I wrote over 3500 words today for my game project… I did a complete redesign and now it’s so much the better.
Damn I need to write like this more often.
Some days overdue, but here comes part 2 of my review of EA’s Spore.
Tribal/Civilization Stages
Personally, I lump these two stages together because there is only a slight difference between the two. Again, I hope in future expansions, this changes and each stage stands out. In both stages you take control of a number of characters in a real time strategy setting. Tribe stage you control tribe members, Civilization stage you control vehicles (land, sea, and air) but the process is pretty much the same.
In tribal stage, your goal is to dominate the other tribes. You can do this through social conversion or military might. By default you start with 3 types of huts you can use to specify what your tribe members can do. You will always start with 1 weapon hut, 1 social hut, and 1 tool hut. Tool huts help you gather more food (fishing and gathering) or allow you to heal your injured tribe members (healing). Social huts offer you 3 musical instruments to play for other tribes to convert them (the same thing as making allies in the creature stage). Weapon huts give you 3 extra choices of weapons to fight with. Stone axes seem to do more damage to everyone and everything in general, torchbearers burn huts down faster, and spear throwers can attack from afar.
Taking over other tribes by conversion is really easy. Make sure you leave one person behind to defend your food and take the rest of your tribe and load them up with as many types of social instruments you have. You may also want to dress them in appropriate clothing as that can boost your rating when interacting with other tribes. Head to a nearby tribe and play your hearts out, making sure to get the crowd’s requests as they as for different solos.
Taking over other tribes by military means is also really easy. Easier I dare say if you start with axes and dress for war. Just head to another tribe, kill them, kill them, burn the village, kill them, etc. Same as the creature stage except you have to burn down their main hut.
Once you’ve disposed of the competition, you’ll be awarded with more clothing options and 2 more types of huts to use, which varies by who you kill/charm. Keep in mind, you only have room for so many types of huts, so don’t be surprised when you can’t be a jack-of-all-trades so easily.
The key difference from the above in civilization stage is the addition of money to limit how many units you have, the replacement of buildings types with city types, and the micro managing of each city’s layout. In addition, racial powers earned from previous stages played will play a bigger role in city stage, as well as the opening of a third type of victory, the economic victory where you buy an enemy city.
Much like military and religion (social) victories in civilization stage, you start by selecting an appropriate unit (military, religious, or economic) and select it to go communicate with another city. For economic victories, you’ll start a trade route with the other civilization. Once enough trade has been completed, you’ll be offered to buy out the enemy city. Keep plenty capital on hand to do this and don’t try to claim too many at once. Once you get enough cities, you’ll be able to pretty much finish the game by using the level 4 power of any of the 3 paths. As cool as it is, I do not recommend the military mega power… having to rebuild the other cities is annoying.
Tribal/Civilization Stage Pros: If you like RTS’s, these stages give you a nice simple way to enjoy that game play. At this point you also get to experience a lot of new types of customization using the Spore engine. Up to this point, we’ve only seen creature editors. Now in civilization stage, you get to start designing structures, vehicles, and other fun toys.
Tribal/Civilization Stage Cons: They are really simplified beyond comparison. There really could have been some detail, as well as allowing tribal building customization. The clothing options in these stages and space stage leave something to desired IMO and it’s rough trying to make something look like clothing on your creatures compared to just the attachments they give you. Also the fact that certain clothing will be worn by certain races is just kinda silly. Add more choices to these stages on customization and activity and I’d play them more often instead of just rushing through them.
Honestly, it feels like we’re missing a section here. Tribal jumps to modern too fast and it feels like there should have been a growing segment between the two in which your civilization starts establishing itself. The fact you can look the same at the start of civilization as you do at the end is a bit weird. Biggest change I’d make is some sort of developmental stage between the two; something with knights, bows, and the start of steam power and animal driven vehicles. That would also be fun to tie the fact you can domesticate creatures in tribe stage to the next stage by allowing you to use some of the larger creatures as pack animals. You could even add more exploring in this stage to really set the stage for the full blooded civilization stage. What could happen is they could set this up as the first half of the civilization stage before moving up to big vehicles and planes.
Once your planet is unified under your banner, you may now precede to
THE SPACE STAGE
Okay, I know a lot of folks like this stage the best, and I’ll grant you, it is fun, but I think it could have been better. Let me get into the description first before I get into my “How this could have been fixed” like I wrote in the con for the Tribal/Civilization section.
In the space stage, you’ll be dominated by a few things for the first hour or five that you’re developing. You’ll be focusing on development of your system and some nearby stars, getting the hang of the space economy, and learning about space combat and exploration. As you grow, you’ll start deciding on what you want to do as far as growth goes. You may want to start buying other planets, allying with other species, or assaulting them. Combat is rough though as you’re the only ship in your species that can actually fight. Everyone else has a dozen or more ships attacking you. In addition, eventually you’ll have to start fighting the Grok here and there. I’ll leave what the Grok is for you to discover. Game play at this stage is pretty fun and I’ll admit I haven’t explored all of it yet.
Space Stage Pros: It’s a sandbox. No doubt about it, after a point you’re pretty much capable of doing whatever you want on the 50,000 stars out there. Have fun, blow things up, go all 2001 on some unexpecting species, and master the galaxy. You can do a ton of things and I still look forward to testing them all.
Space Stage Cons: Pirates suck, getting slaughtered early in the game by a mistake sucks, etc. In addition, much like the tribe/civilization stages, there feels like there’s a missing stage here. Mainly a solar system phase. I still think it would have made more sense to have a mini stage here where you pretty much completely colonize your entire system at least partly. I can understand not terra forming everything, but getting a colony on every world in your system should have been a mission set.
Aside from my brief review of the space stage, that’s it for Spore. It is a fun game and I do recommend buying it. It is a fun casual set of games and it is cool seeing your creatures as well as knowing other players are enjoying them too. Don’t expect something ground breaking here in terms of game play. The customization element of Spore is where it stands out.
Now, EA, start giving me Sims-like expansion packs with more parts, design possibilities, and stages! I want aquatic races, plant races, more stages (aquatic life, mid tribe/civ, and solar system), I want to do more stuff with domesticated creatures. I want to spend more time enjoying each stage instead of rushing through them. Give me a reason to enjoy them.
Justin Diehl
PS: Epic creatures still stuck.
Reviving a few of the things I worked on previously with this blog, I’m going to try to start reviewing things some more. I’ve said it before but I’ll repeat myself, I am not a professional reviewer, and I really have no formula on how I check out games. I’m just an average user so my perspective if that of, did I have fun, did I enjoy it, would I keep enjoying it? Hrm, maybe I do have a formula?
Spore Review (Part 1)
I’ve been playing this game since it came out. Now this game has had a lot of hype over the past few years. So many promises, hopes, dreams, etc. Well, to tell you the truth, the game delivers on almost all of them. The game is a lot of fun for a casual game. I stress CASUAL GAME because that’s what spore is. Well, actually it’s like 4 casual games and 1 potentially complex but typically casual game.
Let me take a step back and explain what Spore is and what it relates to. Spore is created by Will Wright, one of the fore fathers of gaming and the creator of the SIM series of games (Simcity 1, 2000, 3000, The Sims, SimEarth, SimAnt, etc). Well, spore takes that and jams it all together into a massive scale. You start your game off as a single celled organism that gradually evolves into a larger sea creature, then a land creature. From here, you evolve intelligence and start a society in the form of a tribe. Your tribe eventually grows up and becomes civilized and makes big cities. Eventually your civilization unifies and you ascend to the stars.
Step back number two, let’s go over these stages an explain just how fun or not fun each stage is.
Cell Stage: Okay, this one is a simple 2D free form Pac-Mac game. Your goal is either to A) eat plants and evolve or B) kill animals and eat them to survive. You can, optionally, do both. Whichever you choose to do, it will determine if you’re a herbivore, a carnivore, or an omnivore in the creature stage. You can also hunt down parts in cell stage, although there aren’t many. Eventually, you’ll be one of the biggest fish in the pond and you’ll move on from the aquatic landscape and onto land and the creature stage.
Cell Stage Pros: Simple, fun, and pretty intuitive. Cell stage is about as easy as it gets and it’s enjoyable all around.
Cell Stage Cons: For one, they took out the suggested aquatic stage they were going to have and replaced it with part of the cell stage. A pity but we’ll live. There also isn’t much detail in Cell stage. We also see one of my biggest complaints of the games start here. For much of the game you’ll encounter gigantic creatures with features and abilities you’ll never be able to get. It’s annoying when you’re at a certain stage and the biggest predators have so many parts you could never afford until the end of the cell stage yet when you have enough points to look like that creature, you’re huge compared to that creature. It’s distracting and kinda makes me grumble.
Cell Stage Verdict: Fun, and I do replay it often, but never by itself.
Creature Stage: In this stage, you add legs to your fishy and move onto land. You’re now part of a small herd. You don’t have to work together, but as you grow more intelligent, you can choose to team up with herd members or members of other races you befriend. You have one goal at this time, get enough points to become self-aware/intelligent. There are a number of ways to do this, from killing, eating, and eliminating other species to befriending and allying with other creatures. There are some minor quests that mostly involve being nice or killing your neighbors (you choose based on your stance). You’ll also be digging around for more parts to add to your creature. You can find these either by finding bones of dead creatures (not the ones you kill though) or killing or befriending alpha members of other animals. Make sure your creature looks how you want because after creature stage ends, you don’t get to evolve anymore.
Creature Stage Pros: This is the best stage in the game, IMO. It’s fun, neat, and you get to move around as an individual creature. The creature manipulator is so much fun as you find more parts and in general I love playing in this stage.
Creature Stage Cons: EPIC CREATURES SUCK! Again you cannot become these giants. At Least I haven’t found a way yet to become one of these one-hit wonders. I’ve tried making my creature as large as possible in game and the creature manipulator just doesn’t seem to let you become any bigger. I understand they are mostly user created content turned giant, but I’d rather play these creatures and crush cities than fight them. Maybe a future expansion would allow this… Think of it as another evolutionary path.
Review of Tribal, Civilization, and Space stages coming in Spore Review Part 2
Justin Diehl
Sep 30
Wow, it’s been almost two months since I’ve actually written a real update to this blog. Really sorry about the large batch of twitter posts that have taken up the time time. Somewhere between the beginning of August and now I’ve been distracted with so many things that it’s hard to figure out where to begin. Well, let’s take things in order.
At the beginning of August I ended up doing two things involving my gaming. First, I took an official step down from United Role Play duties. I’m still on this hiatus for the most part. Currently I am looking at picking up official duties come October. My presence as a game administer is being tiered down and I will instead focus my efforts as lead forum administer and web development. The former is a sure thing but the later not so much. I’ve also joined a more general group of gamers, F7 Lans, a group of gamers currently focused on Team Fortress 2 gaming. I’m paying to be a supporter for them and I’m enjoying my time with them. I’m not taking up any official stance with them beyond fan and occasional advertiser to new folks to the servers. I want to keep my relationship with them purely based on fun and recreation.
In addition to the efforts in my gaming communities, I’ve jumped on the Spore bandwagon. It’s a pretty fun game and I do recommend it. If you have it, my name is nulloperations if you want to buddy me.
Continuing the time line, early September hosted my first convention, SLCC. This was so much fun. I was able to meet Frans, Rhiannon, Amu, Armath, Harper, and a number of new folks while we were down there. Disappointed Caycee and Kevin didn’t show up (with them living so close and all). In addition to learning many useful SL business tidbits, I also got to really sit down and use Raven’s Mac. Okay, I admit it, I really enjoyed the experience. NOT FROM USING A MAC! But from using a laptop. Still hate Macs, but I do like laptops now. I’m already planning on buying one next year.
The convention was such a great experience that when we came home in the evenings that weekend I started a crazed effort into building the new House of RFyre store. I had the bulk of the shape finished by Sunday evening. As it stands, texture work on the build it at 90% for the core structure. Detail work will come later but for now the core of the build is complete save the last bits of paint. I will start posting images later as the structure comes together and we near the final release date of October 20th. That’s the day we’re clearing out the rest of the island and moving the structure down into place. Vendors will start moving in those nights too.
Speaking of mid-October, I will be officially losing my job on the 17th. I don’t hold any grudges against my work place. Its business and sometimes folks get swept under in the choices. No, I still won’t say where I work as that’s part of that crazy employee contract.
Those are the current updates in a nut shell. I’m going to try (again) to get back to posting more often. I also need to get back into finishing up the new design for the website. I have some nice texture work done and I think it comes off rather nicely.
Later for now,
Justin
Aug 03
Okay, lots of things are changing, some fast, some slow and deliberate. So let’s start the list off:
Website
I have plans for development. A new skins/style, maybe some personal coding, and general all around updates. I do intend to post more once this has occurred (mostly since I fear having to reset the blog… again). There’s a lot of things I want to do with the website, besides it just being a blog. I want it to be my virtual face, so to speak. I want people to be able to come here and know who and what I am as far as my virtual self. This includes my writing self, my developer self, my gamer self, and my business self. There’s a lot I can do with this place and so far I do feel like I’m wasting it.
That said, the website development is going slow. I need to have some more focus.
Writing
Slowed to a stop for the time being. That will be changing tomorrow. I say tomorrow because right now I’m writing this to help get some of my groove back. I also took the time to write a podcast review for 12 volt Theater. I owed Jack that much since I have completed failed to help him with the T-shirt thing I was looking at back in May and well, it being only 25-30 days left to Dragon Con… yeah… sorry about that Jack. I’ll make it up to you.
Non-fiction topic covered, my fiction will be returning this week with a passion. I’m determined to answer M. Stackpole’s challenge from Dragon Page: Cover to Cover. Not going to say which one though, not until I actually get it done. I hate saying I’m going to do something and not following through (READ: Previous paragraph). My mind has been racing with ship design and space physics lately. Need to really start studying that more. And South-American ancient architecture… Shh, secret story.
Second Life
I’ve flown in full swing into helping House of Rfyre. I’m really determined to keep focused this time around. I owe Raven that much. That said, my current topics of interest are RFyre Security, RFyre web design, RFyre future island developments, and RFyre advertisements.
One thing I’m thinking of is the fact I listen to so many podcasts (how many did I mention already in this post?) that I really need to think of what can these things do to help RFyre. There’s the possibility of getting our own, but I fear that will only hit up the current SL audience. That’s a good thing, but I want to really expand our market. A number of podcasters have mentioned their audience sizes before on their casts and many of them are very respectful. If spending money to advertise on a popular cast makes us money in return… well I’m very interested in embracing new media. After all, isn’t Second Life a growing new medium? It’s not just a game, it’s a growing world.
United Role Play
And here’s why I have more free time. I’ve left URP as a member and admin. I still hang out with the gang on weekends, but not during the weekdays anymore. I’ve got more time to focus on work now that I’m not spending all of my free time gaming on an RP server.
I still hope the best for Dave and the rest of the URP crew, but right now it’s not the right place for me. Best of luck you guys.
Alrighty, that’s really the mussings that are rolling around right now. There are other things swimming around right now, but nothing I’ve hammered out fully.
I’ll be around more often,
Justin
Just added a forum to the website for a friend’s community.
Link is here if you wish to join in. They’re mostly a Gamer/RP Community.
Justin
So I’ve been thinking of some changes for the site. I’ve already did a new theme, now I’m working on customizing it. In addition to that, I’m considering changing the name of the blog. I’m getting closer to the time when I won’t be up every day in the early AM, and I havn’t written too many posts during that time period anyway. The website is named hidden node however, so I’m thinking the theme should have to do with the site.
Other news, my Shadowrun book delivery arrived today. Awesomeness.
Justin
May 29
A bit of a brief post but…
As the title suggests so it is true.
The video here is Lit Fuse Film’s Latest, Jill’s Song.
It’s a stirring then eventually disturbing piece. Mostly monologue set to music that sets you up for one piece of emotion then will slap you across the face as it drops the other shoe.A little background. Lit Fuse Films is a machinima studio house that uses a video game to produce their films. They use primarily Garry’s Mod, a modification program for Half-Life 2’s Source Game Engine. G-Mod, as it is often called, provides interfaces for gamers in a sandbox style environment. Gamers can roleplay, deathmatch, create scenes, animate ragdolls, etc. It’s a fun interactive tool for the Source Game Engine.
Lit Fuse Films has produced a number of excellent titles from War Of The Servers, a retelling of H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds, to the musical piece Ignis Solus, in additional to several comedy pieces. In addition to Machinimation videos created with Garry’s Mod, Lit Fuse Film also provides unique and original music for their works. Many of their songs really present the feel of their videos and the style of Lars Erik Fjosne is amazing.
Enjoy the video. Check out the other content from Lit Fuse Films. They’re amazing talents of their craft.
Justin
May 06
It’s been about two weeks since I made an actual post. The Tweets are short and sweet but they don’t really provide a ton of substance.
What I’m busy doing:
1) Second Life production has increased (although not today). Working on projects specifically for RFyre growth, and maybe something I can sell for myself.
2) I have GTA4. It’s nice having a game for the 360 that everyone else just got so there’s a lot of interest amongst my friends.
3) I’m getting Shadowrun stuff ready for some RP sessions maybe this summer. Pablo seems interested. So does Denise but I’m not sure how much longer she’ll be in town.
4) I’m reading more, and exercising more. Both good things. Weight isn’t coming off too fast yet but it’s only been a week so all things in time.
5) I’m looking around at new computer hardware (like a headset) and debating price versus using my debit card.
Next time, a post without a list maybe?
Justin
I’m a gamer. Have been a gamer for close to 23 years now. I’ve forgotten more matches, stories, and adventures than most casual players will ever experience in my years. I’m not the best, far from the worse, and I always strive to have fun. Something about that has been changing over the last few years.
When I was a kid, I gamed with my three brothers. We played hours and hours of NES, PC, Sega, and eventually Play Station and X-Box games. Singleplayer, multiplayer, saved or fresh game, it didn’t matter. A lot of my childhood revolved around games. Not that I spent my time only in gaming, but there was a great deal spent around electronic interactive entertainment.
As a teenager and young(er) adult, I still gamed a great deal, but I became more introduced to the true multi-player experience. Gaming with your buddies and family was fun but over time you learned them, you could tell their strategy, and for the most part there wasn’t as great of a challenge (Yes Alex, you still kept surprising me and I still say we were equals when we played the same games). It was still a blast to play with them, but for those who were only casual gamers, or at least casual in the genre of your choice, it wasn’t as challenging. Fun for sure, but you like to test yourself.
So steps in online gaming. Here you are open to a world of challengers and champions. Will your next opponent be a newer player who hasn’t learned the gaming system yet or will you face someone with less of a life than you? You could never tell and there was such pleasure in facing opponents that were your equal. The adrenaline, the comradery, and the joy of defeating odds where you really didn’t know where the coin would land. Such is the pleasure and addiction that is online gaming.
In the last year, I’ve drawn more away from single player gaming nearly completely. Sure there was the joy of Oblivion, but honestly I don’t enjoy it unless I’m sitting on Ventrillo listening to my friends chatter about their characters. I’ve drawn myself away from story and more into action. This worries me, in a way. especially since in the last (except for very recently) I have always drawn myself away from writing as often as I have. Interactive visual medium seems to have taken over a great deal of my leisure time. I still feel the urge to write, but when I do I tend to think in action games terms.
So what’s the point in all this? I’m not sure. I suppose it’s observation really. I know part of me wants to get away from all the gaming, yet at the same time I’m finding it hard to. When my friends are online, I want to hang out with them, after all, they are my social group really. I’ve a few friends offline here in Tampa, but the uprooting after the storm in ‘05 sent most of my close connections to internet online interaction. Personally, I don’t find this too bad, or at least I didn’t last year when I wasn’t working 5pm-1:30am. These days, working the night shift has pulled me away from my other friends too. Saturdays are my only social days for the most part.
Let me wrap this up before this becomes a “woe is me” post. I’m going to lay out some plans for my life in the coming weeks. The hard drive I mentioned yesterday is coming later tonight instead. I’m going to use that to start learning more useful skills centered around the PC. In addition to that, I’m going to try to take some Dragon Page and I Should Be Writing Advice and put butt into chair and start writing. I’m the only one providing excuses for why I can’t be writing. I’m going to lay off the games more, at least I will try to. It’s not too easy because despite what people say, gaming is an addiction. That adrenaline high is powerful and exciting stuff and will hook you.
Gee, if I spent this time writing fiction instead of blogging I’d have another page or two. Aw nuts.
Justin