random spore facts

(she/her) things about spore i found and want to get out there

[randomsporefacts]

main blog is zelenbug

recommended for viewing in the desktop blog view! the sidebar contains a resources page main tag: #spore

[randomsporefacts]

the camera in the feb 19 build can zoom out really far on the galaxy screen. at some point in the zoom it gets a spinning transparent texture overlaid on it

thats completely gone at around this zoom level

this is how close it can zoom in

in retail it can only zoom in and out this far. not far at all

anyway the textures for it in feb 19 are found in Arenas_textures.package

this is galaxy_zoom_arms

and galaxy_zoom_dustlanes_top

both of these textures are still in retail in Spore_Graphics.package, but are unreferenced anywhere

theyre also unreferenced in feb 19, technically, but its likely an effect present here has them. the feb 19 .effdir files just werent able to be unpacked by smfx

[randomsporefacts]

an interesting key combination in feb 19, listed in the readme under editor dev cheats, is "Ctrl-Alt-l = Toggles muscle limb and bendy limb"

when you hit this key combination hovering over a limb, it toggles between the two limb types. so its interesting that theres these two distinct limb types at all! most of the limbs use muscle limbs, but a couple of the legs and arms use bendy limbs instead

note that this doesnt actually change the part, and it will revert to the original limb type if you stop hovering over the creature, and ive had the game crash by using this too. so be careful

you can see the true limb muscles on these bendy limbs. slackwrist, for example, looks like this

wizardsleeve actually really looks like doubelbow! though not an exact replica (doubelbow is in the back in the fourth image)

brawnysaurus is a little silly looking

cankle seems to kinda match broncosaurus in the actual limb parts

finally steatopiggy

if you stack together a bunch of bendy and non-bendy limb parts onto one limb, toggling will toggle between one type for the entire limb

[randomsporefacts]

the february 19 build had eye overlay effects, which should be seen when you toggle the first person view in creature stage with the z key, although i couldnt get them to show for some reason

IHaveNoIdea \ themadpsientist on the spore modding community discovered that you can view them in test drive out of the creature editor by running "prop eyeEffectEnabled 1 -list @editor_config!PlayModeSetup.prop" in the cheat console

the top row of eye parts doesnt seem to have any eye overlay, which could be explained by them being added later in development

now heres the second row. you can see that the vision gets progressively better as the eyes go from left to right, so the order of the eyes actually matters. the corners of the screen also have a mild grid effect

heres the third row

fourth

fifth (strangely the last eye of the set is still kinda blurry)

and sixth

the amount of eyes doesnt affect the eye overlay

with multiple eyes, it generally prioritizes eyes of a higher tier, and within the same tier prioritizes them in some other order i cant determine

it also prioritizes any the top row here over the higher tier boneye which is strange

finally heres no eyes

side note the first person barely works and the creature doesnt go in the direction you point your camera to, still has tank controls

edit: i was meant to queue that my bad. youre getting the post anyways

[randomsporefacts]

full list of maxis creatures that arent early creatures (so they dont appeaer in the sporepedia in the early creature editor out of the main menu), but have early creature parts

for reference these are the actual early creatures

(i found the full list of creatures with early creature parts through searching for hashes in AssembledContent)

first is doofnit, which has mostly early creature parts, but with swillson and palmwalker. this sort of thing is most likely a creature actually made during a playthrough in creature stage and then assembled

dragon is the same deal

eyegor is interesting because it definitely looks like an early creature at a first glance, but! its mouth is gobsterclaw, not jaw!

froggert has the eyes

knot the grawx also looks like an early creature but has gobsterclaw

(its worth noting it didnt even have a mouth in feb 19, so they had to add it later in development and so it couldnt have been an early creature either way. i dunno if it counted as an early creature in feb 19 though, its not in the sporepedia)

heres the first odd one. jayel also looks like an early creature, and it only has early creature parts, so what makes it not count?

looking at this post for parameters of early creatures, and at jayel's summary file in Spore_Content.package, it seems to merely just exceed the required cost for an early creature (which caps at 145; the cost here is "parameter float cost 160.0"). so thats probably it

konk also doesnt seem to have anything wrong with it, has jaw and everything. looking at the summary file, the cost is also 160.0, so its excluded from the same reason as jayel

leeroy kept the jaws and stalk eyes from a cell

lumptilor once again only has early creature parts. the culprit is 150.0 cost, literally 5 more dna than is allowed

mini-tri same thing, cost 150.0

monwerkdee is pretty clearly edited from werkin sondee so its kept the eyes and spikes. this is like the most blatant example of a creature made during a creature stage playthrough here

handwalker just has the cilia. curiously its one of the creatures internally prefixed with singer_, which i wouldnt have expected to be made during a playthrough like that?

sqibble has flagella

tailumberai has spikes and flagella

tym flee the giant eyeball

and finally zunghul, this rather complicated looking creature youd def expect to be made in the creature editor from the start, has some flagella

[randomsporefacts]

the feb 19 build has a few more dbpf packages outside of the ones found in SPORE/Data. even if they dont have the .package extension, theyre identifiable by the DBPF at the start of the file if you open them in a text editor

UserData has these ones, for example

ServerCache.package has a bunch of summary files (and some others) that smfx cant parse

EditorOfflineUser.db only has one file with an unknown extension and data that smfx cant parse

planetRecords.pkp and planetRecords.pkt is just empty, at least on my copy because i havent made any saves yet (oops)

snapshot.snp.pld actually has a bunch of planet scripts in it? theyre parseable too

finally theres a bunch in Data/TestScripts, some with no extensions at all!

crgtest has a bunch of unclear files in animations~ and another one with no clear name, folder or extension. its possible this might actually be a save file? is it? cvgtest, spgtest and trgtest have much of the same

planetRecords.pkp has a bunch of planet record files, once again unparseable

stars.db lists who knows what, collectable items, empire, npc city music, player city music and star record (which is a really big file). notably i actually looked at the end of the file in a hashed folder, and it lists 105 names at the end, which are these ones if i fix the spacing. its clearly just a bunch of namegen names, probably of stars

Abdena, Aegelince
, Aganier, Agetrebus, Alemliane, Amskekaka
, Antes
, Anthel,
Arignan,
Ariuck, Ashannaso, Authagnus
, Belan,
Breston
, Calia,
Charius,
Chlaned,
Cicoras,
Conia
, Coper,
Creusi,
Cridonis
, Dandre
, Daradan,
Deataer
, Degor,
Derton
, Dionov
, Djampa,
Drakon
, Drany,
Estes, Eucubraka
, Eumin
, Eutha,
Excar
, Frann
, Fretta
, Gailatt
, Galey, Galtalaur
, Garianys
, Gorcus, Hegeleuen,
Ikomizes,
Ilkart
, Izata,
Jacrew, Jaeshwina
, Javena,
Kadia,
Kation
, Katon
, Kavid,
Kaylian,
Kennix,
Khodiana,
Kotenell
, Latos,
Laventia,
Leiannas
, Lycon
, Macan,
Makhines
, Malvana,
Marda
, Maxon,
Millo
, Mordo
, Narosten,
Naton
, Ocekon
, Ohnes
, Oxynos
, Paria,
Phibni
, Phitz,
Plingwen
, Poigh,
Polossus
, Proon,
Racheley,
Rakus,
Ramani,
Remphuma, Rubaellus
, Rydene,
Rylos,
Sarin
, Sarlyton
, Sawkin,
Scheus,
Semon
, Serle
, Suvenosh
, Tathaman, Tchazeris, Teticaris
, Tibia
, Trion
, Uhlia,
Valvana,
Vicas
, Walmon,
Whirison

the other ones didnt seem to have much readable text

[randomsporefacts]

i kept forgetting to cover this; its been pointed out that a lot of the maxis creation hashes arent based on their names (as in the february 19 hashes), but are specifically timestamps! if you convert the hashes to decimals, and then convert them to dates starting from january 1 2005. this here is plugz from the feb 19 build, whose hash is most likely actually just its name

a lot of the hashes in prebakedkeys.txt from spore hero also convert to timestamps that make some sense, with creation dates starting from 2007. a good chunk of these creations were made june 27 and 28, july 8, and sep 13, and some even made it into final as you can see!

so, judging by the hash, Hopper here (specifically the land vehicle) goes all the way back to jun 27 2007 and was carried over intact through over a year of development

and money bug is possibly even older, but im not sure i can trust this timestamp in particular

then theres a gap between dec 22 2007 and may 12 2008, where a lot of the retail creations start appearing

note that may 1 and 7 2008 are almost certainly invalid dates for these two, considering they match the hashes for both prebakedkeys (which was likely a 2007 spore build) and the feb 19 2008 build, and this date obviously comes after both of those

curiously these timestamps are actually older than the timestamps on their own pngs. for example, Imino here dates to may 12 2008, however the timestamp on its png is july 4 2008!

many creations are made throughout may and june. it seems like the timestamps wont quite align between the hash date and the png's date, even when the former is in the period where the pngs start being baked; frog monster (which is the tribal outfit) is dated to june 5 2008 in the hash, but june 7 2008 in the png

everything i looked at, the png date is at least 2 days after the hash date, but i wasnt super thorough so its possible some were made and compiled on the same day

after june 17 the dates stop making sense (the latest png timestamp is july 5th, and now hashes start matching for earlier builds as well)

like, by that logic, this guy in the feb 19 2008 build was only made a few months ago. lol

it goes all the way up to jan 17 2141 for anyone curious

[randomsporefacts]

spore has a set of model builtins, defined in probably the exe (instead of any of the packages as.rw4 files)

in gonzagogl (which, as we know, is kinda the earliest spore build though done in a different engine) theyre defined in the exe, along with a bunch of other simple models that dont have obj files. here they seem to be Circle, Weapon, Cube, Fins, Health Meter, Plant, Polygon shape, Pyramid, Spheres, Wall, Wings. heres some for example

glut32.dll also defines a bunch of primitives (including teapots), but this is probably an opengl thing and thus not applicable to retail spore

retail spore appears to have them in the exe, in .rdata also. theres a list that appears to have them, and some other things??? which includes 4axes, arrowhead, cone, box quad, sphere, oneshot stop, start, activate, treat as emissive, nightLight, always show maximum itensity colour, max standard identity colour, cylinderY, cylinderX, disc, cylinedrZ, cylinder, boxmap, project YZ, projectXZ, projectXY, model

anyway. i covered in this post from a while back that i had an adventure where, for some reason, the lods on the creature eggs break and turn into spheres

it appears to be using the sphere primitives, and keep in mind that it displays the texture from a nearby creature!

something found by ramonekemono on the smc discord when they were messing around with mods is that the builtin quads display the creature's texture at certain angles also!

and note the ground terrain type in the anim editor in feb 19 that loads a sphere. it also pulls from the creature texture if you zoom out enough!

so, as you can see, the builtins all seem to load the creature's texture at certain lod levels or angles

i was informed that builtins are used as placeholders pretty much everywhere & this is possibly related to the creature baking process, which, as discussed here, also uses actual models, and also squares specifically. so probably also uses the quad primitives for some point of the texturing process. and that this might be a property of the material the builtins are set to, that allows them to capture skinpaint textures

heres also a picture of the builtins & apparently most are rarely used

& apparently theres a 9th distinct "null" builtin around here too, between the cube and axes

[randomsporefacts]

ctrl+shift+w in the february 19 build wireframes literally everything, including all the 3d models and the hud

you can also see the dais in test drive under the ground

an interesting thing is that it also affects the texture baking process. if you go into test drive or paint mode while in wireframe mode, the texture might look a bit different here (the first image is wireframe toggled after entering test drive, the second image is wireframe toggled before entering test drive)

and if you toggled it off, turns out the texture rendered on the creature weird!

i believe the reason this happens is that the texture, as its being generated, is itself an unwrapped 3d model, and all the textures only get applied on the actual wireframe

you can also enter while wireframed, and unwireframe at the right time to get an interesting texturing hybrid

its hard to see the diffuse here, but you can see not only does it wireframe the actual creature mesh, but also the individual uv segments for some reason with those squares, and then just the whole texture itself (look for the diagonal lines). so its interesting to see how the texturing process seems to work

you can make and save a creature entirely in wireframe too and it. kind of breaks the png lol

its NOT actually totally transparent! theres a thin diagonal line that seems to match the creature's base color. this is the alpha channel for the png

also this happens if you toggle wireframe while in sporepedia, the background is just rendered to an image turns out

and yeah, if you load a creature texture in wireframe then it just gets baked in like this and stored in the graphics cache (until it gets cleared out at some point..? which this build is a lot less prone to doing than retail)

(edit) also stays that way outside the sporepedia, here it is in the anim viewer

fwiw the creature editor is still rather easy to work with in wireframe, you can see the creature pretty clearly

anyway, heres the texturing process, mild flashing warning below the cut!!!! its only on the left side of the screen

[l-1-z-a]

This keyboard shortcut also works in The Sims 2 Legacy Collection:

Reblog by @l-1-z-a · 4 images

💬 4  🔁 13  ❤️ 88 · Looks like "wireframe" mode

[randomsporefacts]

another feb 19 anim viewer thing. i actually learnt what this does

G: Toggle Next Ground Type Shift+G: Apply Next Ground Type

if you hit g, then hit shift+g (repeatedly), it might toggle to a different type of terrain for the creature to wak on. it toggles between this horizontal plane, a small sphere, and an entire planet. in the list (you access by hitting u) theres also a list of planets, which you can switch to by selecting one and hitting shift+g again (several times until it works), making the anim viewer also worlds most annoying planet viewer. as sometimes it resets to different ground types anyways

i dont show it in the video, but you can teleport around the planet if you shift+click on a point in the planet, and then hit shift+t

also you can follow the creature if you hit f

[randomsporefacts]

in the feb 19 build, the green circle under the creatures in the anim viewer seems to show their stride length, and they will move the foot once its roughly outside that range, or moves the foot forwards to be at the front end of the range, i guess??

i covered here that in this build, the stride length increases if the creature runs, but i cant seem to find a way to get it to run in the anim viewer. so im not certain what happens then

also the stride length doesnt line up on this creature, so maybe it also depends on the actual leg length?

if you have multiple creatures, the green circle indicates the selected creature (if you hit ~ it also toggles on and off as "debug ui"), but it does resize based on the creature so i would assume its related to the gait??

[randomsporefacts]

ctrl+shift+w in the february 19 build wireframes literally everything, including all the 3d models and the hud

you can also see the dais in test drive under the ground

an interesting thing is that it also affects the texture baking process. if you go into test drive or paint mode while in wireframe mode, the texture might look a bit different here (the first image is wireframe toggled after entering test drive, the second image is wireframe toggled before entering test drive)

and if you toggled it off, turns out the texture rendered on the creature weird!

i believe the reason this happens is that the texture, as its being generated, is itself an unwrapped 3d model, and all the textures only get applied on the actual wireframe

you can also enter while wireframed, and unwireframe at the right time to get an interesting texturing hybrid

its hard to see the diffuse here, but you can see not only does it wireframe the actual creature mesh, but also the individual uv segments for some reason with those squares, and then just the whole texture itself (look for the diagonal lines). so its interesting to see how the texturing process seems to work

you can make and save a creature entirely in wireframe too and it. kind of breaks the png lol

its NOT actually totally transparent! theres a thin diagonal line that seems to match the creature's base color. this is the alpha channel for the png

also this happens if you toggle wireframe while in sporepedia, the background is just rendered to an image turns out

and yeah, if you load a creature texture in wireframe then it just gets baked in like this and stored in the graphics cache (until it gets cleared out at some point..? which this build is a lot less prone to doing than retail)

(edit) also stays that way outside the sporepedia, here it is in the anim viewer

fwiw the creature editor is still rather easy to work with in wireframe, you can see the creature pretty clearly

anyway, heres the texturing process, mild flashing warning below the cut!!!! its only on the left side of the screen

[randomsporefacts]

learnt about this from the smc discord also. in the trading menu specifically, cold cloud vacuum uses the icon for air conditioning

here they are in collections. see how air conditioning has a plus on it, and cold cloud vacuum has a minus

and then in the trading menu. screenshot from catsbian / frostali on the spore modding community discord, since i dont think i have a save file where i have this tool unlocked but not purchased

see it has a plus on the cloud, even though its supposed to be lowering the atmosphere

in ufotools~, these are the filenames of the icons

tools have separate entries in Spore_Game.package in spacetools~ (which defines the actual tool) and in spacetrading~ (which defines the instance in the trading menu)

looking up the icon with the plus on it, its referenced, appropriately, in coldcloudray.prop in spacetools~, which is air conditioning; and toolcoldcloudvacuum.prop in spacetrading~. so they just reference two separate icons and mixed them up

but the funny thing is, spg_terraformatm_coldcloudray is referenced in spacetools~/coldcloudvacuum.prop as expected.. and spacetrading~/toolcoldcloudray.prop, which is air conditioning! they both swapped places!

i dont know if it has anything to do with the fact that the names to pluses/minuses on icons dont correspond on the hot counterparts on these tools?? coldcloudvac seems incorrect for the version that adds atmosphere anyway, so it feels like they swapped the icon filenames here

for what its worth the hot cloud icons correspond between the trading menu and the actual tool. i dont know if theres any other discrepancies like this

(side note, logically, if it were to match the others, air conditioning would have to be called cold cloud seeder (based on hot cloud seeder) but air conditioning is funny as hell so im glad they did that)

[randomsporefacts]

a basic explanation of how spore actually stores the creation data in the creation pngs. information comes from this post http://www.rouli.net/2008/08/spores-png-format-illustrated.html, as well as kade on the spore modding community discord

first thing is that creation data is stored in an xml, that defines the creation parts, part scales and morph handles and such, and some other stuff like the creation type and colors. you can see it clearly with kade's png tool

the game compresses this xml data (usually to below 8192 bits), gives it a crc and then pads out the data with zeroes to make it 8192 bits long

also, before the creation xml data, it stores metadata about the creation (which you can see in the asset tool in the png raw data tab, as well as in the png metadata tab), such as its name, author name etc. here is that for alderbrook

then it uses the actual render of the creature as an encryption key, which ensures that the creation render will more or less correspond to the actual creature (though you can also encode creation data in a totally blank png)

the way it creates the creature render is roughly the same thing they used during development to make part thumbnails, paint thumbnails, and planner thumbnails, though those usually dont have creation data stored in them (with the exception of the cell paints in the feb 19 build). most of them are also 128x128, though it also creates 256x256 creation thumbnails with no creation data stored in them (mostly used on the spore website, but for some reason also stored in the game files in EditorSaves.package)

anyway, then it takes the actual creation png and puts the encrypted model bits in there. its a bit confusing, but kade said that it takes the color value of every pixel and encodes the data in there by making every rgba value either even or odd. it makes very little visible effect on the actual creation png and they still manage to store the data in there!

you can see that the rgba values vary by only 1 on any seemingly totally transparent background, and how it manages to store that in areas with color

i will say this post is a little old and uncertain about some things, but you get the gist here

another thing is that the information in pixels is read in bgra order, instead of rgba; this is an image kade shared

so in a sense this is what the game actually "sees" out of the png. kinda interesting

anyway the way the game stores the data explains the noise you can see in the transparency somewhat. you can see the transparent checkerboard easier on dark colors especially

shown with increased contrast on alderbrook

apparently the png format is totally different for adventure pngs, as it doesnt use the image itself to encode any of the information (you can open a transparent adventure png, use the magic wand anywhere on the background and there wont be any of the expected noise). im not sure how this works!

i believe its something to do with actual metadata in the file, which, for example, discord completely strips so you cant just share adventure pngs on discord and expect them to work. something like that??

it possibly also has something to do with the fact that there are long known tools to create custom adventure thumbnails, with graphics that wouldnt otherwse be possible with the normal screenshot tools. i have one saved that puts a note graphic onto the adventure thumbnail, for example

[randomsporefacts]

thank you for everything you do, genuinely. thing game is (quite obviously lmao) one of my favs as it holds a good part of my life, "rushed development" or not, it is always a joy to play and even more of a joy to find out all the cool easter eggs, facts, behind-the-scenes and more!

bless you. <3

im very glad my madwoman's ramblings about a silly viddy game bring people joy

[randomsporefacts]

some notes on aquatic stage with concept art from spore: the evolution

also this set of art from Christian Scheurer (image from his website), captioned "There was even a proposed world with elaborate underwater landscapes and cities."

the reason for cutting it was navigation, because it didnt mesh well with the 2d gameplay of cell stage and the ground-based gameplay of creature stage. you would just have a stage in the middle where verticality is suddenly a factor, which would defiintely feel a little strange

i also imagine making the controls good would be a factor too. the gdc demo didnt even show any verticality on the player whatsoever, and the gonzagogl fly/swim experiments have an interesting control scheme, but it entirely relies on a mouse and also random things floating around in the water column (so you click to swim to them) which isnt ideal either. the only other thing i can think of is controls similar to space stage, but again that would be a strange midpoint between cell and creature

i have to say! im pretty sure that aquatic stage was, in fact, never actually a stage in itself, but rather just underwater gameplay for creature stage (also later stages, which you can even see here!). the reasons for why they cut aquatic would still apply here though

[randomsporefacts]

a message on the spore modding discord has reminded me of an interesting oddity with the leather base paint and how it colors parts. some of them will be much brighter at the base than they should be! but this doesnt seem to happen to most parts

from my testing, this seems to happen specifically to Barracutie, Stealing Crystals, Featherferns, and Cassoworry

also it affects the spikes on spraypalm, porcupain, some strike parts, and teeth on some mouth parts. but theres barely any visible effect and its only evident while its actively painting + theres absolutely nothing on any graspers or feet, including on claws

it doesnt even really overlap with the parts that interact weirdly with the eggshell paint! it seems sort of arbitrary here

see how the highlighted color changes based on the base hue

during the texturing process, this highlight abruptly comes up between the brushes being applied onto the creature, and the part textures actually getting applied

but notice how the main body of the creature also got more saturated at the same time!

and this happens, for example, to s'gnarly which only has some teeth brightened while its painted

from looking at the skinpaint effect, after it applies the main brush, it uses a skinpaint flood, which presumably is what does the weird saturation effect but its hard to tell. why is it only applying to certain parts, and sometimes only parts of those parts at that?

edit: this is probably why this happens