Video cards don't render polygons, they render triangles, and triangles are what most calculations are based off of. Likewise if you are talking about 3D animation/rendering programs, everything in spore is made of what looks like b-spline meshes, not polygons. Creatures are a different matter, being created by algorithms that they created themselves.

Triangle count in the actual game can be taken care of by LOD algorithms. Reducing the triangle count of the objects depending on distance. Also we have backface culling which will reduce the triangles rendered to the screen by not rendering any triangles that are not visible (ie. behind other objects) I'm sure spore already does these, as just about any current game does, and they probably set their complexity limits while taking those into consideration. Keep in mind, and this really only applies to creatures, joints create a great deal of extra processing needed to calculate how that creature moves, bends, stretches, etc. It's by far not as simple as just counting file sizes and seeing which is bigger.

Basically, keep in mind that the things going on in the background are very complex, and trust that the devs know what they are doing when they set these limits. For one, there are alot of players out there who don't know much about computers not to mention have older computers. These people set the bar for the rest of us, because if maxis would allow your giant complex item, and these people crashed from it, then they would lose customers. They want a game where the content can be viewed on a computer meeting the minimum requirements they put on the box. That most likely doesn't include builds that surpass the complexity through cheats.

Not sure what the freedom cheat is (I'll go look it up later), but I agree. Not being able to use my newly edited space craft or creature in the space stage to replace my "obsolete" designs is frustrating. Not being able to upload those same "up to date" creations because they are too complex is more than frustrating. The textures are compressed, particle effects are disabled and there's a complexity (and currency) limit to creations. If they don't have the bandwidth now, surely they can at least tell us when they will have it (and I'd like it to be sooner rather than later). I really want to upload my newest creations. I also don't want them to get cheap and tell us that they will have the servers ready in anywhere close to a month (I don't even want to wait a week, but I can manage). I understand the cost of bandwidth and the time to set up new servers, so I am willing to be patient to some extent. It's just irritating because one of the best features of this game is sharing your content. It's kind of pointless to have the ability to upload if my creativity is bound further than the complexity limit. I even tried to dumb down my creations to what I consider "still acceptable", but with no ado. I would be messing with spore right now instead of typing here if this limitation didn't exist. I'll go back to it now, but I must have spent two hours posting all over the place in hopes that one of the webmasters will see it. Anyway, happy gaming, I'm off to finish beating spore on hard and hopefully tomorrow I can upload my "complex" creations.

manictiger wrote:I would be messing with spore right now instead of typing here if this limitation didn't exist.

i understand all the issues with rendering and whatnot. i just wanted to make a big fuss because it's just really disappointing that i have this ability to make ANYTHING, but there's no way to brag about it or show it off, short of sending the .png personally through IM and message boards.

i want to at least be able to use spaceships that are overly complex, since it's only one (yours) that is being shown on screen, so after the initial loading or whatnot, couldn't it be there?

i realize to an extent i'm being unreasonable, but it's seems like a "pickle"-tease to give us what we were crying for back in the CC days, but we can't even utilize the Freedom past ooh'ing and ahh'ing at the sporecard.

Perhaps they should add a PNG section to our personal pages then. A place where you can upload a png file for others to download and try out at their own risk. That way it keeps it out of the sporepedia which gets automatically downloaded to your game. With the way the game is currently set up, with no way to turn off that stuff short of logging off, I can't see them allowing potentially game breaking items into their database for everyone to automatically download into their games.. Imagine the customer support headache that would be created from that!

True. maxis seems to have solved many problems several game designers before wouldn't dream of touching.

letting players make the content? and make it easy? HA!

i'm sure they'll figure this out and implement it somehow to appease me and the few others that want to use their really detailed creations.

Grammar is the exact best.

thanks for the contribution of that comment. it furthered the development of this topic.

/endsarcasm

I don't know if anyone else has encountered this issue but I'm hoping someone might have figured it out. The freedom cheat no longer works for me. I was using it previously for advance creature creation and it worked fine. Now when I try to use it, it gives me the whole "Editor limits are disabled" but when I start to make a creature I still max out the complexity meter. Not a big deal but I really enjoyed making those complicated creatures.

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