Browsing through some of the API docs, I see a lot of animation data.

I was thinking of building something along the "arena" style, but using animation along with the stats to sort of show the battles in progress. Show the attack animation, and fear/cower animation if the player loses.

Is this something even worth attempting. Right now I don't have a good frame of reference for what the XML data actually means

I'm thinking of the structure of the Static Data... like these samples..

http://www.spore.com/static/model/500/226/147/500226147573.xml

http://www.spore.com/data/blocks/creatureblockmap.xml
http://www.spore.com/data/blocks/limbblockmap.xml

Any tutorials or docs on what all this stuff is?

Hey Eeker,
I'll have some explanation of the static XML soon. Thanks for waiting
It will be worth the wait

There's no animation data stored in that XML- what you have is all the stuff needed to build that creature/building/vehicle. The animation system inside Spore actually animates it.

However, we do have a GIF output button in the Test Drive of the Creature Editor.
So you could use that to generate little creature sprites.

MaxisDangerousYams wrote:
However, we do have a GIF output button in the Test Drive of the Creature Editor.
So you could use that to generate little creature sprites.

Is there something where you can generate specifically walking and attack sprites?

Eeker wrote:

MaxisDangerousYams wrote:
However, we do have a GIF output button in the Test Drive of the Creature Editor.
So you could use that to generate little creature sprites.

Is there something where you can generate specifically walking and attack sprites?

Yes, go into the test mode, change the background to black, and walk/attack while taking the animated GIF, it's not that hard.