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The show floor opened up this morning to early-access press only and I headed straight for EA’s booth to check out some of their offerings. In addition to Crysis and Battlefield 2142 playable on the showfloor, there was a Spore presentation being ran by the master Will Wright himself. Here is an overview and some screenshots of what he had to say.

The show floor opened up this morning to early-access press only and I headed straight for EA’s booth to check out some of their offerings. In addition to Crysis and Battlefield 2142 playable on the showfloor, there was a Spore presentation being ran by the master Will Wright himself. Here is an overview and some screenshots of what he had to say.

The demo started with a first look at Spore’s main menu and showing the separations amongst the play-types. On the top are the games (various levels) and on the bottom are the editors. These span from space, to creature, to environment and so on. We were only shown (due to time) the creature editing and level and the space level.

To start, Will showed an overview of the latest creature editing system. He mentioned that almost all parts of the editing system, from hands to the mouth, control the creature in its entirety - from its personality to the way it sounds, etc. In addition, the color system is a procedural texturing system that lays initially colors, then various textures (scales, etc.) and more all on top of your creature model. It looks like an incredibly intricate system, as has been seen quite a bit so far in previous videos. It looked like it was nearing completion and would allow for endless possibilities.

From here he moved on into the creature mode and showed some basics of living the life of your creature. There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to the gameplay here. He showed attacking and fighting using simply the keyboard and mouse, all relatively simple control and movement. In addition there is a social bonding element between other creatures of your species, other creatures entirely, friends, mating, reproduction, and advancing your creature through evolution. In order to move from one step to the next in terms of evolution and generations, you must find a mate. Once this is done they will lay eggs and once you click on one you are taken to the creature creation screen to manipulate your creature and create the "next generation." From here you are brought back as a baby and must eat and grow again to continue this process.

As has been often mentioned, Spore is a combination of game ideas like Impossible Creatures as well as gameplay from games like The Sims, Civilization, and many other RTS games. Watching this video and hearing Will talk about this it really did become evident that this was exactly what Spore is. He mentioned during the creature mode part just mentioned that this is similar to RTS gaming in that you begin building your culture and start putting together cities. Moving on to the space level he described this gameplay changing more to a Civilization-like game.

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