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asmoser's picture

Emergence, Spore, and Procedural Animation

While I think Jessica is quite right that the gameplay in Spore is not an emergent system, I think one can argue there is emergence present in the animations and environments the game creates. In Spore, the player gets to evolve his/her creature over time and has specific options for how to modify it. However, the game uses procedural generation to animate the creature's movement and to some extent its behavior. A three legged creature with a substantial portion of its weight towards its rear will walk differently than a well balanced three legged creature that will walk differently than a 6 legged creature. The game actively creates new animations for movement,methods of attack, etc., by analyzing how the creature is designed and then applying a set of rules to generate the animations.

This sort of procedural generation is part of what makes spore as impressive as it is; it allows the player to "soft shape" and completely personalize his creature without concern for preexisting animations.

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