They would have to be compressed, as at 1kb each, 1 million creatures would take up about 1 GB, if they are uncompressed, there would be no room for them unless there were thousands of servers.
They are 1kb at their original size. That's what they are 1kb. I'm sure that can be compressed if needed, but if you drop a few servers down on this game you can hold everything that will ever be made in spore, plus, they don't have to hold the info for people who are banned from auto-upload for creating bad stuff.
Spore is built on procedural content. The 1KB files represent all the data that you need to define your creature. Spore, the program, takes this data and extrapolates it into the full model, animations, textures... everything. At 1KB there is no reason to compress it any further. Now, during the game as it 'pollinates' your experience the amount of data it needs does increase. When you first advance to the 3D realm, it needs to import other creatures and plants to inhabit the world around you. These are the 1KB files, and it only needs to do so every so often when you need more things in the 'food chain' around you. This is a sum total of around 6KB every 'update'? for a lengthy amount of playtime. Even non-broadband connections could do this easily. When you advance to tribal, the other tribes around you are the creature you have created, so at this point in the game I would assume your planetary creatures are set. Instead, it would be the buildings you can buy and the cities you view that make up the content distributed to you. This is more than before, but I can't see you needing more than perhaps 50 different buildings at the moment of advancement and a few random 'purchase' suggestions as your style changes. When you advance to civ this is vehicles and I doubt this is much more than 50 as well. So still, we have a (in my opinion high) estimate of ~150KB of total transfer through tribal and civ gameplay. This is certainly more than before, but still a very, very small amount of data to handle. Planetary would actually be a step back, I think. I may be wrong, but I'm under the impression that the only other life in your solar system on other planets would be some non-intelligent creatures. I'm going to assume that the planets are randomly generated for you, but I could be wrong. It appears that there are perhaps 6 planets in a solar system, on average, and maybe one or two of these might have life. To populate these planets, I doubt you would need more than 50KB again. Interstellar is where things get really heavy, but I see the universe as more of a browser. I doubt you need to download the specific info for each system until you actually decide to view it, and until you focus in on one planet you may not even have to download the creatures. The 'lifeless' (or unintelligent) systems are probably those that are made for you as sandboxes. This requires various creatures to be downloaded to populate them, and this is probably in the 50-75KB range per system. The 'intelligent' systems are those created by other users in their entirety, but as I've guestimated an entire system would likely only range between 50-200KB (depending on how many planets, how much life, how many cities.. you know). Considering that this probably doesn't all need to be downloaded all at once, it's never a huge strain to your connection. While there very well may be a good few gigabytes (or more) of raw data stored to account for every single creature that will ever be made, this is trickled to you very, very slowly, and even a small portion of it is a wide, wide scope of information. Even a dialup connection can download a gigabyte in a week's time, and you're never going to have to download it all at once. Even over months you'll barely see a fraction of what there is to see. To sum up: Don't worry about the amount of transferred data. There is no need to. Oh, and this is all conjecture - but intelligently drawn from everything I've heard. I don't think I'm assuming terribly much here.
Despite our knowledge that a computer could not hold the amount of data that several galaxies would take, there is still the matter of "why". Why would we need several galaxies when one is quite overwhelming on its own? I may be wrong, but judging by the fact that I never have been before, you might want to take my opinion into consideration. I win.
I would like to excuse my verbosity in advance. Posts merged [Heat] I think people are looking at the galaxy in the wrong light. You know that one little square that was on the galaxy in the 2005 GDC? That was everything he could see in the interstellar view, and he only showed us two of the stars within it (including the home star). I believe that this little section is grown and populated with as much as it possibly can be. (Which is likely a hundred or more stars? I would guess more.) And thats only a tiny square in your galaxy. As you expand, more of the galaxy will likely 'open up' to allow you more room, and each of these sections probably contain hours upon hours of playtime. Now let's do a little math. Assuming that each square is roughly 1/100th of the galaxy and that each square contains roughly 100 stars (and remember that this is a very low estimate), and each star has an average of four planets... That is already 40,000 planets to explore. And I'm sure that it will be more than that in reality. If you tweak these numbers to (a high guess of) 150/500/5 the number explodes to 375,000. If you spend only three minutes (which is outright ridiculously small) on every planet, that's already 160,000 (1,125,000) minutes of play time. 2667 (18,750) hours. 111 (781) days. The pure and simple fact is, there is absolutely no reason no have more than one galaxy per player. Now let's shift to data content, since this is the other discussed topic. Assuming that Spore gets decent sales (not amazing), let's say three million, and, even more crazy, let's say that 1/3rd of these people play with some regularity. (One million.) The average user (of all those 3mil who will play) who isn't cranking out as much customised stuff as possible would probably contribute his/her creature, the city layout and mindset, and perhaps a few terraformed/colonized planets. All in all that's roughly 10KB worth of material (on average?) for - I will assume - all of the non-regulars and 1/2 of the regulars. That's 25 million kilobytes or 25 gigabytes. This is a pretty low estimate. Then there is the remaining half-million players who will actively (though some more active than others) tweak/tinker/create a number of things. Now, I'm not going to say all of these people do it as much as possible, but they do it. Suddenly the average skyrockets to 50KB? Some people will only tweak a little, some will tweak hoards, but I'll keep the extremes few in number. Oh, that's another 25 gigabytes. All in all, that's 50 gigabytes for a pretty reserved guesstimation. I wouldn't be surprised if, with this same player base, the number got closer to 150 GB. Now, this doesn't take into account however they're going to 'filter' content. There is sure to be some stuff that will get banned (for certain reasons. 5%?) and if that's all that doesn't get distributed then it only drops to 47 GB (142.5 GB) in a high guess. Taking this even further, there will probably be another percentage that will not even use the internet. (10%?) Still, considering this number, it is VERY possible to store all of this info. I myself have 500 GB of storage on my computer alone, and I don't have the most expensive stuff out there. What I don't understand is why people seem to think that adding galaxies would somehow double this data? Galaxies =/= content. What you're failing to take into account is that it's not a direct link between the amount of content and the size of your galaxy. A galaxy is each player's total realm available to explore. The content is merely potential to fuel the expansion of each player's galaxy, drawn from the creativity and adaption of others who are playing through their own galaxies. (Not to mention the base stuff made by the dev team.) It is a database to draw data from which will populate your experience as you go, tailored, as we have heard, to your play-style.
Just making a note for some of you.. From a couple posts I get the impression that a few of you guys think that this will be a MMORPG style game... It will not be. Think of it like The Sims 2.. You have your own little world that you build and play in.. whatever. Then you can go to the online house/character exchange and download copies of houses for yourself. Other people have the same house, but their houses are not affected by what you do with yours. Spore takes this a step further, and to continue with the analogy, and downloads the 'houses' for you. 'houses' being player created creatures. I HIGHLY doubt that Maxis or EA will have servers that host galaxies that players can play in. I belive that those servers will only house the creature data that your game then downloads for you. I could be wrong, but.. from what I heard in Will Wright's presenatation.. I dont think I'm far off.
I solved all this math stuff. Below is my very (very) complex equation. 2kb + 190834873957kb + $ galaxies + a bunch of servers = :sporerules: :laughing2: $ = How many there is going to be.
I still think that little lighty thing in the picture is the death star on disco 70s night....but whatever floats your boat... Oh and just so you know, to get more content it automatically downloads the content if your connected, so you can spend more time playing :grumpy: all this talk is making me wanna play more!
Yeah.. I know what you mean. arty: I really tired of just talking 'bout it, I want SPORE. :sporerules: But hey.. the longer they take, hopefully the better it is when they release it!
You people seem to be forgetting one simple little fact. The place your planet starts in is the solar system right? after you get enough pointd you can zoom out away form your 4 planet solar system into the galaxy, still with me? After that he also zoomed out even more, and if you remember the 2005 video he did, the entire galaxy you were in was a little square on the big rotating circle thing. Guess what, the circle thing is the universe, and you can click on other little spots on that "universe" to go to other galaxies, so if im correct of course theres other galaxies but there cant be other universe's can there? and if you didnt get understand something i said which i wouldnt be surprised about, ask and i will answer :spin:
Uuhm.. Actually.. No. That was a galaxy, both times.. Just different views. You could consider it a universe, as it contains the entire game world... But Will said that there would be basically only one galaxy. So.. in that sense, yes its a universe.. But all those smaller dots were actually solar systems. Sorry.....................................dot dot.
Traveling through galaxies? Well if anyone saw the time it took to travel from one star to another in the Spore E3 Demo, it took a little while to get from place to place. So traveling galaxies would be crazy proably taking over a half hour.
I'm agreeing with you because Bill did say that, and i don't doubt it if it's endless, but hey: galactic wars, even space stations?
Glactic wars, I don't think so... I have heard that you can only build one UFO (there really would be little need for more) but space stations and orbital planetary defences would be a really cool, and handy! If we remember the E3 2006 demo, once Will attacked the 'birdman' planet, the retaliated and started attacking his home planet. Will would then have to fly all the way back to his planet to try defend it. Of course, if the enemy was as strong as Will, there wouldn't be anything left once he got back! Defence systems in orbit would defniately be a good choice as, even if they were destroyed, they would allow ample time to come back and bast them into space dust!
Speculation, speculation, no real fact, no real fact. Space stations would blow my mind, I would be in heaven. Then I could do some Bab-5 stuff.. Woot. That would open up an entire new realm of diplomacy. Space trading, lots of space ships docking and leaving. That would rock. A space fleet would be awesome too.
You're reading my mind firemaker! THe space phase is the one I want to know a lot more about, because trading galactically, and docking ships, etc. would be amazing. We need space phase info!
I PRAY that we have a HUGE amount of things to do in space phase. Perhaps even like.. asteroid mining, or something. Manufacturing of objects. Because.. colonizing plantes, and watching species.. will get boring after a while.
