Spores Illustrated brings us news on the system requirements for the Creature Editor

OS - Windows XP/Vista (FAT 16/32 file systems not supported for Digital Download)

Processor – 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent

Memory – XP: 512 MB RAM / Vista: 768 MB RAM

Hard Drive – At least 300 MB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for created creatures. (600 MB for digital download)

Video Card – A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0*
For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game
requires at least:
* Intel Integrated Chipset GMA 950
* Dual 2.0GHz CPUs, or 1.7GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent

Supported Video Cards

* ATI Radeon™ series
9500, 9600, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800, X850, X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950, 2400, 2600, 2900, 3650, 3850

* NVIDIA GeForce series
FX 5900, FX 5950, 6200, 6500, 6600, 6800, 7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950, 8400, 8500, 8600, 8800

* Intel® Extreme Graphics
GMA 950, GMA X3000, GMA X3100

News just broke that EA has relented and dropped the 10 day revalidation requirement for Mass Effect and Spore! Jay Watamaniuk, Bioware Community Manager broke the news on the official Bioware forums:

Q: Did BioWare and EA change their mind on requiring that the game be re-authorized every 10 days?

A: BioWare has always listened very closely to its fans and we made this decision to ensure we are delivering the best possible experience to them. To all the fans including our many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able re-authenticate as often as required, EA and BioWare want you to know that your feedback is important to us.

Q: If the game isn’t going to require an authentication every 10 days, will it ever require re-authentication?

A: Only if the player chooses to download new game content.

While this is a huge step forward, fact may remain that SecuROM will be employed, which is still nothing short of putting malware on our systems.

GamingShogun was lucky enough to ask Monte Cristo’s Project Director Patrick Marchal some questions on Cities Unl…erm…XL . The name still takes some getting used to.

On a question regarding what we would consider region play Patrick responds:

It’s still slightly too early to give you precise details about the inter-player/city interactions. However, we can already tell you that players won’t be confined into their city’s economy and will, if they wish, be able to participate in a global exchange. Import- export, specialization of cities … these are clearly areas where we think the genre can see big improvement.

On system specs:

The minimum and recommend system specs are not yet defined. However, we know our audience doesn’t necessarily own the latest PC machine. We are aiming to run the game smoothly on older computers - of course, in that case, you won’t have the shiny effects you may see in the screenshots but player cities will definitively still be better looking than in current city builder titles.

We will keep you to that MC!

We’ve just received a mail from Caryl Shaw (aka MaxisLucky), online producer for Spore, on the SecuROM issue. It seems the community outcry is reaching Maxis’ ears. Below is the mail in its entirety.

Hey Spore Fans -

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been hearing your concerns about
the online authentication mentioned earlier this week.  I didn’t want to
head into the weekend without getting back to you with some information
about how Spore is planning on using this new system.

A few things we wanted you to know:

– We authenticate your game online when you install and launch it the
first time.
– We’ll re-authenticate when a player uses online features, downloads
new content or a patch for their game.
– The new system means you don’t have to play with the disc in your
computer. And if you are like me, always losing discs, this will be a
huge benefit.
– You’ll still be able to install and play on multiple computers.
– You can play offline. 

We do hope that players will play online - sharing creatures, buildings
and vehicles with other players is something that is unique to Spore and
one of the coolest features of the game. Every day, when I play the
Creature Stage, I get to see wacky and awesome new creatures from my
Buddies on the team coming over the hill at me and I can’t wait to see
what happens when our creative, passionate community starts sharing
their creations.

I’d love to write more - but I need to get back to work.  We’ve got a
game to finish. 

-caryl

===============================
caryl d shaw (aka MaxisLucky)
online producer
spore

What do you all think of this? Come on in and discuss it on our forums.

Also: please vote on the issue in our frontpage poll!

Disclaimer: The following is my own personal opinion and not necessarily reflects the opinion of Simphoni Networks, LLC

Yesterday a rumour hit the Spore community. As I am not in the habit of spewing unconfirmed rumours I didn’t bring it up here yet. But by now it has been confirmed. In an effort to decrease piracy of their games EA will implement SecuROM on both Spore and the game Mass Effect. What this entails is the following:

“After the first activation, SecuROM requires that [Mass Effect PC] re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez’d and gets banned),”

If customers do not come online after ten days, the game will cease to function. “

After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run,” added French. “..An internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after.”

This means a whole lot of potential troubles for everyone with legal games getting accidentally blocked. It also means it will be impossible to play Spore on a computer without an internet connection. And that while we have always been sworn Spore would be playable off-line. I think Simprograms says it right:

Let me get this straight. If you go on vacation for more than 10 days and have Spore on a laptop and would like to play, it sucks to be you! Because you are screwed! What if you lost internet connection for a month or visit/stay with somebody in a rural area with no connection? This whole idea of SecuROM spells out T-R-O-U-B-L-E in a huge way. The whole idea behind this is to stop pirates from pirating the game, yet don’t they know that this will increase piracy and reduce the number of copies the game will sell? It should not be right that the ones who buy the game legimately are getting the stick, while the pirates will have this cracked and running without DRM in no time.

In my personal opinion this is completely the wrong way to go. The whole re-activation thing Microsoft added to their operating systems shows what a hassle it is every time I change my hardware. And I hardly do that every 10 days. The potential for things to go wrong here is huge. I wonder whether EA is going to put up dedicated helpdesks for people to explain to people how to make the game communicate through their firewall even though they never wanted to play online.

We have been paid a visit by MaxisCactus, and as always he or she had some nice bits of news for us all:

Hey Everyone,

We’ve been keeping an eye on your fansites and the creature concept art many of you feature in forums and galleries has pretty much floored us.  The ingenuity of these creations is astounding.  We’ve had a lot of fun discussing your art and members of our development team have recreated a few fan concepts in our creature editor.  Renders of these have been uploaded to the site, as well as developer commentary.  We even sent off these creature concepts to NASA for evaluation from their Astrobiology Institute. 

It’s all up here: http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php

Also, we’ve been receiving more and more questions about the game, and have updated our FAQ section.

http://www.spore.com/faq.php

Finally, we have a couple new movies for you to check out.  See the developers discuss procedural animation or the new Yuri’s Night movie here:

http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php

Check back to Spore.com this week for more updates.

I definitely urge all of you to go over to the Spore site and check out the concepts and resulting Spore Creatures. The resemblance between the concept art and resulting creatures is a testament to the Creature Editor’s versatility.

As announced yesterday on our forums the Creature Editor is now available for pre-order for North Americans at the EA Store.

Following the news earlier this week that MC has renamed Cities Unlimited to Cities XL, they have now moved the entire website to a new address: http://www.citiesxl.com. This event is announced in a new blog by dasilva, which also gives us some glimpses into future game mechanics and yes: new screenshots! Dasilva gives the following description of the game:

The game’s online features and services will allow players to create interconnected cities on virtual and persistent planets. Mayors can share and trade with one another, specialize their economy and team up with befriended cities to create sprawling metropolises. Life on the planet will be punctuated by events and competitions - a concert held in one town may, for example, be attended by visitors from other areas who can also enjoy a walk around the city to admire the urban creations of multiple players. By combining a fantastic single-player game with the social and multiplayer aspects of an MMO, CITIES XL™ will shape the future of the genre by offering more variety, bigger cities and multiple gameplay layers.

The screens provided are exciting as well: check them out in the forums. One person who will remain nameless had only one comment after seeing the new shots:

*drool*

IGN reports that the Spore Creature Editor will come out in June. According to EA’s Patrick Buechner:

A trial version of the Spore Creature creator will be available for free through a variety of sources including as a download from Spore.com and in The SimCity Box. There will also be a version of the Creature Creator available at retail. The free Creature Creator has about 25-percent of the creature making parts from Spore. The retail version will have 100-percent. It’s up to the players to choose which version they want, but they’ll all be available at approximately the same time.

The SimCity Box will include SimCity Societies, SimCity Societies Destinations, SimCity 4, SimCity 4 Rush Hour and The Sims Carnival SnapCity, and retail at 40USD.

Buechner goes on to say that the creatures made by the stand-alone editor can be shared among users, and directly imported into the game once it ships.

So what’s your take on this? Are you going to get the full-version, or make do with the free one? Let us know in the forums!

Monte Cristo have just announced that they Cities Unlimited will be renamed to Cities XL™. An important distinction between the Cities Unlimited and Cities XL names is that the latter has a ™ tacked to the back. Although no official explanation is given by MC, this may be an clue to the reasons behind the name change. Cities Unlimited is (as some of you may have found) also the name of a network hosting city guides to all cities in the US, and owner of the domain name www.citiesunlimited.com.

MC will make the name change official through a press release next week, but Simphoni will go ahead and rename its official Cities Unlimited forum to reflect the change to Cities XL. Hop on in, and let us know how you feel about the name change.  

A new blog has been posted on the official Cities Unlimited site. This one deals with the modelling of economics in the game.

…a company will set up shop in the city if it believes that it can generate income. Alternatively, it will leave (declare bankruptcy) when it has sustained losses over a significant period of time. A resident, in turn, will move to a city if he believes it will bring him adequate satisfaction, and leave when this is no longer the case.

Developer David goes on to explain how residents act both as workers and consumers, and companies act both as employers and outlets for goods and services. It appears the players will have several options for balancing their budgets, including what Monte Cristo calls “Foreign Trade”. Whether this means region play as in SC4, or trade with “imaginary” neighbours as in SC2000 is still unclear to this reader.

Check out the article and tell us what you think!