Piccolo113 wrote:Just as a little disclaimer: I have done this on my legally purchased copy of Spore. If you wish to do this on a pirated version of the game, that's your choice. I, on the other hand, will not advise you to, or claim that pirating is a good idea.

Confirmation:

1.) Uninstall the EADM (it's not needed and it slows the game down on startup)

2.) Use the instructions in this link: http://reclaimyourgame.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=40

3.) Then make sure your game is updated to 1.01. DO NOT START IT YET!

4.) Find and download the "no-cd crack" for version 1.01 of Spore.

5.) Go to the directory C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\SPORE\Sporebin and make a copy of the SporeApp.exe file. Rename it to "backupSporeApp.exe" or somesuch. This is so you can restore the original .exe file when new patches come out.

6.) Copy the "cracked" .exe file to the C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\SPORE\Sporebin directory.

7.) Start your brand-newly SecuROM-FREE game!

The game will not re-install SecuROM if you've done everything properly and exactly to the T on the instructions.

The best part, aside from no longer having SecuROM, is that the game will startup INSTANTLY now, like it should, and have less slowdown in-game (for me, at least).

REJOICE! SecuROM has been DEFEATED!

I just finished following the above to the letter and
1. It does completely remove SecuROM
2. Things now load faster without SecuROM
3. The lag and invisible problem seems to be gone.

BUT in both online play and offline play I now CTD sooner and more consistently than I did before following this procedure.

I am in the Space stage.

BigDaddyBadAss wrote:
BUT in both online play and offline play I now CTD sooner and more consistently than I did before following this procedure.

I am in the Space stage.

Glad to hear it solved at least some of your problems. About the crashing, your save game might be corrupted, try backing up your save folder, then renaming it to something else and starting a new game. You can find your saved game in C:\Documents and Settings\*your user name*\Application Data\SPORE\Games\Game0

Ok so tried playing with my Saved folder cleaned out. I selected Space Stage. Played for more than 30 minutes with no CTD. Not sure how this helps though. Am I supposed to now invest another X numbers of hours to get back to where I was only to start experiencing the same symptoms/problems again. Whats the point?

I see people calling their Saved games "corrupted". I think this is too much of a "Jump to Cause". It could just be that the game engine cannot properly handle all the activity that is happening in the background of a mature game that is not there when you first start a game.

I also still see problems that clearly show this game did not complete a proper QA cycle. For example, when leaving a planets atmosphere it will get stuck (looping) in the space ship animation and will not continue zooming out to the star system view. If you reverse and zoom back into the planet and then back out again it will get past the animation and continue moving out to the star system view.

There are lots of other problems that I could test and report symptoms-possible/probable cause, BUT guess what I am not getting paid to QA this thing.

This is not uncommon for EA published games. Get it out and start the revenues flowing whether it is ready or not.
They will continue to get away with it as long as people continue to buy their games. Unfortunately EA has the clout to control many of the more popular games developed.

BUT there are other publishers out there that are doing a better job of putting out quality games when they are ready for prime time not just when they are ready enough to get people to open up their wallets.

I for one will now wait for a patch and see what other peoples experience with it is before spending anymore time on this game. I have told my son to absolutely NOT install the patch and stay on 1.00.

BigDaddyBadAss, I know what it's like, I already lost 2 space empires this way. You're probably right about the game not handling the info properly, that's why I'm probably taking a break until this gets resolved and I regain the will to go through it again. What can I say... I'd be perfectly happy if I had to wait another six months, hell, even a year, if it meant that we'd have a stable and mostly bug-free game, but nooooooo... And then of course, there's the 3 activations limit that I'm about to break (and I own only 1 PC), but that's a story for another thread.

Hi all

Just thought I would let you know that in fact my lagging issues have now come back. Using the crack to remove secuROM did work for a short time, but no longer. Absolutely no idea why though and secuROM is still not installed.

Anyway. I've given up now. I've spent SO much time trying to get this game working again since the patch, so I've emailed the retailer I purchased it from to see if I can still return it for a refund. Unfortunately I bought it 32 days ago so am probably out of time.

I'd just like to say that I massively enjoyed the time I played Spore before the patch but am no longer willing to wait for the game to be fixed.

Cheers
Draycen

Update since my last post. As stated in an earlier post, I had told my son to make sure he did not apply the patch. He is still on the 1.00 version.

Last night he told me that he is starting to CTD also.

I am definitely jumping to cause here, but symptoms indicate that a number of these problems are related to how much activity you have going on in the background of your current game.

Only a one PC scenario, but.....

Other than the shallow gameplay, I had been having little in the way of actual problems. Sometime after but not immediately following the patch, I started getting spontaneous reboots - whan the reboot had completed I was getting a report form XP that the failure was due to USB problems - both in SPORE and out as well. These were occuring even if the PC was sitting idle, and happening between every 30 minutes and 2 hours. I had also upgraded my antispyware and registry cleaning programs and initially thought they were the cause. System restore failed. After uninstalling the antispyware and registry cleaner no change.

Then to this thread where NERO was mentioned. This has been installed on my PC since delivery a year ago and I had never used it. I had been all ready to remove Securom as described above and decided to simply remove NERO in the meantime. Coming up to three days without a problem now. The spyware and registry cleaner were reinstalled after the first 24 hours of this period btw.

Is this acceptable? - no, but it may be a piece to proving how it is all happening.

don't let this topic die, people.

They sell us a laggy game that invades our privacy and limits how many times we can install the game...yet expect us to be loyal....I vote for Coup D'etate