#spore datamining

in ConsequenceGraphics, it uses these textures, Tower.png and tower-color.png

its literally just Futuro and Merlon Roof stacked on each other, with only the base part made bigger by 1 notch

it uses this paint but, for some reason, the icon is mirrored???

otherwise it matches exactly this way

the way it works is that it sends 6 ribbons to place the big tentacles that wrap around much of the planet, then places the central thing

LP_Ribbon_Center actually seems to act the same as LP_Grob_Signature

anyway its interesting this actually predates the final cyborg grox. remember this is the feb 19 build. the grox were this

first thing is that creation data is stored in an xml, that defines the creation parts, part scales and morph handles and such, and some other stuff like the creation type and colors. you can see it clearly with kade's png tool

the game compresses this xml data (usually to below 8192 bits), gives it a crc and then pads out the data with zeroes to make it 8192 bits long

also, before the creation xml data, it stores metadata about the creation (which you can see in the asset tool in the png raw data tab, as well as in the png metadata tab), such as its name, author name etc. here is that for alderbrook

then it uses the actual render of the creature as an encryption key, which ensures that the creation render will more or less correspond to the actual creature (though you can also encode creation data in a totally blank png)

the way it creates the creature render is roughly the same thing they used during development to make part thumbnails, paint thumbnails, and planner thumbnails, though those usually dont have creation data stored in them (with the exception of the cell paints in the feb 19 build). most of them are also 128x128, though it also creates 256x256 creation thumbnails with no creation data stored in them (mostly used on the spore website, but for some reason also stored in the game files in EditorSaves.package)

anyway, then it takes the actual creation png and puts the encrypted model bits in there. its a bit confusing, but kade said that it takes the color value of every pixel and encodes the data in there by making every rgba value either even or odd. it makes very little visible effect on the actual creation png and they still manage to store the data in there!

you can see that the rgba values vary by only 1 on any seemingly totally transparent background, and how it manages to store that in areas with color

i will say this post is a little old and uncertain about some things, but you get the gist here

another thing is that the information in pixels is read in bgra order, instead of rgba; this is an image kade shared

so in a sense this is what the game actually "sees" out of the png. kinda interesting

anyway the way the game stores the data explains the noise you can see in the transparency somewhat. you can see the transparent checkerboard easier on dark colors especially

shown with increased contrast on alderbrook

apparently the png format is totally different for adventure pngs, as it doesnt use the image itself to encode any of the information (you can open a transparent adventure png, use the magic wand anywhere on the background and there wont be any of the expected noise). im not sure how this works!

i believe its something to do with actual metadata in the file, which, for example, discord completely strips so you cant just share adventure pngs on discord and expect them to work. something like that??

Some experimental textures included hair on creatures, but in the end, that feature was left behind.

some creatures with fur were shown earlier in the book, though given that theyre unpainted it looks more like a scrapped part

and that also more closely matches the fur in some 2006 creature renders. these could have actually just been a scrapped hair part

which lines up with these models still found in retail

but these look more like a part of the skinpaint system, were there two different hair systems in place? (second image is from the prima guide)

and yeah there was more evidence there was hair paint systems, like these properties (Spore_Game.package\editor_hairSystem~\hair.prop). hair also has its own shaders which just a part wouldnt need

carries over outside the editor, though its hard to tell

in final this does not happen (shown in paint mode also). the eyes have a consistent specular and bumpmap

comparing the textures, nothing jumps out at me other than the much worse quality on the tintmask alpha in feb 19

the actual apparent difference seems to come down to a single property they set

and this is also splash-space. no other splashes seem to be present here, or any other stage transitions

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the prima guide also has a really similar alternate tribal stage artwork, but it actually differs slightly and has final huts. so this is actually newer than this prototype

theres also the creature loading screen, and an alternate space one, on Shannon Galvin's site

including yet another tribal one that isnt linked for some reason, which was apparently made for the artbook. it also matches the prima guide

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