E3 Recap
E3 was a blur of new information about Spore - but who’s to keep up with it all? Lucky for you I compiled everything I could remember into one huge post here. Let me know if you notice anything missing.
EA unveils official trailer and updates Spore site
Just before E3 got under way, EA updated the official Spore site with a ton of new screenshots, information, and even an official trailer! The trailer is more or less a 3-D rendering of Will’s
Release date
Will announced to GameSpy that Spore will be released in April/May of ‘07. Of course, a date that far out is far from final - but it’s a definite setback from Fall ‘06, or early ‘07. Here’s the quote from GameSpy:
WW: We’re saying that Spore is coming out in 2007. The message that we are getting from [Electronic Arts] corporate is “Don’t screw it up,” which is great. What they mean is, “Lets get it right.” This will be the game’s last E3.
GameSpy: So it will come out in the first quarter of 2007?
WW: Probably just after that, though we are not being precise. What we are saying is just outside the fiscal year, which is March.
GameSpy: So April or early May?
WW: Yeah. Right.
New game information
Throughout all of the videos and interviews we’ve learned a ton of new information about the game. In an attempt to contain all of this, here’s a list I’ve come up with:
Gameplay breakdown
- There will be 6 different stages of gameplay: Cellular, Creature, Tribal, City, Civilization & Space
- At each stage of gameplay there will be a different editor unlocked
- After you’ve “beaten” the game you will have the ability to come back into any of the editors/stages and keep playing with them
Creatures
- In order to evolve your creature, you will need to build up “DNA Points” (not a final name) in order to mate, and eventually evolve your creature. You can earn DNA Points by eating, and not getting hurt.
- When you evolve your creature, you will not start off as a full-grown adult. Instead you will start off as a baby and need to grow into an adult. ** When you’re a baby, the game procedurally changes your appearance to look like a baby creature. When you’re in the creature editor, you can actually check out how your babies will look like. ** While a baby, you can play with siblings & other baby creatures. This enhances the social aspect of your creature and allows you to move around in packs and accomplish tasks as a group (like attacking a larger animal).
Creature Editor
During E3 a number of people were allowed to play with the creature editor for an extended amount of time, and everyone has great positive feedback from it. All in all, it sounds like the creature editor alone is enough fun to occupy a lifetime. A great perspective can be found in Gaming Steve’s podcast #52
- The creature editor has three parts: Structure, Paint, Test
- During the Structure phase you can change the body shape of your creature
- During the Paint phase, you can add up to 3 layers (not final) of textures like stripes, scales, or dots. You can associate colors with each of these layers (plus a base color of your creature).
- During the Test phase, you can move your creature around a simulated environment and test out how your creature moves, attacks, eats, plays, and shows emotion. You can also hear how your creature will sound (determined from the mouth/throat shape of your creature) and create babies of your creature.
- As you edit your creature you will get real-time feedback of its abilities, ranked by things like carnivore, herbivore, stealth and brain-power.
Sporepedia
As you play the game, all the content you see and interact with will be added to a set of trading cards called a Sporepedia. Each card has a small thumbnail of the content (creature, tree, ufo, etc), it’s quick statistics (speed, stealth, etc) and the name of the person who made it.
Additionally, once you enter the UFO stage you will be able to scan new pieces of content on other planets and add it to your Sporepedia.
Space stage
- In the space stage you will be able to be worshipped by alien creatures
- Attacking peaceful colonies will result in reactions from their home planet or allies. There is a special communication mode that pops up that you can receive messages from aliens or your own home planet.
- While exploring new planets, you can sometimes find pieces of alien technology that you can pick up and use with your UFO
- You will be able to use your tractor beam to do things like grab comets and smash them into planets to destroy civilizations, or create oceans on barren planets
Miscellaneous news
- Environmental Editor - Will announced that you will, in fact be able to create environmental objects such as shapes, trees, and other objects you find around your world.
New videos
We were hit with a slurry of new videos during E3 which was great! Some of the highlights include actual video game footage (straight from the computer) and a whole new presentation by Will showing off some new aspects of Spore.
EA - Game Footage
This looks to be a TV commercial showing off Spore in a few screens. It’s great quality and gives you a real chance to hear how the game sounds and see some really clean screens of Spore gameplay. My 2nd favorite video released during E3.
EA - Spore trailer
Official trailer for Spore (so far). It’s more or less a 3-D rendering of Will’s GDC ‘05 presentation.
E3 Demo - Will Wright & Robin Williams demo Spore
This is the demo that Will was showing at E3 - but with a special surprise! About half-way through, Will lets Robin Williams come up and play with the creature editor for a while. My favorite video from E3 :)
E3 Demo - First look
This was the first E3 Demo that started circulating around the ‘net. Pretty much the same footage as the above, except with slightly modified gameplay.
New Screenshots
Buildings
Creatures
Editor
Everything Else
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May 15th, 2006
Great post Kyle! Really sums up what we know so far. I love that new card deck thing, seems like a motivator for exploring as much as you can.
But Q1 2007.. It’s just sooooo far off! :(
May 15th, 2006
Awesome stuff you got here. I couldn’t find an update anywhere else.
May 15th, 2006
Great site and great info. The Robin Williams thing was GREAT!
I hope to see more of Spore this year.
May 15th, 2006
Beautiful site here Kyle. I love it and love this article.
May 15th, 2006
Awesome article. I can’t freaking wait for Spore.
May 15th, 2006
Thanks for this great compilation of info. I can’t wait for this game. It looks like I’ll be glued to my computer from next April/May until sometime just after armageddon.
May 15th, 2006
Great summary Kyle. I managed to catch a couple gameplay videos and the new trailer, but never got around to watching the Will Wright/Robin Williams video. I’ll have to do that.
It’s awesome seeing decent resolution screenshots with vibrant colours - I don’t know how many times I watched that first video that was floating around a few months ago. It really didn’t do the game justice.
May 15th, 2006
Matt: Yeah, I was super-excited at the actual gameplay footage. It’s great to see/hear the game straight from the source and not muted and washed out through a video camera.
May 15th, 2006
Great summery. You definately have the most facts and specs in one place that I could find.
I can’t wait for this game. Will Wright is the man!
May 15th, 2006
My question is- what about multi-player? Think about it, start up a LAN game of Spore, you can either work together or “race” your creatures evolution and wipe the other player(s) out!
Seriously, it needs to happen if it hasn’t (if it has and I missed it- my bad)
May 15th, 2006
Amazing story!
I have a little contribution for the collection. We accidentally ran into three of the modelers from the Spore team at E3 and got to talk to them a little bit about what they thought of E3 and what working on Spore is like. I was amazed to find that they actually sleep more than 3 hours! Please feel free to nab our YouTube vid here:
http://www.destructoid.com/e3-the-guys-behind-will-wrights-spore
Niero
BTW I really like your site. In fact, I digg it!
May 16th, 2006
Nice story, but like Jason said: where’s the multiplayer-aspect?
Only part of your story i’m missing!
May 16th, 2006
Spore is going to take the world by storm when it launches!
May 16th, 2006
[...] read more | digg story [...]
May 16th, 2006
Spore looks so cool. I love Will Wright’s games! He is a genius.
May 16th, 2006
[...] Some more on Spore…apparently there is an entire fansite dedicated to Spore. Here is an overview of what was learned about Spore at E3. I think this game will be absolutely incredible. It allows you to exercise both strategy and creativity, it looks to be expansive and immersive, it’s just begging people to get interested in and learn about evolution, and most of all, it looks like a whole lot of fun (especially when Robin Williams plays it). I love the screenshots of creatures. [...]
May 16th, 2006
I had the pleasure of attending Will’s final Spore presentation on Friday before E3 packed it up. My favorite part was when he finished creating his baby animal after mating, he appeared back in the game, and a creature he didn’t see coming (behind the camera’s point of view) came outa nowhere, smacked his little baby animal once and turned it into a splatter of blood.
He was a little surprised “well that hasn’t happened before. This, obviously isn’t a scripted demo… Good thing I have cheats that won’t be available in the final release”, and he proceeded to bring up a little cheat dialogue and resurrect his poor baby creature, and he continued as usual.
May 16th, 2006
2007? ug - its going to be hard to wait for this one, it looks playable right now:(
May 16th, 2006
Todd: That’s awesome :)
May 17th, 2006
“it looks playable right now”:
Watch the Robin Williams vid through. At the end, he makes a (whacky) creature and then crashes the game while trying to make it mate. It might look ready, but I don’t think it really is.
May 18th, 2006
Really sweet site dude.. Awesome job!
May 20th, 2006
[...] Total Spore has a comprehensive recap of the Spore presentation at E3, with plenty of screenshots, video, new information, and a link to the newly-udated official SPORE site. Check it out. [...]
June 7th, 2006
Well then. I’ve been looking as hard as I can for Information on the game, and to answer a few questions (which im not going to answer) just look for the info, its there. You just have to look realy hard.
I think multiplayer is a bad idea:
e.g. You’ve just gotten out of the micro stage and into the water and have started designing your pet, just relaxing and taking in the view, and FOOM! Your planet suddenly gets turned into a small pile of space dust by a random UFO who’s just passing by. Before you even hardly start playing, your dead.
This game should not be compedative!
August 10th, 2006
[...] E3 was a blur of new information about Spore - but who �s to keep up with it all? Lucky for you I compiled everything I could remember into one huge post here.read more | digg story [...]
August 6th, 2007
Roswell Information…
Roswell Information continues after 60 years…
August 14th, 2007
DNA Paternity Testing…
More DNA Paternity Testing info…
August 30th, 2007
Hello!!! Wonderfull bestiary! Visit mine!
http://tuscriaturas.blogia.com
January 23rd, 2008
LOL @ early 2007
June 16th, 2008
[...] Spore News and Videos [...]
June 20th, 2008
what ever
September 20th, 2008
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