#spore mods

If you're a longtime Spore enjoyer like myself, I'm sure you've seen these videos or others like them, where invisible limbs (either with vanilla glitches or from the Dark Injection mod) are utilized to make creatures that float above the ground, giving them the illusion that they're flying (or swimming).

But the most well-known, "tried and true" method has always felt a bit...

... janky.

This is achieved by attaching a single invisible limb to the front of the creature, which causes it to walk by hopping on that invisible leg. The single-legged walk cycle gives the appearance that the creature is flapping itself up and down, either flying with its wings or swimming by propelling its tail. The length and angle of the leg changes the stride, and in turn changes the speed of the "flight".

However, I'm not satisfied with my dragon being so floppy. It might work fine for some creatures, but the exaggerated animation is simply too exaggerated for my tastes.

So I've done some experimenting. The method I came up with a couple years ago isn't too different, but it has three feet instead of one.

This smoother motion is definitely an improvement, and it's what I use for most of my floaty creatures. Yet, I still wasn't satisfied with this dragon's flight. The tail still feels a bit too floppy, and it looks like it's leading with its chest rather than flying with its wings, as if it's being dragged along by something.

This design proved to be a winner! The wings look more like they're providing powered flight, and the floppiness level of the rear is more appropriate. The legs are a bit cumbersome, but since they're invisible limbs, they won't render when the creature is encountered in-game.

But as I was composing this post, I thought to myself...

can I make the wings truly flap?

The answer is yes, it can be done!

With another pair of invisible legs attached at the elbow joint of the wings, each with three feet, this dragon has truly taken flight! It certainly isn't perfect, but considering the capabilities and limits of Spore, I'd say it's pretty damn good.

The limb that creates the wing, the one which these new invisible legs are attached to, isn't just cosmetic--it's a fully functional wing limb from the Unshackled mod (check out my review of the mod here!). The wing limb provides the creature with the glide ability, complete with animation. Miraculously, even with these invisible legs attached, the wing limb animates exactly as it should. I really did not expect that.

My Miku ojisan OC made in Spore! :3

With Emd— creator of the Spore Mod API, Sporemodder FX, Advanced Creature Paint, and many other mods and community resources— going dormant in the Spore community, a circle of other modders including myself have taken up maintaining the tools and repositories. A new version of Launcher Kit has been published, and new contributors have been added to the Mod API git repo to update and maintain it.

Recently I've taken up work on the Sporemodder Blender tools, fixing various stumbling blocks and adding some QOL features such as symmetric export for parts and LOD1 export mode.

I've also been working on some Blender Importers and Exporters for various file types that Spore uses that were not otherwise supported.

One that I have fully working now is a flesh limb importer and exporter:

Limb "muscles" are imported as a set of curves that combine together ingame. Their thickness, length, curve, resolution, etc can all be adjusted by the user and exported as something usable ingame.

"This shot is brilliant and should be shown in any film study class #GameofThrones"

As you can see, it allows for some pretty crazy results!

For more info on how limbs work in spore, and to see some of my previous experiments, check out this post with @randomsporefacts!

Another importer I've been working on is for city and tribe layouts, though I don't yet have an exporter to put these back into the game yet. Below are some work in progress images:

A City layout as imported into Blender. The City Hall and Building locations are highlighted as boxes, and connected together as they appear ingame. The spheres and circles represent the Turrets and Decor spots, respectively. Other points represent the Plaza, City Gate, and Harbor locations.

A tribe layout as imported into Blender. The Hut, Campfire, Foodpile, and Toolshed locations are highlighted as boxes. The Totem and Animal/Egg Pen are also represented by their own respective shapes.

Eventually, both of these formats will both be exportable as well, and users can begin creating their own city/tribe layouts for mods.

I'm hoping that with the new support for these formats, people will feel encouraged to try modding parts of the game that normally do not get a lot of attention.

I've also been experimenting around with procedural part texturing, though the results are somewhat mixed. I'd expect that they'd need to be edited manually to get the right look...

Top is Maxis, Bottom is procedural.

Eventually, I'm considering releasing this shader set + my blender workspace layout + some helpful python scripts (for processing the part .prop files) as something of a "Part Creation Kit" community resource.

Aside from that, I've been working on a new, fully rebuilt version of Dark Injection with some much-needed fixes, updates, and an overhaul of the previously VERY messy and bloated file structure. As a bonus it includes new parts and paints, faithfully upscaled textures, and improvements to part recoloring. And then also some new Valla Vanilla parts as well. Most of the DI stuff is pretty subtle so maybe I'll show that later in a different post.

Anyway, just an update for my Spore followers as for what I've been up to most recently!

However, I am now having a. Non-serious issue that I can't seem to find any online solutions to. Basically, what folder do I put non-ModAPI mods (e.g Dinosaur Parts, Dark Genetics, Strange & Beautiful) into to get them to work? Because I tried the Galactic Adventures "Data" folder, which is where the mods were, but the mods aren't loading.

Behold the Skuther!!!

For years I have wanted to create a faithful, 3D-version of the “Ultimate life-form” from SPORE Creatures DS. I’ve tried for years (off-&-on again) to make a satisfactory Skuther in actual SPORE, and none of my attempts really worked... 

hiya! i am glad you have found my blog, i always love finding people who love Spore too.

i do use mods! I dont use Dark Injections simply because it adds almost... too much for me- im not huge on modded parts all the time tbh, mostly ones that are more complex in shape like those, so i tend to skip it. which ones i use can flucuate as sometimes i do want to share creatures normally. in that case i tend to just use Graphical mods which i have a link to here. even the graphic additions are enough to make spore feel like a whole new expirience tbh.

otherwise, my favorite other mods.... CamBen Color Pack is definitely a fave, i think combined with the Fur Mod you can do a lot of cool stuff! and of course the Enhanced Color Picker, a must have imo. two others i like together- Multiple Galaxies (makes the one galaxy on the home screen into FIVE instead) with Solar Spore (in order to increase planet count. i just think Multiple Galaxies looks cool but it doesnt function any different than the normal galaxy, its basically just the image, so you may get some kinda misplaced solar systems. but its fun for a change and with how massive space stage is, it does make the universe seem bigger (and its fun for lore making).

i found Multiple Galaxies mod through some backwards way so i can reupload it as i dont know where it is anymore. do note, you cannot use a HD galaxy mod with this, as they replace the same thing.