Saving the game in Spore

[(O)enone]

I realise Spore isn't out until next week, but I thought I'd ask on the
offchance anyone knows the answer to this. If not I'll post again next week.
:)

I've just been reading the PC Gamer (UK) review of Spore, and my attitude
towards the game has shifted from "not really interested" to "very tempted
to buy this." A lot of what I've read really appeals to me, in a way that
games like The Sims really really don't.

However one thing in particular has made me slightly cautious. Towards the
end of the review, it says, "[...] the game crashed four times in my 50-odd
hours of play, which I find entirely acceptable. What's completely
unacceptable in that there's no autosave whatsoever, so every single time I
lost over three hours of progress. [...]"

I'm not too worried about the crashing, annoying as that would no doubt be,
but more about the implication regarding saving the game.

Is this simply saying that the game doesn't automatically save and that the
reviewer forgot to save manually, or is it saying that there's no way to
save at all in the middle of developing your creature?

The reason I ask is because I always find my gaming time in very limited
availability, and there's no way I could play for anything like three hours
in a single day. I'm more likely to get closer to 30 minutes. If there's no
way to save the game after reasonably small amounts of time then I'll have
to sadly leave the game on the shelf and play something else instead...

Thanks for any information on this that anyone can offer!

--

(O)enone

[(O)enone]

(O)enone wrote:
> I realise Spore isn't out until next week, but I thought I'd ask on
> the offchance anyone knows the answer to this. If not I'll post again
> next week. :)

[...]

> Is this simply saying that the game doesn't automatically save and
> that the reviewer forgot to save manually, or is it saying that
> there's no way to save at all in the middle of developing your
> creature?

So come on then, it's out now, someone must know the answer? Can you save
the game at any time you want in Spore or only when the game lets you?

--

(O)enone

[Loïc Madelezus]

(O)enone a écrit :

Of course you can save at any time, except during a few training phases.

[Loïc Madelezus]

(O)enone a écrit :

[(O)enone]

Loďc Madelezus wrote:
> Of course you can save at any time, except during a few training
> phases.

Good, many thanks for confirming that! :)

--

(O)enone

[yaugin]

Oh, if only that were the extent of Spore's save game problem. I just
ran into a nasty bug, which is nasty partly because of the bug itself
and partly because the game handles it in the stupidest manner
possible.

I had last saved my game partway through the Creature stage, and then
I played from that stage through the tribal/civ stages in one sitting.
This was something like six hours of gameplay for me. So, shortly into
the space stage, I was on a planet surface and I tried to save, but
the option was grayed out. Apparently you have to zoom out to the
galaxy map to save, which I did, but then Spore told me that there was
an error trying to save, and that SPORE WILL NOW EXIT. No "retry/
ignore" option, it just failed to save and then forced an exit. What
bothers me is that someone went out of their way to code this
behavior. It would have been easier to ignore the problem and let me
continue playing and then at least I could attempt another save or
just leave the game running in the background until I got around to
finishing it. The way they handled this error is so dumb that it's
offensive.

So to answer your question, yes, you CAN TRY to save your game at
anytime, but every time you do, you run the risk that it will cause
the game to close on you without saving. So if losing hours of
progress is a concern to you, then yes I agree 100% with the review
you quoted -- it's completely unacceptable and you best wait for a
patch or just avoid the game altogether -- it's not that good anyway.
Make no mistake, the only reason I played the game for a six-hour
sitting is simply because it takes that long to get things to
progress, not because I was glued to the gameplay. I probably won't
even bother finishing it now.

[(O)enone]

yaugin wrote:
> Oh, if only that were the extent of Spore's save game problem. I just
> ran into a nasty bug, which is nasty partly because of the bug itself
> and partly because the game handles it in the stupidest manner
> possible.

[...]

Sorry to hear about your horrible saving experience. I think various threads
I've read over the last week have pretty much convinced me not to bother
with Spore now. It sounds like way too much of the replay value is down to
Sims-like customisation of creatures (something that I don't find remotely
enjoyable). I'll wait until I can pick it up on budget and then see what
it's like.

Thanks for the reply!

--

(O)enone

[ADavi...@gmail.com]

There is very little replayability, to be honest. Once you get to the
space age once, unless you just like building the creature, building,
and vehicle models, there's absolutely nothing even remotely
replayable about the game. I mean, you can try it as a carnivore/war
species, or a herbivore/religious species, or even then dangerous
omnivore/economist species, but really, it's the same game over and
over and over and over again. I've played through to the space age 3
times now, and although the space age is fun and the galaxy is
massive, I am not a fan of Sim for the sake of Sim. Once I run out of
goals that yield significant rewards, I lose interest. Creating the
creatures and buildings is interesting, but there seems to be a
problem in that you can't choose to stay in the spore stage, or the
tribal stage, at least not with any sort of entertainment. It seems to
me that they tried to make it simple enough for most people to get it
and dumbed it down too much. I feel like I'm required to enjoy the
space stage, because the rest of it is just too easy, even on "hard"
mode.

My final thought is that Spore is a fun game, but for $50, save your
money and wait for something better.

[midi...@gmail.com]

On Sep 7, 10:43 am, "\(O\)enone" <oen...@nowhere.com> wrote:

> Loïc Madelezus wrote:
> > Of course you can save at any time, except during a few training
> > phases.
>
> Good, many thanks for confirming that! :)

Of course, if you do happen to need to quit during a training phase,
you lose
any progress since your last save. For example, if you went from start
of
civ phase to early space phase, and you just don't have time to kill
some
diseased creatures, you'll have to go back and redo your civ phase.
That's a pretty serious flaw. Not as bad as crashing 4 times in 50
hours
of game play, which would pretty much turn me off on that publisher
for producing a shoddy product, but it's still bad.

[dre...@gmail.com]

A game like spore should take up a ton of space. Having so many stages
seems like it would do that. The fact that this game is all on just 1
CD, I think they could have done better in adding more gameplay and
less of the artsy stuff.