Messages posted by: Turlow

I've come to the conclusion ring thickness variance came about like this. Straight from the deranged backwaters of my mind.

Play Tester: "Hey Dev! All the rings around the suns are the same size and it hurts my eyes. Can you vary their size:"
Dev: "Sure! I'll just drop RAND into the ring size function."

Now, prove me wrong! :D

Ryalseth wrote:Sort of, in that (I think) the monolith will always affect a tribal or civ society and not other creatures on the planet.

It always effects the most advanced. Civ over tribe over creature. Not that you'll see tribes on a civ world.

Parvati wrote:I put my money on one of your creations that ticked of someone. The creature ban system has indicated that it is an automated system. And you know you can not have an arguement with a computer system.

Sure you can! But it's followed by a long "rest" at a quiet hospital. :wink:

Cinna wrote:I've played upwards of 70+ hours of this game and have several space faring civilizations. I can't see to bring myself to open the game anymore. Playing different archetypes to conclusion ends up being the same thing over and over. It only slightly changes the way you get to space and then it's the same.

How do you guys keep going? I'm not being facetious, I really want to know.

I don't play Spore anymore. I've concluded I am not the target consumer.

Parvati wrote:

Turlow wrote: Also, the Wow client without access to the Wow servers is useless software.

Not if you are familiar with private servers :wink:
But I am not going to debate the legality of such servers.

Wow has private servers? All I can say is, "WOW!" :wink:

I disagree that SecureROM is being used to counter piracy. Install limits don't stop piracy as we've heard the bootleg version of Spore has had the limits stripped away. Install limits do stop you from trading your game at a used gaming store though.

theultimateend wrote:

ToyImp wrote:lol wow that's bad.

And great point on the WoW reference.

Well I figure they have the largest player base in the world and don't use this malicious crap.

Blizzard wants the Wow client in people's hands. The big MMOs make the most money off the monthly subscriptions not box sales. Heck, the LOTRO encouraged me to hand my CD and buddy key to a friend to try to get them to subscribe. The program that Blizzard runs behind the client (called Warder maybe, I forget exactly) is not trying to detect illegal clients but to detect and stop illegal 3rd party "cheat" software like Glide. Also, the Wow client without access to the Wow servers is useless software.

Do creature actions count?

In space stage I beamed an artifact into one of my home world cities. Apparently two of the citizens had different thoughts on the best place in town for their new shiney. I spent the next five minutes watching the two of them drag the artifact between two spots in town.

Dairuka wrote:

Batman64 wrote:

Dairuka wrote:I plan on using speaker phone, and recording the entire conversation. If their representative is anything but nice to me... Youtube. :D

Careful there. That is illegal unless you inform them that you are recording them.

And, of course, good luck to you :thumbup:

Thanks for the heads up. I'll inform them inocuously, but directly.

Call you local police office and ask them about the legality of it first. The worst thing that can happen is they don't know and can't tell you who to ask. If you inform the CS rep there is always the chance the company policy is to end the call immediately so don't inform them unless you must.

spec24 wrote:is there anyway to know what level plant or animal you're carrying around in your cargo AFTER you've colected them (whether they're good for T1, T2 or T3)? I have so many I tend to forget.

Plants and animals don't have levels. For example, when you need to place a small plant, you can use any small plant in your hold that is not already on the planet.

Silverwane wrote:I haven't heard about this, and I'm a little dubious at the prospect. With something that seems as tied to imagination and creativity as Spore, how would they possibly come up with good, static cards? Does anyone know how this system would work?

They could develop a game around creature level abilities and release decks with a base creature set (Maxis creatures). Then, using a web storefront tied to the Sporepedia and a back end of digital printing and direct mail distribution, allow people to turn their creatures into cards that can either be printed by the user or, for a slight fee, made into an official card and mailed to the user.

Is this the "how it works" you are asking about?

DizzyDragon wrote:I really hope they don't make the first expansion a lousy parts pack. Would make more sense to improve the gameplay first, so we have more fun playing with our creations. You can make almost anything you want with the parts we have now anyway.

If it really turns out to be a parts pack, I'll probably won't buy it.
Except if that will result in...
"Error: Your game is not up to date. Please buy the expansion in order to connect to the Spore server."
Oh noes! :(

Shame on you! You just gave the EA Marketing lurker the way of insuring expansion pack sales. Look for, "You must have the latest expansion pack to download user content," messages coming to a Spore game near you.

Always beam down on high ground or next to a colony. When you terraform planets, their surfaces change and often water appears and rises. If the water covers your beam down spot while you are beaming down, your plant or animal will die and not count towards the food web.

brentacs wrote:Jackuul,

From what I can tell, by observance and what I know of generating "unique machine id's" from work, the MAC address is a part of a machine's id used to determine "an install". What does this mean?

I realize this isn't hyper-technical, but should suffice for explanation here.

- A MAC address is a unique (supposed to be) way of identifying an individual network card.
- SPORE determines "an install" by grabbing several different "unique" components of your system, like the MAC address, part of the graphics card, the CPU, etc. The sum of those parts becomes on Machine Id.
- When you login, SPORE generates this Id and then registers it with or against your CD key.

Nothing Earth shattering here. But what happens, I think, in my case was:

home computer was ID #1.
laptop with wireless network card was ID #2.
laptop with US air-card was ID #3.
laptop with International air-card was ID #4.

So, if you say you connect by two different means, and that is two different network cards, then yes, I would say EA would consider that 2 different installs. Once again, this is just a WAG (wild a$$ guess).

When I get back in the states, about a week, I will be calling. I did save my receipt after hearing about this DRM mess. Someone will be earning their combat pay on the support line, I'm sure.

I hope this "helps"

Makes me wonder what happens if someone has multiple network cards in the machine at the time of Spore's install. When Spore creates the Machine ID would it include the MAC for every card it detects? If so, this problem could be circumvented (admittedly not easily) by installing Spore with all cards connected and playing it the same way.

[edit for clarity]
"...by installing Spore with all cards connected..." I mean connected to the machine, not connected to a network.

cainomdk wrote:

MatticusUK wrote:

cainomdk wrote:Well... That will be a "legal" cracking... He bought the game officially... Besides... cracking a game is not illegal, distributing a copy (legal or illegal) is... Thats two different things...

Hm, so you can legally crack a game which you own?
Can you legally crack a game which you don't own?
Sorry if it's off topic but curiosity has been aroused. :mrgreen:

Example: You buy a car... weld a bed on the roof, change the tires, removes the speed limit, change the color... Is that legal? The car is yours... The car company cant tell what to do with the car...
Same with game which I bought. I can modify it... Well I could do everything with it.. Like using the Handbook as toilet paper... The game company cant tell me what to do with it...
As long as I dont make copies of it and either sell the copies or distribute it for free... That would be illegal...

Look... Cracking (modify or whatever) the game dont make maxis or EA loose any profit. Thats my point :)

This is a bad example and does not hold up. You purchase the car which grants you ownership. Since you own it, you can do what you please with it (within the limits of the law). You do not buy software, you license it. The company that made it retains ownership of the product and you pay to use it, not own it.

scorpia wrote:Are you people being purposefully obtuse? A simple 10 minute jaunt in game reveals the association between empire planet T-scores and ring thickness. Non colonized worlds don't affect ring size. Multiple colonized planets are averaged.

Not so! All my planets are T3 yet I have some thick and some thin rings on around my systems.