The Beginning Stages of Spore

Posted on April 3, 2006 by xKarma

A GDC 05 VIDEO SUMMARY (see Videos)

"We're calling it Spore."
The demonstration of Spore begins at 12 minutes into the video. It starts off at a cellular level, "This basically is a very analogue fluid version of Pac-Man." At the cellular level the idea is very simple, after consuming pellet-like food bits and avoiding viruses and other harmful entities, you're able to lay an egg. The egg symbolizes the next generation of what you start out as, and then is when you can actually edit the egg and alter its properties ie; mouth pieces, movement, and defensive mechanisms. You're then able to control a life-form in which you've been able to somewhat create, which goes back to the principles of procedural gaming as he mentioned in the beginning of the video.

"2d to 3d Environment"
At 14:20 into the video, he says "This entire world here is procedurally created, especially our little guy here", which is a character in an ocean environment. The implication of this quote are far reaching, not only are you able to build and control a character, but also the environment in which the character lives. The animations, textures, behaviors are all generated procedurally.

Awesome
One very awesome quote is, "Another thing to realize here that's kind of different, is all of the creatures in this environment are coming from other players." and he follows that up by saying, "What I mean coming from other players, is that they are asynchronously being sent to your computer." He mentions that the objective of the game at this stage is to create a balanced eco-system, so based on what the world you created needs, it will be filled out by sending what other players have created to balance things out. The life cycle of the creature at this stage is generally pretty short just like that of the initial cell, and it eventually lays its own egg in which you can begin to edit in the creature editor.

Mr. Potato
"The editor here is roughly a mixture of Mr. Potato Head, Erector Set, and Clay.", as he begins to use the editor. Like a 3d graphics program, you can shape and distort nearly every physical feature of your creature from the body to the face to the tail. He begins to build a 3 legged creature by picking and choosing different parts. So he went from taking his sea based creature and turning it into a land based creature. At 17:10, "A player can build like really unusual characters in here, the system will analyze what they built, and then kind of bring it to life all procedurally." So imagine the possibilities of this, you practically have 100% control over what type of creature you want to build, and the game will make it function based on the modifications you build.

"From Cell to Water"
At 17:30 into the video, the new creature he built emerges from the sea onto land. And it's a great spectacle of an entire environment procedurally generated from your specifications earlier in the game as well as from other players. The guy he generated is a carnivore, and there's this other weird looking creature in which he attempts to eat. He notes that the method in which his creature attempts to kill the other creature is based on where he choose to place his offensive "attacker". His creature then begins to consume what it killed and Will mentions that there are "procedural verbs" in which he demonstrates that say for example your creature is eating (as his currently was), he can tell it to DRAG and eat at the same time. At 19:30 he mentions, "The game sort of creates a balanced eco system so you aren't always on the top of the food chain."

"From Ocean to Land"
So at this point of the game, he says that basically you're trying to live out the life span of this creature by eating, and avoiding enemies. You can gain access to the creature editor by mating and laying an egg, which you can accomplish by sending out a mating call. Eventually you find a mate and have your "creature sex" (ha ha), and an egg is layed.