randomsporefacts

[randomsporefacts]

information about some bizarre unused chimney parts from the building editor

for reference, these are the used ones. theyre numbed 01 to 08

however theres also 09 to 12 in the games files! all of them are edited from chimney_08 so i will provde it here separately for emphasis

first looking at Spore_Graphics.package\building_rigblock~\be_details_chimney_09.prop.

the differences between chimney_08 and 09 is that it has a different name, and different strings for modelRigBlockAMTag. chimney_08 is has oldfashioned, playful, and detail tags, whereas chimney_09 has cylindrical, steampunk, deco, techy, and chimney (the chimney tag is never used outside of these unused chimneys)

the name on chimney_08 is Little Puffer, while chimney_09 is named simply WWW (in en-us that is)

as you can tell they have consecutive names too. chimney_10 is VVV, chimney_11 is UUU, and chimney_12 is TTT

all the following chimneys are identical besides the name, but VVV (chimney_10) is also the only one with some other unique trait

instead of its lod0 model (so the actual visible model) being be_details_chimney_08, its be_details_house_10, which is actually the same as this part

however its hull (which is the hitbox i think, which you can use for grabbing the part in the editor) is still be_details_chimney_08-hull! and so is its effect, so it would just look like this part but it spits out fun colorful dust

WWW, UUU, TTT are identical to each other, and themselves nearly identical to Little Puffer besides the name and the tags. they all have the same model, effects, price, complexity score, handle offsets etc. VVV also has all of that alongside a different visual model for some reason

[randomsporefacts]

en-us\Text.package\locale~\consequence.locale mentions a consequence ability for wanderers

# SPG_Wanderer_Tool 0x00010067 Species Shuffler NOT IN USE 0x00010068 Randomizes the species on a planet. NOT IN USE

SPG_Wanderer_Tool does not exist outside of this one mention in the locale string, as a comment even, as opposed to the other consequence abilities. the hashes for these strings also, indeed, are not in use, not even in any unused tools under any different name

this was likely removed because giving you a special ability for skipping all the stages is kind of silly (although ga makes it incredibly easy to get a different consequence ability)

however randomizing the species on a planet DOES sound basically useless. if the way it works is that it actually just pulls completely random species (that match its slot ie herbivores for herbivores obviously) from the sporepedia for every species on the planet, it might be sort of useful when youre terraforming a planet and dont want its entire biosphere to just completely match whatever other planet you pulled all the plants and animals from?? but that obviously has no gameplay applications, unlike all of the other consequence abilities

[randomsporefacts]

you know about ctrl+shift+c to bring up the cheat console. i just talked about it a few days ago! however theres something sort of interesting i noticed about the spacing in the help command output

notice how theres just an arbitrary amount of spaces after every line?

yeah so i started transcribing this for fun, barely figured out the apparent width of spaces, and it turns out this just makes way more sense in a monospace font! (i also made a few typos here)

i dont really know why the font used in here isnt a monospace font. instead it just appears to be Trebuchet EA, aliased, at a 9 point scale

remarkably in Spore_Graphics.package\sporeUIDesigner~\SporeUITextStyles.css, in the listing of fonts, it defnes cour.ttf for the cheat console

assuming cour.ttf is Courier, this is indeed a monospace font! and it would have looked something like this. minus the typo(s)

remarkably enough, the cc demo actually uses courier still! the cheat console is also transparent for some reason which is fun

and yup it is Courier New, as its found in SporeUIDesigner~ in the cc demo and it just outright says what it is

since the final game doesnt have that ttf i guess the game just uses trebuchet ea as a fallback

[randomsporefacts]

if you stick your camera inside of a star (which normally puts a bright overlay on the screen) in space stage and click c, it will take a screenshot and disable the bright overlay which allows you to see what it looks like with the camera clipped into it. it has an interesting looking halo inside! that is actually the solar corona effect no longer obscured by the star model

here i got to see the effect even past the screen brightening oddly enough (also im being beat up by pirates here dont worry about it)

this also allows you to get a good look at the stars textures, though it doesnt necessarily require the brightening effect to be disabled

which protoplanetary discs also have fun fact

this effect also slightly distorts the image behind it

[randomsporefacts]

not quite a fact but just funny and charming

i was trying to find how to make captains in adventures into epics with cheat engine (not a youtube video), failed (if theres a written guide id appreciate it!!!)

but i did stumble upon this neoseeker page with really funny fake made up cheats

this one is funny cuz like.. you press q and you just. strafe left. and l is just the mission log?

im so glad we have stuff for spore on the level of running around the courtyard statue 2401 times to unlock luigi. genuinely. this fills me with joy

i think my favorite has to be Green or LookOutAbove or ExtremeLaser

higher jump is also really funny for creature stage because level 5 jumps are absurdly ginormous as is

[randomsporefacts]

i keep boosting like. each of these lmao but heres a new kinglyvalence vid that should be pretty interesting!

anyway this is done by glitching a part to be moved really really far from the origin point of the creature. creature stage (and the later stages) shrinks the creature to match some kind of maximum creature size, which includes any significantly offset parts, therefore making it comically tiny

cell stage keeps it the same size though. notably enough, loading a creature into the cell editor with cheat engine and then editing it with cell parts will actually still function in cell stage. even if it still has creature parts and only creature vertebrae (which are distinct from cell vertebrae), like this little guy

also this scale is affecting the tribal stage voices somehow? but that technically means that the larger creatures get the squeakier voices. i dont think its the mouth size either cuz it didnt seem to be particularly small on the creature

also the scale doesnt affect the hologram, but somewhat affects the flags theyre holding maybe?

it also affects the comm screen in space stage and shows the entire platform theyre standing on. the static also covers only the creatures and its also proof that the static from the anti grox guys is actually just hiding your very own species

anyway check out the video and the rest of the channel, theres not a lot of dedicated spore channels im aware of so its nice to see something like this !

[randomsporefacts]

planet concept art, from the creating spherical worlds pdfs from Andrew Willmott's site (linkie)

and storybook planets, with unique flora and rock sets that are still in final!

i think this art is probably by Christian Scheurer, whose site also has more concept art for planets among other things

[randomsporefacts]

various tga files found in the creature creator demo, CSA_Graphics.package\animations~\0x00000001.tga (which is also duplicated under 0x15EAF8A4.tga)

0x00000002.tga

0x00000003.tga (which is will wright)

will_face.tga is a crop of that same photo

theres actually a bunch of tga files in this folder. a lot of test textures, placeholders, matcaps, and other stuff

in comparison, the final game has no tga files, aside from 4 textures in ScenarioEditor in galactic adventures

as well as a mention of a tga file in Spore_Graphics.package\lighting_properties~\example.prop (and the equivalent in the ep1 package)

0x8701F3C5.tga is not present in final anywhere, nor even the cc demo, however the envCubeMap png file does exist in both cc demo and final

although in final its not quite a png, but "0x7D328FDD.48bitImage.png" (in cc demo it was just 0x7D328FDD.png)

[randomsporefacts]

some space tools have properties that set to have them be disabled on the homeworld, savegames, or "201 ruins"

property spaceToolDisableOnHomeworld 0x04163a04 bool true #disable this tool on the users homeworld. property spaceToolDisableOnSaveGames 0x04163a05 bool false #disable this tool when visiting savegame worlds. property spaceToolDisableOn201Ruins 0x04163a06 bool false #disable this tool when visiting 201 world.

most tools have these properties. abduction beam has the homeworld value set to false curiously

some others where the value isnt set actually parent ToolTemplate, which itself lists it as disabled for the homeworld and save games (but not 201 ruins). which presumably is also why theres actually a value that sets homeworld usage to false, its not necessarily that they had it at true at some point but decided it was too restrictive, it was just overwriting the values in ToolTemplate

only a few tools(?) are usable across all planets, that being Bribe, cultural_Template, Energy (Mega) Pack, Hologram Scout, military_Template, Repair (Mega) Pack, Scan, SETI, and all three Anti-Tank Turrets (which is for civ stage turrets i think?)

interesting that all the coloring and terrasculpting tools are disabled on 201 ruins? and save games but that one makes more sense you dont want to mess with another save game

that said it still lets me color the planet with the destroyed cities (i dont know if the fact that a tribe has somehow formed itself on the planet has anything to do with it)

and the planet with the broken spaceship (i also got planet artiste 2 for this). so whats this about? does it disable the tools during the tutorial or what? in fact all tools that would normally be enabled on a planet are still enabled on these

its not like these values are unused though!

even something implicitly disabled through ToolTemplate (though the monolith has a unique tooltip for it)

and you can see return ticket also gets disabled on a save game, which seems very silly but whatever. it also disables basically all other tools as expected

(fun fact i like that all the tribes are all concentrated on one little part of the continent as it is in tribal stage)

[randomsporefacts]

some planet textures from Spore_EP1_Data.package\trading~ (so they were added in ga)

planet1, planet3, planet3 and planet4

quality rather varies. all of these look like repurposed spore concept art or older screenshots, planet4 in particular is very recognizeable as this planet from 2006 (like from the second screenshot here, though they rotated it)

planet3 is also 2006

these textures are completely unreferenced in ga or elsewhere, but the fact that theyre in trading~ suggests it was meant for the galaxy screen and associated menus somewhere (why is the alias trading anyways? whats the relation? does anyone who worked on sporemodder fx know?)

[randomsporefacts]

if you're in Europe PLEASE consider signing the Stop Destroying Games initiative. the deadline is July 31st 2025. i've posted about it before; it aims to create legislation for publishers to stop killing the games you pay for and to provide an end-of-life plan for live-service products. thank you!!!

[randomsporefacts]

another fun fact about the bee planet from last time. according to the game capture in obs (which rips texture loading to the screen, for both creatures and planets), the texture of the bee planet i have here looks like this

resized to its actual apparent resolution of 255x255 (not 256x256 curiously enough)

compared to how it appears on the planet, its not only mirrored (look at the little thin line on the dark stripe on the bottom), it also has some swapped color channels

and not just a hueshift either, look at how the magenta remains here specifically

its really just the channels swapped. using this paint.net plugin (color flip/rotate from here), if you swap the red and blue channels, then it looks correct

anyway this square is applied across the planets whole surface and it even tiles nicely!

with a seam that you can see ingame too. btw you can see a fish face on the left, ah pareidolia. because its symmetric to some degree it exists across both sides from the light streak

that said, ingame i think it happens right at the boundary between the square corners (that the sphere is made out of) so unfortunately theres no fish ingame

heres the texture at the original orientation and flipped (and also shifted a few pixels to the right) so you can see how its mirrored. you can see on the edges its pretty noticeably mirrored (and you can see the mirroring ingame too)

and the same thing happens vertically too

and you can actually see the mirror pattern at points

anyway heres a height map of the earth (adventure uploaded by MaxisCactus). the way terrain height maps are done is very similar to GonzagoGL, see here. this one seems to be 512x512. i also separately provided the red channel with increased contrast

you have to flip and mirror it in order to get the actual orientation. so its just africa, im not sure where the rest of the planet is BUT

note cubemap_earth.dds. if you dont toggle cubemap view here then its going to just load this one face

so the game is actually only loading one face of the cubemap!

and indeed, its only loading the face thats being affected. here i adjusted the terrain in antarctica and this is exactly what i managed to rip with obs (also notice how its flipped vertically in comparison to the cubemap)

heres the cubemap when i raise the terrain slightly. this time, for whatever reason, it selected to display the americas to me

so what is actually being recorded to obs when you change the terrain in any way is just a select face of the planet's cubemap

heres the texture too, also with colors and the orientation flipped to match how it actually is ingame

[randomsporefacts]

following up on what i mentioned in this post. i couldnt figure out how to REPLACE animations in the adventure editor with cheat engine (if anyone knows let me know; ive only succeeded at displaying creature animations in the creature editor build mode, not even test drive works)

but replacing the animation hexes ends up just canceling the animation entirely so heres miscellaneous clips of me having fun with that

its rather interesting too because it changes the function in some instances (like with glide and charge)! in some of these cases it seems to work more or less the same as skipping animations in creature stage via jumping does

i wonder if this could be used in creature stage to skip the walk all the way to a fruit without having to jump? (jumping in the middle of walking to the fruit will teleport the fruit to your creature)

and yeah the planet is also a bee. look at what parts of it i could safely magenta out without it affecting the planets surface, at least at this elevation (changing the elevation does introduce pink spots)

[randomsporefacts]

on an unrelated note was spore the evolution (the other book besides the art of spore) ever scanned? im stll yet to read it

[randomsporefacts]

happy birthday to this blog today

it was also 1,420 posts this morning

[randomsporefacts]

you can lead a creature far away from its position in test drive just by spamming certain actions available in creepy & cute, after which it will automatically walk back. it will even do this while still in the middle of an idle animation!

(i also did this in this test drive background with the vehicle editor lighting (just view any vehicle in the sporepedia and then go back while in test drive) for the heck of it)

note that walking back like this is behavior that happens in some other animations too, visible when i was previewing some animations with cheat engine. this is a link to the latest post from that set but it might not have any examples of that

theoretically this can be done outside of the editor to bring a creature really really far away from where it was and have it walk back halfway across the planet. im not sure how to do this in the adventure editor with cheat engine though

[randomsporefacts]

spore origins has internal names in some of the the midis!!!

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these following filenames are for the android version specifically

the name for obj198.mid (title screen theme) is "spore gameplay theme" and it also has "Generated by NoteWorthy Composer"

obj200.mid (the jingle for completing a level) is "fx_victory"

obj209.mid (eating sound) is "fx_eat"

obj223.mid (which is a song ive never heard) has the noteworthy composer credit but no actual song name. heres a recording of it

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java sounds. specifically Spore-Origins_s40v3a-N6131, they might differ in other java versions

the 177.mid file (which is a sound that is obj199.ogg in the android version; i dont know what the sound is) has Quicktime Player twice in the file

179.mid (sounds like the brain freeze sound on android, which has an ogg file for it) is "fx shrink"

183.mid (never heard it) is "fx_freeze". you can freeze over (different from brain freeze) in deep blue but it has plays a much shorter sound, at least in the android version (also uses an ogg for it), not sure if java even uses it

184.mid (attacking sound) is "fx attack"

188.mid (death jingle) is "fx gameover"

189.mid (game completion jingle) is "fx gamewin2"

190.mid (also unfamiliar) is "fx grow"

191.mid (sound for touching symbiotes) is "fx pickup"

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on a mostly unrelated note i found like. complete 100% definitive proof it is called spore origins. the only reason this confusion happens is that this name seems to only be external, as on android and java its only ever called spore (both the app name on android, and also ingame both versions)

like see here. its only called spore here, same goes for the android version

also theres apparently an ios version but i dont have an iphone let alone an old one so i know nothing about this, or spore creatures ios for that matter. i had an app file from spore creatures ios but wasnt able to extract anything from it. and i doubt that one ios games emulator supports them?