Spore Creature Challenge round 1 (closes night of 7/3)

The Game Room
1

This is more of a rough idea now, as such if need be we’ll change the rules as we go, maybe even make a spinoff thread at some point if we decide another idea is better.

Anyway: Welcome to the world of Spore, all you need is the Spore creature creator and some creative drive. The object of the game is to make a creature as described by the round-master (see below). The description can be vague (i.e. “make something cute”), specific (i.e. Make a dragon with a purple body and green wings), or templated (i.e. make a creature you’d see in a generic fantasy game). Try to be creative in your choices when deciding what the next rounds contestants will do.

Round-masters and challenge picking: To become round master you win the previous round, in the event you do not WANT to be the round master, or feel you are not able to come up with a good solution you may delegate responsibility to the contestant of your choosing (or feel free to ask for suggestions in the current-round thread). Round-masters may not compete in their own challenges, for balance purposes (you know what you’re good at). Feel free to provide an example to spark the contestant’s creativity though. The round master’s job is to formulate an interesting and fun challenge, NOT to stump the players. Currently the only real rule regarding challenges is no “Sporn” ("i.e. “make a penis monster” is not an option). Also, RM’s tally the votes.

Phases of play: Pre-game, this is basically the original post, outlining agreed upon rule changes and the current challenge.

Event, this is where judges say they’ll judge, and entrants post their creatures. This lasts about two days (subject to change)

Judging: Where we tally votes and figure out who won, at this point entry is closed to prevent confustion.

After-game: We discuss new rules and changes to the current ones and maybe ideas for the next challenge is necessary.

Event phase explanation - Currently I’m not capping the number of participants or judges, if it gets out of hand we can set limits in later rounds. Each participant may submit up to three creatures. Judges just simply say “I’d like to judge this round.” This event will last two days (this round will close around 10PM on Sunday for example). Feel free to critique other’s submissions during this round, be constructive, it’s the SDMB not Digg or Youtube.

The preferred method of creature presentation is to upload it to Sporepedia and direct link to it (that way other participants can view it in their creature creator to help judge). However a picture upload to your chosen hosting site, or even a “showoff” video on youtube are acceptable entry forms, as well as good supplements to the preferred method, just keep everything for one creature in one post (“oops, missed the edit window” notwithstanding)

The judging will be done by the contestants themselves, I trust you all to be fair when judging other’s creations, don’t feel bad or conceited if you truly think your creature is the best. However everyone gets two votes, you MAY vote for someone else twice you may NOT vote for yourself twice (and yes, you can split your two votes between two non-you participants). If you don’t have the creator feel free to be an impartial judge with a single vote, just be sure to speak up before the event phase ends!

Though you vote for you favourite CREATURE, the votes will be tallied for the submitter. In case of a submitter tie, the creature with the highest vote count will win, if the highest creature is a tie the round-master has a tiebreaker vote he or she can cast (the Round Master is counted as an impartial judge with a single vote in normal voting, but gets a second one in case of a tie). This is so we don’t discourage multiple submissions, if this turns out badly we’ll swap it, so that we vote for the creature and only look at submitter totals in the case of a tie. The voting will close one day after submissions close, or after all contestants and judges have casted votes (whichever comes first).

Voting form should look like (the form should look exactly like everything between the following double brackets):
[[
<Status as a submitter, judge, or round master>
First Vote
Creature Name:
Submitter Name:
Comments:

Second Vote
Creature Name:
Submitter Name:
Comments:
]]

Creature Submission Forms may be tailored to the contestant’s liking and personal style, so long as it’s intelligible.

Now that that’s settled
This rounds challenge is…
Make me creatures based on a spiral!
My creature for inspiration

2

By ‘based on a spiral’ do you mean the body has to be in spiral form, or would something like this little fella (YouTube link) count, too? If so, that’s my first subscription, and here’s the Sporepedia link.

A question about the role of the judges: will they merely tally the score in the end, or what else is their function?

Also, I feel that a two-day submission period might be a bit short, this might end up short of contestants, but I guess you could just wait and see, and if you feel there’s not enough submissions simply push back the deadline.

Good idea for a game, I can’t wait to see other people’s creatures!

3

Yes, that works for a submission, nice job (didn’t know you even could spiral legs like that, even by connecting separate joints).

Judges are simply impartial third parties with a single vote (as opposed to two votes you get as a participant). They can feel free to help tally, but that’s the round-masters job in all technicality.

And yeah, if it doesn’t go well I’ll push back the deadline.

4

Thanks! It was quite a bit of fiddling around involved…

Ah OK, got it.

Well, seems like the submissions aren’t exactly pouring in… C’mon folks, give it a shot!

5

I have not the slightest clue how the first entrant did what he did. (And I don’t know how to “connect separate joints” as one commentator said, either, and if someone could tell me, I’d appreciate it.)

Still, here are my two entries:

The Spiroid

SnailTail

Regarding the first, it seems the generator allows you to have a single footed creature, but does not let that foot be centered, iow, the feet have to be right or left feet even if it’s the only one and even if it’s right in the center of the body. If anyone knows a way around this, I’d like to know.

Regarding the second, my original idea was to have it crawl, not walk, but for some reason crawling distorts SnailTail’s body shape to near unrecognizability. (Bits of him become skinny instead of fat.) So I stuck a couple of little legs on there. SnailTail with the legs is my submission.

-FrL-

6

You can connect new limbs to existing limbs – simply strip them of their feet, and hold down CTRL while attaching a new leg/arm; so I simply connected limb to limb to limb etc., and then arranged the joints in a spirally way.
You can also take off partial limbs by holding CTRL and dragging the part you wish to remove, e.g. a forearm, shin or something.
And I don’t believe that there’s a workaround for the feet thing, since those that aren’t symmetrical in the first place don’t come with a symmetric extra model.

7

So when does the new round start? I couldn’t come up with anything that both evoked spiral-ness and that I’d be willing to show off. It was too lame.

8

Here’s my entry- Molluscosapiens.

I’m pretty happy with the way it came out- I really wish there was a way to make things slither on a foot instead of hopping, but it’s not too bad on this guy.

9

Well, I’ve got no idea if there’s a way this is gonna take of yet, but anyway, here’s my second submission: Rotorazr!

10

I think we’ll extend the date a bit, if a mod sees this could they change the title to say “closes night of 7/3"”?

11

Oh, well if you’re still taking entries, here mine: Tall Boingo. I didn’t peak at others’ entries yet, so I don’t know how creative this is.

12

So I guess we have as big a turnout as we’re gonna get, feel free to start judging. Since we have no impartials everyone gets two votes, use them wisely.

Maybe this’ll catch on in later rounds, maybe not.

13

First Vote
Creature Name: Tall Boingo
Submitter Name: Pleonast
Comments: Well, it’s definitely a spiral, more so than just about every other entry.

Second Vote
Creature Name: Snailtail
Submitter Name: Frylock
Comments: I’m a big fan of realism, and the paint job on this one, as well as the use of decorators, makes this thing look like a two-headed caterpillar.

14

I assume it’s bad form to vote for your own creature.

First Vote
Creature Name: Rotorazr
Submitter Name: Half Man Half Wit
Comments: I like the clock-spring spiral of the legs. I also like how the leg stripes look on the spiral.

Second Vote
Creature Name: Bouncey
Submitter Name: Half Man Half Wit
Comments: I like the legs!

I didn’t intend to give both my votes to HMHW, but I definitely like those creatures better.

By the way, don’t forget you can leave comments and a thumbs-up rating on creatures’ Sporepedia pages, too.

15

You can vote for yourself, but only one, where as you can give two to the same creature or person that isn’t you.

16

First Vote
Creature Name: Molluscosapiens
Submitter Name: Lightnin’
Comments: By far the best, i.e. most convincing, paintjob, plus I like the use of the horn as a shell. Why not just leave of feet entirely and have it slither, though?

Second Vote
Creature Name: Tall Boingo
Submitter Name: Pleonast
Comments: Won by a slim margin on account of overall spiralness.

I’d say we eliminate the voting for yourself entirely; the rule of being allowed to do so but only with one vote is pretty arbitrary, plus if one did it, everybody else would basically be forced to do the same, in which case all those votes would cancel each other out, anyway.