Official Spore Creature Creator Feedback Thread

[PieJesu]

Originally Posted by Wishbone77

Also, the centered single limbs currently act like right limbs, rather than centered ones. And most of the feet and hands are asymmetric, so they're right ones too, if centered.

You can easily change hands to be more centered by click on the hand and pushing TAB. You can then rotate the hand and it will snap to the center instead of curving to the right. Use dexterrous or horrorthumbs if you want it to look symmetrical or trapfist and succulenders.

[cmdskp]

About sharing and protecting creations; some solution ideas.

To have an approval request sent to the original creature maker, when someone re-uploads a modified creature. If they approve, the creature then becomes visible for download. (To implement, just needs the original creator's ID kept permanently as well as the last modifier's ID in the creature data - the rest should be possible from the Sporepedia database side.)

This would offer:

- protection from reuse
- prevent undesirable changes
- reduce clutter on the Sporepedia from minor variations
- see how your creations are 'evolved' by others

You could always have an option to automatically approve on by default and allow people to change that so they could have this control if they wanted it.

[Wishbone77]

When you make changes to one of your existing creatures, and then share the updated version, there should be a choice to either update the original creature, or to make a new copy of it.

It should also be possible to clone one of your existing creatures, so you can keep the original version in the internal Sporepedia. As it is, the only way you can have more than one version of a creature in the SCC, is to download the original from Sporepedia and import it, after you have updated it.

[orifice]

@cmdskp

I like these idea's.

But how would this be applied to the existing frauds. It may only serve to prevent further frauds.(still, better than nothing I suppose)

[roo42uk]

Another quick thing i just noticed, only the sporeacles (first nose) seem to fit anywhere all the other noses are not coloured right and just dont seem to fit on the ends of the mouth parts.

[TheAesthete]

Originally Posted by Wishbone77

What you could do was to remove the stretching function from the joint pulling function, and instead scale the length of limbs by pointing at the limb and using the scroll wheel. The wheel isn't used for anything on limbs right now, and since it IS used to scale the thickness of joints, I think it would be quite intuitive.

Either i'm imagining things or maybe you just haven't noticed, but i believe the mouse wheel does alter the limbs. Yes it scales the joints as you said, but i believe if you put it over the limb you can change the mucle mass of that limb as well.
Maybe you could just hold down a key to turn off all but axis rotation or something. I'm not sure why they didnt include the 360* tab key wheel things for the limbs... i guess the animation couldn't handle joints in weird directions.

[TheAesthete]

i know some people are very protective of their labours, so i do think that some sort of "original creator id" should remain with the creature once edited by someone else... however, i myself, feel that if someone wants to steal my creature... then they can go ahead. I had fun making them, and i think their missing out on that, but also, i feel its the nature of the game to be sharing these things. Once i click share i'm not saying "this is my creature" i'm saying "this is our creature" (this is going dangerously daytime special-esq lol)

[orifice]

There's a problem with the sporepedia.
It won't let me search some words. I can't search for bug or pig, there are others but these two I can remember because I tried them today.
Anyone knowof other words it won't search for, or better why?

[TheAesthete]

Has anyone else noticed a difference with the Euro Sporepedia webpage and the US one? or is it just me being stupid? But when i log in and click on Sporepedia on the eu. server i get a page that shows me 6 creatures and a tab to increase the amount shown and to do a search for something.
HOwever, i know that sometimes on sporepedia (and i believe it is when i'm not on the eu. page though i could be wrong.) i not only get those, but i also get some tabs on the side saying "your creations" "maxis" and "everything else" which makes looking back at my creatures far more easy than going to the "my spore page" not the least because it means i can search my own creations for rated ones and see what people are liking.

Am i going mad?

[orifice]

We need necks and tails.
and the ability to colour limbs, necks, heads, tails, hands and feet separately to the torso would be really useful too.

[TheAesthete]

i justed noticed something.... what was it... oh yeah, why doesn't adding a nose or antennae give the creature a sensory bonus? tell the bat it can't 'see' its world because it doesn't have good eye sight. or the mole can't hunt down its food because its almost blind...
Ok i know i'm being over dramatic, and i'm sure having eyes was probably something needed for the full game to work, but atleast give an animal a bonus when he has a nose, something more than charm! lol.
Maybe they get a bonus with eating food because they can snuffle out more of it? i dont know, but something. lol

[clawsywp]

i would love to see it so when u play a creature, it is not automatically the male of the species. a demo i saw they showed the mating then the other creature laid an egg....
please make it we can play either gender! its not only blokes that buy games yah know.

[TheAesthete]

why do you assume the one we are seeing is male? given theres no genitalia, and as they all lay eggs, none will have mammory glands...

Anyway from what i can tell is that they are all gonna be genderless in appearance.

[Mugge]

Originally Posted by TheAesthete

Anyway from what i can tell is that they are all gonna be genderless in appearance.

Hehe, umm yea ... Go browse Youtube and think that statement over Only kidding, I know what you mean. Btw, your link to sporepedia has a typo.

@clawsywp
If you prefer to play as a female, you can certainly make a girly looking creature if you want. That's as much female as it gets. The same goes with male too, as it seems every creature is hermaphrodites.

Mugge

[Shantalya]

Originally Posted by PieJesu

You speak as if you are limited in texture choice.

The Layer Paint mode allows you to pick from many, many different textures that suit virtually all creatures I try to make. It also offers a very robust colour pallete. Details can be coloured by choosing a colour in the "Detail" section.

Free paint is not needed for what you are describing.

I disagree on this. I tried for hours to colour horns flowers and other parts. Thy either get a very strange colour or none. It would relly be nice to improve a very little bit the texture choice. And as said before: A frame on all textures that are currently in use, and a short description like f.e. bubbles on back and front or scratches on the side...

I fully agree on the request for beeing able to move ALL PARTS in all 3 Dimensions/Directions

[PieJesu]

The only parts which cannot be rotated are feet. Everything else can be rotated by using the TAB key.

Colouring the details specifically would be a nice touch, but I don't agree on free-paint.

The reason they made the textures procedural was to remove the time needed to texture a creature by hand.

[orifice]

Ovoid torso's we need to be able to make bodies that are not round, Ovoid in both directions eg human torso and horse torso.

[BenVdd]

id like to have a symmetrical function rather then make everything symmetrical right away..

[TheAesthete]

cheers mugge... i thought i'd compied and pasted that lol.

And i too have thought about asymetrical creatures... tried to think of any on our planet that are asymetrical, but couldnt. can anyone think of any?

[BenVdd]

hmm... my sis? haha no , just kidding , err... tbh, none that i can think of , but thats exactly why it should be enabled ! spore is about creativity , but its being limited by symmetry

[orifice]

The Fiddler crab is assymetrical. HA HA check out the big brain on me!!

[orifice]

Also flatfish like sole, spend the transitional period of their life assymetrical and never really achieve symmetry as adults.

I'm going to lie down now, the sedatives the doctor gave me are starting to kick in.

[TheAesthete]

oooh good thoughts, good thoughts.
Any techytypes want to tell us a techytype reason why asymmetry would cause techytype problems?

[Mugge]

Originally Posted by PieJesu

The only parts which cannot be rotated are feet. Everything else can be rotated by using the TAB key.

I think he meant move and not rotate. It would probably break the animation in many occasions though, so might not be a good idea.

Colouring the details specifically would be a nice touch, but I don't agree on free-paint.

Agreed. As well as bigger/better representations and descriptions of the textures. And the ability to choose one texture (like scales) and then one alphachannel (like the back) would be great. It would add a lot of flexibility instead of the texturetype being locked to a certain bodypart. Still rooting for a third (advanced) coloring tab

As for my sliders (to change the seed) idea, I still want to say that no one in here knows for sure whether it can or can't be done properly (and easily). When rendering the individual creatures (to make them look a little different and unique) the seed change might be small (to make them still look alike) and a greater change could make them look totally different. There could be more than one seed per procedural too. One that's more prone to change the size of the pattern and one that's more likely to change the pattern itself. Maybe it's not feasible and easy to make a solution where the user can influence the actual procedural and still give the engine the ability to make every creature unique, but then maybe it is? Only Maxis could know this. I'm not holding my breath for this to appear in the game, but I hope at least someone will hear the request.

The reason they made the textures procedural was to remove the time needed to texture a creature by hand.

Yep and probably to avoid a lot of awful looking creatures as texturing by hand isn't all that easy. At least it's hard to make something as good looking as the procedurals in this game accomplishes, so I hope they keep it all procedural too.

Mugge

[PieJesu]

They can't enable asymmetry! It's hardwired into the engine!

And you can already make oval torsos. Increase spine size anyone?