Spore players (Mac) chime in....

[otispunkmeyer]

he guys, if those of you with spore, running it on OS X it'd be great if you could just chime in with two things.

1) brief opinion/impression of the game.... is it good? bad? what you expected?

2) what mac your running it on and how well it plays. im hoping its going to run just sweetly on a SR MBP with the 256mb 8600gt

cheers!

 

[Schtumple]

1 I think it's great, by far the best game I've played in terms of diversity, it could do with a bit of a polishing in terms of performance, space mode is a bit jittery when entering planets, but aside from that, love it.

2. MBP 2.5ghz, 2gb ram, 512mb 8600M

 

[patseguin]

1. VERY fun game. I spent 3-4 hours on it last night and had a hard time quitting. I am in the mode where you first get to land and am having trouble figuring out what to do next. I've befriended a few species and run around and find everything is much higher lvl than me. Also, on first launch after installing, it tol dme something about it couldn't conact the servers and to check my internet connection. I ended up having to close out of whatever that was.

2. Running on a Mac Pro 4GB RAM, 8800GT. Runs totally smooth on my 30" at 2560X1600.

 

[keysersoze]

Also, on first launch after installing, it tol dme something about it couldn't conact the servers and to check my internet connection.

1. Same issue here. Relaunched the game, and tried to connect to the server, and it said it already had registered the game, even though the first time through it said the connection failed. Seems to work fine now.

2. Running on a stock 2.0Ghz Macbook with 1GB RAM and GMA x3100. All settings on Medium, except shadows on low. 1280x800. fps drop now and then in creature mode, when running around, but all in all very playable and fun.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

sounds good, i was a bit worried that EA would stuff it up when translating the game to the mac platform.

it runs through cider right?

 

[patseguin]

Not sure what cider is. The game feels and performs like OS X native to me though.

EDIT: I did a quick Google. Yeah, apparently the game is cider. However the technology works, it's great with Spore, so far anyways.

 

[Sijmen]

1. I love it. The game is criticized for its simplicity but that is precisely what I love about it. The space phase is gets a bit more complex (I found it frustrating at first) but that makes it well balanced, in my opinion.

2. Having framerate problems on mid 2007 iMac 24" w/ C2D 2.4 GHz, 2600 Pro, 1920x1200, 4 GB RAM.

Oh, I also really like the Dutch translation. Very well done. Feels good to play a game in my own language with a translation that's not retarded

 

[00Penguin]

1. Very addicting game, it is very hard to stop playing. It is very simple to play so anyone should be able to do it.

2. Running on mid 2007 iMac 20" with 4GB of ram

 

[Huntn]

You start out developing your species. Does this game turn into a RTS (real time strategy) game? I thought it might include some sim aspects like Sim City. Anything like Civilization?

Admittedly I need to read more about it, will go look for a good review to read.

 

[ZiggyPastorius]

I've been running it on my 2.0Ghz late 2007 Macbook in OS X. In terms of the gameplay, it's awesome. Creating creatures and watching them and such is funny as hell (atleast to me and friends), the way some of them look and the way they act. There's a lot of diversity in terms of what kind of creature you can build and what you can do with them.

I'm running it all on Medium settings, and it runs well. Not perfect, but mostly.

 

[dogzilla]

Not running so well...

My experience has not been good. Gameplay on the game is great. I'm at civilization stage and have enjoyed the game so far, as have my kids. I've also heard that the space phase is the best part of the game, and am lookign forward to that.

Unfortunately, the game refuses to run on my computer. I've installed it on my wife's MacBook, where it runs well. However, she needs her computer, and I bought the game for myself, and have been very disappointed that it doesn't run on my MacBook Pro which meets the stated requirements. The game will launch, show the splash screen, resize the screen, then crash and dialog box stating: "Critical section 4d1a8a14 wait failed at address 0x3e0c23f0. Do you wish to debug it?" Clicking either "Yes" or "No" has no visible results. In my system logs I can see a lot of _NSAutoreleaseNoPool errors being generated by spore.

I have started in safe mode (holding down shift key) and get similar behavior, but different error ("Could not create the graphics device. direct x is not available. [1002]"). I have also created a new user and tried running Spore under that and still get the same error.

I am running on a 2.2ghz Core Duo MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM and GeForce 8600M GT with 128mb VRAM.

 

[nintendude]

1. one of the best computer games i've ever played
2. Macbook Air 1.6/80 Model, running very well

 

[Deschain]

I'm really disappointed.

This was the kind of game that when i first heard about it and then saw Will Wrights demo (must have been like 2 years ago?) i was drooling, but i knew it really couldn't live up to what i wanted. Everything was to simplistic. I wanted the evolution part to be deep and fun, it was simplistic, boring and short. Editing creatures wasn't much fun after the 3rd or 4th try (having played the creature creator i was bored of this concept long before the game dropped).

There are games that do the RTS, SimCity and Civilization elements better, their are games that do the space part better. This game is like a jack of all trades, master of none. Everything is over simplified to the point that it just isn't what i wanted.

I played it on a friends iMac (the exact specs escape me) and it was good.i also saw it running on a friends Macbook (4gigs, 2.0ghz, newest revision) and it ran good (some settings were lowered, again, i'm not sure which but it ran smooth.

 

[Huntn]

y wife's MacBook, where it runs well. However, she needs her computer, and I bought the game for myself, and have been very disappointed that it doesn't run on my MacBook Pro which meets the stated requirements.

I am running on a 2.2ghz Core Duo MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM and GeForce 8600M GT with 128mb VRAM.

As it runs on a MacBook, by God it should run on your MBP. Give Maxis's tech support a call. Have you tried to reinstall it?

 

[dogzilla]

As it runs on a MacBook, by God it should run on your MBP. Give Maxis's tech support a call. Have you tried to reinstall it?

Yes, I've reinstalled it twice, being sure to delete all associated pref files. Tonight, I brought a pocket firewire drive home and installed Leopard on it, let software update bring everything up to date, and then installed spore. Booting off the clean install on my external drive, Spore runs.

So basically, I can run the game if I'm willing to do nothing else while I'm playing the game, or if I'm willing to spend hours trying to locate the elusive conflict.

I like the game, but this is supposed to be enjoyment for me, not more work. I've posted on the support forums, but those have been unavailable for a full day now. If no one at Maxis has noticed that their forums are down for over 24 hours, I'm pretty sure noone will ever notice / respond to my support request.

I suppose I'll give them a call and suffer through the useless 30 minutes of useless debugging before I get to anything useful from them.

I'm really disappointed in Maxis.

 

[DukeofAnkh]

The game will launch, show the splash screen, resize the screen, then crash and dialog box stating: "Critical section 4d1a8a14 wait failed at address 0x3e0c23f0. Do you wish to debug it?" Clicking either "Yes" or "No" has no visible results. In my system logs I can see a lot of _NSAutoreleaseNoPool errors being generated by spore.

I had the same error come up, though it only happens sporadically. I'm at the point where I try not to have too many background things running (which is annoying). The most frustrating bit is the amount of game progress I lost because I didn't remember to save often enough...

 

[0098386]

I played through to the space stage and found it utterly lacking, a shallow game with little to do and some poor game design choices. Completely overhyped and I'm glad as hell I removed my preorder since I just played on my brothers version (PC).

And IIRC it's not completely Mac native, isn't it using that Cider emulation dowhacky, reducing performance?

 

[t19880821]

I played through to the space stage and found it utterly lacking, a shallow game with little to do and some poor game design choices. Completely overhyped and I'm glad as hell I removed my preorder since I just played on my brothers version (PC).

And IIRC it's not completely Mac native, isn't it using that Cider emulation dowhacky, reducing performance?

No, it's not mac native. There's a very big noticeable difference when you play it on OSX and Boot Camp. I first installed the game on XP, then I thought "well hey i can install this on OSX to save me some space on my windows parttion and that way i'll at least be able to play something under OSX without having to switch to bootcamp." So I uninstalled it from XP, installed it on OSX... and wow.. what a huge reduction in performance.

 

[whitehexagon]

1. In short 8/10 for me.

Shame they didn't bother with a native version. I found the frame rate pretty low in places and quite choppy zooming in and out in space mode. The game concept itself is quite nice, but it's missing alot of game play. Somehow it reminds me of an updated Elite.

The real game seems to be Space, the earlier stages are just a series of mini games that don't really add much to the game imo. Although space also suffers quite some issues: Mainly occasional crashes, save often!, not enough tradables, constant attacks by pirates,ufo's,other races that involve you rushing from planet to planet to help out. Even when you get such great sounding weapons as the uber-turret, it dosn't seem to do much unless you go and babysit the planet while the defenses kick in. Ignore the attacks and they seem to get less, but then you end up having to pop back to planets now and again and spend time micro-managing the repairs, adding missing turrets back etc. Don't see the point of the Grox so far, I guess they are just a place filler until there is enough online content...

2. SR Mac Pro 2.4 4GB RAM, 8800GT

 

[mahashel]

I've had a lot of fun with the game, but am terribly frustrated at this point.
I progressed to the space phase as a completely pacifistic race. No problems at all. However, apparently pacifists cannot survive space.
I haven't attacked any other races, and yet 3 other empires declared war on me within 30 mins of starting the space phase. I received a badge: "warmonger". Um.. I'm a pacifist and have no weaponry whatsoever.. how utterly ridiculous!
I've terraformed a handful of worlds, but can't focus enough to continue to do so, since my worlds are under constant attack at this point. I'm ready to give up on this race and start over from scratch.. What a waste. This kind of AI behavior would make sense if I were playing the game on "hard", but since this was my first run through the game, I set the difficulty to "easy". THIS is easy? Seriously? What does the game do on "hard"? Detonate all your planets just for jollies?
I really enjoyed the game up to this point, but space just seems really one-sided with huge balance issues.
Waiting for a patch...

 

[BradB]

I enjoyed it very much, it's a brilliant game.

It runs on mostly low- medium settings on my macbook with maxed ram.

 

[topicolo]

very addictive, but the space age is completely overhyped. Yes, it is amazing that there are literally tens of thousands of stars to visit, but they all start to seem the same after a while. The biggest gripe about the game is that you have to micromanage everything. There's no point in expanding your empire because you have to visit each one individually and trade manually to make money. The colonies can't handle anything on their own and call for your help when they have ecological disasters, alien attacks, and a variety of other annoyances.

 

[waffle911]

The biggest gripe about the game is that you have to micromanage everything. There's no point in expanding your empire because you have to visit each one individually and trade manually to make money. The colonies can't handle anything on their own and call for your help when they have ecological disasters, alien attacks, and a variety of other annoyances.

Oh, so Will Wright hasn't yet kicked his Sim City habit.

Micromanagement. Will has it.

 

[Huntn]

At one point I remember Spore being described as "revolutionary" game play. Would you all say it lives up to that hype?

 

[0098386]

At one point I remember Spore being described as "revolutionary" game play. Would you all say it lives up to that hype?

BWahhaa, oh heavens no! I can see how casual players might enjoy it but it's not got the addictive/casual nature of something like Peggle, or the depth of something like The Sims or the greater depth and longevity of Sim City.

Had this been out before said games then yes, it would be revolutionary. As it stands it's a cut and shut job of his previous games with simplified gameplay.