#spore cheat engine experiments

[randomsporefacts]

trying out the thing here that lets you switch editors with cheat engine (which affects the creatures you can drop in)

these values are safe to mess around with, as the game will change the value on its own whenever you open a different editor

-

im in the religious air vehicle editor (1151075343), i switched the editor type to the creature editor (1180455098)

and i dropped in a random creature, which worked but, since this is the material editor, the main skinpaint body is gone. all of the other parts work though, and theyre a bright white color, as opposed to being colored like in the creature edtor

also curiously the creature is very tiny here

you cant interact with any of the limbs or feet or graspers, but you can drag the other parts around. you cant put them back on the skinpaint body though since its gone

surprisingly enough you can color these parts that you can move around too. though they ignore your color settings and stay completely greyscale

if you dont pick any colors, any parts you add on will be using their default placeholder textures. also you can stack some creature parts onto the vehicle parts, but not all of them (ie mouths). i think the only parts that will stack on vehicle parts are the parts that can stack on other parts in the creature editor at all

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then i switched the editor type to the city hall (2582195973)

if the vehicles were already huge compared to creatures, the buildings are even more huge compared to vehicles. i know i called it Absurdly Tall Hall but this is a bit much

its also realy easy to cap out the complexity meter, and the dna will run out but thats easy to circumvent

the building editor and vehicle editor parts interact pretty nicely, since theyre both material editors

-

i ended up switching to the house editor so lets load other creations into it

i changed the editor type to ufos (2528264583). as expected, ufos are pretty tiny in the building editor

the body parts can be dragged around like bodies and roofs (though their movement will be weird if theyre rotated to be upside down for example), the detail parts also attach to things as expected

i also switched the editor to religious land (2597835946) just to be able to do this

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even the biggest creatures are absolutely microscopic in the building edior. its so interesting i wouldnt have expected these differences in scale to be like that, id expect them all to be the same scale

curiously enough, this specific creature is not largely positioned below the dais as it is normally (since its position is normally dependent on its feet,the legs are weird in bot parts and might so cause this to happen)

and heres like the tiniest creature

unlike the vehicle parts, all of the parts here are treated as detail parts that have to attatch to something, and cant float around on their own in space unless you use shift or ctrl. you also still cant touch the limbs or feet/graspers

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lets do something fun. i booted the cell editor and switched the value to the creature editor again

it displays completely top down, but the creature stands on the floor and plays its usual idle animations and sounds (as it thinks its in the creature editor). the only model capability that displays here across editors is sight (it plays the creature editors sight animation AND the cell editors sound)

even the early creature parts arent compatible with the cell editor

creatures also still use the creature vertebrae rather than the cell vertebrae parts. if you pull on it (you cant also change the length of the vertebrae or their position, but you can still scale it) some limbs might turn red but they dont get deleted until you move another part

parts have no restrictions on where you can put them and still even retain their rotation and morph handles

also the bodies are weird. i guess this might be because of it using the creature vertebrae instead of cell vertebrae? but you can put all the parts on the bodies vertically, not just the eyes, and parts dont seem to merge into one part in the middle of the symmetry

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lets try the opposite, opening a cell (value 489603236) in the creature editor

the game treats it as mouthless, and sight remains the only cross compatible model capability (curiously it plays the cell sound for it anyway). it also only plays cell idle animations

you can enter the test drive with no issues

and then if you go back the camera resets to be top down, as in the cell editor. it wont let you zoom in too close either way

i had to swtich the editor value to the creature editor and back to the cell editor just to reset the camera, and loaded another cell. it says carnivore but this is just because of the carnivore creature mouth i had here prior, the value just doesnt get updated

no matter how much other parts you put on the cell, the verbs dont appear in the top right. it does animate remarkably well when you add and remove parts though, and it stands on the floor as expected while idling

also you can still place the cell parts vertically for some reason (even if the editor is viewed top down), but theyll replace some other adjacent parts this time

look at this beaut that i cant save

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switched the edetor type to city hall again. as you can see, these are absurdly huge, and none of the textures display properly

if you click on any of the building editor part, itll instantly get sold. you can just get left with a completely empty edtor, no creature, no body parts. if you then hit test drive (i had to try it) the game, as expected, just crashes

-

i switch it into the ufo editor. its much more nicely sized. you can stack all creature parts onto the ufo parts, but they wont animate (even if you place parts)

even if you then switch back to the creature editor value, none of the animations will work still, probably since theres no skinpaint body to be found at all. im not doing it again this time but im totally expecting the game to crash if i hit test drive again

also i switched the editor value to religious air and hit new creation, but it just keeps generating the normal creature editor bodies even though it didnt change the editor type back to the creature editor anyway. the creature idles still work, placing animations will work, only the verbs are weird

[nemossubmarine]

Warhammer 40k: Wrath &Glory RP #29

The party gathers together themselves, aliens and Ferrus for a little party in the conference room. Alien booze is involved. There’s a game of Truth or Dare (mostly Truth tbh) that gets called. Larry and Alice do a little arm wrestling, which Larry totally cheats in, and Alice says that she let him win.  Coco asks Tirak what’s her favorite thing about La’awali is, and Tirak says it’s how her mind works, how she always thinks about things more deeply. Tirak dares La’awali to give her a kiss. La’awali asks Larry whether he finds Tau attractive, and Larry says that sure, they’re not bad looking. Larry asks Ferrus why he doesn’t sleep with his employers, and Ferrus tells that he used to sleep with a Captain, who, when Ferrus told him he could drop off some of his crewpeople on a war-torn planet, the Captain, apparently offended for being challenged, stranded Ferrus on the planet as well for several months. La’awali does a little dance and Coco admits to being afraid of flying beavers.

We learn that Alice has once pulled a truck off from top of a sewer grate and Alice is the only one who manages to learn a Kroot swearword. Ferrus asks what Izarak’s first time was like, and Izarak admits to maybe having some relations at the Ministrum school. Izarak asks Alice, what she would like to keep hidden from someone. Alice says she wouldn’t have liked her mom to know that she worked in the pits, but apparently her mom died young. Alice asks Ferrus what’s up with his name, and Ferrus tells that all his siblings are named after primarchs in some strange ploy to gain the family some luck (he has a sister named Leman, it’s not great). Larry tells about the worst instructor he had, a flight teacher who liked to humiliate his students.

Coco tells the tale of how she and Ace met; her family had found some eldar artifacts and invited an Inquisitor to look them over, Ace was the Inquisitor’s acolyte and that’s how Coco and Ace first came to know each other, but they started dating only after Ace had been made an Inquisitor. Coco asks Izarak what his favorite part of his job is and he says helping people. La’awali shows a hidden talent for handstands. La’awali inquires about what exactly Inquisitors do, and Coco doesn’t exactly answer the question, saying she doesn’t involve herself with Ace’s business much, but as far as she know, he studies eldar culture and artifacts. Larry tells Coco how he got to Dimmamar with Iris. Ferrus tells a bit what the Captain he used to sleep with was like (some rich kid, kind of handsome, okay in bed).

Ferrus wants to know what Tirak thinks of humans and she says that they’re oddly soft and squishy with no claws and blunt teeth, which she takes to mean that they must have been peaceful at one time, but she’s sure she could crack their skulls open very easily, except maybe Alice. Tirak asks Larry what the biggest human crime is, and Larry answers that it’s heresy (ie believing in wrong stuff). Larry asks Izarak if he has any kids, Izarak says no. Alice recounts walking in on a friend working (as a lady of the night) as the most embarrassing thing ever happened to her. Alice asks Ferrus who in this room he’d fuck. Well, he’s gay and both of the men in the room are employing him in some form, so... Larry’s apparently more his type. Ferrus asks Larry to name a person in his life that he misses the most, and when Larry is unable to name a single person, Ferrus asks whether this is the sort of game where stripping is punishment. Larry answers by taking off his shirt. He also calls out for Izarak to take off his robe (implication being he has lied on a question).

Tirak tells that she might want to be a painter if she wasn’t an engineer/soldier. Coco says that she and Ace might have kids one day, and humans do not lay eggs. Ferrus isn’t quite sure what he’d do if he weren’t a Navigator, which is what Coco asks, as he has literally no experience or knowledge with anything else. Maybe something like piloting? Settling down onto a planet is out of the question. Ferrus asks Alice what she is looking for in a woman, since that’s what they had been talking about. Alice says she would like someone smaller than her, someone quite homely and kind, someone to have a quiet life with. Alice questions Coco about who she was looking for in Asphodel, and whether she was doing it at the behest of Inquisition, as Alice had heard some rumors about that. Coco tells that she was looking for Ranan, and that the Inquisition had nothing to do with it, purely personal. La’awali says she’d like to take a holiday on a Tau planet renowned for its art. La’awali asks Larry for the meaning of his name and Larry lets her know he’s actually named Laurel, presumably after the wreath, though he isn’t sure if there’s more meaning to it than that. Alice tells Larry that she joined the gang by Julo seeing her fight in the pits. She could have become his second-hand woman immediately, but she opted to work for it instead. That’s enough of truth-or-dareing for the night. But the party is far from over.

At some point during the evening(?) Larry takes Alice aside. Alice asks how Larry is finding the party. Larry says it’s good to get to relax a bit after the ordeal they’ve been through. Larry asks about Alice’s lung and says it might be good to get a doctor to look it, at the same time as they get a doctor to take the spores off. Alice says that’s probably good, but she’ll have to save a lot of money to get it replaced. There’s a bit of confusion whether Alice actually works for Larry or not, but anyway Larry hasn’t paid her. There’s many people Larry hasn’t paid, but he’s getting in a better spot with his money, hustling, picking up stray rings here and there. You know, that sort of stuff. Anyway, he asked her to join him, because there’s something he wants to tell her, namely that he actually was educated to be a pilot, by the Imperial army and used to be a pilot for the army, a genuine navy boy. Alice takes this well, or as she says “there was a saying in the gang that all soldiers are bastards, but we’re okay with hanging around with Inquisitor’s girlfriend so I guess it’s okay” and “you might have been a bastard but you haven’t stayed a bastard”. Larry lets Alice know that the navy thinks him dead, so that might become a problem at some point. Alice lets Larry know that he can ask her for help if he needs it at any point.

Rest of the party goes pretty well. Coco gets quite talkative and friendly when drunk, but she is among the first to retire. Larry makes sure to act nice and friendly with Izarak, apparently feeling bad for calling him out. Izarak seems… not too pissed (?). 

In the morning Alice talks with Michael, wanting to know about how his acid spit affects his kissing abilities. Michael lets her know he can turn it off, so if he were to kiss someone (which he is not in the habit of doing) the receiver of the kiss would not get hurt. Alice is fascinated by this answer, as she is apparently really interested in Space Marine biology. And other biology too, as she mentions talking with Ferrus about Navigator eye makeup. Michael, somewhat confused, says he doesn’t wear makeup. Alice looks at him like he’s a bit of a dummy. Michael makes the point that he’s mostly just like humans, except bigger (somehow also him not sleeping with people gets brought up). Alice bravely resists asking about Michael’s dick size.

They eventually get to Mpandex. The Forge World is covered in a thick layer of smoke as is very common with the Mechanicus owned planets. They descend through the layer of smoke and find a factory the size of a continent and a sea. They locate an archipelago with movement and a light house. They agree that La’awali should hang around the empty islands of the archipelago, while the party drops off into the sea near the islands. They drift ashore and pretend to be unconscious, except for Alice who starts dragging people away from the water.

Pretty soon some servitors approach and grab them. They are taken inside the lighthouse, where someone begins to examine them. Alice “wakes up” at some point and comes face to face with a tech-priest, who appears to be wearing a swim-suit. He’s mostly human looking, except he lacks hair and eyebrows and appears to have cut off his own eyelids. His name is Chaerilus.

Alice claims to Chaerilus that she doesn’t remember anything, and when he gets a bit suspicious Larry miraculously wakes up and confirms her lie by also not remembering anything. Larry complains pains, saying he has some kind of tumors. Chaerilus also notes that Alice’s lung should be checked out, but she says she can manage, so Larry gets taken in first. Chaerilus asks if Larry would like to stop feeling pain, seeing that he is planning on opening his stomach up. Larry agrees and Chaerilus does something to his brain, so Larry is awake during the operation. Next he takes Alice in and does the same thing. He lets her know that she should look into getting a lung replacement through whichever faction she works for, when/if she remembers it. She asks how expensive they are, he says very.

Once Chaerilus has returned Alice everyone is a bit awake. All claim memory loss. Larry says he remembers the name Ross, but nothing else. None of the others remember anything before falling into the water. Chaerilus provides them with some Mpandex swimsuits to wear, and says that tomorrow he’ll take them to the mainland so that they can be put to use. After some prodding it turns out that Chaerilus tests how clothing fares against elements / weaponry. Mpandex is the biggest under-armor / swim garment manufacturer in the whole segmentum. The party says they’re getting tired, so Chaerilus says he’ll let them sleep and he himself grabs his wide-brimmed hat and heads out to fish.

[rpgmgames]

November’s Featured Game: Shooty and the Catfish

DEVELOPER(S): Daniel ENGINE: RPGMaker MV GENRE: Adventure, RPG WARNINGS: Course Language, Gore SUMMARY: Shooty and the Zaat are a dynamic duo solving monstrous mysteries!

Play the demo here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! Sure! So my name is Daniel, I guess technically I am an animator. I started out making flash cartoons around 2000 just for fun and became a professional animator in the advertising space around 2007. I have been working in media ever since, both in studios and as a contractor working under the Visitors From Dreams label which is also the label I use for my game development. I started dabbling with RPG Maker in around 2002 but I never got very far. Once I got into the media industry I wanted to pick it up again but with Mac being what almost all my work was done on, at home and in studio I didnt get the chance to actually get into it properly again until MV released, infact I was so excited that I purchased MV the day it dropped and immediately begun development on my first title Flatwoods. Ironically Shooty and the Catfish was developed on a PC, but I digress.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Daniel: Shooty and the Catfish is set up pretty simply. The 2 lead characters, Shooty and Zaat run a sort of monster investigation unit out of their home. They get calls to different desitinations to deal with different monster problems. I really wanted it to feel like it was set up in a similar way to a lot of cartoons from the 80s, where every episode had a pretty similar but still managed to feel like a little self contained adventure. I have thrown in some little elements of an larger narrative but they are light until the final episode. Originally the series was pitched to Frederator for Cartoon Hangover, it got a little ways into early development but then Youtube changed its algorythm and animation on the platform became a struggle and the project was dropped. I didnt want to waste all the work I had done on the concepts and so I eventually tried to find a way to work them into a game, its taken me quite a few years to get as far as I have with development, but I would be even further back if I had tried to animate it all alone. I created Flatwoods to try and get a small project out, you know, to get some experience with the engine, little did I know how much more I had to learn!

How long have you been working on your project? *Daniel: I pitched Shooty and the Catfish back in 2013 from memory, but it didn't start to take shape as the project you currently see until the last 12 months. In that sense I am incredibly happy with how quickly the game has come together.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Daniel: So many things have influenced my work its not funny... Where do I even start? Shooty and Zaat have a bit of a Finn and Jake thing going since when the project was originally pitched to Frederator and thats what they were looking for at the time. Resident Evil 4 (the closest any game has ever come to perfection imo) was the inspiration for the games ammo based combat system. Demons Souls originally derailed the project when I tried to emulate its non linear hub based design (you will notice the demo takes place on a single island instead), that created all kinds of balancing issues though so thats all been stripped back and is what lead to the decision to make the game episodic instead. One element from Demons Souls that remains in the game is a diverse mix of linear and looping level designs when it comes to mapping. The game also features towns that have layouts based on unused maps from the Pokemon GS 97 Spaceworld demo since they never made it into any of the actual games in the series. Pokemon GS also influenced the games visuals. I'm not a big RPG guy, but I played a hell of a lot of Pokemon growing up and Gen 2 is still my favorite. Trying to get MV to emulate the limitations of the Game Boy Color was quite the hurdle, I still cant believe I got it working as well as it is. I also have a lot of cameos from other peoples RPGM games, so there's that. Its a big ol' mixing pot of ideas and inspirations.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Daniel: Countless, the biggest challenge is always scope though. I originally wanted the game to be like 3 hours long tops, now its well in excess of that and that's before I have even put in meaningful NPC interactions. That's why I have decided to break the game up into episodes, each one should be around an hour which is much more my jam. I don't have a lot of free time so I tend to gravitate towards games that are tight and short, I think that's why I am so determined to keep this game in nice manageable chunks. Now that the game is shorter I don't need levelling so I am starting to tone down the RPG elements. One change always leads to another, but episode one is getting damn close to completion. I say this before I have even had the chance to announce the game's going to be episode on my own blog, ha ha. Episode 1 January, The Great Spore Chore! Keep your eyes out for it!

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Daniel: As mentioned above a lot has changed, I feel the biggest change was when I tried to move the game from being episodic into one adventure after playing through a bunch of other RPGM games for ideas, it all started to feel a bit aimless and the storytelling techniques I had planned when it was episodic weren't translating well as the game progressed. So I guess now the game is episodic again we have come full circle! So many ideas seemed good on paper but ended up not really being fun or adding anything in practice. Oh yeah, and the transition from Game Boy green to color was a big one based on feedback from the demo. Some people were finding it hard to tell what elements were interactable, doors in particular, I hope that color has helped minimize that issue. Key items will also have an animation on them so they are hard to miss. I'm not a fan of hunting for items in big maps, it's certainly not something I want to subject people too in my own projects.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Daniel: This project has had a few key people involved. Outside of myself I have worked with 2 musicians. One is an old school friend who did music for my animations back in the early 2000's. He has contributed a bunch of really cool EDM which makes up most of the games OST. On top of that there is also a number of optional bosses (one per episode) that have music composed by Secret Agent Ape who worked on Soma Spirits and a bunch of other upcoming games. I have been really lucky to get to work with such rad dudes.

What is the best part of developing the game? *Daniel: I love designing enemy battlers, my process usually involves me drawing a weird shape, sticking some eyes and a big goofy nose on it and trying to come up with a stupid pun to use for a name while listening to bands like Yes or Klaatu. It's bliss. I have a lot of people ask me why I have limited myself in terms of resolution and color palette, and it comes down to one of the important things I told myself when I got into game making as a hobby was that I would stop if it ever started to feel like work. I spend my days doing heavy visual effects and compositing, sometimes doing complex character animation. I want to keep that stuff as far away from my game development as possible. Ironically working within the incredibly restrictive limitations of the Game Boy has ended up being incredibly liberating and keeps things feeling fun as opposed to feeling like more of what I do all day to pay the bills.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Daniel: I always enjoy checking out demo's of upcoming games. Both Heartbeat and Virgo and the Zodiac's demos blew me away from a technical standpoint on the MV front. I still find it hard to believe those demos were made with the same engine I'm using. I guess it really shows what can be done when the engine is in capable hands. I wish I had more time to play actual full releases, I mean Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass just came out and I have no idea when, if ever I will have the free time to play it because its such a commitment. I feel like I am missing out on some great stuff.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Daniel: I guess I relate to different characters in different ways. Slim Grim is the one who hands out assignments to Shooty and Zaat, he is pretty much done with life, over people and the world itself, I think thats something we all have a bit of inside of us. Shooty is a very positive individual, his solutions to most problems is a bullet with a smile, and I think theres a bit of that in all of us as well. Zaats a bit of a cheeky smart arse, so I guess in a lot of ways I am most like her as a person. One of the episodes also features Gerkinman who is and has been a sort of self insert in my work since 2001 so I guess technically I relate to him most... ha ha, but thats cheating!

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Daniel: I wish I had done a better job keeping the project focused. I feel like a good few months were spent making the game bigger in ways it didnt need to be.

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Daniel: All of my games are loosely connected, taking place in the same world. None of them tie directly into each other, im not big on the cinematic universe concept that seems so popular right now, but events in my previous 2 releases and the 5 planned episodes of Shooty and the Catfish are loosely connected in ways people who take the time to look can find. They are also tied into around 17 years worth of animated shorts I have released. I have no plans on stopping now!

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Daniel: Well, theres quite a few things... Mapping for all 5 episodes (outside of towns) is complete, so when Episode 1 is done I will be immediately rolling into Episode 2. I am aiming to have an episode out every 2 months which should be doable with so much of the game already finished. I also have a couple of short films I am looking forward to being able to invest some time into, things have slowed down in recent months due to freelance but I am eager to get to animate some of my own work again. I am also eager to see the comments sections on Lets Plays. Both Flatwoods and Hazmat got a bit of Lets Play action and a couple of those have some pretty substantial comment sections. The amount of theories people try to put together for these projects is staggering. I could never write something as entertaining as what the speculations in these comment sections contain in terms of what my games mean, it cracks me up and I find it quite flattering that random people have put more thought into elements of my stories then I have. Makes me want to keep things deliberately vague just to encourage more of it. Lastly I will be releasing all the build files for the project so if anyone wants to make fangames or whatever they have direct access to all of the core files used to build the games. Im a big fan of the concept of a mod community, and while RPGM doesnt exactly allow for that, id love to see people do similar things to my work as whats been done with a lot of LISA fan games.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Daniel: I don't know about being afraid exactly. I am curious about how my business model for the episodic releases will go over. I was planning on releasing them at $1 an episode and $4 for the bundle when it's all complete. I know some people think thats still charging too much, but some people have also told me im not charging enough and that it lowers price standards accross the board for RPGM content. The way I see it if I can cover the costs of Steam and the music I commissioned then I've done alright since this project was for fun, but that's just me.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Daniel: Just keep at it and set yourself small goals. If your working on a big project break it up into manageable sections. Take things one map at a time, ya know what I mean?

Question from last month's featured dev @overcast-rpg: If you could choose an RPG Maker gamedev to release another game; which one would you choose and why? *Daniel: Oh that's an easy one, The Catamites. I love Space Funeral, it's easily my favorite game made in the engine, and while The Catamites has developed countless games since its release, they have all been in other engines. It would be fun to see them return to the engine after all they have learned about game design since Space Funeral's release and to see what they would do.

We mods would like to thank Daniel for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Shooty and the Catfish if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[randomsporefacts]

first post of 2025 heyy

continuing flora paints research, applied onto a creature with cheat engine and compared to a normal creature paint where applicable

fe_skinpaint_florabase_morinda has no counterpart. this one was actually a cut creature paint! the name morinda comes from a tree genus though and the paint resembles plant cells viewed under a microscope

you can see the creature paint here in the lower right of the selection

fe_skinpaint_florabase_platesLarge, they werent lying that plates can large

fe_skinpaint_florabase_platesSmall, seems to apply the plates more uniformly across the creature (or plant) but theyre so big its hard to tell

fe_skinpaint_florabase_shortfur

fe_skinpaint_florabase_snakescales

fe_skinpaint_florabase_spotted

fe_skinpaint_florabase_striated has no counterpart. the default color is also black !

fe_skinpaint_florabase_valueGradientDark, which is a lot paler at the top in the flora paint actually

fe_skinpaint_florabase_valueGradientLight, also darker at the top than the creature paint. both of the flora value gradient paints have stronger contrasts than their creature counterparts and i think i like them better like this?

fe_skinpaint_florabase_vittatum2 which ... barely applied anything, but you can see the larch scales texture better that way i suppose because it just applied that and thats it

fe_skinpaint_florabase_vittatum3, same thing

fe_skinpaint_florabase_walrus, the flora paint also has the default color as black instead

fe_skinpaint_florabase_zebra

fe_skinpaint_florabase_zebroid

also referenced but nonexistent are fe_skinpaint_florabase_quilted, florabase_rubberband, florabase_tempered, florabase_vgcats, florabase_vittatum1

and thats it for the base paints. coat paints will be in another post

[randomsporefacts]

cheat engine experiments to see creature animations (replacing the sing 1 animation (0x04DD7380) with hashes from Spore_Game.package\0x00006F14\0xF8CC4670.tlsa)

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7

starting with the animations for the unlocking water vehicles cutscene, which is completely unused in final. the ship in a bottle model (that only wound up in adventures) might be related to it

what in the world is _final/tribe/trg_death_below2 ???

also theres grasper overlays, so creatures can technically play several animations at once and these just get used for certain tools or other handheld objects

also i love these tribal idles where two creatures interact with each other

[randomsporefacts]

as seen with cheat engine, the currently selected color of a creature or something other is just the hex of the color, though it doesnt work for the default (rightmost) color for some reason. here for example the selected color is #F8BF43

i can search for it with cheat engine, and then change the color to something else, and then back to this orangish yellow so this reduces it to the values that didnt change. if i then change the color to an adjacent yellow #F2E76D, then you can see how one of the values changed to match it

it doesnt seem like you can change it to do anything with it though, as it ends up resetting no matter what i do with the colors here. but its kind of interesting to see how it actually stores colors

if anyone knows if theres a way to force a creature to have any arbitrary hex color you want in vanilla with cheat engine, let me know

[randomsporefacts]

cheat engine experiments to see creature animations (replacing the sing 1 animation (0x04DD7380) with hashes from Spore_Game.package\0x00006F14\0xF8CC4670.tlsa)

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 (15 hour late edit i forgot to link part 6)

curiously _final/creature/epic_com_spit_v1 also makes the actual spit part spit too. i wouldnt have noticed that if i hadnt been using a creature with spit!

the creature physically walks around during the onfire animation, if you time it right you can probably make it walk far out of the editor boundaries but i didnt feel like it

the herbi_inCity animations? which suggests these are animations for droping a herbivore creature insie of a city, but curiously one of them plays a voice clip from the sapient mouths too? then theres separate ones that are defined as "sent_inCity". i think this is the only name in the game i remember for all the sapient creatures being grouped together. anyway those are also used for citizens, not just any random creature you dropped in there theres also animations for omnivores specifically. normally space stage doesnt differentiate between omnivores and carnivores

[randomsporefacts]

resuming the queue sorry for the hold up

some flora paints, applied onto a creature with cheat engine, and compared to the creature paint counterparts where applicable. the flora paints have default colros but im not selecting them because its too bright of a blue usually

fe_skinpaint_florabase_amigurumi and ce_skinpaint_base_amigurumi

fe_skinpaint_florabase_amphibian and ce_skinpaint_base_amphibian

fe_skinpaint_florabase_auratus and florabase_bark have no counterpart

fe_skinpaint_florabase_blankMatte. i know it looks like i have the same paint selected but i actually replace the hash for ce_skinpaint_base_blankMatte with whatever other paint i want

fe_skinpaint_florabase_blankShiny. you can guess what the filename of the creature paint is, so i wont be including it from now on

fe_skinpaint_florabase_eggshell

fe_skinpaint_florabase_giraffe

fe_skinpaint_florabase_gradient. curiously the flora one has a more uniformly applied tint

fe_skinpaint_florabase_granite

fe_skinpaint_florabase_leather

fe_skinpaint_florabase_longFur. since the flora one is larger it takes far less time to generate the texture

fe_skinpaint_florabase_lumpy

fe_skinpaint_florabase_mantelloid

fe_skinpaint_florabase_marble

fe_skinpaint_florabase_melt. the flora paint actually has a different default color, black instead of blue

additionally fe_skinpaint_florabase_banded, florabase_fishScales are referenced somewhere but dont actually exist as skinpaints, thus they cant be shown here

anyway more will be in another post

[randomsporefacts]

more flora paints compared to their creature counterparts via cheat engine

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_waldo

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_washMatte, actually colors just the underside of the creature like the gooUnderside detail paint, but its not shiny unlike that one! also the default color is black again

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_washShiny basically is just gooUnderside. they do cover less area than gooUnderside does though

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_zebra, dont really know whats going on here

now onto detail paints

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_amigurumi seems to cover the whole creature (or plant), the creature counterpart only covers the limbs

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_banded has no counterpart. covering the whole creature instead of just the limbs is going to be a common theme here. also another black default paint

not gonna look at fe_skinpaint_floradetail_blank its going to be the same

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_clydesdale

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_cow, not sure if this aligns with the coat counterpart of the cow paint

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_giraffe, another one with a black default paint. no creature counterpart

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_giraffeLimbs, covers the whole creature or plant (but including limbs this time) just less densely than the previous paint

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_giraffeTopside, also no counterpart but theres ce_skinpaint_detail_giraffeUnderside which itself has no flora counterpart. for some reason this is barely on the topside and mostly just affects the limbs

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_gooLimbs, actually colors the entire creature (the top halves of the limbs are largely uncolored though) and takes forever to generate the texture

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_gooTopside, no creature counterpart, creatures instead have gooUnderside. as i mentioned earlier gooUnderside is already similar to fe_skinpaint_floracoat_washShiny, its just a coat paint instead

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_graniteLimbs, covers the whole creature again and expresses this gradient more strongly

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_halftoneLimbs, covers the top of the creature with larger spots!

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_kidney, actually covers the whole creature unlike the kidney coat paint (which in flora covered the limbs), but with shorter stripes than the kidney coat paint that creatures have, and its positioned differently

fe_skinpaint_floradetail_lumpySides, actually only covers the limbs

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_walrus, floradetail_gooSides, floradetail_graniteTopside, floradetail_halftoneTopside, floradetail_lateral (some of which would have had no creature counterpart too) are referenced but nonexistent

more paints in another post

[randomsporefacts]

cheat engine experiments to see creature animations (replacing the sing 1 animation (0x04DD7380) with hashes from Spore_Game.package\0x00006F14\0xF8CC4670.tlsa)

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5

i know its been a while...

great visual in _final/civ/c2s_walkin. your guy just collapses into a pile when entering the spaceship creator thing

_final/csa/csa_gif_punch has rather different sounds from final. curiously also the csa gif animations really ARE just that fast

also theres the space comm animations viewed from the side. no voice clips so you have to pretend you hear them

[randomsporefacts]

more flora paints viewed via cheat engine and compared to the creature paints. now i start the coat paints

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_banded. see how it applies onto the fin part too, this is the kind of reason i actually had it on the creature all along (then i removed it and forgot to put it back)

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_blank looks exactly the same so im not including it

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_cow

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_granite, the flora paint covers a larger portion of the creature

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_halftone, the first big difference here! it goes on the BOTTOM of the creature (with larger spots as all the flora paints are larger) rather than the top. accidentally resembling the halftone underside detail paint (which flora dont have, but they have a separate halftone topside detail paint, i dont know why they did it like that)

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_kidney, the first limb paint! which is rather curious that its a coat paint. creatures have a kidney detail paint, and flora do have a counterpart to that too, so i dont know whats going on here

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_pebble, which also has reversed direction from its creature counterpart (so it also colors the top of the feet), and its more bumpier looking

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_platesSmall

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_polkadot, much larger spots and they dont seem to have the gradient with the middle being lighter

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_ridgesLateral..?

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_rubberband, actually applies on top of the creature instead of going around it. wish that was a normal creature paint too

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_stripesLL, had to attach a longer leg for clarity. seems like this paint only goes on the limbs, also the stripes are in the wrong direction for its name

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_stripesML, which has horizontal stripes too but instead covers the top half of the limb! thats unique, theres no creature paints that cover the top half of the limb specifically!

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_suckers has no counterpart but resembles the suckers detail paint

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_toupee, the flora paint is like the paint that takes the MOST time to apply on a creature this simple (and its not like the normal toupee paint doesnt take a long time to apply already)

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_turtle, also seems to cover the whole creature instead of going around it

fe_skinpaint_floracoat_amigurumi, floracoat_crocodile, floracoat_fishScales, floracoat_giraffe, floracoat_giraffeBorder, floracoat_gooStripe, floracoat_lizardo, floracoat_mantella, floracoat_melt, floracoat_platesLarge, floracoat_ridgesTiger are referenced but nonexistent

more paints in another post again

[randomsporefacts]

yet more cheat engine experiments. i resume looking at the unused building editor paints by replacing the hashes for one of the existing ones with hashes for other paints found in Spore_Game.package\skinPaint_script~

theres like 15 whole bamboo paints and each one is unused. heres be_basic_bamboo_01 to 06. these would have been really nice to have ... also they all seem to have the same colors

heres be_basic_brick_large_01. yeah

be_basic_burlap_01, actually works but looks kind of strange. also i finally figured to take a screenshot with obs instead of togglecaptureui ingame this time, so the icon in the top right will actually show. oops

be_basic_leaf_01, would have been really nice to see but the tint on the second color is WAY too subtle

heres be_basic_leaf_02 and be_basic_leaf_03 as well. theyre the same though so only one image

be_basic_pebble_stone_02 is rather interesting looking

be_basic_plain_wood_01 to 03, theres 15 in total of these as well and theyd all be useful it feels like

be_basic_stucco_03; note that be_basic_stucco_03_with_trim is used which i put on one of the blocks here. the noise pattern itself aligns between the paints

be_basic_thatching_01 and 02, theres 5 of these. its a very noisy looking paint (with sharp contrast) i do kind of get why that was removed

be_basic_wood_01 and 02, theres 6 of these

unfortunate that be_giftwrap_01 doesnt work, and other paints that im not showing because they lack textures and dont work

heres be_matted_01, it still doesnt work but at least its a different color?? note that the selected colors are still green and black. i think its just incredibly overexposed

be_new_shake_roof_A and D. of that group B and C are used

BE_paint_stone_01 and 02 strangely carries over the texture from the previous used paint, but uses different colors?

be_simple_01. its the first unused paint so far here to only use one color!

unfortunately be_simple_02 to 04 dont seem to work, but 05 does. its like 01 but shinier

theres so much tech paints already and a lot of them are still unused! strangely all of these here (aside from 06, which is used) dont seem to work despite having textures in animations~

or thats what i thought... but they DO seem to apply textures, its just that the colors are all wrong. this is be_tech_41, which does actually work remarkably well

and heres be_tech_01 to 05, and 07 (06 is skipped due to being used already) . sorry for the composite image i hit the image limit again

theres still even more paints to look at so i might do that later

[randomsporefacts]

cheat engine experiments to see creature animations (replacing the sing 1 animation with hashes from Spore_Game.package\0x00006F14\0xF8CC4670.tlsa)

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

(3:25) the taming animations are the most curious, especially that it says give_apple there. i think this is used when you give a creature a bone in final. the normal creature stage fruit are called apples internally sometimes so theres that?

(8:36) a carnivore idle animation for chasing a fly?

[randomsporefacts]

follow up to last post with cheat engine experiments

i identified which paints and paint themes were used (based on which ones had paint icons), looking at Spore_Game.package\skinPaint_script~

so now i can actually view the unused paints! except for flora paints because theres just too much of those and all the flora paints deserve a separate post

SO! heres ce_skinpaint_base_banded... kind of, it gives up trying to render and just keeps the previous paint

but the fun thing is you can switch to another paint and then back to ce_skinpaint_base_banded quickly, so it interrupts trying to render the previous paint and just. keeps it like that.

so you can use this one to see how paints look unfinished, with all of their specular maps and such, but no bump maps since they get rendered as the last texture

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next is ce_skinpaint_base_vittatum1. vittatum 2 through 4 are these paints

so itd be easy to imagine theres a fourth one that keeps the legs from the first (blue) vittatum paint, but the body coloring from the second vittatum (green) paint

same issue as the banded paint though. unfortunately. we dont actually get to see the forbidden vittatum1 paint

this is its file, but skinpaint_base_vittatum1 as an actual paint doesnt seem to exist, which i assume is also what happens to the previous paint. so it fails to render. shame!

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next is ce_skinpaint_detail_quilted. same issue as the previous paints but it seems to just be blank outright. it does color the detail color the same tealish color though

cells have one unused skinpaint, which is cl_skinpaint_cell_amigurumi. it similarly also fails to render but is colored a light green this time

i also couldnt get the flora paints working. ok so that was kind of disappointing ...

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anyway i replace the hashes for be_theme_default to load unused material editor paints

so if you change the paint hash to a hash of another paint on the same page this time it just selects both. this is also true for creatures

heres just be_theme_a_plain_05. it actually worked! thats something!

buildings actually have way more unused paints AND paint themes than any other editor, even vehicles have more paints. heres be_theme_a_plain_07, be_theme_a_plain_08, be_theme_a_plain_10

the plain ones are kind of boring so lets see be_theme_basic_01. all of the be_theme_basic paints are unused

they go all the way up to be_theme_basic_18

ok lets get into something REALLY interesting. lets see BE_theme_cake and BE_theme_chococake! from the cake editor!

BE_theme_crystal is... not what i expected. but it appears to use unused paints?

be_theme_d_default_01 is similar to the normal default paint theme but its shiny!

be_theme_hero_01 and BE_theme_insect (which is the same as BE_theme_orc) are also not what i expected. but they also seem to use unused paints

be_theme_tech_a and be_theme_tech_a1. second one is pretty cool but im not sure what the relation between these is besides having the same roof paint and color

now theres paints that dont have a be_ prefix. heres castleCrimGold, castleMarSand and castleSlateGold

heres what greytheme actually is

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so thats all of the most interesting paint themes, but you can also replace the normal paints and theres a LOT of unused ones. but finding an address is ridiculously difficult for paints as opposed to paint themes for some reason. you get a LOT more hits for these hashes. luckily the address is always one of the last ones so i can view it

for example heres... be_bank_01. it doesnt work very well but it sure looks cool

same results with the other be_bank paints except theyre less shiny. i think none of them have textures

heres be_base_wall_trim_10. it actually works! its strangely pink?

i hit the image limit so more in a couple days

[randomsporefacts]

even more cheat engine experiments! but i managed to find a way to replace skinpaints with other skinpaints in the creature editor

the way i did this is i searched for the hash for the blank matte skinpaint (0xC3BA33F7) in cheat engine, and kept changing each one to a hash of another skinpaint until it worked. it changes the paint when you select the skinpaint again

i dont know if this address is gonna work (it changed for me on a restart, is it supposed to do that???) but here it is

so you can have this great visual

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but you can do more with this! for example heres what happens if you replace the hash for a base paint with the hash for a coat paint. i applied the walrus paint previously, so it only just replaces the coat paint of the creature

this wont let you have two coat paints at once though. it just replaces it outright

you can also swap it with detail and theme paints perfectly fine

also if you set it to an incorrect hash (like 12345678) then nothing happens when you click the paint. it gets selected but doesnt change the creature. so incorrect values are safe

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cell paints work!

and, more curiously, so do the flora paints since flora editor is a skinpaint editor too! heres fe_skinpaint_florabase_bark

the paint mode doesnt work in the flora editor (without mods anyways) so this is the only way to actually view them

heres fe_skinpaint_floratheme_19

fe_skinpaint_floratheme_05 and fe_skinpaint_floratheme_06, which are the only two with colors

fe_skinpaint_floratheme_06 has a very interesting detail paint! it covers the whole creature (or well. plant) and has some interesting hueshifting (also the base color here is grey)

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i tested skinpaint_tribalIdentity (which was found in an effect), not selectable in any editor, however it didnt work here. unfortunately. seems like its another layer of paint above base, coat and detail, so it doesnt work here

tried changing it to the hash of greytheme (Spore_Game.package\skinPaint_script~\greytheme.prop), crashed the game and only just realised that greytheme is actually a vehicle paint theme. oops! so dont try paints from material editors in the skinpaint editors i guess!

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so i wasnt able to find any further skinpaint paints in skinPaint_script~ (since this is the one that seems to have all of the actual skinpaints that will work) so the flora paints are the most interesting things i can mess around with

so i made a creature with fe_skinpaint_floratheme_05

but sadly it doesnt actually save normally. it doesnt throw an error or anything. its just not saving

i tried out the thing here though that lets you save any creation and i can confirm it worked

but spore doesnt like it

so i saved a separate version with roughly equivalent creature paints (but i kept the same colors). its still using the colors from the flora paint theme! this is just cool

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you can use this to apply creature paints onto cells

however coat and detail paints dont work on cells, including in paint themes. you can turn it into a detail paint and click it and the game DOES rerender the cell texture, but then it doesnt actually use the paint (this is ce_skinpaint_coat_crocodile, which is meant to appear on the creature's back). it does pull the color from the paint though

oh well! heres fe_skinpaint_florabase_morinda on a cell

(nice rhyme)

cells with creature paints also cant save unfortunately so i wasnt able to save this thing. even after changing it to a cell paint ... rip to fuzzy punky

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i did actually identify some unused paints looking at skinPaint_script~ but theyll be in the next post

[randomsporefacts]

cheat engine experiments to see creature animations (replacing the sing 1 animation with hashes from Spore_Game.package\0x00006F14\0xF8CC4670.tlsa)

part 1, part 2, part 3

responding to these tags so im repeating animations for it

the first one does play voice clips corresponding to what sounds do the mouths make in tribal stage!

as for the latter it doesnt seem to work with outfitted creatures

anyway the cell to creature cinematic might have an unused animation (gen_cell_clg2crg_monster)? that corresponds to unused voice clips maybe. its hard to know what the animation is though bc it doesnt work very well in the creature editor