GiantBomb – Interview with Spore producer Kip Katsarelis

Giant Bomb have conducted an interview with Kip Katsarelis about Galactic Adventures.

 

View the video here!

Stone Librande: Lecture on Galactic Adventures

 Simon Ferrari was one of the people from Georgia tech who went to a lecture from Stone Librande about designing games, his work on the Simpsons game and Galactic Adventures. You can read his full blog post over at Chungking Espresso.

Librande brought five copies of Galactic Adventures, and we broke up into groups to design a mission in it using the Mission Creator. Stone was excited to see what a bunch of game design graduate students would do with the tool set. The package is incredibly robust. You can basically create up to eight independent Acts within each mission, and each Act can have numerous objectives (all of which you script yourself). You can tweak the stats, behaviors, and dialogue on every unit you place. There was also a team devoted solely to creating environmental effects for the Creator: by far the coolest effect was a Star Wars-style red-and-blue laser battle that you can criss-cross your level with. Terraforming planets is incredibly satisfying, and the architectural options are top-notch. I hadn’t played Spore for awhile, and the bank of community-generated creatures has grown so immense that you can basically find anything you want with a little searching.

I’m not going to lie to you, though: the level creator, and the scripting tool, are not really created for people who already know how to code/make their own games. Just as with any user-gen game (such asLittleBigPlanet), experienced designers are going to want to do things that the tool just can’t handle. Your captain avatar can’t ride vehicles (something we wanted to do for our little Spore remake of Lord of the Rings), and you can’t design cut scenes to link acts. The AI is good at appearing to know what it’s doing, but it’s still kind of buggy and sluggish (maybe this will be improved in the QA phase). But for both casual and core gamers ages 4-110, there are multiple levels of detail that one can go into, develop, and enjoy. I could definitely see using it to prototype missions for other projects.

Read the full article

Creator Sporlight: MSCE5

MSCE5 is one of the most well known creators on the Europe (UK) official forums, and has started to create some fantastic creations. Read on for more! 

If you think you have a creator who deserves a spotlight, post a comment below or in our thread on the official forums.

Sporedum’s Creator/Creature Spotlight Homepage

 

Location: Århus, Denmark

Profile: MSCE5 (aka, Marcolon)

 

Sporedum: Your creations are really well thought out, and the design on some of them is amazing! Do you find any particular inspiration for your work? 

MSCE5: Well when i’m creating new stuff for the game i usually get my inspiration from movies, games, famous creators etc. Not to mention my friends who i’ve gotten alot of inspiration from. Like 04starrad who inspired me to start doing Mechs recently or Rebecca1208 who i seem to get inspiration, for new creatures, from all the time.

 

 

 

Sporedum: You may not be as popular as some creators, but you have a steadily growing fan base. Have you met anyone during your experience playing Spore? 

MSCE5: Yes! I’ve met alot of great people on the Spore UK forum. Our community there is far from as big as the American is, yet we still know each other well. I have alot of friends there.

 

Sporedum: Looking through your 460+ creations, it’s hard to pick out one that is the best. Do you have a personal favorite? And what is your favorite creation created by another player? 

MSCE5: Well i actually have a few that i like more than the others. Recently i made a Rock concert with the building editor which i think is very good (judging myself). Also a few days ago i made 2 mechs based upon Rebecca1208’s Kyrozi’s which im very proud of =)

 

 

Sporedum: Which editor is your favorite to create in (creature, building, vehicle, spaceship)? Why? 

MSCE5: Building editor by far! I love that the chances are so many! Theres assymetry which makes it so much easier to create something good looking. Its also the editor which i believe is the one im most experienced with.

 

Sporedum: What is your favorite part of spore? And if you could do one thing to improve spore, what would it be?

MSCE5: Well… Right now i play most for the editors. The possibilities with spore are infinite. And i think that if i had to add anything to the actual game it would be a more realistic look, as well as a longer playtime with more variety in gameplay. Maybe bring back some of the old elements that were shown off back in 2005 when will wright demonstrated spore. The physics back then were amazing.

 

 

 

Sporedum: Many of your creations have a very stylized look – do you have a story or theme behind your creations?

MSCE5: Well i dont really have an actual story behind many of my creations. Only a few. Which would be My Rubicon creature that i made many months ago. I actually started making machinimas for youtube with them. However, i’d say my favourite theme is probably the futuristic theme which many of my creations do have. Im just that type of person who’s very mixed in flavors…

 

Sporedum: What would be the most essential piece of advice you could give for people to improve their creations?

MSCE5: What has helped for me is to keep on creating and practicing in the editors! A good thing is also to look at the famous creators creations. Another tip is to pull their creations apart to see how they acrtually create them and set them toghether (ofcourse without sharing cause that would be like stealing)

 

Sporedum: What spore communities have you been involved in, and how has this impacted on your Spore experience? 

MSCE5: I’ve been involved alot in the Youtube spore community aswell as the official spore forum for the UK. I spend every day on the UK forum…

 

 

Sporedum: Are you excited about the release of Spore Galactic Adventures on the 23rd of June? And how do you think you will use the adventures creator to advance you creations? 

MSCE5: Yes indeed! I’m actually at this point very hyped about the game! I cant wait for it to release… I’m sure it’ll add alot of variety to the game and the adventure editor surely looks interesting…

 

Sporedum: If there was one parts pack you could get, what would it be?

MSCE5: This is a hard question… Hmm… I think that it would be cool to sorta have a parts pack for robots and mechanical creatures. Seeing that i’ve spend alot of my time recently creating mechs… My experience with mechs are growing but actual parts would be very nice =)

Worthplay preview: Spore: Galactic Adventures

As you might guess, you’re not really being given a game here. Spore: Galactic Adventures is a toolkit used to make games, using blank worlds as a staging ground. It’s impressively flexible, allowing you to play through adventures using your own custom-evolved hero or one determined for you by the scenario, and to create your own custom adventures with which to befuddle your friends.

In Galactic Adventures, you begin with a blank world and a large number of tools you can play with. One of Maxis’ employees was killing time at a recent EA event in San Francisco by designing a birthday party-themed level, with confetti generators and playing clowns; other adventures were set in a tiny universe, with the player’s character standing atop a planet like the last level ofKatamari Damacy and jumping from star to star, and on a battlefield, where two alien races were shooting it out for supremacy. The player’s job in the latter scenario was to get behind enemy lines and figure out a way to get onto his opponent’s mother ship in order to prevent them from constantly teleporting in reinforcements.

Read the full preview