More Awesome Than You!

I just got to Creature stage and my nest is fuckin' UNDERWATER.
This means CRUNCH NOM NOM as soon as creature hits the part where water meets sand.

(Click for larger view of the HORROR)

(http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/1889/nestinwaterwq9.th.jpg) (http://img373.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nestinwaterwq9.jpg)

Yea, there are big things lurking in the deep. :)  They usually migrate to a new nest by around the first brain size increase, if you can keep 'em alive that long.

Basically, no. The moment the creature swims to shore (where sand hits water), it triggers the large monster to gobble it up, kind of like when you approach the shore from land (if your nest is onland). There is no way around it except to completely scrap the game. Sticking the nest IN WATER seems to be the worst possible place you can stick a nest, and I've played Creature many many times.

Ah, I wasn't aware that it gets them going inland -- I only had it get them when they went out too far. 

Yeah, me too.

A nest underwater?  What the hell?  That's really strange.  I thought the nests during creature phase were always in the same general locations on each planet.  Guess not.

I don't suppose you could try to fly out of your nest?*

*Although I heard they'll get you even if you're flying as well.

No wings available with 5 DNA points (fresh out of Cell stage) - and even if I did have wings, I would get chomped the moment my creature flies over that magic spot where the sand touches the water. That spot triggers the monster, whether you're flying, in the water or on land.

Yeah, that happened to me when I was flying over an inlet to save time. I was waay over the water and the big thing still ate me to death.

Are the green blobby things your monsters, or are they the big water monsters? I'm only seeing one type of critter in your picture.

Spore deprived, not sure what is background / landscape and what's a beastie.

The 'green blobby things' are her creatures.  The big water monsters are only visible for mere seconds when they come up to comp you, and then only in a 'special event' movie-type thing.

Really, the only thing worth paying attention to in that picture is the map on the lower left-hand corner, which shows the location of my nest.....IN WATER.

After a second look, your planet looks to be totally FUBAR'd.  Not only is your nest in the water, but food sources are too.  I don't remember seeing that in my game.  And the ? creatures ALL right on the edge of the water.  It's almost like the template of stuff all got shifted South as far as it could go or something.  I'm not any sort of computer expert, but that's what it LOOKS like to me.

Just like Jsalemi, I was shocked and surprised the first time my creature swam out in the water and got NOMmed by a huge creature from the deep.  I think I yelled "OH!"  when it happened.  LOL

Yeah, it seems the planet is borked borked borked. I reloaded, played to Creature again and same shit happened. Not touching that planet again.

Just delete the planet out. You'll get a new one elsewhere in the galaxy. I'm up to nine saved games and from game six on (when I started paying attention), each time I've added a saved game, I've gotten a new planet available.

What are the conditions for being om nom nom'd by a water monster? I've swum across short distances as a shortcut and to see if I could... how far out do I need to go?

As I recall, it's about three or four nest lengths. I'm not sure how else you can measure it, creature size not being constant.


On deleting planets or getting new ones every time you start a new game, I almost thought I'd reached the limit when I loaded up the game just now. Then I tilted a bit. The game put the planet so close I can barely click on it. Gah. It's pretty, too.
(http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7408/eeekclosesx9.th.jpg) (http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eeekclosesx9.jpg)

Fascinating, your planets are in different places than mine, and you have 15 to my 10.  So clearly you get more if you start filling up the galaxy.

 - Gus

I'm assuming there's a limit at some point. I'm starting a new game every night and getting most to space (I have three in tribal). So far, I still have six available planets.

I don't know, have you seen how many stars are out there? You have entire arms with only one or two, there's still plenty of room.

That said, I have a feeling the first expansion will enable you to play other galaxies. Just a hunch. (I seem to be expanding at a rate of one a day also, though I've been slowing down since I had one reach the core.)

As notovny said earlier, people wopuld pretty much go "What, you can play in other galaxies too?  How is that different?"  Truly, that's pretty much hit it on the head.  Galaxies are galaxies.

Although, maybe they'd add rare galaxy formations like quasars!

Other galaxies would be unpopulated by PC characters. Possibly with a new nemesis, new galaxy-specific easter eggs, etc...

I'm thinking mainly back to Sims 1, where the limits were much harsher, true, but until the first expansion pack you couldn't even have other neighbourhoods, you were stuck with the one 10-lot hood, and several were already occupied. (Most notably the tutorial and the Goth lot.)

Feh.  You have at least 2,000 stars in the EAxian Way galaxy.  That should tithe one over until we create our own universe with the LHC.

How do we know that the limit is at least 2,000 stars? The number of stars in the galaxy is not necessarily equal to the number of potential saved games.

Judging by my explorations with just two space-faring species, I'd be surprised if there's less than 2,000 stars in each ARM of the galaxy, let alone the whole galaxy.  As has been said many times here, Spore really does capture how big space really is.

No, I couldn't see the limit of saved games being over 50. At 26 (20 saved and 6 open) I'm having major issues on some of my more populated arms with clicking on the right planet.

Space in Splotch is REALLY FUCKING HUGE. I mrean, REALLY, REALLY HUGE. You know those two races you thought were really close to each other when you positioned them in the galactic map when choosing their home planets? They ain't THAT close together: The space between them would encompass an entire game's space in any other strategy game. Yes, that's right: The space seperating two NEARBY races you placed on the galactic map has enough planets in it to play an entire round or two of Master of Orion in.

And how little there is to do in it... :P

That is one of the weaknesses, yes. Once you've seen one planet, you've seen 'em all. The aliens themselves are so interchangeable that if you delete a race already in the game, it is replaced by one that looks totally different, yet is exactly the same.

I was going to focus my efforts on collecting cool creatures and making designer planets, but then I realized there's no profit in it, so I went back to Sims and Soulcalibur and await new shinies for Splotch.

Although with some of the mods that have been released, it might be tinker-worthy now.

Well, rumor has it that the first L&P Splotch SP is coming (someone found a link to it on Amazon), that's supposed to add body parts for the creatures.  If true, it looks like EAxis is going to go the Sims route with Splotch.  What a surprise...

Well, unless they're going to make it so we can make BETTER creatures, more parts will change little, especially if they lack functional value.

I can't wait for the Splotch EP that gives us magic that lets us do things we can already do.

That's what the Stuff packages for The Sims 2 do.  They're purely decorative crap.

I'm feeling pretty much done with Splotch right now, I'm currently playing Colonization.  But when I was trying to re-create specific vehicles and creatures, I definitely noticed some limitations.

The most obvious one is asymmetry.  Since there's a mod out that does that, and people use glitches in the editor right now to get around it, I fully expect that they'll add that.

The game badly, badly needs better textures for spaceships.  There are some fairly good techy looking textures for buildings that they don't give you for spaceships, where they're really needed.  Instead we get crappy organic and rivet textures.

There are some basic shapes missing from the vehicle editor, like hemispheres and pyramids.  I'd be much happier if they'd give us a trapezoid with the width controls of the cylinder, so the top face can be smaller than the bottom face.  No arbitrary constraints on part size would be nice too - there are a bunch of interesting items in the building "details" section that can't be made large.

It's difficult to give creatures heads that aren't blobby, and insectile creatures in general.  I found it quite difficult to do a Preying Mantis or an Ur-quan.  Both have very triangular heads.

 - Gus

The way textures are painted on in the vehicle editor is also not always right.  It can create swirlyness on the ends of whatever shape you're adding.

NO SHILLING. And Pirate Cat won't pay for his downloads.