#spore datamining

[randomsporefacts]

(thanks to A-xesey for linking portfolios i hadnt seen before in the spore discord!)

some of the achievement art from John Cimino's site

theyre flat-colored, and higher resolution than in the game itself (but instead are jpeg compressed)

of particular note is this pollinator achievement, which was not tied to any stage in specific judging by the colors

its files arent found in the game anymore, but its description is still present in Text.package/locale~/achievements.locale

# alg-pollinator - achievementdescription 0x06529c6e One of your creations has appeared in 20 other players' universes #alg-pollinator - achievementtitle 0x06529c46 Pollinator

-

side note John Cimino also made these spore animations. the second one is known from a swf from the old spore site, but the audio here is actually much higher quality than in the swf

and is responsible for all of this creature 2d art found all over spores prototypes (some of these here are recognizeable from the space prototype more or less!)

i never realised it at the time but of COURSE the achievement images were made by the same person who made these 2d creatures!

also according to A Brief History of Spore by Chaim Gingold, John Cimino's art influenced what the creatures would look like in the final game

The decision to incorporate the character design aesthetic of an animator marked a turning point in the visual sensibility of the project. The genetic building blocks of Spore’s life forms, the creature parts, adopted the appeal and personality of John Cimino’s creature designs. And, imagining how Pixar might visually treat a film about bacteria, we put eyes on our single celled organisms. Our planets transformed into expansive landscapes, but retained a toy like sensibility. We made the galaxy more colorful. The entire team became vigilant, seeking opportunities to inject charm and wit into the project, producing the dry goofball humor that characterizes Maxis games.

this article really good read in general, a lot of really interesting insights about spore's development. and check out John Cimino's concept art too!

[danieyells]

Datamining Lyca's character story chats:

Since Lyca can't read(pretty sure he uses TTS for texts you send and receive) he has a hard time with his class timetable and finding the classrooms

He didn't consider that your sense of smell isn't as good as his so you couldn't describe what the location he needed to go to smelled like

When you try and tell him who teaches what he says to describe the person's face not what they do. You say you wouldn't know how to do so without drawing a picture of each of them, but if you say you can't draw well Lyca says that drawing is easy.

Lyca didn't know there were people who hated drawing

Lyca is in fact an incredible artist, even with just a pen! He's very confident when it comes to drawing. When he draws someone it looks just like them.

Subaru had to tell Lyca that he has to wear clothes every day or he'll get suspended(Rui said he'd probably get arrested)

Rui can apparently kill anything by touching it, even mold spores???? Rui didn't you know you can't kill mushrooms in a way that matters?

Rui explained what 'neglect play' was to Lyca "When you leave someone alone but like, with love😘" and Lyca said that's what Neros did to him oh gosh

Lyca needed to be taught how to use the cafeteria anomaly that provides food. Lyca did not understand the concept of saving a seat and pissed someone off by sitting in the seat they saved for a friend.

Lyca does not understand how to eat spaghetti. It is too long. :(

[howwillyoucreatetheuniverse]

more ripped space icons, i've always loved the first interplanary drive one :3

[ramonekemono]

And here it is, my first ever released #Spore mod, "Ramone Kemono's Sex Pit" featuring my #TF2 #Engineer in a Bayonetta + Nier 2B inspired dress! This adds 28 animations into the game, including #Bayonetta and stripper dances. Here's the download link.

This mod includes recently datamined Bayonetta dances thanks to @CreativeHandler and @/UmbranRosa, stripper dances and some experimental stuff, with full finger and eye movements! Will be updated with more dances and improve old ones as time goes on uwu.

All the songs played during the dances are given credits to their original artists in the dance name popup. Please look them up and follow their works!

[cosmikazie]

i love how spore flips the narrative on the trope of "alien sightings" and stuff, in multiple ways. as your creature is evolving and stuff you start to come across spaceships abducting nearby creatures and evidence of ancient civilizations, but as soon as you enter space stage that mystery is out the window. if spore were any other game, though, this mystery about aliens would linger forever, and people would be datamining the shit out of the game finding evidence for ALIENS!!!! and UFOs!!!!!! and stuff. instead, what's the mystery that lingers around?

humans.

humans are the aliens of spore. when you get to the center of the galaxy, a little spaceship speaks to you in a language that's unlike any you've heard before, but yet seems familiar. they tell you to go to "the third rock from Sol," and when you do you get an achievement called "manifest destiny." your captain knows this planet is important, but you can't put your finger on why. it's got vaguely different terrain from any other planet you've seen before, but other than that it just looks like any other T1 planet. and yet, it's still morbidly interesting. like something was here long ago and is now gone, or something amazing is about to happen.

the end of spore is not about the earth meeting the heavens. it's about the heavens meeting the earth. and i think that's amazing.

[athelari]

4. second shot

Day 4/7 of the Mass Effect Trilogy Week : Lore. 890 words; angst? not really?; ME2 (Grunt: Rite of Passage); Shepard’s a Sole Survivor, expect mentions of Akuze; cw: trauma/mild panic? just to be safe.

Mikaela Shepard wipes the sweat off her brow before grabbing another handful of thermal clips from the ammo box. The supply is dwindling, but she reckons there’s still enough for a few more rounds. Some of the available cover is dented, and the last Harvester soaked up a fair amount of their firepower before going down, but they’ve got this. She reloads her rifle and chances a questioning glance at Garrus; he nods at her and hunkers back down behind his designated spot.

Then, the ground wobbles under their feet.

“Feel that?” Grunt mutters, glancing around him and sniffing the air. “Everything is… shaking.”

He steps into the open ground, shotgun at the ready. She knows that glint in his eyes: not quite blood rage, but as close as he could get without compromising his tactical side. Whatever is coming, he's ready for it. He doesn't yet know what it will be, but his mind and body are prepared to tackle it headlong.

She, on the other hand, knows what it is. And she isn't ready to face it again by any means.

Pitch black. Everything is pitch black. “Dyatlova! Report!” Tremors, like fighting in an earthquake. Heart thunders against ribcage, rapport of a thousand cannons. Foot slips on something wet, and she falls. Smell of blood, metallic, stomach-turning. It's coming back. It's coming back. “Jamaal! Toombs! Anyone, say something!”

Gunfire. She startles, turning just in time to see Garrus firing into the distance. A single bluish… tendril? Tentacle? Appendage, at any rate—has emerged and is wriggling like an oversized worm. No, not a worm; like the light on an anglerfish's head. Is it a lure? Do they lure their prey? A laugh, bilious and brittle, gurgles up her throat. Is that what they are? Mere prey, baited into being that monstrosity's next meal?

Grunt cocks his shotgun and heads toward the appendage. She darts forward and seizes him, fingers clenching around his armour. “Don't bother,” she hears herself say, as if from across a room. “It'll come to us.”

He shoots her a quizzical look, but, to his credit, complies without complaint. Garrus nearly fires another round at the appendage before it vanishes, slinking back into the subterranean. Does he recognise what they're up against? He probably does, she realises. They've faced a few together, back in the day, but always in the Mako. Never on foot. Why would they face one on foot? What kind of industrial-grade insanity is it, facing one on foot?

Her hands are shaking. Her boots, nailed to the floor. She looks straight ahead, but she can't see a thing.

���Prefer habitats with little to no atmosphere, diet consists of ores and minerals consumed directly from terrain, spores capable of surviving interplanetary transit…” Fingers tapping against table, punctuated by a sharp breath. “Fascinating. Also, did some minor datamining, found this in Cerberus archives. Thought you'd like to know.” Datapad exchanges hands. One glance at the title, and her heart plummets.

A deafening rumble. The ground ahead splinters, severs, separates. Acid climbs her throat, and then she hears it: that rushing in her ears, like waves breaking against jagged rocks. Her breath solidifies in her lungs. Her hands turn to lead.

“Hey.”

Garrus' face swims into view, ice-blue eyes searching her with undisguised concern. She swallows, but her throat is dry as sandpaper and she nearly chokes instead. “We got this, Shepard. We're krantt, remember? We've got you covered.”

She glances at Grunt, ducked behind a concrete pillar and entirely oblivious to the scene playing out behind him; at Garrus, his mouth pressed shut and his trigger finger twitching idly against the side of his rifle. The thought douses her like a bucket of ice water: she's not alone, not this time. She has her krantt with her. And not just any krantt, either, but the best in the whole damned galaxy.

(The first time it happened, she watched her squad die. Not this time. This time, they've got her back, and she has theirs. For years she desperately wished for a second shot, to turn back the hands of time and fix what went wrong. This is it. She won't back down now. And she’d sooner die before she lets any harm come upon her krantt.)

Head bowed, hands clasped. People swarming like rachni, flitting and criss-crossing beneath garish neon. Voice a soft susurrus, barely afloat over the bustling din. “Amonkira, Lord of Hunters, grant that my hands be steady, my aim be true, and my feet swift. And should the worst come to pass—”

“—grant me forgiveness.”

Just as the last word leaves her mouth, the thresher maw spills forth, breaking through the ground like a whale breaching the surface. Its carapace glimmers in the bright Tuchanka sun; its fluorescent blue tongue flailing wildly against the sky. It emits a loud roar, rattling the pebbles and reverberating in her skull.

She hears Grunt laugh, loud and wild, like a child with a birthday present. Garrus catches her eye, and she returns his sharp nod. Gone is the terror that settled in her gut and petrified her limbs. There's no fear, no rage, not even the thrill of anticipation. There is only cold, glassy focus, and the knowledge of one more target to kill.

She raises her rifle, peers through its scope, and fires.

[randomsporefacts]

the default awareness level of creature actors added to adventures (specifically when you add a new actor, not change an existing one to another creature) will depend on the amount of eyes they have

for example, a creature with no eyes will have no awareness either

a creature with 1 individual eye part (which can be one centered eye or two paired eyes) will have a vision of 10. and more eyes will bump that up in increments of 10

heres some research. i tested and it does actually seem to be dependent on the amount of eyes, not the individual eye parts with their dna costs. these are all creatures with 4 eyes, but they keep the same exact awareness value, regardless of the four eyes being centered and taking up more dna points, or them being asymmetric, or not

five eyes (4 asymmetric & 1 centered here) will also have an awareness of 20

and same with six eyes regardless of arrangement

in fact, froofa has 14 (7 pairs) eyes, and the awareness level stayed at 20

so i made a creature with as many eye parts as possible, that being 40 (20 pairs). that DID put the awareness level at 50, so it doesnt actually cap at 20. but im not sure at what amount of eyes it changes then

another theory is that it might be dependent on the cumulative modelCapabilityEye value of the eye parts. some eye parts actually have higher model capability eye values, specifically those closer to the right part of the column

it doesnt seem to apply with creatures that only have two eye parts, as both of these guys have the same awareness level of 10

but it does have SOME sort of effect. amarken here has 1 pair of eyes from the 4th column, 2 pairs of eyes + 2 additional center eyes from the 2nd column (and also a pair of ears if that matters); and thats enough to ALSO give it an awareness level of 50

so that suggests that the choice of eyes isnt purely cosmetic, technically??? even though they unlock in complete random order in creature stage, instead of only unlocking a part if the part on the same row from the previous column has been unlocked

this might also affect the npcs in creature stage though im not certain. in any case it affects the default values in adventures surprisingly enough

also it might possibly be based on modelCapabilitySense anyways. having other sense parts, such as ears and noses and antennae, but no eyes, doesnt actually seem to add to the awareness range at all; and all the eye parts have modelCapabilitySense, but the other sense parts actually dont! however this value stays at 1 for every eye part, and amarken seems to show that there DO seem to be actual levels for eyes

the ears instead have modelCapabilityEar with its own differing values (also 1 to 4), but im not sure if this is ever actually used. the noses and antennae have no model capabilities to speak of beyond the cuteness ones (also goes with mean values, almost every part has one of those and it might maybe be used? theyre more hidden part values)

[randomsporefacts]

0xFED95F53.rw4 is an unused egg model that looks quite weird

heres its texture

versus the normal foodpile_egg_01.rw4 and its texture

as well as the egg platter and its texture

so, as you can see, the unused egg model actually uses the texture from the egg platter, but the uvs dont match it

heres the uvs of the unused egg model

which actually perfectly matches the texture from the foodpile egg

and you can see this for yourself if you just import the right texture

so it looks like they accidentally caught the unused egg model when blanket updating the textures for egg platters, but they left the egg foodpiles alone since i guess theyd be too much work to redo? so they still use these old textures

the same old flat platter also exists in the texture for the meat foodpile, but not seaweed or fruit foodpiles

its also in the thief bag texture, which still retains how the platter used to look like

theres some screenshots of the early flat platters too (source), including old fruit and fish models

also there IS actually one with gift boxes??? this is related to a months old post where spore wiki claimed that the giftwraps were used for tribal stage initially but i couldnt find any proof until now

[randomsporefacts]

as seems evident from the 2005 gdc spore video (source), graspers originally could be placed anywhere on the body of a creature. which the willosaur uses, since it has a grasper on the tip of its tail (not a limb!)

as for how it animates, the grasper tail just swings back and forth walking as if the grasper doesnt affect the animation at all, but when its actually using the grasper it animates as expected with no issue

though it doesnt use the grasper to drag the corpse around

in any case. can this be replicated in the final game?

the graspers have a bool modelHasBallConnector. i made a package that copies the grasper template (CreatureEditorTemplates/CreatureGrasperTemplate.prop) to set that bool to false. this should affect all graspers

and what it did is that it didnt let me place htem anywhere period. also seems like it has graspers attached to the arm parts be rotated weird when initially placed

i also tried setting modelActsLikeGrasper to false, didnt help (the arms with graspers did still animate like normal too...??)

so im not sure how i can replicate this behavior in final, are graspers hardcoded to only be attachable to limb tips?

EDIT: several things from the notes. i appreciate the insight since i hadnt used any of those mods

(and tbh i havent even modded the game outside of my experiments with packages lmao ....)

[randomsporefacts]

literally got audacity for this. heres all of the shaman voice clips reversed (minus any of the ship voice clips). you can see the filenames just above the waveforms (rips from here)

turns out its mostly just a guy going papepowww pepoeapowpwwww bupinnnngggg oopeboppwww in a squeaky voice

also these waveforms keep reminding me of mandelbrot sets

[randomsporefacts]

a bunch of unused cell flora models (inedible, used the same way as the rocks diatoms and seashells) actually resemble the fiddleheads of a fern

particularly being Spore_Graphics.package\animations~\CG_rock1_L3.rw4 and to a lesser extent 0xBD8CD7AC.rw4

even the normal used plants arguably, for example 0xBD8CD7AD.rw4 here

and now these are fiddleheads. they also form into curlies and have smaller curlies growing on them, kind of like a fractal

and apparently theyre edible!

[randomsporefacts]

the three big stars in the galaxy.swf from the 2005 website appear to just be single textures

here they are in fact

however, if you zoom into them, specifically the red one has a rapidly spinning line laid on top of it

viewed in ffdec, its actually composed out of 4 frames, and looks like this in actuality. it looks vertically stretched but i think they just did that so the perspective on the galaxy would squish them back down into a circle

in comparison, the other two stars are completely static

another interesting thing. if you hover over any of the stars, it plays a radio kind of sound thats almost soundsd like something from the space prototype, and displays a strange image behind the star

its hard to tell what it is, but theres 2 identical copies of it in the swf. it definitely doesnt look solar related?

heres the galaxy textures here. the left one actually seems to be mirrored in the swf

the left galaxy texture obviously doesnt fit in the frame, but its not that clear in the swf since its on a black background. it becomes more apparent in ffdec

im not quite sure, but i think the perspective seems to be done by rotating the texture (and all the sprites on it) and then just squishing it vertically. is that what this here says?

[randomsporefacts]

heres another new kinglyvalence vid i wanna shout out, with interesting info about achievements and some tricks

most of the cut achievements have had made up objectives since as it turns out they didnt have anything beyond an icon. i looked and indeed some of then werent in achievements.locale (the cc demo has early locales but doesnt even have this file), nor are they referred to anywhere outside of the achievement images folder

vs a used achievement

-

the giant killer ojective was made up but its very likely to be accurate, given even the icon is really similar to the creature stage epic killer achievement! also never realised that

-

also worth noting this pinned comment, the icon for the pollinator achievement was on John Cimino's site

and this comment

-

+ i never realised the steve dialogue directly referred to the sharing creations across games feature!

and this trick to copy the wrong part puts you in dna debt, even within cell stage [this achievement task was made up]. this trick, combined with another creature editor trick, lets you start creature stage with 920+ dna

and i had no idea the game detects if you put the cell mouth on backwards

here it is in HintsEDI.locale. couldnt find how the game actually tracks putting the mouth on backwards though

# edi-errormouthfront.prop 0x44f89e14 Mouths work best on the front of the creation

-

a person in the comments also claims theyve unlocked the good arm achievement, but its another achievement that lacks everything in the assets beyond the icon (including in 1.0.0) so im inclined to not believe this

its also not on the spore website (archive link). even bad baby is there

[randomsporefacts]

some real delving onto how the limb parts work

so going from a very tiny level first. first there are the muscle models. each individual limb part has a minimum and maximum one, and theyre stored in Spore_Game.package\editor_muscles~

first, for the used limbs, theres the group files, which has a number of points with a corresponding muscle offset, percentage and radius

heres a much shorter and seemingly unused group file as an example

theres also older .mcl files with much less information, just listing offsets(?) and their what i assume is size values. maybe? sometimes a file has several of these <muscle></muscle> parts. couldnt figure out how they work

ANYWAY. these group files then get referenced, several at a time, in prop files in the same folder

-

then those muscle names get referenced in Spore_Graphics.package/creature_rigblock~. each individual limb segment references a min and a max muscle file, as well as min/max socket offsets

then these limb segments, which are themselves parts, get used in the actual limb assembly parts (ItemBlockAssembly) you can put on your creature

im not quite sure how it determines the actual limb segments that get attached with the limb assembly part. the only thing i can thin kof is the crt file it references, but theres no actual crt file in the game files

i tried to rely on AssembledContent to search in the crt files to see what the limb segments are but theyre all super inconsistent, why are limb parts with the same segments (Slackwrist and Brawnysaurus) said to have different limb parts???

-

heres all of the limb segments though. no names because i cant tell whats wrong with these crt files

first segment in Broncosaurus

first segment in Thundercalf (also used by all exoskeleton limbs with fleshy parts)

first segment in Cutty

both segments in Brawnysaurus

first segment in Meekling

second segment in Burly (this one was missing from the AssembledContent crt files .?)

might be missing some because i was thrown off by this

heres the crt file segments in the limb parts but beware that theyre definitely wrong a lot of the time for some reason

[randomsporefacts]

heres the names of the city anthem drum beats, according to the filenames of sounds in the audio packages. turns out theyre in alphabetic order!

if you hover over any of these it normally just says "Pick a beat"

not like theyre separate tooltips either (citymusic.locale shown) so im not sure if you can mod it so the names would actually show

if youre wondering whats up with all of the audio posts lately. i just felt like looking at the audio packages and sorting some things

[randomsporefacts]

an unused texture from the creature creator demo, found in CSA_Graphics.package\common~\0xBE613A32.tga

its pretty clearly from sims 2, although i couldnt find the original sims 2 file it must have been from (as i dont have sims 2 to dig through its assets, and i couldnt find any other downloads of the assets)

you can see a similar button in here, which also has the elder icon (source is the sims wiki)

though it does seem to look somewhat different, the one in the sims 2 screenshot is slouching slightly more. it might be because of the image quality though

im also not sure where this button was used in sims 2, i cant find it in the create a sim screenshots on this wiki page

and search engines are useless as usual

it sort of looks like the life mode (?) icon in actual gameplay, but that one has two people. apparently it does change in the university looking at mobygames screenshots but thats all i was able to find

if anyone here has actually played sims 2 since they were a baby, and knows where the elder button is used, let me know. and why is it in spore???

its worth noting that the general ui style in sims 2 definitely influenced spore

EDIT: a reply pointed me towards the sims 2 body shop (image source and more info here)

it shows a baby here, but the icon looks remarkably like this button here with how its shaded

so i assume if the elder is selected here then thats the exact button that will be used here!

... why did spore have a texture from a thing for sims 2 custom content????