Creator Tip: Tricking Miss Complexity

Many creators out there are always angry that Miss Complexity won't allow for decent vehicles or spaceships. The spaceship editor already allows more, but that still isn't enough. Despite that, since patch 5 there is a trick: asymmetry.

Once you have your core game all patched up, all you have to do to is hold down "a" and select a base part. This will remove the base part's double as well as all those from the detail parts attached to it.

Warning: This will make all new parts attached to it asymmetric.

When you start hitting it high on the complexity meter, just do that and you should get it down a few notches, ready to add more to your vehicle or spaceship.

If you still need to add a symmetric part, you can still use a flat, square block and move that into the already asymmetric base part, but don't forget to hold down "a" first to get even more out of Miss Complexity.

CreatorTip: Color

I have gotten many questions on some of my creations asking me how I do this. So, I decided to make a short guide on how to manipulate color and limbs to make the body seem like it's two different colors. There is one color scheme in particular that allows you to do this. It is found in the detail section, first page, 4th on down on the far left. (See in the screencap to the left)





This color choice only covers the knees or elbows of the limb, this allows you to push limbs together to make it seem like a solid color and a part of the body. The best limb to use is the slackwrist arm, as this makes it flow more smoothly with the normal body, however it works with any limb. The screenshot below shows how you have to push the limbs together to get this effect.

Shape the limbs anyway you want to, however make sure they are sized correctly so they flow together. The result should look somewhat like this:

Part of the body is the base color, but the other part is the detail color shaped to look like it's part of the body color.

CreatorTip: Rotating Roofs and Bases

I've been asked many, many times how I manage to rotate roof and base parts since all we can do is swivel them around. There are two easy ways to do that:

Using Connectors

Place a roof or base part on any connector attached to another basic part. Then rotate the connector until you've reached the desired angle. Now you have two choices, you can either drag the base/roof far enough away with the shift or alt key and delete the connector or simply copy the base/roof and a copy will be left in place. You can then move the connector again and place another tilted roof/base to create more advanced creations. This technique allows for creating circles, arches and spirals using nothing but base blocks.

Note: Doors are considered detail parts and will automatically reset their position when you accidentally hover the mouse over an arrow of the base part.

Using the Rotation Mod

DVDMaster was kind enough to make a Building Editor Mod adding an additional rotation ring to the base and roof parts when you hit the tab key. You can install it like other mods by placing the .package file into the Data folder of your Spore installation directory.

Note: Currently, the mod only works on the PC.

CreatorTip: Advanced outfitting technique

I have always been unhappy with how some of the outfitted creatures turned out: most of the time, your alien species' suit or armor ends up looking as if each part was glued on the being's sking. Of course, that's how the editors work: you attach stuff to a creature's skin.

But I'm going to share today a technique I have developed to help create outfits that are a lot more convincing. There are a few limitations to this technique, and it takes a lot of practice to create suits that animate properly, but here it goes...

This is what we're aiming for. This technique allows you total control over where you place an outfit part, and it's used mainly to let you place rings around a creature's limb or body.

This is how you should start: add a Snokelicious part and place a Ring part carefully on top of the Snokelicious. You can only place one part on top of another if you have installed Galactic Adventures or one of the latest patches. In earlier versions of the game the outfit parts can't be stacked.

Hold the "Tab" key while selecting a part to access more handlers and position the parts as shown below:

Now here comes the tricky part: select the snokelicious, NOT the ring, and hold "Tab" for the advanced handlers. As shown below:

You can then rotate the snokelicious - NOT the ring - 180°, so it now points to the inside of the creature's limb or body. You may have to resize and move both parts to get the proper placement.

This technique can be used with any parts, though you will find out that not every part stacks on everything. Parts such as hats can be only placed on top of certain types of parts, such as shoulderpads or chest parts. With training you'll learn how to get the best combinations of parts.

Another combo that looks pretty good is the Bolt/Tinker Ticker. I use that a lot, and it helps create some very cool spacesuits. You should start with the placement of parts shown below, and follow the same steps as shown above.

Practice this technique and soon you'll be making outfits like this one:

Update: Rebecca1208 has created a video tutorial based on this technique. It might be easier to learn from it, so here it is!

CreatorTip: How to disguise gameplay objects as creatures

Many people keep asking about how to do this, after I created an adventure that feature "statues". These were actually Blue Gates disguised as creatures. You can disguise almost any object as a creature if you follow a few simple steps.

1. Add a gate (or another disguisable object) to your gameplay objects page.
2. Click on the option to disguise it.
3. When the editor opens up the Sporepedia, instead of selecting a building or vehicle and clicking OK, choose a creation and click the edit option (one of the bottom right buttons on the Sporepedia).
4. Inside the edit mode of the building or vehicle, click the Sporepedia button on the bottom left of the screen.
5. Use the Sporepedia filters to find the creature you want, choose it and again click the edit option.
6. Inside the edit mode of the creature, just click OK (the green "V" option).

Voilá!

CreatorTip: Fooling around with 3d spore models

As everyone should know by now, the latest Spore patch added several new features to the game, such as the possibility of riding vehicles in adventures, in-built asymmetry for all editors, and a cool cheat that exports 3d models of your creatures in a format readable by most 3d modelling programs.

You can get more detailed info here, but to make it work you just need to enter the creature editor, go to Paint Mode and type "ctrl+shift+c" to enter the cheat "colladaexport".

That saves a collada file of your creation in the same folder your creatures are saved. You can then import it into a program such as Autodesk Maya. For those of us that don't have the skills to use or the access to Maya, I highly recommend a little program called FX Composer, that can be downloaded here.

The FX Composer isn't as good as Maya, but it does let you do some cool stuff, like changing lighting effects...

... switching textures ...

... and placing several models together:

I'm still learning how to do the most basic stuff with the program, so I'm not sure if it's even possible to animate or to export a movie, but at least you can create some cool pics such as these:

Creator Tip: How awareness works with buildings

DVDMaster at the official Spore forums has made a discovery about how the awareness system of NPC creatures works with buildings in the adventures. Check the picture above. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 are buildings created separately. As should be expected, most of the creatures on the picture are able to see one another, with exceptions: A can see only B, because the buildings are on the way, for instance. But let's move to another example:

Here the building 4 is only one building, despite having the same shape of the two buildings from the previous example put together. There should be no change, right? Wrong!

Now the creatures B and E can't see the C and D guys, and vice-versa. In fact, C and D can't even see each other, despite being side by side!

DVDMaster has thought of an explanation for that, and his finding has been confirmed by the developers:

Imagine there's an invisible box around each building, and that these boxes actually hide stuff that's behind them or inside them. It would explain why the C and D creatures are practically blind in the case shown.

This happens because the game computes a bounding box that encases each building and uses it to determine awareness. The line-of-sight checkings are expensive, and Spore uses this solution in order to avoid taxing the machine's processor.

This means that if you're planning to build interior spaces, you should create floors, walls and ceilings separately, or any creature put inside it won't be able to interact with objects or other creatures.

Creator Tip: a few tips on making adventures

1.
There's more to goals than just "kill N creatures". Make sure you experiment with the different kinds of goals. Extermination missions can get really boring, especially if there's no challenge, or if it's too challenging. No way to defeat that big boss other than getting all upgrades for the captain? Then your mission will be left aside until the player gets the upgrades, by the time he'll probably have forgotten it.

2.
If you want to make your mission hard, make it short. That way, the player can try a few times before getting bored. It's highly frustrating to play a mission for 20, 30 minutes, and then be killed by an overpowerful NPC.

3.
A longer mission can be hard, as long as the player can figure out a solution after playing and failing. Just making the enemies epic, with high attack and health points is pointless, unless you also give the player the tools to finish it, and ways to find out how to do it.

4.
Remember that gameplay objects can be disguised - in other words, replaced by buildings or vehicles. This allows you to disguise a gate as a UFO, and have a parked spaceship, for instance. Also, remember you can set any object to appear/disappear only in certain acts, allowing for story development as the adventure progresses.

5.
You may want to use the first act for a "talk to" goal. That way you can have a character explain what the mission is about. You can also give tips by the speech boxes on the behavior panels. This allows for some cool detective work, where the player clicks on an object on the groun and gets some info, without having to sacrifice a goal for that. It's very rewarding for the player when he can put together the pieces of a mystery.

6.
Finally, remember to tag your adventure creations GAprop! That way they won't show up in the stages of the core game. It's really annoying to meet alien species called "The Mayor Bob Empire", and even worse to find cities made of wall parts and giant keys. Also remember that you can change the name of the creation in the adventure editor, without really affecting the creation outside the adventure. That way you could get one of your alien species and rename it to "Mayor Bob", for instance.

Well, that's it for now, folks! More to come soon!

Creator Tip: the GAprop tag

Like many users, I was worried myself that the creations made for exclusive purposes on the upcoming Galactic Adventures expansion pack - like walls and other decorations created for the user-made adventures - would be selected by mistake as buildings and vehicles for the civ and space stages.

However, MaxisCactus just answered that concern:

"Our team has taken measures to resolve this issue.

When you create a galactic adventure prop, you can tag it “GAprop” before publishing. This will prevent it from being chosen in the core game for any slot.

This way, canonical creations (such as realistic factories) made in Galactic Adventures can still appear in other players’ core games’ appropriate slots, but players will have the option to exempt their more zany prop creations by simply tagging them using this convention.

-MaxisCactus"

Source: Sporedum

Creator Tip: Making Early Creatures

One of the Spore editors that appear under the "Create" tab is the Early Creature Creator. It is essentially an hybrid between the Cell and Creature creators: it has all the parts of the Cell editor, but with the addition of three types of legs and the full 3d appearance of the Creature Creator.

The creatures that you make in this editor can be used as a playable species if you choose to begin in the Creature Stage. More complex creatures are only available on later stages (unless you use the EvoAdvantage cheat, earning the "Joker" badge, though).

The critters made on the ECC also tend to appear as NPC creatures on the beggining of the Creature Stage - they're likely to be the first creatures that you'll meet in land. Since most people have few early creatures in their database, the early Creature Stage tends to be populated mostly by Maxis Creatures, wich is a shame.

So making lots of Early Creatures is important not only to give you choices of playable creatures, but also to populate your game with NPCs that match your style. Shall we start?

Facts of life in the primitive SPORE worlds

That little critter abova was my first creature in the game, evolving from the cell stage. I learned a few things from it, a few facts that we must accept if we want to enjoy using the ECC.

1- Little choice on parts. Yep, we can only use 12 parts and 3 types of legs, so you have to get really creative with those parts, if you don't want all early creatures to look nearly the same. The main concern should be the mouth, since you have only one choice of mouth for each diet type.

2- Small Budget. Not only you have a small pool of parts to choose, but you also can only use a few of them. This means that most early creatures should be bipeds, with very few quadrupeds. Hexapods are almost out of question, since you can't use enough joints for a decent animation.

3- The Paint will save you! Since you can't put much details in the poor creature's body, the way to go is to get crazy with the painting. You have access to all of the same textures and colors of the full creator, so dedicate a lot of attention to paint here. My little guy abov wouldn't be nothing without a smart combination of textures.

Modding for variation

To add a little variation to the small choice of parts, there's a little mot that I love called Cell Part Xtended, made by DarkDragon. You can find the download link on this topic on the GamingSteve community. This small mod adds morphing handlers to the cell parts on the ECC, allowing you to stretch and contract them.

See the "eyes" on the critter above? They were made with a distorted Electric part. See another example below.

The only problem with this mod is that animations on the mouths get a little weird if you distort them. All other parts are safe, though.

Turning limbs into bodies

Now pay attention to the example above. You have 3 choices of limbs in the ECC, and you can break them apart by holding the "Ctrl" key and dragging each articulation out. This means that a limb part does not have to be used as a limb. If you use it to create more complex body shapes, a new field of possibilities opens before you.

Also, the limb parts react differently to certain textures, so you can use them to create unique color effects.

More options if you want an NPC creature

The game uses what the developers call "archetypes" to choose the NPC creatures for each stage. There are 2 archetypes for early creatures: NPC_Social and NPC_Combat.

The cool thing is, you don't really have to use the ECC for making these early creatures. You can edit them in the full Creature Creator, you only have to respect some limitations. For a critter to fit in one of these archetypes, it has to have the following stats:

NPC_Social is any creature made with a maximum of 145 dna points (meaning at least 1,855 points left on the full CC), with Sing and Bite level 1, Charge and Spit level 0 or 1, and all other stats level 0.

NPC_Combat is the same as above, but it can have Charm level 0 or 1.

This means you can use a few parts not available on the ECC. These are them:

- You can use the heads available on the ECC, but can also use two heads from the full editor: the Toucan't and the Sauroclod; You can use
- You can use any eye part, but remember that they're more expensive than the eyes on the ECC;
- You can use any legs, but will have to use the default feet. The Exoskeleton Limbs from the third patch come with a new default foot, though;
- Since you can use any eye part, you can also use the "Senses" parts, the noses, nostrils antennae and ears;

You can do all that, if you remember to follow the instructions for each archetype.

Now you can have shells!

If you follow the instructions above, you can use a bunch of new parts on the NPC early creature. The green creature above, for instance, has a shell made with Snortle noses. So you don't really have to use a nose on the middle of the guy's face, understood?

The shell offers zero protection, though...

Exoskeletons are fashionable

You can also use the new(ish) Exoskeleton limbs on the NPCs, by following the already mentioned strategy of turning limbs into bodies. I should mention, though, that your creature is going to have to be really small for some of these tricks work, since the limbs, as well as the Sense parts, can't be made to be very big.

Create new faces

Even with the expanded options for NPCs, we still are restricted to 5 types of faces and their morphing variations. You can combine Sense parts and limbs to create some weird heads, though.

For instance, antennae can be used to give a herbivore creature something more resembling of bug pincers.

Combining strategies

You can create some truly astonishing early NPCs, by combining the tips above. But remember something: some textures don't go well with the exoskeleton limbs. If you're using them, you may want to try simpler, smoother textures.

Let your imagination float!

Finishing this lengthy tutorial, I remind you that you don't really have to use legs. I never managed to make good slithering creatures, but I'm proud of some of my floaters.

The tricks for a good floating animation are: using limbs as parts of the body (or else the body will try to touch the ground), and using details under the body to adjust the distance from the ground.

Here's just one more creature, for no reason other than I like it:

All of the creatures in this post were made by me and can be foun on my profile. Check them out!

Creator Tip: Making cool spacesuits

First rule for making cool outfits for your space stage creature: don't be afraid to experiment. Get creative. Many parts can be used in non-conventional ways. On the creature above, for instance, I've used the Moon Gas Sensor for the arms and legs (it usually goes in the head). The boots were made with a hat and a chest plate.

Aqua View Masks make great neck braces. Try to make your creature with a thinner neck, and use the "Tab" key and arrow handlers to morph and position the part properly.

The Creepy & Cute Parts Pack has a bunch of very useful paint options and parts. If you're making a creature straight for the Space Stage, you can use the Mittenfist part as a gloved hand and the Footoon foot as a shoe.

More isn't always best. While you can use lots of parts for a detailed armor, you should check if the parts match each other aesthetically. There are several styles of outfit parts, and they don't always go well together. You can use instead a smart paint job for the illusion of a skin tight suit.

It doesn't have to be a humanoid creature to enjoy the comfort of a soft, warm suit. Though you may want to keep the base creature simple. If the creature has too many parts, it can be hard to tell if it's even wearing a suit.

All the creatures above can be found in my profile.

Crator Tip: How to make asymmetrical creatures

This may be old news for the hardcore SPORE creators, but since many people keep asking me, I'll explain here. Asymmetry is possible in the creature, outfit, vehicle and ufo editors through a mod - a file that changes some values that the game loads at startup. The bad news is that you have to install or uninstall the mod to enable or disable the asymmetry - that means quitting the game and starting it again; there isn't a magic switch that you turn on and off.

Here is the download link for the Asymmetry Mod.

If that doesn't work, try here.

That little .package file has to be saved in the Spore Data folder. That's likely to be located on C:\program files\Eletronic Arts\Spore\data.

What does it do? Well, it makes the editors ignore symmetry, wich means that if you change a part or place a new one, it won't be mirrored on the other side of the creature or vehicle.

Some tips on using it:

First of all, don't go trying to make an asymmetric creature from scratch. The game is often unable to save your creature if you make asymmetric limbs. Uneven legs or arms on each side usually create issues with animation. So make a creature with the mod turned off, save it, enable the mod and edit the creature, makin minor tweaks.

To disable the mod without deleting the .package file from your data folder, just rename the extension to ".package.old".

Another cool way to use this mod is on the outfit editor. Outfits never give trouble, since they don't affect animation.

So be creative, an enjoy!

Creator Tip: making NPCs use matching buildings.

Do you love making themed matching sets of buildings? If so, you might want to know this tip.

In SPORE, when the game picks cities for NPC (Non Playing Character) civilizations, it picks a random City Hall and chooses buildings that match it aesthetically. By using a tag "set:" you can assure that it will allways pick the correct buildings to match the randomly chosen City Hall.

Example:

This City Hall has the tag "set:galazan". If the game picks this hall, it will search for a House, a Factory and an Entertainment building with that tag, and will find these:

Update: further testing has shown that this system is not 100% reliable. I guess we'll have to wait for better ways to control our content and create our SPORE Empires...

Creator Tip: How to play as or edit The Grox

In the site SporeBase.com you can find detailed instructions on how to hack the game so it allows you to edit or play as the Grox. Just click the link and follow the instructions.

Here's a creature I made by editing the Grox. Its a shame we can't upload them to the Sporepedia, though.

Creator Tip: How to get your content featured

User Uroboros made a little tutorial video that I feel I must share, for it shows a few simple steps that can can do wonders to improve the quality of the content being uploaded in the Sporepedia. Check it out:

Creator Tip: How to make inward-facing wheels turn in the right direction

spiritofcat prepared a neaty video tutorial on how to make inwards-facing wheels (needed to make motorcycles, for instance) without having them turning backwards, wich happens when we use the "Tab" key to turn the wheel 180º. Check it out!

Check out how it works in his Hybrid Rescue Tank.

Creator Tip: Player Tips

Players from the Gamingsteve SPORE community are posting their tips for the game on this thread. Check out some of them:

Editors:

- "There are some building textures that don't appear in the vehicle texture palette, but they can still get them on your vehicle by using the 'Paint Like' feature and then copy them around with the eyedrop."

Cell:

- "Putting a pair of spikes on the rear aft of the cell in a wide arc, shrinking its bottom segment to the smallest possible and enlarging the spikes to as big as possible will basically make you immune to rear facing attacks. Even huge creatures will just knock you forward with no damage when they bite."

Creature:

- "When you do the social game and try to dance/sing or impress another creature, they usually get "locked" if you fail to impress them. If you have done your 3 "impresses" and realise you are not going to make it, quickly press a move button and you stop your dance/singing and you can try impressing the same creature again."

Tribe:

- "Give gifts to any tribe with an orange or red face with you. You ONLY need to send the chief and the "gift" doesn't seem to use up any of your food. This will buy you time to either build up your music crew, or organize your war party."

Civ:

- "Before entering the Space stage from Civ, finish maxing out all your cities. These carry across, but your cash won't."

Space:

- "When colonising a planet, you just need to put ONE of each plant/creature to fill out that row in the foodweb. Once they have been beamed down, you can beam the plant/creature up again. Now you dont have to run out of them."

Creator Tip: Using mouths to create unusual head shapes

Step 1: Put a Carcharebear mouth on your creature (you can try with other types of mouth, too).

Step 2: Holding "Tab" for additional handlers, rotate the mouth 180º horizontally. The actual mouth should be concealed by the body; just a featureless head should be visible.

Step 3: Insert another mouth in the "front" of the head. Remember that the new mouth piece will be attached not to the "head", but to the body, so resize and position as needed for a seamless blend.

Step 4: You can now put any kind of detail part you want in the thing's face. Make sure the "call" animation doesn't screw the illusion, though: if the mandible shows when the creature open its mouth, add a few parts to conceal it.

And voilá!

This is one of my own tips. You can check it on my Deimogon, and look for others in my profile.