Topic: Making a SPORECast

[Emmental]

The following are a few issues I am finding with the interface and Sporepedia (in-game) side of the game. Some of these I'd consider to be bugs and some just need a little improvement. None of them affect gameplay in any way.

1. Creations from the Creature Creator are not appearing in My Creations.

This seems to be a common problem without a reliable fix. At least not one I'm willing to try based on what I've read so far. Just included here for completion.

2. Online search does not find all my creations.

If I search using the in-game search for my user name, only one of my creations created and shared within Spore is found. All of the creatures from the Creature Creator do appear. This is also the case for the search on the web site. Searching for the name of a missing creation also returns no results.

As a side-effect of this, I am unable to create sporecasts of my own creations from within the game since they can only be added (as far as I can tell) from online sources, not My Creations or Everything. Sporecasts can (again) be created from the web site.

3. Online search results only display on a single row.

There is room for 3 rows of search results, yet only one row is displayed. Three times as many search results could be seen per page if these rows were used.

4. Find Sporecast does not find all my sporecasts.

As for the creation search, searching for my user name only results in one of my sporecasts appearing. Again, the web site search also has the same problem and searching for the name returns nothing.

5. Find Sporecast is slow.

The Find Sporecast funcion is very slow loading the icons representing creations. With only three displayed per page, it's a very slow process finding sporecasts. Additionally, there is no way to enlarge or properly preview items in the sporecast, so the decision to subscribe or not has to be based on a few very small images.

6. Creations added to own sporecasts do not appear in the sporecast list.

I've added creations to my sporecasts through the web site, but none of the new additions are appearing in the sporecast entry in Sporecasts in-game. Only those items added when they were first created appear. When searching for the sporecast in the Find Sporecast search, the newly-added items do display in the preview (for those sporecasts that can be found - see point 4).

7. Recent Sporecasts in user profile.

When viewing my own profile, the Recent Sporecasts section seems to just show random sporecasts. I'm not subscribed to any of those it lists.

[eleazar]

I've run into various other problems, and here's how i've gotten around them.

1) My Sporecasts created/modified on the web won't update in the game.
Since it is many times easier to make sporecasts on the web, this is hard to avoid. I've found that adding/deleting stuff to/from your sporecast via the game can force a refresh.  It doesn't necessarily refresh everything, but it helps.


2) Creatures won't upload, or upload a "blank" creature.
I haven't totally figured this out, but i've had a lot of success in simplifying creatures so that there are 4 complexity dots free.  For Space/Civ/Tribal costumed creatures, i've found it absolutely necessary to start with a creature with 4 dots free no matter how simple or complex the costume is!  Some creatures imported from the CC simply won't upload no matter how much i simplify them.

[papaboom]

6. Creations added to own sporecasts do not appear in the sporecast list.

I've added creations to my sporecasts through the web site, but none of the new additions are appearing in the sporecast entry in Sporecasts in-game. Only those items added when they were first created appear. When searching for the sporecast in the Find Sporecast search, the newly-added items do display in the preview (for those sporecasts that can be found - see point 4).

Is there a workaround for this problem - is MAXIS aware of it? It's very annoying... Some of these bugs make you wonder about the SPOREPEDIA testing process.

[WeAreLegion]

Funny thing is I got my maxed-out complexity turtle (Civ/Space clothed) to upload by just waiting four days and trying again.

Just saying that it seems that sometimes you can get them on there without sacrificing.  And let's face it...you should NOT have to sacrifice creativity to get the damn things online!  I mean if the game/server/whatever cannot handle them that complex, why let us do it?

I've run into various other problems, and here's how i've gotten around them.

1) My Sporecasts created/modified on the web won't update in the game.
Since it is many times easier to make sporecasts on the web, this is hard to avoid. I've found that adding/deleting stuff to/from your sporecast via the game can force a refresh.  It doesn't necessarily refresh everything, but it helps.


2) Creatures won't upload, or upload a "blank" creature.
I haven't totally figured this out, but i've had a lot of success in simplifying creatures so that there are 4 complexity dots free.  For Space/Civ/Tribal costumed creatures, i've found it absolutely necessary to start with a creature with 4 dots free no matter how simple or complex the costume is!  Some creatures imported from the CC simply won't upload no matter how much i simplify them.

[eleazar]

6. Creations added to own sporecasts do not appear in the sporecast list.

I've added creations to my sporecasts through the web site, but none of the new additions are appearing in the sporecast entry in Sporecasts in-game. Only those items added when they were first created appear. When searching for the sporecast in the Find Sporecast search, the newly-added items do display in the preview (for those sporecasts that can be found - see point 4).

Is there a workaround for this problem - is MAXIS aware of it? It's very annoying... Some of these bugs make you wonder about the SPOREPEDIA testing process.

Sorta.  You can force a sporecast to refresh by adding stuff to it via the game.  It has never worked perfectly for me, but it at least makes the ingame and web versions of the sporecast a lot closer to being the same thing.

[papaboom]

6. Creations added to own sporecasts do not appear in the sporecast list.

I've added creations to my sporecasts through the web site, but none of the new additions are appearing in the sporecast entry in Sporecasts in-game. Only those items added when they were first created appear. When searching for the sporecast in the Find Sporecast search, the newly-added items do display in the preview (for those sporecasts that can be found - see point 4).

Is there a workaround for this problem - is MAXIS aware of it? It's very annoying... Some of these bugs make you wonder about the SPOREPEDIA testing process.

Sorta.  You can force a sporecast to refresh by adding stuff to it via the game.  It has never worked perfectly for me, but it at least makes the ingame and web versions of the sporecast a lot closer to being the same thing.

So you are saying not to add new stuff to the Sporcast via the website and only add new items from within the game? Sorry - I just want to be sure I'm clear on your reply..

If so - that makes it difficult to work-around to deal with - as the in-game SPOREPEDIA is tough to keep working for longer than a minute before you get some sort of disconnect...in addition there is no way to sort Online SPOREpedia searches within the game (as you can on the web..)

Thanks for helping Eleazer.

[Mrrx]

The following are a few issues I am finding with the interface and Sporepedia (in-game) side of the game. Some of these I'd consider to be bugs and some just need a little improvement. None of them affect gameplay in any way.

1. Creations from the Creature Creator are not appearing in My Creations.

This seems to be a common problem without a reliable fix. At least not one I'm willing to try based on what I've read so far. Just included here for completion.

I was nervous about the various solutions I saw posted as well.   But armed with that information I came up with an another method to solve this issue for myself. (Win XP)

1.   Every one of my creatures is in that My Documents subfolder where your creatures files are saved.   I made a copy of this folder.    I also made a second backup in case of disaster.

2.   I entered my Sporepedia and deleted every single creature.     I also deleted every file in the creatures folder.

3.   I entered windowed mode in Spore, entered the creature creator, and dragged the creature file into the editor.    Tweaked the tags and saved, this put the creature into the Sporepedia.

4.   Delete the copied file and continue working.   When the copied folder is empty I am done.

It took a long time to do this.   I think I had 150 creatures, and I spent most of an evening working out the procedure and doing it.

If you don't delete your sporepedia creatures, anything that is, in fact, in there gets duplicated and the file names get a silly (1) or such appended to them.    If you don't delete the files in the creatures folder the filenames still get the (1) appended.

[spiritofcat]

6. Creations added to own sporecasts do not appear in the sporecast list.

I've added creations to my sporecasts through the web site, but none of the new additions are appearing in the sporecast entry in Sporecasts in-game. Only those items added when they were first created appear. When searching for the sporecast in the Find Sporecast search, the newly-added items do display in the preview (for those sporecasts that can be found - see point 4).

Is there a workaround for this problem - is MAXIS aware of it? It's very annoying... Some of these bugs make you wonder about the SPOREPEDIA testing process.

So you are saying not to add new stuff to the Sporcast via the website and only add new items from within the game? Sorry - I just want to be sure I'm clear on your reply..

If so - that makes it difficult to work-around to deal with - as the in-game SPOREPEDIA is tough to keep working for longer than a minute before you get some sort of disconnect...in addition there is no way to sort Online SPOREpedia searches within the game (as you can on the web..)

Thanks for helping Eleazer.

I wasn't aware that there even is a way of adding creations to your sporecast on the web. Anyone care to explain how to do it?

The following are a few issues I am finding with the interface and Sporepedia (in-game) side of the game. Some of these I'd consider to be bugs and some just need a little improvement. None of them affect gameplay in any way.

1. Creations from the Creature Creator are not appearing in My Creations.

This seems to be a common problem without a reliable fix. At least not one I'm willing to try based on what I've read so far. Just included here for completion.

I was nervous about the various solutions I saw posted as well.   But armed with that information I came up with an another method to solve this issue for myself. (Win XP)

1.   Every one of my creatures is in that My Documents subfolder where your creatures files are saved.   I made a copy of this folder.    I also made a second backup in case of disaster.

2.   I entered my Sporepedia and deleted every single creature.     I also deleted every file in the creatures folder.

3.   I entered windowed mode in Spore, entered the creature creator, and dragged the creature file into the editor.    Tweaked the tags and saved, this put the creature into the Sporepedia.

4.   Delete the copied file and continue working.   When the copied folder is empty I am done.

It took a long time to do this.   I think I had 150 creatures, and I spent most of an evening working out the procedure and doing it.

If you don't delete your sporepedia creatures, anything that is, in fact, in there gets duplicated and the file names get a silly (1) or such appended to them.    If you don't delete the files in the creatures folder the filenames still get the (1) appended.

I found a fairly easy workaround for getting my CC creatures into my real game.
The CC creatures still appear in the Everything tab, just not the My Creations tab.
So I go into the Everything tab and search for my own name.
This shows up all the creations from both my game and my CC.
Then I just click on the one I want to import, click edit, add a random part, remove that part, save, share.
It works well for me since I only have about 7 CC creations. Might be a bit slow for those with 150 though.
Sorta.  You can force a sporecast to refresh by adding stuff to it via the game.  It has never worked perfectly for me, but it at least makes the ingame and web versions of the sporecast a lot closer to being the same thing.

[Liquos]

So, how do I get my creatures in? Don't tell me that I need to use the online search bar, because then I just won't even bother making SPORECasts at all.

[eleazar]

If you had done a search you would find a lot of threads where people say,

"Don't try to make a sporecast in the game.  The in-game features are horrible.  Use the sporepedia website."
... or words to that effect.