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Nah, we'll just have a bunch of penis shaped animals like with what happend in spore

Video games can also grossly misrepresent evolution, driving, archaeology and just about anything else they're based on. They are for the most part a source of entertainment meant to create a virtual world that may or may not have anything to do with real life. That is the point. They're supposed to be fun. Sometimes the historical inaccuracy is the whole point; It can be fun to interact with a world that isn't historically accurate; alternate timelines for example.

I'm pissed that my video game misrepresents Elves.

Video games can also grossly misrepresent evolution, driving, archaeology and just about anything else they're based on. They are for the most part a source of entertainment meant to create a virtual world that may or may not have anything to do with real life. That is the point. They're supposed to be fun. Sometimes the historical inaccuracy is the whole point; It can be fun to interact with a world that isn't historically accurate; alternate timelines for example.

Awesome lets desig.. wa... what is this buried into the terms and conditions..

This Contest is only open to residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 13 years of age or older at time of entry and who had Internet access as of February 19, 2009.

Hey how come they don't mention that on the main page?

To be eligible to win, your app needs to display the text, "Download your own copy of the Spore Creature Creator now!" along with a link to http://www.spore.com./

Say what? Well then I'll just do my application for fun and not submit it.. oh wait!

By providing any Contest Assets for entrant's use Sponsor is granting entrants a limited, non-exclusive, non-commercial license to use the Contest Assets solely in connection with, and as a part of, the Contest. Entrants shall otherwise have no right, title or interest in or to any Contest Assets, and any use of the Contest Assets (including use of the entrant's Entry that contains Contest Assets) other than as permitted by these Official Rules may constitute copyright and/or trademark infringement.

Well at least they don't take my copyright if I win.. oh wait!

By entering the Contest and by accepting a prize, the Contest winners irrevocably assign and transfer to Sponsor any and all rights, title, and interest in and to the Entry (with respect to their Original Creations included as part of the Entry), including without limitation, all copyrights and a waiver of all moral rights in the Entry.

I haven't come across any software that won't run on that other than bluetooth drivers using A2DP.

• Screenflow
• iBank
• iPhone SDK
• Spore
• Evernote

Need I go on?

Also, depending on who you bought your Mac through, there is usually some cheaper or free option for upgrading to the next major release

Apple.com. No option that I know of.

Yeah, I do that all the time. I've played 100's of games over at my friends' houses over the past few years and within half an hour, I've more than gotten my fill. For every game I've found fun enough to warrant a purchase (as well as investing the time to play them) there are hundreds that I was more than happy to skip. Poor quality, plus over inflated price equals you don't get my money.

For example: Thank god I didn't buy Spore! What a dissapointment... I was so excited for that game over the past 3 years, but then this guy had to ruin it. Not even beginning to mention the draconian DRM.

Kotaku covered the same thing, and debunked it here.

And Here's the page in a thread where the guy posting your thread (jpfrostfox) said he screwed up, with the forum moderator (sporemasterladym) trying to do damage control.

Can't take the time to register.

He did not say he screwed up, he did nothing wrong. The moderator who was sacked certainly did though. His apology was personal, to the moderators who were decent for making their job more difficult because of his questions and the sensational reaction they caused. It was no admonition of guilt.

Purely by coincidence I saw an image of the Twitter FailWhale for the first time just last night while perusing this collection of Awesome Error Pages on Buzzfeed. My vote for the coolest goes to the 404 page for the Spore website. Imaginative, appropriate, and downright awesome!

Kotaku covered the same thing, and debunked it here.
And Here's the page in a thread where the guy posting your thread (jpfrostfox) said he screwed up, with the forum moderator (sporemasterladym) trying to do damage control.

That's not entirely true, it seems. http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/3869.page
"Please do not continue to post theses thread or you account may be at risk of banning which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore."
The text is in red, and it looks like the post has been edited. It's a shame that Spore's forums won't let you see who made the edit, however. It would be nice if we could see, without a doubt, that it was edited by a moderator.

I recommend the epic fail.

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500009400872

Haven't seen the box, but it's on the website.

Requires Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS 10.5.3 or higher. Wine on Linux is not any of these, so they aren't required to make sure the game runs.

I hate DRM as much as the next person here on slashdot, but be reasonable. My software won't run on Wine, it's not designed to, so I'll be buggered if I'm putting the time in to check it works or support anyone who tries.

The summary != TFA. Surprise!

"Due to the complexity of the developing system, which includes the disk-planet and planet-planet interactions described, the simulations resulted in random systems. Nevertheless, two dominant cases were detected.

In a disk with low mass and high viscosity, the gas in the disk is removed before a planet can form, resulting in a system that has only rocky, icy bodies. At the other end, in a disk with high mass and low viscosity, planets are formed but are pulled towards the center of the system and acquire highly elliptical orbits around the star.

In the intermediate case, planets form but undergo only modest migration towards the star and their orbits don't become as elliptical. This seems to be the case of the solar system. The simulation showed that this case is realized in a small number of systems, meaning the solar system does not resemble most planetary systems. "

The report is saying that along a spectrum of possibilities, there are a number which produce results different than our system.
1) It says nothing about the real life DISTRIBUTION of these alternatives. If only a narrow band of X values produce the results you want, this isn't necessarily a problem if you're in the high point of a steep bell curve. Look at a H-R diagram - there are clearly 'sweet spots' in stellar development across the range of possibilities. Nothing says planetary development is any different.
2) This of course means little. There is no evidence either way to suggest that life (which is the point of looking for solar systems - I don't think we just have some weird fetish for similar solar systems) can or can't develop on those alternate results. Hell, we may find that solar systems with nearly circular orbits are rare but that's good because they produce the Galaxy's retarded civilizations, and everyone ELSE out there is laughing/pitying us.

FWIW run your own particle/gravity simulation, and find the same results yourself: http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes. It's awesome, and finally a use for that uber-mega-cpu you just bought.

I wouldn't be so sure!

I wouldn't be so sure!

I wouldn't be so sure!

I wouldn't be so sure!

I wouldn't be so sure!

Oh, wait! Here it is...

Not that many. Yes - sure, the ability to create something which will offend, will be attractive for some.. and griefers will take longer to get bored. But sooner or later, the novelty of creating giant animated penii will wear off.

Very few, especially as EA moderates those sorts of creatures now. They ask you to not upload such creatures and if you continue, your banned. Sure you can a new account and the bans aren't perminent, but the vast majority of creatures don't need moderation anyways. There are so many wonderful creatures, its a shame the penis creatures made so much noise. I've contributed ~130 creatures myself.

Maybe we'll finally find a useful application to all these $$$ spend in R&D for building artificial intelligence systems (I mean, something else than japanese pet robots) ? May I suggest this game ? If that doesn't work, I'll just be happy with tons more stupid domain names. Hands off, "www.my.ass" is mine.

Old and Current Windows games? That's what Wine/Cider is for. Don't believe me? Just ask MacOS X.

Bad planning? Or are they trying to implode the universe? (Well the internet anyway).

Not mentioned in the article or summary is the much more interesting news that the Sporepedia is live. Go check out some of the creatures that the Maxis team has created. Some of them are quite different from those I've seen in previous media.

But the game trailer on the official site http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php?movieID=7&play=hi has got to be the lamest game trailer I have ever seen.

.... it seems that's the same time that Spore is slated for release for the PC and MAC according to The Spore Press Release. Is "late 2008" the year for Vaporware?

This will be the first planet that I create when playing "Spore". If Spore ever gets released that is. I think it's likely a failing project, doomed to be delayed.

BUT if I'm wrong, my first planet will be a boiling ball of liquid, with giant tubeworms. Oh boy!
http://www.spore.com/

One of the reasons Will Wright released the first gameplay video of Spore at the Game Developer Conference 2006, instead of E3, was because he felt E3 was more like a commercial used by game producers to hype the games before it comes out, not a place for developers to exchange ideas and make better games.

You could land on and explore each planet. Close up. Let me say that again, you could land on each planet, collect it's life, find unique artifacts and rove your little tank around for hours.

Sounds like Spore.

Hmmm. Yes, procedural "generation" - not just graphics - but behaviour, physics, and (basically) the rules of the game!

There has been alot of hype about "Spore" recently...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(game)

And the official site is just recently online:

http://www.spore.com/

Now, I'm personally rather excited about this. I think it'll really bring out the "open-ended" nature of gaming to a whole new level...

One that, lets face it, has been around a while - "user based asset creation". AKA modding (but, with the twist of doing this while actually playing the game!!!)

Think I'll have a sit down...

I just checked this out in SL and it's cool, even if there isn't a lot to check out ATM. Linden Labs should be very intersted in this sort of thing.

Currently most of 2nd life is quite mechanical. By that I mean there are plenty of landscapes and cool plants in SL, but they are all meticulously hand-crafted by people, and mostly static once placed. Imagine if you could opt to have your SL land on "living land" that would actually have it's own ecology. Water flows and wind could cause erosion, birds could carry seeds from area to area... ultimately a system of DNA could be created to handle cross-fertilization of plants and wildlife.

Maybe they could even license the Spore engine to perform some of the work for them ;)

Is that a group of graduate students have returned from E3 with an unauthorized copy of the game Spore instead of working on their project for the final. I predict that these lazy students will evolve into hard working game testers.

Check out their E3 video. It's a nice condense introduction to the game.

Why didn't I get the beta to Spore too?

"We won't see any invention or development from EA anytime soon."

Except for, you know, http://www.spore.com/.

This is exactly why I am looking forward to Spore, which is driven almost entirely by user created content.

I suppose something remotely on-topic is required here, so: I own Oblivion on 360. I choose not to buy the content at that price.

Hey that would make a great game. Simulate an amoeba in water that eats food. We can simulate that amoeba's evolution into more and more complex organisms, watching it get bigger and deadlier. Then it can grow into a vertebrate lifeform that walks up onto land and becomes sentient, builds cities, wages war and sends spaceships into outer space!

Oh wait...

Don't forget the official site.

http://www.thesporezone.co.uk/screens/index.php?ID =1

http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php