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[Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Rei]

Anyone heard of this game thats (maybe) coming out next may? Called Spore it is. I am like, EXTREMELY anticipating that game.

Basically, you first start with a single-celled creature in a drop of water (that may or may not be located in a large body of water), and you swim around, eating stuff and weaker cells. Then you evolve. You might decide to add a spike in the front of your creature, for increased damage, or some other thingie that increases your speed.

Eventually you become a fishlike creature, that can then evolve to get to land, this is where the creature editting REALLY starts. The choices of what you can make is literally unlimited. Robin Williams was put on the stage of a demo showing of the game to test the creature editor, and he made some weird thing with short short small legs, 3 pairs of arms (each ending in a different pair of hands), 2 mouths, one on each side of the head and 2 noses, one a trunk and the other a normal nose on the end of the trunk.

Not exactly a normal creature. But you still have to run around eating stuff, and avoid getting eaten, and eventually you evolve enough brainpower to reach the next stage of the game, tribal mode.

Now you control a small tribe of the creatures you designed. You can give them stuff, like drums, spears or maybe a fire, and they will get all excited. You have to compete vs other tribes as well.

Sooner or later you grow so large you enter the city mode. Now you control a city of the creatures, and now instead of altering the creatures, you alter the buildings they have, meaning you can create a completely unique building style, and the computer will try to mimic it. Now you have to advance your citys tech level. Later you gain access to air, ground and underwater vehicles, which you once again can completely edit/make yourself.

You also fight or trade or just ignore other cities, and now the game begins to enter the 5th stage, the civ stage. So now you gotta stay on top and conquer other cities, or create alliances with them.

Eventually you reach the final 6th mode of the game, space exploration. Your city finally manages to produce an UFO and now you can fly around in it and interact and explore your world, or other worlds in the star system. That cold planet on the far end of the solar system? Why not terraform it, smack down some volcanos to help create an atmosphere and then trigger an genesis effect and colonize it.

Why stop there? Go to other star systems, find intelligent life and say hello. Blow their planet up or just scorch their cities a bit, or be friendly.

Abduct alien creatures and put them on that world you just terraformed, or do it before you terraform it, and watch em go *BOOM*!

The possibilities are endless!

[loke]

WOW! That sounds one to look out for !
 :eek:

[Solara]

Yes, I've been eagerly anticipating Spore for quite awhile now. Once it's released I imagine it'll be a long, long, time before I need to buy another game.

The funny thing is, there is a popular game exactly like that in a series of sci-fi stories I once wrote...I'd sort of imagined it as the penultimate gaming experience, but never thought I'd actually be able to play it...

[Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Rei]

You, my dear sir/madam, is a lunatic. It says so to the left of your post.

I'd like to read that sci-fi stories though, sounds interesting  

[Solara]

That would be madam. Surely you've never seen a guy calling himself something like 'Solara'?     And correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you're a lunatic too...the only difference is that I was smart enough to escape, apparently.

But anyway, no argument on that part, but I'm a kindly lunatic, so I'll say right now there's no way I would subject another human being to those stories, even if I was able to find them after all this time.

Just so you have an idea of how awful they were, let me mention that I wrote them in junior high, and if I recall correctly they were one part cyberpunk, one part utopian Star Trek-esque society, and one part fantasy/blatant rip-off of Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" series.

I thought it was some pretty epic stuff at the time, but now that I'm older and wiser I realize that the descriptive word I was actually looking for was 'cringe-worthy'.     :roll:

[ June 07, 2006: Message edited by: Solara ]

[ June 07, 2006: Message edited by: Solara ]

[Solara]

Edit: Double post, ignore this.

[ June 07, 2006: Message edited by: Solara ]

[Toady One]

Gezol might force us to whip out the Jim Theiss again.

[Eagleon]

Anyone else in the Gaming Steve forums? There's a pretty large community there, and plenty of info and speculation in old topics, if you're looking for it. Also screenshots, links to movies, etc. I'm on there, but I post barely more often than here.

http://gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?board=12.0

[Gezol]

Ah, yes. Jim Theis, the legendary standard by which all bad fantasy is judged. I introduced his work to the Bay 12 IRC channel a while back, and I guess now that Toad has mentioned it, the time has come to introduce this unique author to the boards, as well. Behold his masterwork:

The Eye of Argon

I guess the Eye of Argon is kind of what happens when you're 16 years old and trying to write like Robert E. Howard without really knowing what most of the words you're using mean. If you're an aspiring writer, chances are you'll end up feeling a lot better about your own work after reading it...

[Solara]

LOL! I've read a MSTing of that book somewhere before, but I guess the author's name slipped my mind.

I...I can't read more than three paragraphs without the aid of the funny little background comments, though, and even then I felt an almost overwhelming desire to claw my own eyes out.

The truly scary thing is that not that the guy thought something like that was publishable (at least I've never had delusions like that about my writing, even today), but that he was able to find an editor that agreed with him.

[Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Rei]

Note to self: avoid Jim Theis like the plague.

[Solara]

All right, since you asked, I went digging around in my closet and unearthed a couple of my old journals.

Here's a faithfully transcribed exerpt, spelling errors and all, for your reading...um, pleasure?

So without further ado, PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MINDS BLOWN (and don't say I didn't warn you...)

quote:
Daz arrived just as the storm broke over the battlefield, streaking down like the opposite of lightening. She hadn't wanted to be involved in this stupid fight, but if they wanted her they were going to get her. The knights broke and ran from the hooded figure on the pawing, snorting, red eyed mount and the wave of terror that acompanied it. Throwing back her hood and surveying the scene with her ice-blue eyes, she figured she might have overdone it a little when she saw that Cedric's vikings were *also* running, but that left just her and Merlin on the rain soaked battlefield, and that was fine with her.

Determined not to be defeated so easily this time she leapt off her horse, which promptly disappeared, and flung an arm in Merlin's direction, shouting a word in the language of the Dark and sending a bolt of pure power in his direction.

Damn! He blocked it! She knew she shouldn't be surprised, but it still made her angry, and when he retaliated she overcompensated with a gigantic blast of power that not only blocked his shot but hit him hard enough to make him stagger a little. Smiling coldly, with renewed confidence Daz sent beam after beam of both physical and mental attacks in his direction.

Merlin might have more experience, but she had unmatched speed and raw power, something the fight with Nimue had proved to her. Now that she'd gotten into the swing of the fight everything was going perfectly. Black light sizzled from her fingertips, and she either dodged or blocked all of Merlin's physical attacks with inhuman speed. As for the mental attacks, they were even easier. A pounding beat from her favorite band played in her head, and all of his pathetic clanging attempts to disrupt her rhythm were either deflected or incorporated into the whole, making her stronger.

She really seemed to be winning this time, when suddenly she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye and whirled around. She raised her left hand just in time to catch the sword swinging toward her, and there was a shower of blue sparks as it cut through the synth-flesh and hit the metal underneath. One of the knights, being either braver or stupider than the rest, had snuck up behind her. "Die witch!" he roared, raising his sword again. Her left hand was now unusable, but all it took was a flick of magic from the fingers of her right hand to send him running away screaming. Maybe she'd overdone it and he'd be crazy for the rest of his life, but right now she didn't care. Her hand was ruined *again* and it would be expensive to repair.

Even worse, she realized she'd forgotten about Merlin just in time to be knocked down by a insanely powerful sneak attack. Furious, she climbed to her feet, her head spinning, and tried to prepare a defense before he attacked again. But it was no good, she realized, the stupid knight had made here loose her rhythm and now she was going to loose the fight to unless she did something fast.

Summoning her mount, she leapt onto it and with one last icy glare in Merlin's direction rode up to rip a hole in a stormcloud with it's hooves. The battlefield was bathed in lightening, and she took a moment to hope he'd get fried before taking advantage of the distraction and opening a portal to home. It was pouring down rain there, too, and to her annoyance the spell dropped her off right in the middle of the street, where she narrowly missed getting hit by a car.

ZOMG TEH AWESOMENESS!  

Seriously, I think this was a big part of why I flunked algebra. Twice. Flipping through this thing I see pages that are like:

quote:
x=5
x + y > z
Daz leapt onto her hoverbike and gunned the motor, roaring down the streets after the two women. Alliance or not, she couldn't let these midevil bitches contaminate *her* timeline. She'd kill them all if she had to, and then Cedric was going to be sorry he'd ever crossed her.

I may post something about the game I mentioned when I have more time. Those parts are actually a little better, mainly because no one's leaping onto anything or flinging bolts of power in anybody's direction.  :roll:

[Toady One]

HE he he.  "As for the mental attacks, they were even easier."  Merlin was an idiot, and he doesn't have the beat.

But...  was that algebra there as part of the story?  Or were you writing these things during algebra class and taking occasional notes at the same time?

[Solara]

Very, very occasional notes.

Famous writers don't need math!

[Eagleon]

Dear lord, you guys weren't kidding! I couldn't read past the first paragraph. Seriously - "Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth" is as far as I got.

You're right, Gezol, I do feel better. o.o

And Solara, I'm sure deep down in that morass of waves of terror and bolts of power is a good story waiting to be uncovered and cut into a shining jewel of literature.... I think.

... *snickers*