vashivihan
Let There Be Rock
After the big announcement that Maxis' Spore would be hitting on September 7th of this year on PC, Mac, mobile phones and Nintendo DS, there was some doubt that the previously confirmed Wii version was still on. It seems that doubt was short-lived, though, as Will Wright once again confirmed that Spore will be hitting Wii at some point in time. However, it'll be different from the PC/Mac version (for obvious reasons), but they're hoping to play up to Wii's strengths in the process of making a different version.
"I can't say much about it except the fact that the overriding kind of factor in my mind and Lucy [Bradshaw]'s, in terms of looking at what direction that team goes with it, has been to make really good use of the controller. What interests me about the Wii is that in some sense you have a much higher bandwith controller than you have with any other console or even a PC. How do we abstract the maximum? Because one of the biggest advantages we have is our procedural animation system, which means that we can have an infinite of variety of animations that we can make the creature do because it's done procedurally. So that's a natural kind of strength of having a higher bandwith input device–it should really feel like I'm puppeteering this creature very directly, as opposed to I'm just indirectly controlling with a few buttons here and there. The rest of the design is totally going to evolve around that," explained Will Wright. Quite a mouthful.
So, Will Wright and co. are looking to get the most out of the respective platforms Spore is being brought to. It's almost a given that the Wii version could be the most idiosyncratic of the bunch. Emphasis on the Wii remote and the myriad ways you can manipulate your creations would definitely support that.
"A lot of the prototyping they've been doing is, "How do we make you feel like you have the most control over this creature, even in a very subtle ways, by moving this controller around?" and then make the gameplay serve that, because I think if I had nothing else, but a really fun creature to drive around the environments, and I felt like I was really controlling in a very expressive way I would have a blast with just that alone. So that's a really good starting point."
We'll have more when it's available.
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