Monday, June 16, 2008

Spore Creature Creator is here.


The Spore Creature Creator has been leaked to the Interwebs and I just happened to get a copy to check out. I don't think there is any real problem with that since it is a free thing EA is letting people experiment with until the game comes out in September. The idea is that over the next three months people will make thousands of creatures that will then populate the game's "Sporeopedia" and thus be available to the community at large on launch day. It's actually a very good idea and I am sure it was something Wil Wright thought of and not some marketing punk at EA. Anyway the editior is really easy to use. I am including some pictures of some creatures I made really quickly as a test.

The editor gives you complete control of your creation right down to its spine. You can quite literally create anything your fevored imagination can think of making. You start with a blob representing the body mass and you can stretch and shape that any way you want by elongating the spine or increasing and decreasing the mass along the spine using the middle mouse button. Once you have the body the way you want it to be you can go about adding limbs and appendages the same way. Each part can be modified to a high degree. The program is very good at fitting each part logically onto the creature. Once you have added the mouth, eyes, legs, hands, etc you can go into a paint section and give the creature a very detailed skin. I would not be surprised to see some people take hours to perfect a creature, but you really can make one very quickly.

Once it is made you can take your creature into a little holding pen and have it go through a series of emotes and gestures to see how it will animate. I haven't made anything that would break the laws of physics, but I am sure there are people out there who will try. You can even hatch "babies" to see what the creature will look like when they are young. If this demo is any indication of the end product, I think Wil Wright has another hit on his hands. There are still some doubts about what kind of shape the actual Spore game is going to take, but even in a sandbox "what-if" form it is going to be loads of fun. Here is a link if you want to download the demo and try it for yourself.