players.
- Search for content by name.
- Search for content you have not seen.
- Search for similar content.
However, upon release it has been officially named Sporepedia. It includes the same features as the browser. This includes:
- A Flickr upload
- A Facebook/Myspace style profile
- A video recorder (with direct upload to YouTube)
[edit] Sporebooru
Sporebooru.com is an alternative file posting system to the Sporepedia. It is based on the Gelbooru-Code and as this it is an imageboard. Besides the possibility to upload own creatures and use the easily customizable tag system to find creatures with the desired properties the site also features a forum and comments on pictures, as well as a rating system. A single page can display up to 25 creatures and a registration is not mandatory for an upload. However the rules say only creatures and vehicles are allowed to be posted. In opposite to Sporepedia the design is rather slim and due to that it does not take much time to entirely load the page.
The knock-down argument for Sporebooru is the opportunity to upload unlimited complex creatures in contrast to Sporepedia.
