A Mind is a Terrible Thing

If you can’t insert/edit a link (or media or a picture) in a blog post because when you press the “Add Link” button, it pops up a large-ish empty blank sub-window — and you’re using Firefox with Adblock installed — go to the Adblock options and be sure to whitelist your Wordpress blog’s page.

That’ll let the add links and media pop ups render properly.  Was drivin’ me crazy, that I couldn’t insert links in my last post, and couldn’t figure out what was different between my laptop (now) and my desktop (back home).  The Adblock setting was the thing.

I’ve had EA Games’ latest blockbuster computer game, SPORE, for about 3 weeks.  Couldn’t play for most of last week though, because we were away in Bangalore for a shopping/break trip, and I don’t have the game installed on my VAIO laptop (not that it would run anyway).

So…time for the usual follow-up review.

I have to admit, I’ve gotten way more gameplay from Spore than I have with most other games I’ve purchased in the last several years.  In fact, the last game I played to completion (repeatedly) was “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” for XBox (loved it…but the follow-up sequel?  meh.)

I’ve also played Spore to the ostensible ‘end’ of the Space phase.  Had myself a smallish stellar empire of a few dozen systems, dealt with crises and wars, fought my way to the center of the galaxy, etc.  That said though, it’s a noted feature that the Space part of the game is also the biggest, with literally hundreds and hundreds of stars.  I’m not exaggerating.  Spore is also open-ended, in that you can keep on playing, doing whatever you like.  Terraform worlds, reshape planets, grow your empire, go exploring, forge mighty alliances, go to war — whatever.  You can be a ruthless capitalist, a fierce warrior, or a gentle diplomat, and more.  You can be good, neutral, or evil, or anything in between.  There are no real limits or strict categories on how you have to behave.

However, if you do take your little cellular creature and grow it a particular way through the creature, tribal, and civilization phases, each of the previous phases determines your characteristics later on.  If you’re a friendly, social critter, then in space, aliens will tend to be favorable towards you.  Be aggressive and militaristic, and you’ll have bonuses and abilities in that direction — and the others will tend not to trust or like you.

In addition to the five phases of a given game, there are also highly extensive tools for creating your own creatures, buildings, vehicles (land, sea, and air), and starships.  I am totally, completely, utterly without artistic skills.  I’m serious:  I suck at art.  Always have, always will.  But the tools for designing things in Spore are amazing.  You just assemble parts, stretching and adjusting, and finally ‘paint’ your creation with a large palette of colors and textures.  There is also an ample selection of parts styles, so you can indulge your whims.  (For example, I literally created a ‘Stack ‘O Pancakes’ as one of my starship designs.  I also put together a rather passable and highly detailed rendition of Serenity, from Firefly.)  The click-and-drag controls also have a built snap-to and symmetry functions, but I have to admit I wish sometimes there were easier ways to fine-tune.  Sometimes I just can’t quite get a part to go where I want it.

Even better, the creatures, buildings, vehicles and ships I encounter are not only my own creations and those included in the ‘base package’, this is also an online game — where everyone can share, and where your own game keeps downloading content from the Spore servers (this is optional).  Last I checked, there were over 30 million items available, nearly all of which were created by fellow players.

As for the gameplay itself…well, I’ve played through on Easy and Normal difficulty settings.  Still, the early phases seem to go by too quickly.  All you need to do to graduate from Cell stage is eat enough food and collect enough parts.  Creature stage, food is incidental — there you collect parts and interact with other critters (either socialize or exterminate them).  Tribe stage — collect food to grow, and interact with other tribes (either win them over socially, or exterminate them).  Civ stage — collect ’spice’ for money, and interact with other cities through religion, trade, or conquest, until you’ve conquered, converted, or bought up the entire planet.  What I mean is that once you know what you’re doing, it’s not hard to get through the 1st four phases in a couple hours at most; only the Space stage is open-ended and big enough to require many hours of play to advance to the end-game scenarios.

In a positive note, however, very shortly after finishing my 1st game (well, abandoning it), I found myself wondering, “Okay, I did an Ecologist, now I wonder what it’d be like to be 100% ‘green.’”  Ran that up a ways, then I decided to try out a predator-type.  Before I even took that much into Creature phase, I decided to try an omnivore trader.  And so on.  Then when I got a little bored with that, I switched over to creating new designs.  Ships, buildings, and so on.

Anyway… the ‘cons’ are that I wish the early stages were richer and longer.  Also, in the Space phase, there are entirely too many crises that require personal intervention, which is nigh impossible to do when you’re literally halfway across the galaxy, deep in enemy Grox territory.  I note also there are some definite ‘holes’ in the game, too, where I’m pretty sure they pulled features — for example, noses and ears are purely decorative and give no particular benefits.

The ‘pros’ are the wide range of gameplay, and the simple fun of raising a tiny cell to eventually become a starfaring species.  Despite the relative persnicketyness of the design tools, they’re still amazingly flexible and encouraging for personal creativity.  Plus, there is definite replayability value here.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’d gotten the pre-purchase download for EA’s highly anticipated “massive single-player online game”, Spore.

Late last Sunday night, the pre-load unlocked itself and I was able to install it — but being late, I didn’t do anything other than to confirm it installed okay.  Actual gameplay didn’t commence until the following morning.  Since then, I’ve usually played a couple hours each day.  In the game I’ve taken the farthest, I’ve just started the Civilization (4th) stage.

Initial impressions — the pros:

It’s a really beautiful game, and quite entertaining simply to enjoy the visuals.  In general, the basic gameplay is fairly simple.  For instance, at the earliest “cell” phase, you just swim around and eat stuff.  Along the way, you try to collect parts for function upgrades.  Eventually, you get big enough to evolve into a creature.

As a creature, it’s much the same thing, but now there’s more focus on whether you fight other critters or tend to be social — and again, you try to collect new parts and abilities.  Eventually, you move on to a tribal stage, then civilization, and finally space exploration.

How you play and behave reflects itself in the abilities you unlock and acquire, and also in how newly encountered strangers will tend to treat you.  Be a friendly-type creature, and when you form a tribe, you’ll continue to tend to be favored socially.  Be a ruthless carnivore, and others will be hostile — but your tribe will also have evolved more attack strategies.

It is super easy even for a total non-artist like myself to create interesting and highly detailed creatures.

The game is constantly updating itself with content from online servers, you never know what kinds of creatures, buildings, vehicles, and spaceships you might run into — most of which were created by other players.

Once you have unlocked a particular game phase after the 1st one — creature, tribe, civilization, or space — you have the option to begin new games at those points, rather than having to start over as a cell.  But if you do that, you do forego some of the ‘acquired characteristics’ that result only from having a continuous past.

Although Spore’s depiction of evolution bears only a nodding resemblance to the real thing, the whole concept of this game has to be driving the creationists crazy.

The cons:

Sometimes the directional controls can be really clumsy, and I’m not finding it very easy to keep the camera focused where I want it to stay.

The on-screen mini-map and status icons in the Creature and Tribal stages are way too small.  The display elements ought to be more customizable.

It’s also not always obvious what you’re supposed to do, or how to accomplish it.  In addition, when you move from one game stage to another, the mouse-click behavior sometimes changes — an inconsistency which can result in lethal errors.

There’s almost no penalty for dying, you just get reborn back as an egg, or at your village or city or planet.  I keep thinking there ought to be some cost, even if it just means you have to spend more time again collecting DNA points, food, or Sporebucks.

This is just me, but I like to fiddle with things, try stuff out — and the ‘real-time’ nature of the game can make this difficult.  I generally prefer a “turn-based” option, or something that automatically pauses the action so I can take care of tasks. Or some way to speed up or slow down time.

The lack of elapsing time control is exacerbated by the fact you only get one save position for any given game you’re playing.  For instance, in my current game, I’m in the Civ phase.  I cannot go back to, say, the Creature phase and make different decisions (like, “I want to be more ‘adaptable’ than ’social’, so instead of making friends, my critter should fight more”).  The only option is to start over in a brand new game, back at cell stage — and it looks to me like there’s a limited number of games at any given time (about 10, I think?).  If I had to pick one peeve, it’d be this one: Let me have at least 10 save positions per game run, not just furthest advanced.

Ought to be some way to screen out or replace non-alphabetic creature names.  The game sometimes goes out to the main Spore servers and downloads player-created content.  Now the game’s been released worldwide, I’m seeing critters with names in Japanese characters.

Summary:  (Above is a little Flash widget showing my various creations.)  It’s fun.  Despite the shortcomings, this is the first computer game in ages which has actually managed to captured my attention and enthusiasm.  That said though, I found both the installed game ‘Sporepedia’ help systems and user manual to be woefully inadequate in terms of helping me figure out what to do — hence I have to recommend also getting a copy of Prima’s game guide.  I bought and downloaded the eBook, and it’s proven invaluable in explaining how to do stuff.

Now this is just bloomin’ smart.  Early this month, I put in a pre-order for the eagerly anticipated new Electronic Arts game "Spore".  It’s basically a massive evolution simulator and looks to be lots of fun.  Actually, it reminds me of Sim Earth, Sim City, Civilization, and Masters of Orion. 

(Also brilliant: Selling the "creature creator" module ahead of time.  I’ve had quite a bit of fun ‘doodling’ new critters.  My undertanding is that the full game will make use of the million-plus creatures people have created and uploaded to their Sporepedia accounts.)

Computer shops in Bangalore do tend to be pretty up on the latest stuff — but I’m not there 98% of the time.  Hence, the "digital download" — meaning that I’ll download and install the game over our DSL line here in Penukonda.  I figured I’d have to wait another 10 days…and then wait even longer as everybody in more advantageous parts of the world and faster connections swamped the download servers.

Here’s the brilliant part:  The game is already downloading, as of yesterday. 

When your product is available in EA Download Manager in a preload state, you will be able to download the product ahead of the product release date.  This will save you time when the game becomes available to unlock, unpack, and install.

At our speeds (256kbs), it’ll take several days to get it all (looks pretty massive, probably about 4GB), but then the installer will wait until it gets the final unencryption/installation file, on the day Spore is released to market.  What this does, obviously, is keep the server downloads manageable and avoiding, for instance, the craziness that happened last month in the US when the new iPhone hit the market (their activation computers went belly up).  Now that’s thinking ahead.

I will, of course, post a review once I’ve gotten to play Spore for a while…

In January 2004, a pair of rovers landed on Mars, each expected to perform for no more than 90 days.  After that time, it was thought they’d have to power down for Martian winter and would not respond thereafter.  Or, perhaps they’d simply break down mechanically and that’d be it.

It’s now the end of August, four and a half years later — and those two rovers are still functioning!  1632 days for Opportunity, and 1653 for Spirit, better than 18 times the expected operating lifetime for both.  (To use an analogy in human terms, it’s as if you had a life expectancy of 72 years — and found yourself still alive and pretty darned well after 1322 years.)

To be sure, both are having problems with balky joints, minor malfunctions, and one inoperable wheel, but both rovers continue to provide valuable science data.  Simply amazing.

This is just an FYI-type message for the occasional visitors here:  From time to time, I’ve implemented different systems to try to keep the blog comment spam to a minimum.  A while back, I tried enforcing a "must register" policy — but some complained they couldn’t log in afterwards.

Here’s the deal now:

• Anybody can register for their own log-in, but there are systems in place to ensure that you’re a real person and not some spam ‘bot.  If you register, your comments will usually be posted right away without any intervention (moderation) from me.
• You can post comments without registering/logging-in, but the chances the system will flag the comment to require me to approve it are much higher.  If you don’t see your comment right away, please be patient.
• Certain terms such as relating to insurance, online casinos, mail-order pharmaceuticals, and porn will usually get blocked entirely, especially if the comment contains links or track-backs to such sites or products.

Thanks,
Becca

Apologies to anyone who might’ve come by in the last day or so and found this page could not be loaded.  Apparently Sitemeter (a website tracking widget) went bad and their new code wouldn’t let Internet Explorer users load the targeted page at all.

I’ve removed the widget entirely for now, as have many other bloggers around the world…

By the way, in case you’ve forgotten, there are STILL two rovers poking around on Mars.  Intended to last just three months, both Spirit and Opportunity have remained functional and mobile for well over four YEARS.

Kudos to the engineers and techs.  True, the rovers are wearing out, but it’s simply amazing to realize they’ve weathered over 1500 day/night cycles, including two Martian winters that neither was expected to survive.  We’re still getting good science from these wee, hardy beasties.

Fingers crossed for the upcoming landing of the Phoenix probe, due to touchdown this coming Sunday.

Ever since we finally found the right kinds of pots to use with our magnetic induction cooker, we’ve been experimenting far more with various recipes and methods.

Tonight, I checked to see whether it could get vegetable oil hot enough to cook french fries properly.

Answer:  Oh yes.

The result was crispy and delish.  With a side of genuine Heinz ketchup, the results of the experiment soon disappeared.

So far, the only real downside to the cooker was the difficulty we did have in getting the right kind of stainless steel pots to use on it.  For us, they actually ended up being some super-cheap Indian-style pots from a little place several blocks over from Commercial Street in Bangalore.  The more expensive stainless pots kept not working.  What we did was literally to take the cooker with us while shopping back in March, and tried the pots on it, with some water.  Once located, we told ‘em, "Okay, five of those in different sizes please.  With lids."

The upside is these induction cookers are very efficient — more than twice as efficient as gas, in fact (84% versus 40%).  Very good temperature control, plus they heat stuff extremely fast.  The single-burner cooker itself cost about 3500Rs (about $87.50 US), for a fairly high-end model.

• First, I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.5.  Note to self (and other WP upgraders): Do not turn on or use the Maintenance Mode plug in when upgrading.  It gets stuck and you can’t even log in to the admin menu.  The only solution is to go in via FTP and nuke the plug in.  Which I did.
• Second, once again, I love Indian health-care.  The reason I needed a new book to read is we’re in Bangalore, so Stephy could get her eye checked out.  Any time you see new and unexpected stuff in the eye, it’s a good idea to get a professional exam.  Total cost?  350Rs – or roughly $9 US.  This is at the high-end super-specialty Manipal hospital clinic, no less.  (She’s fine, just some scleral detachment, which is normal post-cataract surgery.  Another check-up in a month, when we’ll be in town anyway on our way to & from Singapore.)
• Did I mention I love A/C?  Oh yes, I does…  It ain’t as hot here as in Penukonda, but it’s hot enough.