“What sort of critters?”<\/p>\n
“All kinds of things. I could even make one that looks sort of like you. Here, take a look.”<\/p>\n
“Oooh! That’s neat. I should have bigger claws, though.”<\/p>\n
“Well, OK, I guess I can do that…”<\/p>\n
“And my ears are bigger than that.”<\/p>\n
“Fine, here you go.”<\/p>\n
“Oooh! Can I have a knocker thingy on the end of my tail?”<\/p>\n
“You don’t have a spiked ball at the end of your tail.”<\/p>\n
“But I want<\/strong> one….”<\/p>\n “Oh, all right…”<\/p>\n “And wings.”<\/p>\n “What? No way…”<\/p>\n “I WANT WINGS!!!!!”<\/p>\n “OK, OK, you can have some wings….”<\/p>\n “That’s nice. I like that. I look a little like a dinosaur. Emmy-saurus!”<\/p>\n “I’m so glad to hear it. Here, I’ll take a few pictures.”<\/p>\n “Yay, dino-me! OK, now have me hunt and kill some demon bunnies…”<\/p>\n “There are no demon bunnies. I can make you do the Happy Dance, though.”<\/p>\n “That’s pretty cute, but get to work on the demon bunnies, will ya?”<\/p>\n “All right.”<\/p>\n “Demon bunnies made of cheese…”<\/p>\n “I’m going to regret showing this to you, aren’t I?”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, a little while ago, I was contacted by the people behind Spore to see if I wanted an advance look at the Creature Creator, as part of a publicity program they’re running asking a bunch of minor celebrities to make creatures and post them to a site that doesn’t appear to be live yet.<\/p>\n This is sort of hilarious, as I am not any kind of gamer– I sucked at Tecmo Bowl back in the day, and my hand-eye coordination hasn’t improved enough over the last sixteen years to handle modern video games. I don’t even play NetHack.<\/p>\n But, I’m a sucker for free promo stuff, so I said yes, and I’ve been playing around with the demo for a week now. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed. it’s really amazing what they can do with computers these days.<\/p>\n The Creature Creator gives you a sort of clay-blob looking body with a spine inside it, and you can customize the creature by adding facial features, legs, arms, hands and feet, and various incidental widgets. There’s also a “Paint” mode in which you can add texture and color effects to make your creature look the way you want.<\/p>\n The commands are pretty intuitive. They had a little tutorial video up on the web, but it really wasn’t necessary– you can figure out all of the basics in a few minutes of poking at the controls, and make really slick looking creatures in no time, and try them out in the “Test Drive” mode which has a bunch of packaged animation effects, including a variety of silly dances.<\/p>\n The one glitch is that a number of features require a mouse wheel to activate, which is kind of a problem for those of us who don’t normally use wheely mice– I installed it on the Tablet PC, which is the most modern machine I have, but there doesn’t appear to be any keyboard or pen way to activate the mouse-wheel effects.I managed to work around that, but it’s annoying.<\/p>\n The Creature Creator is supposed to be one little piece of a gigantic program that is apparently somewhat legendary– in another sign of my not-gamer-ness, I had never heard of it until the promo email. The demo clips they sent look pretty amazing, though. I have to admit, I’m sort of tempted, and I’ll definitely take a closer look when the real product is ready to ship. So their promo has already worked to the extent of getting me<\/strong> to consider buying it.<\/p>\n And the Creature Creator by itself is a wonderful time sink, including as it does the ability to make silly little videos and post them to YouTube:<\/p>\n![\"i-c7fbf9d19efa51d78547ba570dfd8940-emmy-saurus.png\"](\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/467\/files\/2012\/04\/i-c7fbf9d19efa51d78547ba570dfd8940-emmy-saurus.png\")
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