Spore Galactic Adventure Released in Europe, today 23 June 2009

This afternoon i received a SMS that my preordered expention kit, called Galactic Adventures for the EA Spore game, was available. I picked it up for 30 euros and installed it. Everything went smooth.

After a succesfull installation, we clicked on the Spore icon in the dock of the mac and prepared for the new fun....that we didn't find. Looking up the documentation and calling the EA helpdesk brought no prevail. I tried a second install. Nothing helped. Until I went looking in the installation directory Spore in the Applications directory. I saw that a new executable was there called "Spore Ruimteavonturen" (dutch for Spore Galactic Adventures). Dubbel click this new executable and of we go:

Login failed for EA Spore : solution on Mac OSX

I bought the galactic version of Spore when it was released in Europe on 5 september 2008. Since then, me and my two kids of 8 and 10 years old, enjoyed playing it offline. Due to some strange reason, I could not get Spore online. The error messages were different over time but last month I got a message something was wrong with privileges. I tried to change my password but that did not help. Finally, I found "What do I do if I get the error: 'Login failed: You do not have the proper spore.com privileges'?" on the support site of EA. Unfortunately, the explanation is windows only. But after some sniffing around I found the login.prop file on OSX :
You can find the file as follows:

1. Go to your home directory
   
2. Double click on Library
3. Double click on Preferences
4. Double click on SPORE Preferences
5. Double click on p_drive
6. Double click on User
7. Double click on Application Data
8. Double click on Spore
9. Double click on Preferences
10. In this folder there will be a file login.prop, right click and delete this file and try Spore once again.

After the login.prop file was deleted, Spore asked for a new email/password/nickname combination (or you can login with you EA account). You can find our Spore creatures under the name losesi.

Happy sporing

Spore arrived in Belgium, workaround for @ sign on mac

After years of salivation, dreaming and projecting, the mother of all games finally arrived. I just walked into the Fnac of Leuven in Belgium and bought the galactic version for 64,99 euros (the standard version was 54,99 euros). My collegues warned me that I was expecting so much from the game that I could be nothing else but dissappointed. However after the first few hours of play I'm still very excited by the game. It could very well be that Will Wright and his team created another master piece.

Installation on the iMac went smooth. Registration didn't succeed. First, the bug that prevents entering the @ sign on a belgian / belgium keyboard was not solved yet. Just pressing the key with the @ sign doesn't work. A workaround is to use another key shortcut. Type the option ⌥ key and the ` key (that's the key left of the enter key and above the shift key on the right, the superscript is the £ sign). That resolved entering the email addres but then Spore refused to register. Trying a previous account created with the Spore creature editor also failed. Probably, the Spore servers are overwhelmed. Lukily, you can start to play. My seven years old son claim: "dad, this is much better then runescape" !

UPDATE: sunday 7 september 2008:19u30, I got an confirmation mail from EA stating that my registration was successful.

No download mac version of Spore Creature Editor

UPDATE sunday 14 september 2008, 22u08: A download of the complete Spore game for mac is available here : http://www.gametreeonline.com/product.php?productid=16168
(Thx, matt)


UPDATE za 21 juni 2008, 11u30: A download version will become available by Gametree (hopefully soon).

Being delighted with EA's Spore Creature Editor free demo (I excuse them for the bugs), I preordered the full version for 6,99 euro. When the transaction was cleared, I got an email with a download url of the PC version instead of the MAC version. Moreover, it turned out that I had to use EA download manager that is only availble for PC. Today, I got an EA support mail stating that the full version of the EA Spore Editor is only for PC. Lukily, they kindly suggest a refund. I guess EA is more concerned with the Take-2 takeover than building support for games on mac.
Fortunately, this is now cleary indicated on the spore website (it was not when I preordered the full editor):

No download mac version is available. Only the box version is for mac.

Spore Creature Editor Demo is available

Here you can download the free demo of the Spore Creature Editor. This is what my nine years old son made:


I preordered the full version of the Spore Creature Editor for 6,99 euro. For the moment, I can't find the download link. I think it has something to do with the clearance of my visa card.

Also in the free demo, I could not type the @ sign. Very inconvenient because you need to enter an emaik adress to register. This does not work from an Belgian keyboard. A first i8n bug ??

GDC 08: Day 3 : Become a "spornstar"

"A future Wide Open: Unleashing the creative community" by John Schappert from Microsoft (see picture above). The new features of the Unreal engine looked cool. They announced games for the Zune (Zune what ?). An important message was that they will democratize game development with the Xbox Live Arcade. They even talked about a Belgian game : “Little Gamers.” This is a 2-D high definition action side-scroller based on the famous Web comic “Little Gamers” created by Loïc Dansart, a 24-year-old software developer from Belgium.


"Procedural Music in SPORE", Aaron McLeran and Kent Jolly (in the picture above). This talk actually blow my head. They used open software, called Pd (developed at UC San Diego), to generate music. So instead of listening to a track, in Spore, you're listening to a program. The program reacts, and hence the music, on events in the game. Very cool.

"Pollinating the universe: user-generated Content in SPORE", Caryl Shaw from Maxis.

It looks like Spore is the internet made easy. Basically they took over known internet community facilities to stimulate communities around Spore. The trick to hide the procedural stuff as payload in a PNG file is very clever. I remarked that one of the contributor to the sporepedia had as nickname "spornstar". Hence a new name for somebody who want to know everything about the Spore game and the title of the blogpost. Spore will be released on 5 September 2008 in Europe and a few day later in the States. The reason for that is that the market for PC games is bigger in Europe then in the States.

"How heroes are Made: A collaborative Approach to Serialized Content in a Transmedia World" by Jesse Alexander. This talk was cancelled. So I went to:
"Wii Fit : Creating a brand new interface for the home console", Takao Sawano from Nintendo.

My first experience with the Wii Fit was not instant fun. So my initial enthousiasm about this tempered. Bye, bye, Narnia.

Spore comes to Nintendo Wii

I've just read an interview with Will Wright. He announces some marvelous news: his new game "Spore" will also be released on the Nintendo Wii in the second quater of 2008. Just to wet your saliva go and look to Spore on EA's 360° panofantastic display.

Also "Lego Star Wars" is coming to the Wii end of 2007. The online mode is reserved for Xbox 360 and PS3 only. And Guitar Hero 3 for Wii and ... I'm gone write that nice letter to Santa Claus soon!!!

I go on holiday to the sea and I take with me:

books.

More particularly, I have high expectations from:
"De zee, Een fascinerende ontdekkingsreis door verleden, heden en toekomst van onze planeet" written by Frank Schätzing. The dutch version of the book "Nachrichten aus einem unbekannten Universum". I think reading this is a excellent preparation to the upcoming game Spore. The game is inspired on the movie "The power of ten". I saw that movie on the dutch television in "Zomergasten" in 2005. The guest was Robbert Dijkgraaf, one of the founding fathers of the string theory. Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, has created Spore partly inspired on the power of ten. Spore is an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.

The other books are:

• The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe written by Roger Penrose
• De Eekhoorn from Primo Levi, a work of fiction
• The world is flat by Thomas L. Friedman. Many people urged me to read it but somehow I didn't until now. I think the world is spikylike Richard Florida and Sophie Vandebroek, the Belgian chief technology officer of the American multinational Xerox ('Mijn vrije tijd beheer ik zoals mijn werk' by Tom Vandyck in De Morgen op 4/8/07)
• The paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz (see his lecture on Google Video or read the review in the New Yorker). I guess to learn some thoughts that counters the ideas of the long tail.
• De clan van de wilde honing van Ad Borsboom, I hope to gain some insight in the tribal functioning of the Aboriginals.I already explained my interest in authentizotic organistation

Nice to see that all books come from the local library except the book from Penrose.