random spore facts

oh yup one of the audio packages has it, according to keymap its in audio\ea_pd\tribe_drums\tribering1.snr

it does seem like the game filters them to play at a different pitch or something

as you can see later in the video, this is actually part of the music! it looks like the editor music in the tribal outfitter was just overtuned to make such a loud sound on tab switch

im going to try anim_movie_script.txt, which is apparently from june 2007 and just records movies of a bunch of animations

so i try to run "tester -run TestScript anim_movie_script", it did load into the anim viewer but froze and then crashed. because of "ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x00000000" lol

it did produce an avi file in the same folder with the usual user recordings, but its totally empty. im not sure what the problem was

it also created a new TestResults folder in Data! it really didnt seem to get anything done though

00:39:01 Info : # Test name : TestScript, Arguments : [ anim_movie_script ] 00:39:01 Info : # Test started : 14:35:35 00:39:01 Info : # Test dir : C:/Users/Pc/Documents/games/SporePrototype-Feb-19-2008/SPORE/Data/TestResults/TestScript-test\63920327735-00001\ 00:39:01 Info : COMMAND [ Sleep 10 ticks ] 00:39:01 Info : Sleep expires in [ 10 ] ticks.

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im gonna try another testscript, which can be found in the TimeOfDay folder. trying timeofday_bumpy_tribe specifically. it runs tribal stage, moves the camera appropriately, then uses settime to cycle through every 2 hours of the day and takes a screenshot on each

i run "tester -run TestScript TimeOfDay/timeofday_bumpy_tribe". it had a much larger log file, and it logs even stuff unrelated to the testscript! like "Info Error: had to substitute vox event bcode_baby_born_cryMamAIn with default mouth type." or "Info Animation Event Warning ("C:\Spore_Latest\Data\Creatures\Animations_final\tribe\soc_idle_neutral.animation", 2, 7): DATA0_NONE, using default."

anyway it just output 12 tga files to the UserData/Debug folder, which have very strange transparency but here they are

sleep 10 seconds cheat "gonzago name_gen all 500" cheat "quit"

if you run the same cheat, you get a text file dumped to UserData/Debug, along with a debug message like this

Generated 4003 names in 0.1 seconds (0.03 ms per name) Failed 0 times (0.0%) Duplicated fallback names 0 times (0.0%) Tried 11604 times (2.9 per name) Excluded for length 7063 times (60.9%) Excluded as a duplicate 105 times (0.9%) Excluded strings 135 times (1.2%) Excluded substrings 298 times (2.6%) Excluded for one character rule 0 times (0.0%) Succeeded 4003 times (34.5%)

the text file that was generated here was nameGen-English-20260625_121341.txt. it is, indeed, just a list with 4015 lines, where it generates a bunch of names for all name types (Planets, Stars, Creatures, Tribes, Cities, Vehicles, Black Holes)

and you can see from the log how the namegen works!

first of all it pulls the name by combining words from a set of lexicons, which can be found in the name generation packages in retail. i dont think this algorithm is different in the feb 19 build, so im just using this for reference

according to SpaceNames.prop in the same package, each type has its own set of lexicons to use. black holes only use LexiconBlackHoles; buildings LexiconBuilding; cities LexiconCities and LexiconPeople; creatures LexiconCreatures and LexiconTribes; planets LexiconPlanets, LexiconPeople and LexiconCreatures; stars LexiconStars, LexiconCreatures and LexiconFlowers; tribes LexiconTribes and vehicles LexiconVehicle. LexiconFour has four-letter names and never gets used

then it excludes names if they fail several parameters. one thing is it can outright fail or duplicate fallback names? but it didnt do that here it has 3 times the amount of names that it actually succeeds at generating, only 34.5% of the time does the name actually end up succeeding, which is kind of crazy. the game just tries again if it fails though and it doesnt take long at all to generate a name, 0.03 ms as it says

anyway. it excludes names for being too short or too long. in SpaceNames the minimum name length is set to 5, and maximum to 10. that filters 60.9% of the names

then filters duplicates, which i assume is only relevant for the namegen lists

then it excludes strings, which are included in LexiconExclude, which includes whole worlds like Aardvark and Choir or Closet or whatever. i assume it just filters the name if the full word matches this, that said the namegen can occasionally generate real words anyways

then it excludes substrings! those pull from LexiconFoul, you can guess what kind of things are found in there. alongside filtering swears and slurs and other unfortunate words, it also filters some other more inoccuous strings like "apple", "blue", "clam", "eggplant", triplicated letters like "ooo", etc

then theres "Excluded for one character rule 0 times". i have no clue what this means whatsoever. anyway thats the name list generated then!

the gonzago cheat can do a lot more things, and the gonzago name_gen cheat also has other parameters

[name_gen <planet | star | tribe | creature | city | building | vehicle | all> (count)] ... prints out a list of randomly generated names of the given type, will print 20 if no count is specified.

for example, if i run gonzago name_gen creature, i get this

Generated 20 names in 0.0 seconds (0.04 ms per name) Failed 0 times (0.0%) Duplicated fallback names 0 times (0.0%) Tried 44 times (2.2 per name) Excluded for length 14 times (31.8%) Excluded as a duplicate 0 times (0.0%) Excluded strings 8 times (18.2%) Excluded substrings 2 times (4.5%) Excluded for one character rule 0 times (0.0%) Succeeded 20 times (45.5%)

and the nameGen-English-20260721_141301.txt file. theres only one name type in here, so it doesnt specify these are creature names

so yeah pretty interesting. also lol "Bros" amazing name

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i was using the retail name generation package for reference with the feb 19 cheat, but there actually seems to be some differences between the name generations. the SpaceNames prop file is sorted differently and has some commented out strings

#exactlyOneOf aeiouAEIOU #duplicateSuffixes " II" " III" " IV" " V" " VI" " VII" " VIII" " IX" " X" " XI" " XII" " XIII" " XIV" " XV" " XVI" " XVII" " XVIII" " XIX" " XX" " XXI" " XXII" " XXIII" " XXIV" " XXV" " XXVI" " XXVII" " XXVIII" " XXIX" " XXX" " XXXI" " XXXII" " XXXIII" " XXXIV" " XXXV" " XXXVI" " XXXVII" " XXXVIII" " XXXIX" " XL" " XLI" " XLII" " XLIII" " XLIV" " XLV" " XLVI" " XLVII" " XLVIII" " XLIX" " L" " LI" " LII" " LIII" " LIV" " LV" " LVI" " LVII" " LVIII" " LIX" " LX" " LXI" " LXII" " LXIII" " LXIV" " LXV" " LXVI" " LXVII" " LXVIII" " LXIX" " LXX" " LXXI" " LXXII" " LXXIII" " LXXIV" " LXXV" " LXXVI" " LXXVII" " LXXVIII" " LXXIX" " LXXX" " LXXXI" " LXXXII" " LXXXIII" " LXXXIV" " LXXXV" " LXXXVI" " LXXXVII" " LXXXVIII" " LXXXIX" " XC" " XCI" " XCII" " XCIII" " XCIV" " XCV" " XCVI" " XCVII" " XCVIII" " XCIX" " C"

but the actual used lexicons for each name type dont seem to differ. as do the lexicons themselves, aside from LexiconFoul having more strings added AND some removed in retail (some presumably got removed because they already get filtered by a shorter substring). LexiconExclude is also the same still

i never use this tool because it just doesnt do anything so i forget which one is the space tool one LOL but one of thems gotta be it

heres feature_crop_circle.rw4 which just spawns on planets

also primitivelandmarking to primitivelandmarking4

and a bunch of sg_crop_circle textures, the first one is just that and the rest are sg_crop_circle_a to _h. i think? this is the ones the tool actually uses

the effect that uses them doesnt actually use that first one, but references a texture that doesnt seem to exist anymore as one of the decals that it can use, so that suggests another cut crop circle

here i made a test vehicle thats just an enclosed box. in the editor, you can see inside pretty clearly

(side note i had to save it but it was overbudget and didnt even show in the sporepedia, so i had to drag its png into the colony land editor again just to be able to edit it and remove the extra parts to show it in the sporepedia)

but once you view it in the sporepedia, not only does the inside of the box get encased in darkness, the texture is also much lower quality

it actually saves the texture into three .raster files, as can be extracted from GraphicsCache then reexported with sporemodder fx. this is with the opacity removed

and here i made another house with insides present, this time i have a door and a couple windows to see how ambient occlusion works. also a test to see if the animated parts cause ambient occlusion too. i put different paints on the blocks to see them in the texture more clearly

the light does seem to be coming out of the window! and some of the animated parts just break entirely and thus leave no ambient occlusion

and heres how that texture looks. you can see how the light falls on the floor! you can see where the door is clearly, and how the light comes off it. its actually remarkably sorta realistc lighting

also the ambient occlusion seems to mostly just express itself in enclosed spaces like this. you cant even see it here

if you load any of these creations into retail, they will no longer have ambient occlusion! but they do have higher res textures at least. i cant view the building because spore just trashed it and its not showing in the sporepedia LOL

however their textures still get baked and saved into GraphicsCache. where they DO still have ambient occlusion!!

this is the baking gmdl loaded from GraphicsCache with this texture

i just gathered the locales from the basegame and ran a macro on all of them to even them out, so they will be sorted by hash, but the hash is removed. this is because the files will be sorted differently, and the hashes capitalized differently, and this evens the difference out

oh also trimming trailing spaces because that actually seems to account for most of the differences here

then i just ran the results through winmerge

first of all are a handful of files that exist in en-us, but not en-gb (i also renamed all files from .locale to .txt but this was. not necessary lol)

the first one is just this

Updates are available.~br~Log in with your email address and password to get the latest updates.

the second one contains names for exoskeleton parts

core_credits_na_only contains special thanks from the spore team, which are, i guess, exclusive to en-us for some reason

CSA_Credits_Names was all commented out, so its empty. not sure why this is here then

then theres eventlog_clg and eventlog_crg, which are also both empty, for the same reason, which is that "note: there are no event logs for Cell Game/Creature Game at this time." as defined in the comment in the file itself

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then there are the files that actually differ. which are only these (most differences amount to trailing spaces being present in en-us or en-gb but not the other one, but i trimmed those)

although some of these arent actually differences. TextPatch2, VehicleCreator_Template, keys and tooltips just have some extra character at the start of the file that i cant see in np++. it was probably caused by my macro for pruning the files somehow

Abilities, civ_main_menu, CreatureGame, CreatureRigblocks, event_raid_ally, all the mission files that differ, space_diplomacy, timeline just have leading faces on some strings. which in retrospect i should have also trimmed

TribeGame also has a leading space, but also a hash that. didnt get removed by my find and replace for some reason??

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the first one has creation names. Eee Monks was EyeMonkeygirl in en-gb, Evil Monkey was Evil monkey, and en-gb also has names for Squish and Kadents. en-gb is a slightly earlier localization so it reflects that

the second one has some wording changes (theres more than these examples), its sort of interesting that it says how many free bytes you need to free up in en-gb but not en-us??

en-us | The wizard was interrupted before ~string~ could be completely patched.~br~~br~To fully patch this program at a later time, please run the patch again.~UNINSTALL_INCOMP~ en-gb | The wizard was interrupted before ~string~ could be completely uninstalled.~br~~br~To fully uninstall this program at a later time, please run the uninstall again.~UNINSTALL_INCOMP~ en-us | Insufficient disk space - please free up more disk space to apply the patch.~PATCH_ERROR_DISKSPACE~ en-gb | Insufficient disk space - %d free bytes are needed to apply the patch.~PATCH_ERROR_DISKSPACE~

the building creator template difference is for the spore guide, here it says The Basics, but it en-gb it says Basics. for the other strings it still says The Basics so this is probably along the lines of a typo fix

the changes in the civ cinematics amount to en-gb having extra line breaks and duplicated spaces between sentences. some similar changes happen in some other files

the only actual dfference in the space cinematics is at the very end of the file, where they fixed a missing word in steve's monologue in en-us

en-us also fixed a missing period in tribal cinematics

PatchManager has an extra line in en-us

Updates are available.~br~Log in with your email address and password to get the latest updates.

settings also does, which just says "Fit To Screen", which can be found in the original file in Game options for Graphics, after the strings for full screen mode and windowed mode. the actual game only uses the text for full screen mode, which is a toggle! so heres some unused strings i guess!

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spacegame_commodities i had to fix in en-gb because i accidentally didnt remove the hashes from it or anything, but this one actually has a few interesting differences. first of all theres a hash that has 7 characters after the 0x, instead of 8. is that normal???

anyway en-gb has these strings that en-us doesnt

more typo fixes and doubled spaces, also en-gb had "recreatonal" instead of "summertime" beverages in the description for yellow spice, so this is the first actual word change in the game itself!

and Oogie capitalized in en-gb, but not en-us strangely

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sporepedia has an extra string in en-us, which is "Advantaged Creatures". what is that for?

test is just, like, entirely different

TribalAccessoriesRigblocks has a few different part names! Beam Helmet was named Beam Me Helmet, and Snokelicious was named Smokelicious. i guess

ui_space has a few extra strings in en-us

and thats it! none of the changes are actually to reflect british vs american spelling, its more like do you want english localization or a slightly older english localization?

see the spellings are all still just american lol

the parts that got renamed are Wallygator to CrocKisser, Avis Canto to Cantovis, Gatorhawk to Snapgator

Bulgeye to Ocubulge, Eyebis to Eyebissed, Scrutineyes to Scrutineye, Superfl'Eye to Eyelien

Floralescent to Springle, Gaudite to Jemite, Stickhead to Branch Deco

(on an unrelated note you can also see the cursor for hovering over a part changed to a grabby hand at some point)

...curiously theres another one in this build in english, Rancor to Grumpeye, but specifically in en-gb! this part seems to have gotten renamed right before this build, and only in en-us, as the name in every other language seems to reflect its earlier name of rancor still

although. i booted into the feb 19 build with -locale:en-gb and it still seemed to use en-us, as it says grumpeye, but i assure you its real. here it is in SPORE\Data\Locale\en-gb\text\crg_editor\creaturerigblocks_0x325440a2.txt

in the feb 19 build, its named Rancor in danish (still Rankor in danish final!), italian, mainland portuguese, swedish, and thai; Rencor in spanish, Rancoeur in french, Rancuner in dutch, Rankor in norwegian, Rancoroso in brazilian portuguese, and it also transliterates to Ransoa in japanese (renamed to Guranpuai which matches grumpeye)

in fact i gathered all creature part names in all languages in both the feb 19 and final builds, and marked which ones seem to have changed. the parts that got renamed in english also got renamed in most other languages, but there were a bunch of other changes too, including to unused parts interestingly enough

(image 1, image 2, image 3; after clicking on the link, right click and open the image again in a new tab to view it in full)

the parts in thai was entirely untranslated in feb 19, danish and swedish were pretty incomplete in feb 19, and greek changed most names even though they were translated already. also some languages reflect the early part names even into final (like you saw with grumpeye in danish)

this one actually the be_editor_base_mockup.rw4 that can be found in the cc demo (and feb 19)'s files! including this specific colored building, actually in a different place too, and for some reason it was baked onto the mockup model??

paint mode stuff

background and ui mockups. ui is evident from the fact that its literally just edited from the creature editor

theres also the vehicles themselves. some models are recognizeable from early builds!

vehicle renders. not really an editor but its related enough

actual vehicle editor bg concepts

attempts to use creatures with vehicles??? unexplained

im not sure why the creatures here are all this but its rather appropriate to post on disability pride month!

mockups

more 2005 screenshots

this one looks more like a prototype, though not GonzagoGL or anything

here are all the ones that will appear when chatting randomly, sorted as they were in civ_chat_random.pfx, plus the three bubbles (representing the tribal socialization tools) that only get used in tribal stage

you will notice two things, one is that theres a bubble texture that is ENTIRELY absent from all builds we have and i have no idea what its name is, other than it sorts between clothing2 and crown

the other is that the file in retail still references bubble_cube, which is absent from final, but still exists in the february 19 build

i think its a portal reference lol. anyway not sure what happens when the game happens to roll either of these bubbles with nonexistent textures, i assume the creature just doesnt get a bubble above it and thats it. they all have the same probability even unused ones

then theres the bubbles that arent used in the random chats. they still get used in other effects, mostly in the tribal to civ stage cutscene

the effects tribe_chat_icon_churn, tribe_chat_icon_city_hall, tribe_chat_icon_econ_vehicle, tribe_chat_icon_economic, tribe_chat_icon_rel_vehicle and tribe_chat_icon_unicorn seem unreferenced in any animations (the rest get used in animations relating to the tribal to civ cutscene), although it doesnt mean theyre unused

in fact heres bubble_city_hall right here lol

that said i dont remember seeing the unicorn icon or the churn

anyway now are bubbles that were removed from the game and dont get referenced in retail

most of them are these tribal bubbles, describing interacting with other tribes

then the cc demo has a few extras. could NOT find what the name for this one was or what it was used for. its probably also related to the tribe to civ cutscene though?

theres also a distinct bubble_cityhall, not to be confused with the final bubble_city_hall. and bubble_fruit is just in a completely different style from the rest of the bubbles

then theres bubbles from an early version of the tribal to civ cutscene, with duplicates of the waffle icon for each archetype

this is obviously the gdc 2005 tech demo, but it seems to be an early version of even that? all the creatures here look rather strange

compare to this screenshot. the environment seems to be the same as this though, and the rest of the graphics!

particularly, the hoppers match the models found in the feb 19 build (HerdSmall.rw4 from ArenasMisc.package, shown here) and retail (for the black cloud). so turns out this model directly was from 2005!

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theres this screenshot that seems to be from around the same point as the feb 19 build. i recognize these debug displays immediately, and the window title that says StopCurrentCinematic here

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theres also these screenshots from earlier builds. i dont even recognize the top right one here

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another page. must be a build from 2007

curiously it actually has fensters (which is the name given to evolved screebles in the comic book creator), so they still were in the game as of that point. theres also tex, and the tribe here consists of singtwees. plus theres a few more harder to identify creatures

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more early tribal screenshots. this epic here has weird missing legs

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more of that unknown build

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and more 2005 screenshots, with underwater tribes. and more evidence that aquatic was not a stage!!

(edit: here it is)

the mouthPriorty values i found all are only 1, 2 and 3 (not even floats even though this value supports floats)

and whats strange is they actually correspond to the sounds the creature will make in tribal stage onwards!

so all the ones that get MamA have a mouthPriority value of 3, BirdA is mouthPriority 2, and InsA is mouthPriority1. naturally all cell mouths (which make mandible carnivore noises normally) also have a mouth priority of 1

and all mouths added in creepy & cute and bot parts have a mouth priority of 2! which corresponds to bird mouths! but they dont actually make bird noises!! the sound type used in tribal onwards is just some other entirely separate value, which is actually found in Spore_Audio2.package\audio_mouthmap~\base.audioProp, where it defines the sounds to use for each mouthtype

anyway what mouth priority seems to be used for is for tribal/civ/space creatures with multiple mouths of different types

to test, i made one with insect and bird mouths, one with bird and mammal mouths, one with insect and mammal mouths, and one with a bird mouth and a mammal mouth with the same priority of 2

and indeed it seems to prioritize the mouths with the higher mouthPriority values! the first one makes bird sounds, and the rest make mammal sounds

its interesting in the fourth one's case, with different sapient voice types but the same mouth priority on both (and it selected the mammal one anyways). there could be other factors im unaware of that determine what it uses

strangely it differs in different save files! this above was predators, here in creature2 it has a green cube??

this is in herbivore. upon closer inspection this DOES have copies of all other creatures too. the purple and green and yellow ones etc dont show in predators, so it seems like it only has the creatures that the save actually has

if you input an invalid save file and generate random nests, it also just has the green cube

if you add creatures with the creature game edit mode, they do get copies spawned in the center of the planet!!! here i spawned some purple ones in predators, which shouldnt have purple ones normally. oh and you can see the green cube too, so i guess its just always there

it was a struggle to find the effect, but i found the sg_planet_trail_ribbon texture. its used in 6 effects with hashed names

which is colored by these bitimages

theres 2 slightly different effects for each of the three types of trail. the latter three files have a width of 5 instead of 8, 250 segments instead of 300, and are less opaque. they seem to be used for planets' moons

my best idea for why they stay is that that, possibly, they just dont start out at their max length and just take a really long time to get there. notice how they have 300 segments of length 2.5, that makes for a length of 750 units (whatever the units may be)! that seems really long!

this is especially evident from the fact that the length does cap at some point. this is from half an hour of recording. you can also see the planet stopped moving at some point?? it did resume afterwards so no clue what that was about

and yeah see, theyre not getting any longer, this is after leaving it here an hour