Common fixes to SPORE problems

[grandwazir]

SPORE is a great game, but unfortunately caused a few problems for me which took me some time to debug. I've seen lots of posts on various subjects in the forum as well as some gems hidden away and I think it would help the community if we had a thread with nothing but solutions in, which hopefully, when the official sticky on the forum gets updated these can be added too.

"Save game failed - spore will now exit"

This is usually because you have ran out of space. You need to make sure you have enough space on your system drive (where windows is installed) for whatever you set your graphics cache to (if you haven't changed this, it is 1GB) plus another gigabyte. So for most people you will need about 2GB spare on C:

Why do you need the extra gigabyte? Because Windows uses this space for when it runs out of physical memory. Having some space free will not only make SPORE work better but the rest of your computer too. Having no space free on your system drive is a recipe for disaster and will cause loads of problems.

SPORE crashes to desktop when launching

First of all if you are playing as a restricted user or if you are playing in Vista, try running SPORE as an administrator. This is a horrible workaround but it is the only way I can get it to work on my machine. Without it SPORE will always crash to the desktop.

If that doesn't work try deleting your cache files. You can find them at "Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\SPORE". Delete everything that has .package on the end of it.

If that doesn't work you might have a corrupt save game. This is especially true if this only started happening after you received a "Save game failed - spore will now exit" error. You will have to delete the offending save game before it will start. You can find them in "Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\SPORE\Games".

It is worth renaming Game0 to something else and Game0.old to Game0 to see if the backup will work. If it doesn't delete them both.

If all else fails delete everything in "Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\SPORE" which will force SPORE to regenerate the entire folder to how it was when the game was first installed. This should clear out any corrupt settings and hopefully save you a reinstall.

Spore crashes - complains "DasmX86Dll.dll not found"

I had this problem and it was entirely related to the fact I was not running the game as an Administrator. As soon as I did that it never graced my exception log again

I've installed SPORE and it has disappeared! How can I start the game?

This usually happens if you are using Vista. The game places it's short cut in the games explorer which you can get to by opening the start menu and clicking on games.

[grandwazir]

Canyons appearing in the ground all over the planet

The chances are you also have an ATI card. If you force anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on using the Cataylst Control Centre you might encounter these issues. The solution is easy. Turn them off. You can do this by either changing your graphics settings to "balanced" or doing it manually in the advanced settings and the problem will go away. Hopefully once Maxis and ATI decide whose problem it is, they will fix it.

Help! All the other tribes/empires look the same as me!

This happened on my first game. SPORE is very eager to show off your own creations to you and will prioritise them above all others. You can mitigate this by playing online and subscribing to some Sporecasts. I recommend ThrowerOfStones his stuff is awesome!

My game crashes regularly while in space mode, usually when visiting somewhere new

Make sure to delete your graphics cache as explained in the above post. You might find it helpful to reduce your texture detail as well. Moving from "high" to "medium" made an huge difference to my machine.

Eeeak! All my creatures have turned invisible. What do I do?

Tell them to stop licking yoghurt pot tops or was that transparency? You need to clear your graphics cache to fix that. You can find instructions for that in the post below.

Ye Gods! I don't speak Thai! How do I change the game to speak the Queen's English?

You can change the language the game uses by adding "-locale:<country-code>" to the game shortcut. For example if you wanted english you need to put "-locale:en-gb" You can do this by right clicking on the Spore shortcut and adding that in the command line shortcut box.

Spore supports the following flavours in the European Galactic edition. Your version might support others. You can see which ones it supports by finding where you installed SPORE and having a look in the /Data/Locale directory.

• cs-cz
• da-dk
• de-de
• el-gr
• en-gb
• en-us
• es-es
• fi-fo
• fr-fr
• hu-hu
• it-it
• nl-nl
• no-no
• pl-pl
• bt-br
• pt-pt
• ru-ru
• sv-se

You may also be able to find and download another locales that were not included with your game from the internet. It is worth mentioning though that doing so isn't supported by EA.

I can't seem to save in Space mode. What gives?

You can save in Space mode but only when you are actually in space. You can not save your game when you are on a planet - the option will just be greyed out.

[grandwazir]

Argh! My game crashed, now I have to do all those buildings again!

Good news! You don't! When you save a building/vehicle/creature it is saved straight away. Just because you lost your progress doesn't mean you lost the hours you spent on that factory.

My email address has changed/I don't like my screen name. How do I change it?

You can change all your account details. You need to change the information on your master EA account since all accounts inherit from this now. Go to https://profile.ea.com/login.do, login and from there you can change your details.

I've heard loads about cache files. What are they and how do I clear them?

As you play SPORE the game adds various content to cache files so the next time it fetches the same thing it loads it slightly quicker. However in some circumstances this can cause some odd graphical effects or even stop the game from starting at all.

If you are having a problem with SPORE, first try clearing your cache. Depending on if you are using Windows XP or Vista you need to look in different places. Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\SPORE for WinXP) or Users\<user-name>\AppData\Roaming\Spore for Vista.

You want to delete the file in there called GraphicsCache.package.

There are other cache files in that folder too. You might want to delete MVJCache if you have white screens appearing in your Sporepedia or if deleting the GraphicsCache didn't work. Deleting these files is completely safe and you are not losing anything in doing so.

[Corvic]

great thread, should be stickied.

Quick question, have you come across any fixes for it crashing while loading up different stages? (i.e. tribal and civilization?)

Crashing when loading the Civilization Stage

my thread on it.

[DragonSeeds]

I checked out ThrowerOfStones, his stuff is ok i guess, doesn't really appeal to me though

[Eroneouse]

Such a thread already exists mate and has done for days...

A Collection of Fixes

If you can add to it that great as it is a good idea to keep em all in one thread for ease of use.

[desmark]

No offence Eroneouse, but any chance you could re-jig your bug-fix thread to look a bit like this one?

It seems a lot easier to find what you're looking for and has a good breakdown of the fixes.

Nice work both of ya!

[grandwazir]

Originally Posted by Eroneouse

Such a thread already exists mate and has done for days...

I didn't notice that when I made this one. This was more a collection of fixes I had found myself from playing the game.

[grandwazir]

Originally Posted by Corvic

Quick question, have you come across any fixes for it crashing while loading up different stages? (i.e. tribal and civilization?)

It hasn't happened to me. I did have a weird one though when I only had four cities at the end of the civ stage. Once I captured all the cities the game played the video for unlocking planes and because of that didn't advance to the space age properly. That was rather annoying but it worked itself out.

Have you tried the back up save game? If you get a chance and you really want to save that game you could also give it to your friend and see if he can load it. If he can't, the chances are that it is corrupt.

[grandwazir]

Originally Posted by DragonSeeds

I checked out ThrowerOfStones, his stuff is ok i guess, doesn't really appeal to me though

His buildings and spaceships I don't really like but some of the creatures I find really cool.

[grandwazir]

I've updated this thread with some more solutions. Post if you find it useful!

[AmazingMilto]

..im wondering....if i read it properly....

so...deleting cache....is a good thing?

[Matticus88]

i have a question about deleting the Graphic cache.

In my spore folder, it shows Graphicscache.package and Graphicscache.001.package and Graphicscache.002.package.

Do i delete all three of them?

[grandwazir]

Originally Posted by AmazingMilto

..im wondering....if i read it properly....
so...deleting cache....is a good thing?

It is an easy way to fix many graphical glitches. If you are having problems deleting the cache is a good place to start and it can't do any harm. There is no point deleting it for no reason though

Originally Posted by Matticus88

In my spore folder, it shows Graphicscache.package and Graphicscache.001.package and Graphicscache.002.package.

Yup, delete them all.

[vodooblaster]

I do not have a Spore folder in the App. Data Folder. Can you help me out because my game is no fun when i can only play it for 15 minutes and then it crashes.

[DRgamer01]

Originally Posted by grandwazir

SPORE is a great game, but unfortunately caused a few problems for me which took me some time to debug. I've seen lots of posts on various subjects in the forum as well as some gems hidden away and I think it would help the community if we had a thread with nothing but solutions in, which hopefully, when the official sticky on the forum gets updated these can be added too.

"Save game failed - spore will now exit"

This is usually because you have ran out of space. You need to make sure you have enough space on your system drive (where windows is installed) for whatever you set your graphics cache to (if you haven't changed this, it is 1GB) plus another gigabyte. So for most people you will need about 2GB spare on C:

Why do you need the extra gigabyte? Because Windows uses this space for when it runs out of physical memory. Having some space free will not only make SPORE work better but the rest of your computer too. Having no space free on your system drive is a recipe for disaster and will cause loads of problems.

SPORE crashes to desktop when launching

First of all if you are playing as a restricted user or if you are playing in Vista, try running SPORE as an administrator. This is a horrible workaround but it is the only way I can get it to work on my machine. Without it SPORE will always crash to the desktop.

If that doesn't work try deleting your cache files. You can find them at "Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\SPORE". Delete everything that has .package on the end of it.

If that doesn't work you might have a corrupt save game. This is especially true if this only started happening after you received a "Save game failed - spore will now exit" error. You will have to delete the offending save game before it will start. You can find them in "Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\SPORE\Games".

It is worth renaming Game0 to something else and Game0.old to Game0 to see if the backup will work. If it doesn't delete them both.

If all else fails delete everything in "Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\SPORE" which will force SPORE to regenerate the entire folder to how it was when the game was first installed. This should clear out any corrupt settings and hopefully save you a reinstall.

Spore crashes - complains "DasmX86Dll.dll not found"

I had this problem and it was entirely related to the fact I was not running the game as an Administrator. As soon as I did that it never graced my exception log again

I've installed SPORE and it has disappeared! How can I start the game?

This usually happens if you are using Vista. The game places it's short cut in the games explorer which you can get to by opening the start menu and clicking on games.

This doesn't allways work. I can't find anything but the read me and the desktop icon that is literally just a desktop icon, the icon desighn. Someone has to have a better awnser, anyone?

[Hannan100]

Uh this thread is a year old!
Just thought I'd let ya know

[NinjaToast]

xD Wow, talk about necromancy...
Anyways, I usually have about 70GB free on my pc, so I'm fine with the saving one...

[Architect]

Game keeps going into Power Save and have to switch off pc and reswitch on. Sound is there but no vision and no way to restart.

Just deleted 2 graphicscache.packages

So far not gone into Poer Save but Spore shut down

So do I get rid of other packages?

Such as:

MVJCache Folder
EditorSaves.package
GrraphicsCache.package [new one]
Planets.package
Pollination.package
RigblockInfo.package

This game comes with lots of package - driving me nuts crashing every 15 mins and wrecking my pc.

[Architect]

No one know about deleting the other packages?

[supersoulllama]

My game crashes when i die in creature stage! Anything i can do to stop it?

[Architect]

Delete graphics creche, as above. Start agin with another planet/ species. Keep saving as you go along.

[1996prince]

i just bought spore i put the cd in and then i enter my serial number and when i clik next the instalation disapears

[Slizorfang]

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! Spore doesnt recognize my internet connection! First it says "uptades are available. Login with your email adresse and password to receive updates" and then " Network Play Disabled" Please I realy cant login! Help me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ashtaroph]

"You can change the language the game uses by adding "-locale:<country-code>" to the game shortcut. For example if you wanted english you need to put "-locale:en-gb" You can do this by right clicking on the Spore shortcut and adding that in the command line shortcut box."

if you do this hundreds of players have found that you will encounter the Bad_Data error that is associated with patch 4, the shortcut needs to read " -locale:en-us" it doesnt affect the rest of your pc, just Spore.