The game contains about 3000 pieces of flora now. If I understand what's going on then it's still in the code? Maybe it won't take much to reactivate it.

It takes the addition of a simple -state command to "reactivate" it. But for whatever reason, they don't want us to know about this and the cell editor. Why? What harm does it cause? Is it somehow "illegal"? Same for modding the game.

morneau502 wrote:I hope we can have the hi-res editor textures in game soon though, that would be nice..... my riticuli buildings look muddy and poopy. please give us high rez textures in game?

The only logistical problem with having custom textures, if that is what you are asking for, is the additional data storage neccesary for user generated textures. Currently the creations can be stored as a simple table describing the positions of the parts, sizes and preselected textures from the main database installed with the game. If users were allowed to make custom textures, these would have to be uploaded to the Sporepedia and stored on the central database. At the time of this posting, there are just shy of 26 million creations in the Sporepedia. Even if the custom texture was only 100KB, and only half the creations used customs, that is an additional 1.2TB of data that would have to be stored.

Now they are going to sell it to us in an expansion when a patch would do. But I am now smarter than I was when I first bought spore so I am torrenting the expansion.

seliam wrote:

morneau502 wrote:I hope we can have the hi-res editor textures in game soon though, that would be nice..... my riticuli buildings look muddy and poopy. please give us high rez textures in game?

The only logistical problem with having custom textures, if that is what you are asking for, is the additional data storage neccesary for user generated textures. Currently the creations can be stored as a simple table describing the positions of the parts, sizes and preselected textures from the main database installed with the game. If users were allowed to make custom textures, these would have to be uploaded to the Sporepedia and stored on the central database. At the time of this posting, there are just shy of 26 million creations in the Sporepedia. Even if the custom texture was only 100KB, and only half the creations used customs, that is an additional 1.2TB of data that would have to be stored.

AFAIU, he not saying anything about custom textures. We've all been asking to have no compression on the textures already in the game.

seliam wrote:

morneau502 wrote:I hope we can have the hi-res editor textures in game soon though, that would be nice..... my riticuli buildings look muddy and poopy. please give us high rez textures in game?

The only logistical problem with having custom textures, if that is what you are asking for, is the additional data storage neccesary for user generated textures. Currently the creations can be stored as a simple table describing the positions of the parts, sizes and preselected textures from the main database installed with the game. If users were allowed to make custom textures, these would have to be uploaded to the Sporepedia and stored on the central database. At the time of this posting, there are just shy of 26 million creations in the Sporepedia. Even if the custom texture was only 100KB, and only half the creations used customs, that is an additional 1.2TB of data that would have to be stored.

PS. In terms of server and raid harddrives for businesses.

1.2 TB is nothing these days.

That sort of thing wouldn't even have shown a blip on our setup at the CC I worked at even and that was just the stores setup for screwing around like fools (I miss that place, it was like waiting but with electronics).

I think they deleted it because they probably planned on having those editors in the next expansion.

Hence, you may potentially screw them out of screwing more players.

Ultimateend: That Xfire graph is very interesting. That trend line is looking particularly inauspicious. Compare that to graphs of other games and you will see just how unhealthy it is.

MORE THAN TWO THIRDS of people are no longer playing the game after the second week. For what was supposed to be a triple A title, that's just terrible.

Notably, the metacritic userscore has stabilized at 4.7. That's very interesting because it shows a large difference between the tastes of game industry reviewers and the tastes of actual gamers. Is it possible, is it CONCEIVABLE, that the game review side of the industry is bought and paid for, he asked while trying not to laugh, because he knew if he laughed he would never stop laughing and soon it would turn into screaming?

ghadis wrote:Ultimateend: That Xfire graph is very interesting. That trend line is looking particularly inauspicious. Compare that to graphs of other games and you will see just how unhealthy it is.

MORE THAN TWO THIRDS of people are no longer playing the game after the second week. For what was supposed to be a triple A title, that's just terrible.

Notably, the metacritic userscore has stabilized at 4.7. That's very interesting because it shows a large difference between the tastes of game industry reviewers and the tastes of actual gamers. Is it possible, is it CONCEIVABLE, that the game review side of the industry is bought and paid for, he asked while trying not to laugh, because he knew if he laughed he would never stop laughing and soon it would turn into screaming?

Yeah I like to have it in my siggy because I think its a good argument point to people who say the game is perfect.

No game that is perfect has this sort of fallout.

theultimateend wrote:

ghadis wrote:Ultimateend: That Xfire graph is very interesting. That trend line is looking particularly inauspicious. Compare that to graphs of other games and you will see just how unhealthy it is.

MORE THAN TWO THIRDS of people are no longer playing the game after the second week. For what was supposed to be a triple A title, that's just terrible.

Notably, the metacritic userscore has stabilized at 4.7. That's very interesting because it shows a large difference between the tastes of game industry reviewers and the tastes of actual gamers. Is it possible, is it CONCEIVABLE, that the game review side of the industry is bought and paid for, he asked while trying not to laugh, because he knew if he laughed he would never stop laughing and soon it would turn into screaming?

Yeah I like to have it in my siggy because I think its a good argument point to people who say the game is perfect.

No game that is perfect has this sort of fallout.

I agree,

MaxisCactus is out this week. A bit shorthanded. We really are working on making this game better. You can help us or dump on us. Up to you. Either way, some of us check here quite frequently. Looking for good ideas. I'm going out on a limb and say that the flora hack thread got deleted by mistake. Please post again. We love finding out what we missed or left for you to find.

sporemasterladym wrote:I'm a little late to the party but in the discussion of the flora editor, this question was brought up when I was at Maxis last month. They left this editor out of the game on purpose due to it not being ready but plan to bring it back in later. The game contains about 3000 pieces of flora now. If I understand what's going on then it's still in the code? Maybe it won't take much to reactivate it.

Just as a side note, Maxis was very open about everything we asked on the tour. They did not hide anything nor refuse to answer any questions. That team is so busy right now, I doubt they have much chance to read everything. They are a very friendly group of people who are very proud of their game.

I know Maxis is usually pretty good about being open and making the community feel involved, which is why it feels a little odd to have less of a feel of that happening with spore.

If they're really busy working on the game that's understandable, but then they probably need team members whose jobs it is to focus on the community and keep people informed, involved, and excited about the game. Long-tail sales are really helped by that kind of thing, and customer satisfaction after a sale is as well.

Having someone whose job it is to, for example, be present in the forums and disclose info or post links to where Maxis has provided the info... that would help. A Q&A thread would be good, too. Have the most commonly asked questions in the thread answered by Maxis.

I know they're not a cold and aloof company at all because they've always been quite the opposite in the past, they just need to get more involved with the community in a more direct way here in the forums and website and maybe have a development blog like was suggested (a dev blog is part of what makes another game I play, Pirates of the Burning Seas, feel so much more like the developers are listening and are approachable).

Simple answer why they deleted the post.. E.A.

Look at Battle for Middle Earth, Black and White 2, and Battlefield 2, all were developed by 3rd parties but published by the MCDonalds of gaming E.A.

Each of these games had signiificant parts of the game droped by 'Evil Assembly' and you could see the code for these lost features still in the game. Code that was suprisingly used in the pay for addons.

E.A seems to like to mess up games and then make you pay for what we originally expected as add-ons.

imho.

maxisglazed wrote:MaxisCactus is out this week. A bit shorthanded. We really are working on making this game better. You can help us or dump on us. Up to you. Either way, some of us check here quite frequently. Looking for good ideas. I'm going out on a limb and say that the flora hack thread got deleted by mistake. Please post again. We love finding out what we missed or left for you to find.

The main problem here is not that you have been reading posts unknowingly to us, but rather the lack of feedback to our feedbacks. It's a feedback loop without the squealing People have been whining, literally, me included, about that fact. A lot of people have said so in the past weeks and it will always be true: the more developers are seen on the forums, the more they will consider them interested in their opinion and on the welfare of the game and also of the community. Maxis cannot deny that. No game company can't deny that. Those that do are dropped by the community.

Anyway, you guys have had an increased presence in the last couple of days and it's quite refreshing to see that, but one has to wonder if it's caused by the not so good comments generated by, well, I have to admit, the disillusioned users because of the patch and that whole move is just a diversion or a weird damage control twist. I sure hope that it's as simple as "We want to be closer to our fans and get genuine feedback we can use."

maxisglazed wrote:MaxisCactus is out this week. A bit shorthanded. We really are working on making this game better. You can help us or dump on us. Up to you. Either way, some of us check here quite frequently. Looking for good ideas. I'm going out on a limb and say that the flora hack thread got deleted by mistake. Please post again. We love finding out what we missed or left for you to find.

In some countries being dumped on is a good thing .

So it's all a matter of what gets your engine in gear I imagine.

There is support for you folks, even looky in general we've got a little community going (well buddy list). That's a start.

Like I said I'm sticking around till that graph on my siggy goes jumping back up .

Also what madjack said.

I wouldn't even care if people from maxis just popped in to say they like pink ponies. As long as they seem alive and well . Dead devs update no games.

Am I losing it -- where is the big Patch announcement thread that was stickied in General Discussion? I take it that one was getting way too much negative press?

~J