First Spore patch released

[jsalemi]

A patch for Spore is already out.  Those with the EADM will get it automatically -- the patch itself is on the torrents, but not a new cracked .exe yet.  For those interested, here's the patch notes:

This is a PC only patch. Mac users should check back soon!
Features

    * New Cheat: "evoadvantage". Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
    * Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the 'i' key.
    * New Cheat: "blocksmode". Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
    * More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: "stylefilter -microscope" or "stylefilter -norainbows" or "stylefilter -nextgen" to see the new styles
    * Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the "hot and high atmosphere" type

Graphics/Aesthetics

    * Animation improvements
    * Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
    * Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures

Tuning

    * Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
    * Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
    * Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
    * Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn't pay
    * Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Miscellaneous

    * Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
    * Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
    * Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
    * Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
    * Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
    * Fixed problems with the "Rolling Thunder" and "Déjà Vu" achievements not being awarded as they should
    * Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
    * Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
    * Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
    * Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
    * Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
    * Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
    * Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
    * Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu

[Gus Smedstad]

Nothing exciting, though the increased time between disasters / attacks is welcome.

Things I'd like to see:

* Fix crash when loading image of newly-beamed aboard plants and animals.
* Increased range of all weapons in Space mode.

I'm fine with enemy weapon range increasing as well - my problem is the ship control is clumsy enough that the challenge is often finding the tiny little zone that's in firing range.

 - Gus

[cow_tools]

It's dumb how EA makes you get their Download Manager before they let you have the patch.

[J. M. Pescado]

They don't, the patch is standalone-downloadable from other sites on the Interwebs. However, there is no anti-SecuROM crack out for the new patch. Therefore, the matter will not be discussed further at this time.