Topic: Thinking it over

[dapunisher]

Again WeltallZero good points all around, but I'm still confused.
No offense, but you seriously want a game that consists of just flying around looking at other players stuff and saying, wow that's cool?
I want to interact with the other civs and have a blast doing so. Again, no offense but if I wanted to see cool stuff, I'd go to an airshow.
I don't HATE Spore, acctually I'm waiting with baited breath. I'm just worried that there won't be much to the game. Think of the Sims. Now again, imagine if they took out all the sim-sim interactions and just made it an architectual and people creator. Cool, but...then you don't really have a game. I mean despite what a lot of people think, I believe a game of this size and scale has got to use a lot of processing power. I mean think of all the algorithims and other complex math the computer has to use to decide how to animate your 26 legged walking blob. Now think of that, plus EVERY OTHER player created creature. That's a lot of thinking your computer has to do. Which I believe means they are going to have to trim down all the other stuff so they can acctually get it to run without choking. So just how deep will the other aspects of the game be? Like we have said before, only time will tell.

And as for the diplomacy thing....I WISH I had an advanced copy...heh
But think about the Civilization series. Diplomacy didn't acctually get really advanced untill Civ 3, before which it consisted of war, alliance, peace, or nuetral. And if Spore is a very watered down version of that, how deep do YOU think the diplomacy will be?

Oh and in passing, I should also point out again that everything I say IS just my opinion. So no offense again to you or anyone.

[Tarious]

Dude, you're thinking to much.

This game will have something to do at every time and phase, but the ufo phase may turn just into a sandbox...

[dapunisher]

Acctually, we're ALL thinking too hard. How many posts are there for a handful of screenshots and almost no known information? lol

[Zealousy]

Keep in mind that, as inspiration for how best to make Spore, Will Wright immersed himself in a culture of people that could make fully 3d games in under 64k, which is about 1/20 the size of the photos I take with my 3.2 megapixel camera (each photo being about 1.2 megs).

I'm guessing this game'll run like butter, on any system.

[WeltallZero]

No offense, but you seriously want a game that consists of just flying around looking at other players stuff and saying, wow that's cool?

Um, when exactly did you decide to ignore the part in which I create stuff?

I want to interact with the other civs and have a blast doing so. Again, no offense but if I wanted to see cool stuff, I'd go to an airshow.
I don't HATE Spore, acctually I'm waiting with baited breath. I'm just worried that there won't be much to the game. Think of the Sims. Now again, imagine if they took out all the sim-sim interactions and just made it an architectual and people creator. Cool, but...then you don't really have a game.

I don't really care what you want from Spore (no offense), so why should you care about what _I_ want? There's really not much to discuss here. My only observation is that I'm growing more confident that YOU won't like the game that much, so it's you who shouldn't get too hyped.

I mean despite what a lot of people think, I believe a game of this size and scale has got to use a lot of processing power. I mean think of all the algorithims and other complex math the computer has to use to decide how to animate your 26 legged walking blob. Now think of that, plus EVERY OTHER player created creature. That's a lot of thinking your computer has to do. Which I believe means they are going to have to trim down all the other stuff so they can acctually get it to run without choking.

Well, as a computer programmer with almost a decade of working experience, I expect to know a bit about the subject. There are techniques, pretty simple ones actually (especially compared to the rather unorthodox programming Spore is alledgedly sporting), to simulate a continuous growth when there is only a "perceived" one, i.e. it only is calculated when you look. Sort of a Schorodinger's cat, if you get my meaning.
But actually, that's not even needed. Simple mathematical calculations for growth are extremelly light on modern computers' processors, as long as they're kept withing a reasonable order of magnitude. Several thousand civilizations is actually a reasonable order of magnitude, so the game COULD calculate all that in real-time (not that I would expect them too: that'd be simply unnecesay overhead and plain sloppy programming).
Bottom line: I'm a programmer, and I don't worry at all about that. I think you shouldn't, either, but it's your call.

And as for the diplomacy thing....I WISH I had an advanced copy...heh
But think about the Civilization series. Diplomacy didn't acctually get really advanced untill Civ 3, before which it consisted of war, alliance, peace, or nuetral. And if Spore is a very watered down version of that, how deep do YOU think the diplomacy will be?

Extrapolating from previous, unrelated games, isn't a wise course of action. We have no evidence of how diplomacy will be handled in Spore, so drawing conclusions at this point is preposterous.

Oh and in passing, I should also point out again that everything I say IS just my opinion. So no offense again to you or anyone.

None taken. It's just that you're expected to base your conclusions on solid evidence and reasoning; AND not to asume everyone thinks like you.

[Therlun]

Keep in mind that, as inspiration for how best to make Spore, Will Wright immersed himself in a culture of people that could make fully 3d games in under 64k, which is about 1/20 the size of the photos I take with my 3.2 megapixel camera (each photo being about 1.2 megs).

I'm guessing this game'll run like butter, on any system.

thats not quite true.
the point of such code is that it only has very small files that describe everything, and the computer builds the graphic and sound while playing (which actually needs more resources on the computer side ).

it is only less work for the creator of the game.
the development team has not to compute hundreds of megs of data, but only a few, small "descriptive" files.

e.g."kkrieger"
it is a shooter that is 96kb big!(take a look at the gallery)
and it needs quite high specs:
http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger.html

[dapunisher]

WetalZero,

Schorodinger's cat huh? Wow that is some pretty crazy stuff!

Anyhow, ok I submit. I have been beating up on you. Though I didn't even really realize it untill your last post. I guess I  just wasn't thinking (hey don't say anything!!! lol)  You're entitled to your oppinions as much as I am, and I haven't really been respecting that have I?

As for the game itself, I really don't know what Spore is or isn't. I started this thread for the sake of arguement, mainly to get intelligent oppinions and information on the inner workings of the games mechanics (which you have explained). Although I do have to say the design concept of the game IS very cool. I am very much looking forward to making my own creatures/buildings/vehicles/ufos....who knows? But I DO hope there is something more to it then that....and I'm sure there will be. And I hope it will have some sort of depth
The reason why I whine so much is because I am afraid of hyping this game too much. Anytime a game has been hyped alot, it has fallen short of people's excpectations BIG time. Basically I'm giving the negative what if side And you guys have argued your way out of this rather well....reassuring my hopes that Spore will be an awesome game.
Anyway, once again sorry for attacking you. You DO make some good points, and as I said I am very much looking forward to Spore. 

[Zealousy]

Therlun, Good point. I didn't think about it that way. (Or at all?)

I still don't think that this game'll bring a lot of computers to their knees though. I don't know why, but if the game's going to be simplified (as I remember people mentioning Wright had said) then I don't think that the simulation in this game is going to be phenomenally involved.

[krjal]

That might be the case but I think that it would be a very scalable system. You would be able to lessen the processing power needed by setting animations to become less detailed etc.

[Cend]

Like someone before me, remember that nearly everything so far is speculation...not that it'll stop anyone from speculating, especially not me!!

I can't remember, but isn't time scalable? So if you wanted to spend more time on the city part of the game, then just don't zoom out...and spend more time designing and such. Now, I'm not sure how much the game gets into making a city work properly (simcity games) or running the economy (ceaser games) or if it's just a sandbox for the city.

Also, Mr.Wright's demonstration sped through the game at very high speeds. It's quite likely that there was many parts missing or skipped, and/or parts were done in advance so he could skip by them.

To me though, this isn't a game about organizing a city, or running a civilization...it's taking a creature you have made, and designed and bringing it from being a single-cell organism to the ruler of the cosmos and everything in between. I'd hope the game is complex enough in each stage that, if I want, I can spend hours just working with my tribe of primitive Tribbles (now where would they hold the spear? ) or I can speed time up by zooming out. This would also mean amazing things for replayability!

Ramble ramble, this game is hard on the fingers.

[Mr.Heat]

No offense, but you seriously want a game that consists of just flying around looking at other players stuff and saying, wow that's cool?

Um, when exactly did you decide to ignore the part in which I create stuff?

Ummm..ok, so you explored alot of creatures and buildings and whatever, and you created alot too, what will you do with them without the ability to interact with those objects?



Heat

[WeltallZero]

Anyhow, ok I submit. I have been beating up on you. Though I didn't even really realize it untill your last post. I guess I  just wasn't thinking (hey don't say anything!!! lol)  You're entitled to your oppinions as much as I am, and I haven't really been respecting that have I?

Eh? No, no, I didn't feel attacked at all! Don't worry about it. It's just that I'm a bit surprised that you expect others to justify your expectations of the game, when ours are completely different. That, and I wanted to assure you that there is nothing technically impossible within what Spore is trying to do: it's just very ambitious in scope.

[Stromko]

I think a few other people have touched upon this, but my summation of what Spore will have to offer is that you shouldn't think of any one stage as a full game, with sufficient depth, etc. The depth of Spore will be that you go through all these stages (tidal pool, ocean, land hunting, tribes, etc) and they build upon eachother, the things you do in these stages may seem simple, but they have a lasting impact on every stage afterwards.

Example: (* refers to things where I can't be absolutely certain, from what we know so far, that such a feature exists)
IE, your creature shambles out of the water and begins devouring smaller creatures for strength and evading more powerful predators. In so doing, it wanders deep into a desert landscape where perhaps prey becomes more scarce and it must develop sharper senses* or the ability to move farther or faster, and needs much less water, perhaps it develops special camouflage* to hide from giant saurians that prowl the wastes?

So skip ahead, skip ahead; those desert people who evolved in their environment purely by chance form their entire society and technology around surviving and flourishing in this environment, OR, perhaps you grow sick and tired of eking out and existence int he desert, and you now have a possibly difficult quest where you move your entire tribe to someplace where the environment suits your wishes.

You can probably see what I'm talking about here, that choices and happenings in an earlier stage would very logically have an impact on every stage thereafter, and without necessarily needing a great deal of depth in any one stage. Also I've pointed out that, like Will Wright's previous games, it is the gamer that determines what they want to get out of the game, it is the gamer that choses their goals. But now instead of playing the Sims 2 and trying to, say, make a 'graveyard' lot just for the freaking hell of it.. you get choices like making vicious desert-wandering Carebears with energy rifles that drive gigantic tanks around (Jawas!) just for the freaking hell of it!

[krjal]

I like that image Stromko, even if we don't know which parts are possible.

[WeltallZero]

Agreed, Stromko's tale is a very cool example of the kind of cause-effect gameplay Spore could sport.