The focus of this patch is to fix some bugs that have been reported and to respond to feedback we've been seeing from the community about tuning and stability. We managed to squeak in a few fun things too; there's a cool cheat that allows you to turn your creature into a blocky representation of themselves, a new "inspection" feature for the creature creator to browse the parts stats that you have applied to your creature, and the much-requested "evoadvantage" cheat - you'll now be able to start a new creature game with a more evolved creature of your choice!

Features

• New Cheat: "evoadvantage". Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
• Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the 'i' key.
• New Cheat: "blocksmode". Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
• More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: "stylefilter -microscope" or "stylefilter -norainbows" or "stylefilter -nextgen" to see the new styles
• Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the "hot and high atmosphere" type

Graphics/Aesthetics

• Animation improvements
• Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
• Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures

Tuning

• Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
• Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
• Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
• Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn't pay
• Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Miscellaneous

• Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
• Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
• Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
• Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
• Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
• Fixed problems with the "Rolling Thunder" and "Déjà Vu" achievements not being awarded as they should
• Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
• Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
• Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
• Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
• Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
• Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
• Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
• Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu

Q: So it had nothing to do with the iPhone mini-game of Spore? Obviously the timing has worked out quite well with them both due out in September now?
A: Well it allowed us to catch up on a lot of other features as well. Once we decided we were going to [expand the community side of it] we ended up making every other level more complex and we added in the whole time-line feature. Plus as you mentioned the iPhone and [Nintendo] DS versions so it all kind of worked out well in the end.

A legitimately bought copy of “Spore” can’t be activated on more than three different computers — ever.

That will be changed, according to the EA spokesperson, who told Multiplayer that the current limit on the number of computers that can be associated with a single copy of “Spore” is “very similar to a solution that iTunes has. The difference is that with iTunes you can de-authorize a computer [that you no longer want associated with your iTunes content]. Right now, with our solution, you can’t. But there is a patch coming for that.” The official timeframe for that patch is “near future.”

Hi Spore Players,

First, we want to thank you for your responses and feedback to my posting from Friday regarding Online Accounts and clarifying how things work. We’re listening and we want to announce some changes that we are making based on your feedback.

We are going to add the ability to have multiple Spore Screen Names for any one Spore Online Account. Here’s how this will work: for each copy of Spore that you have purchased, you will be able to have one Spore Online Account, just as it is now. However, we will be adding the ability to have five Spore Screen Names for that account. When you launch Spore, you will be able to log in with any of those Screen Names...

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"EA has not changed our basic DRM copy protection system," said Mariam Sughayer of EA's corporate communications in a statement to Gamasutra. "We simply changed the copy protection method from using the physical media, which requires authentication every time you play the game by requiring a disc in the drive, to one which uses a one-time online authentication."

If you do need another activation after your three have run out, you can call customer support and request to enable more.

According to peer-to-peer research firm Big Champagne, Spore has been illegally downloaded via BitTorent 171,402 times since September 1 -- meaning downloads began a full week before the game was even released. While Big Champagne chief executive Eric Garland says it's not unusual for high profile PC games to reach six-figure piracy rates, what is surprising in Spore's case is how quickly the downloads are rising. "The numbers are extraordinary," Garland said. "This is a very high level of torrent activity even for an immensely popular game title."

Ironically, part of what is luring people to pirate Spore is that the copy protection has naturally been cracked, meaning their illegal copies aren't restricted to a limited number of activations -- therefore making illegal copies, in a sense, superior to legitimate copies.

Spore Players,

I want to apologize for the confusion surrounding access to the online features of Spore. Most of the confusion is stemming from our own mistake in the game manual that states that you can have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game. This is incorrect. The information that appears on the box is correct; only one unique Spore account and Screen Name/Persona can be created with each copy of the product. We will correct this information in future iterations of the manual.

I have noted that there are a few other misunderstandings that I hope to clarify here:

• To access Spore’s online features, you will need to register online and create a Spore Screen Name/Persona.
• If you already have an EA.com account, you will only need to Login using that account information and create a Spore Screen Name/Persona.
• Only one Spore Screen Name/Person can be created with a single copy of the game.
• You can play Spore offline, for this reason we have included the ability to play while not logged in.
• If you have installed your copy of Spore on multiple computers, your single account can be actively logged in up to 3 times simultaneously.
• Once you have a Spore account, you can log in with that account on any computer that has an install of any legitimate copy of Spore. On a single install it is possible for multiple users to switch back and forth between unique online Spore accounts. For this reason we have included a Log Out button in the Online Settings options labeled, Disconnect from Spore or change users. The different accounts will be playing in the same Galaxy, and will, therefore, share the same data folders.

Again, I apologize for the confusion and the mistaken information.

Lucy