mflux, thank you for your candid insight into the the development of Spore. You had some very nice suggestions about how this game could be made more fun, and I hope the developers take them into consideration.

tokimo wrote:

mflux wrote:Planet to Planet wars - Currently the game does not allow two types of sentient life in one Star System. Why? This seems like a really artificially imposed limit. There's no UI / gameplay reason I can possibly think of that would require this limit. Having wars fought from planet to planet (two planets home to two space-faring species) is a staple of science fiction (War of the Worlds), and it allows some early introduction of alien races, early space flight and battle (instead of inspecting some random artifact), and produces some cool dynamic.

You say this and you seem to be implying they had you working on UI... But from an actual UI person I can think of one very good reason why you don't want multiple races in one system: Systems are marked by who owns them in the star map. Marking shared ownership would be confusing, and overwhelming.

And here's how that could be solved:

An NPC only mini-phase between Civ and Space that is "pre-space" or whatever. Civilizations in this phase have access to fly to the worlds within their system only until there is only one civ left in the system, at which time they become true space-faring civs. Their own little quest for an interstellar drive if you will.

As far as the UI goes, who says it can't be improved? The current UI sucks ass. How in the hell can you color the system with the empire's color (what a limited palette that is too by the way,) show a microscopic picture of the empire occupying said system and not include the SPORE empire's name? SPORE. Simply not coloring the system with an empire stamp until it is true space faring, giving it a separate icon from the little mini-world and the little mini-spaceship would suffice. Your post implies that things can't be changed. I counter that they can indeed be changed, and this proposed change is relatively simple to put together, and adds gameplay.

But I digress. Once a system is space faring, no other civs can pop up. At any time pre space faring, another civ can pop up (except the player's home system, or alternatively include that and you have to take em out before you get the quest for the interstellar drive. GASP--more gameplay!).

Imagine coming across a tribal system and going to their moon, T3ing it, and plopping down a monolith on both worlds. That would be fun to watch.

Interesting read.

jiman wrote:If anyone beleives you, they fail at life.

Does it matter if he is who he say he is? Does it? 95% of this topic was about opinions about the game, opinions which i agree fully with.

Ouch!

Not too smart, guy. You never know when you will need somene at Maxis to say something nice about you. Prolly not gonna happen now.

danya wrote:Ouch!

Not too smart, guy. You never know when you will need somene at Maxis to say something nice about you. Prolly not gonna happen now.

HOW? He was not disrespectful or mean. Most of his post was opinion on how to improve the game, good ones, at that. In no way do I see that as Maxis bashing.

I have to agree with the points laid out by mflux. I'd be thinking the exact same things about a lot of the limitations and missed opportunities. However, there has been a comment here about the practicality of designs and the freedom of creativity "crossing streams". I would prefer the original consequences system mflux brought up in his first post, but I think when Maxis crossed streams they did so in the creature creator thus allowing stats to stack. Then they for some reason took a hard turn towards the creativity side and completely neglected practicality when removing stacking stats. I think the original post highlights quite a bit about why I personally feel this game is shallow and hasn't lived up to its potential. It's not a bad game, it just feels like it's a shadow of what it could be or has been in the past. I'm by no means a hardcore gamer nor am I a casual gamer though, and I don't think those different classifications of gamers should have had as much influence as they did. The first two posts lay out all the reasoning perfectly.


Internship with a game company though? I wanted to something like that, until I actually was in the position to apply for one and found out the ridiculous hours and requirements! That and the pay wasn't very good either, but there isn't exactly a large selection of game companies in my region. I think I'd get more satisfaction out of working for Northrop Grumman as opposed to Big Huge Games anyway.

I weep for what the game could have been. Limits can enhance creativity if done right - part of storytelling is saying *why* the creepizoids have such long arms and legs - to reach and catch their fast moving and arboreal prey. I really liked the one movie I saw where a low-slung creature with a high "sneak" went from 4 to 0.5 by dragging the body up. But without any actual game effect, the decisions one makes creatively fall flat, and end up becoming window dressing when your creation, in another game, behaves exactly like any other low-slung slow-moving omnivore. It would also serve as a limiter on chairs in game: great, you made chairs; now watch them suffer the fate they deserve, or weather the challenges of the game and emerge triumphant.

A problem with SimLife was the eventual "optimal" creature. In nature there is no such thing, because a very specialized creature is more rapidly driven extinct once the environment changes even a smidgen.

Energy budget can be used to snuff "UBER" creatures - too much of too many abilities, and you end up having to eat so often you starve by sleeping. And sleeping - what about being nocturnal? Or having huge eyes? Balance can also do this - the more aggressive and dangerous the creature, the more it is a "loner" that has a harder time finding mates (more social required to woo, for instance).

can u create and endless amounts of unique to you creations in other games and also have to get uploaded and seen by all the other players of tha game..and have the randomly appear in every ones game?? picking a race...gender...color..ect does not count.......this game is also likea "multi-game" dont like certain parts....dont do them....or have tha pacients to see them addressed later...its like anew type of game system...have ya seen warcraft 1!?!?! have ya seen GTA1??? final fantasy1!?!?!??!?!...ect ect ect... lol game is new and hardly out of its egg......pacients people just because some of you stop everything in your life for a video game and its gets old to YOU faster....that not tha gem thats YOU need to SLOW DOWN LOL

gritmonger wrote:I weep for what the game could have been. Limits can enhance creativity if done right - part of storytelling is saying *why* the creepizoids have such long arms and legs - to reach and catch their fast moving and arboreal prey. I really liked the one movie I saw where a low-slung creature with a high "sneak" went from 4 to 0.5 by dragging the body up. But without any actual game effect, the decisions one makes creatively fall flat, and end up becoming window dressing when your creation, in another game, behaves exactly like any other low-slung slow-moving omnivore. It would also serve as a limiter on chairs in game: great, you made chairs; now watch them suffer the fate they deserve, or weather the challenges of the game and emerge triumphant.

A problem with SimLife was the eventual "optimal" creature. In nature there is no such thing, because a very specialized creature is more rapidly driven extinct once the environment changes even a smidgen.

Energy budget can be used to snuff "UBER" creatures - too much of too many abilities, and you end up having to eat so often you starve by sleeping. And sleeping - what about being nocturnal? Or having huge eyes? Balance can also do this - the more aggressive and dangerous the creature, the more it is a "loner" that has a harder time finding mates (more social required to woo, for instance).

have to be careful putting to many "this part is for that and this one is for this other thing" rules to this kinda creation.....cause we all could end up only being able to remake what real life already made
some points here are good....but pacients maby? let the game style develope? or pile up tha rules and watch the creativity get stiffled

I heart you, and thank you for posting to clarify your views/knowledge.

mflux wrote:

Utterly pointless. Whether you were an intern or not is, in fact, irrelevant also.

Doh... sorry you feel that way. I guess you're right, it's possibly irrelevant. I was directing that at the poster above me (pics or it didn't happen).

Didn't think I would get this sort of reactions within -3- minutes of posting. This is probably why Maxis developers are never allowed to post.

I very much appreciated the time it took to post this and I read all of it in detail not because it was a Maxis intern's feedback, but mainly because the thoughts were well communicated on design decisions, shortcomings, and future possibilities. I too am in the industry, and although a competitor, I still want SPORE to succeed based on its original concept and ambitious and innovative possibilities. Sandbox mode anyone?

Thank you mflux for the informative and well thought out post!

Later,
~J

brieeyeball wrote:

worldbreaker276 wrote:


Mfux, as someone who worked on the game, can you confirm or deny the claims that whole EPs (at least 3 by some accounts) of content are hidden in the game coding so EA can get more money from selling EPs that do little more than unlock hidden content? I'm not so sure about most of those claims, but I'm certain that what I'm seeing in game does not account for 4 GB.

I'll deny it for him. There's about 4GB of content in spore, for sure. Think about it, planet scripts for 500,000 stars worth of planets. Creature data is just a few kb, and I'm sure planets scripts are around the same but scale that up to over 1000000 planets and it's more than 1GB right there, just to generate planets.
Spore is a huge game.

4GB is whats originally installed on your computer (the core application coding, animation, texture, and mesh files), the 1G is your galaxy data and possibly hardcoded Maxis stuff. And scripting? The actual spore application file is about 35 megabytes on HD. And we've all heard about the flora editor, right?

blazur wrote:mflux, thank you for your candid insight into the the development of Spore. You had some very nice suggestions about how this game could be made more fun, and I hope the developers take them into consideration.

Ditto!!!!! Thanks for sharing your experience with the development of the game and your ideas. I would have loved to have seen the things you mentioned kept in the game.

The OP makes me want to cry; he describes the game I WANTED, and that it was going to happen before evil prevailed and a bunch of dumbing-down ninniesw got their way.

...I take it back; the OP makes me want to SCREAM.

And yes to almost all the criticism, ESPECIALLY the grinding, and the one-size-fits-all editors where design doesn't matter! *growl*
It's like someone said, "Okay, let's make a game with concepts that RocketGirl here adores, but we'll make the actual gameplay everything she hates...go!"

Here's hoping they make a Spore 2...and flat-out state and mean it that it'll be the other Spore, the GOOD Spore, the complicated, amazing, interesting, experiments-and-failure-based-learning Spore that we were TOLD we were going to get, which is described in the OP and the 2005 video, and which was the very basis for why I wanted Spore!

Here's hoping. But I @#$%ing doubt it.