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enigmakiwi · 7 months ago

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So... the experiment I conducted ended up being only semi-related to the content of this post, but the data is interesting, so I'm posting it anyway. It's also the most fun I've had in a while! Don't know what that says about me...

When creating a new creature stage game, if you use the "evoadvantage" cheat before selecting your diet, you're given the option to select any creature in your sporepedia, including much more evolved ones, instead of only being given post-cell-stage babies. This isn't something I've played around with in any context other than a saved world breaking or becoming unplayable in the middle of creature stage and me making a different save world with the creature I'd already evolved to, but I thought it would be a pretty good method of testing a few things:

If the player never edits their creature, how does the game assign the new parts given?

If the player never even uses certain parts in-game (in the literal sense; having a part that spits but never spitting at anything), are their branches given priority in the new part lottery regardless?

Is there any obvious priority given in the new part lottery that I have otherwise never noticed?

As someone who's been playing spore since the very day it was launched, are my assumptions and prior observations actually accurate, or have I been living a lie?

(I'm putting the rest under a cut because this is gonna be kinda long. If you don't care about the actual process of the experiment, just scroll to the bottom for my conclusions.)

It's very important to note that I have mods installed and was too scared to turn them off. The only mod which adds a significant number of parts to the pool of acquisition is dark injection, which well more than doubles the number of parts. I realized, though, that a much larger pool would make any prioritization or favoring much more obvious, so I stuck with it.

The strange and beautiful mod added a few parts that were given as default unlocks, but no strange and beautiful parts were unlocked in gameplay, so they presumably weren't added to the pool. Same with Spore Resurrection: Next Steps and Dinosaur Parts. The Integrated Integument mod added unlockable parts that didn't function in quite the same way as normal, so I decided they were largely irrelevant.

I also decided to completely ignore Eyes & Senses and Arms & Legs parts, because they're unlocked in a very obviously different way since they're all tier 1 and aren't all linear, and that's not what I'm looking into right now.

Here's my master spreadsheet with all the data

I figured the best way of doing this was to make a creature with very high social stats to allow for the game to be beaten easily through socialization as well as first-tier weapon parts that would at no point ever be utilized. This seemed easier to achieve than the inverse, a creature with high attack stats and very basic socialization parts. Thus, I made my first test dummy: Test Dummy.

I gave it a Grubblemaw mouth, Croak Masseur graspers, Morepaw feet, and a Featherferns detail— all tier 4 parts. The weapons I added were Pediculous, Hockitlauncher, and Scimitard— all tier 1 parts. I also gave it the Microtech Blade part from the Dark Injection mod in order to test how glide level 1 functioned. This appeared to have no effect on parts given whatsoever.

With it, I played through the creature stage on easy mode (which makes socializing easier since nothing outright hates you) for a good half hour or so, socializing and digging up bones but never changing the creature. I never attacked anything, period. I did mate and enter the editor a few times just to get a visual representation of the parts I was gathering, but always hit cancel.

I was kind of surprised that despite not being given the Cantovis mouth on start, the game gave very obvious priority to this line of mouths, presumably because I had Grubblemaw to start with. Cantovis was the first part I unlocked, and each upgrade was the first part of the corresponding tier I unlocked. It seemed that simply having a part from this line on the creature gave these parts top unlocking priority.

...But what I found even more interesting was how this was distinctly NOT the case for graspers or feet. I never even unlocked Twopaw from the Morepaw line, nor Setaetarsal from the Croak Masseur line. I was given some feet and grasper parts, but never those.

I wasn't able to determine if this was the case for the Featherferns detail part because I was given the tier 1 equivalent, Featherbluster, as a starting/default unlocked part. Similarly, it wasn't clear if any weapons were given any kind of priority because I had Hockitlauncher and Scimitard to start out with, and I was given Pediculous and Fawninatrix (tier 2) as my first weapons *after* the tier 2 upgrades of Hockitlauncher and Scimitard. There's also not that many options for weapons, as Dark Injection adds an alternate for each weapon part which is colored differently, but any new attacking-based "weapon" parts are under the details tab.

This wasn't enough to draw any kind of solid conclusion from, and I wanted to do multiple trials anyway, so I moved onto designing my next test dummy: Quiz Fool.

This time, I gave it a Whalephant mouth, Ectoknight graspers, The Toadening feet, a Crestacean detail, and the health-boosting tier 1 weapons (Keratinhorn, Gobstalker, Maceball).

In preparation, I also made another test dummy for a future trial, Dark Injection Carl, but we'll get to him later.

This trial seemed to basically confirm what had happened the first time; there was a very obvious preference for mouth parts within the Whalephant line. And, once again, it was unclear if weapon parts unlocked were actually following what part was on Quiz Fool, or if the weapon parts being unlocked had completely random odds and happened to line up with Quiz Fool's parts. It was starting to look like the latter.

But this time around, it became pretty obvious that the detail parts in the line that the creature has do not have increased odds. For one thing, I barely unlocked any detail parts, and all the ones I did were tier 1 or were modded parts that didn't fit into the typical increasing tier line unlocking system. So is it just the mouths (and perhaps weapons)? And does this apply to modded mouths, too?

I also unlocked a part from a different mod other than Dark Injection. Until this point, I'd assumed no other mods added parts to the pool.

Now then, here's Dark Injection Carl

He's got a Ufologic Kisser mouth (tier 4, herbivore, bite 3, sing 5), Photon Mitt graspers (tier 3 which is max for this line, pose 4), Photon Sensafoot (tier 4, sneak 5, dance 5, speed 4), a Pyretic Imposer detail (tier 4, charm 5), and the alternate coloration parts of Keratinhorn, Gobstalker, and Scimitard— all Dark Injection sourced parts.

The same thing happened. Dramatic preference was given to this line of mouths, while no obvious preference was given to the lines of any other parts on Carl.

By this point, I had done 3 trials, and I was about to stop. 3 is enough, I thought, and I decided I should make my overall conclusion that simply having a mouth part on the creature would give all parts from that line an increased chance of being unlocked, but no other categories of parts had this effect.

...Boy, am I glad I decided to run just one more trial to confirm things. Because this conclusion was not quite accurate.

This time, I used another new creature, Francine:

She has an omnivore mouth this time, Amphibitude, and a mix of modded and unmodded parts, including the DI alternate Suckerpunch, vanilla Suckerkick, a Waddleweather detail, a Keratinhorn, a Scimitard, and the DI alternate Hockitlauncher. I also gave her Cassoworry wings out of curiosity about non-charming detail parts and how they would fit into all this given that I'd definitely use them (in a literal sense; I'd be gliding around).

That extreme priority given to the creature's line of mouths I'd noticed was... gone? Maybe? I didn't unlock the Simperton (tier 1 from amphibitude line) mouth until my 17th tier 1 mouth. After that, I quickly unlocked the rest of that line, but was that a coincidence? It's also worth noting that there are many, MANY more omnivore mouths in total than herbivore ones. Is the preference only actually applicable once the tier 1 part in the line has been unlocked because it (rightly) thinks you shouldn't be able to have those mouths yet? Was my first trial actually a big outlier in that I'd obtained the corresponding tier 1 mouth first thing? This seemed to be the case now, but I'd have to go through again with yet more creatures to make sure... so there'd be at least 1 more trial after this.

But now that I was looking over the data again with this in mind, I realized it might be possible that other parts were operating in this manner, too; once I unlocked the tier 1 predecessor of a part on my creature, the rest of the parts in the lines followed in being unlocked quite quickly. Given how many more lines of parts there are in other categories (mouths of other diets are unobtainable, shrinking the number of possible mouths), perhaps what was happening now with the omnivore mouths was what had been happening all along with all the other parts. That is, assuming this new guess was actually accurate. I'd be able to properly analyze the data once I actually... y'know, had it.

Also, on top of that, this was the first time that the first unlocked part of any given tier WASN'T a mouth. I'd been under the impression that mouth parts were being given top priority as the first part of any tier you'd unlock, as this had been the case for all 3 previous trials. For tiers 2 and 3, my first parts were weapons.

For the last trial, I decided to stop trying to keep things simple and made a more fun subject, Shredder.

Which, uh, made for some interesting moments because the planet I picked happened to have blood-red water...

Pincernaut and Masticator mouths, Bonestickler and Horrorthumbs hands, Skeletoes and Hippoty feet, Heycorn, Horrorlumb, and Deathspikes details, and Keratinhorn, Porcupain, and Spurprise! weapons. Note that she's a carnivore this time.

Just as with the previous trial, the first part obtained wasn't a mouth. It took a few unlocks before I got a mouth, actually. Because I had more parts on the creature, it became more apparent that once the first part in a line was unlocked, the rest would follow shortly after if a part from that family was on the creature. Apparently, this applies to eyes, too, if this one instance is to be taken at face value.

And with that, I decided I had enough data. It was clear that using herbivore mouths gave me the false impression that the tier 1 equivalent to whatever mouth was on the creature was given priority. This illusion was created because there are significantly fewer herbivore mouth families in total that families of other categories of parts, especially with my modded parts included. In fact, my first trial was probably the strangest of all of them, looking at which parts were unlocked and in what order-- I mean, how is it that the only modded parts I obtained were from Dark Injection when every other trial included parts from other mods unlocked both by default and through gameplay? Weird stuff.

TL;DR/just give me the conclusions:

If a part is on the creature, parts within that family will have increased odds of being unlocked ONLY IF the tier 1 part in the family has been unlocked in-game. The part does not have to be literally placed on it during gameplay editing sessions

The part on the creature does not have to be the highest tier available; any part in the family will do, even if it hasn't actually been unlocked yet or is just the tier 1 part

Conversely, if a part is on the creature, but the tier 1 part in the family hasn't been unlocked in-game, odds of unlocking the tier 1 part in that family are not increased, even if the part on the creature is the tier 1 part.

Actually using a part in game (i.e. using the abilities granted by them like charge or charm) has no effect on the odds of unlocking the other parts in the family. (Or, if it does, the effect is negligible enough that it isn't apparent from this experiment and probably doesn't matter.)

My previously unnamed existing assumption (that the game seems to slightly prioritize unlocking mouths) was not exactly proven nor disproven. It certainly seems like mouths are prioritized compared to other types of parts to me, but this could very easily be confirmation bias or some other unseen variables at work (I'm using mods and cheats, after all, and maybe this is actually a manifestation of physically using parts increasing the odds of unlocking its family after all since mouths are used all the time no matter what, but I doubt that)

What are the implications of all this? I dunno! Does it even really matter? Probably not! But I do find that third bullet point extremely interesting, even if it's not something that would ever affect normal gameplay. The lottery for tier 1 parts is truly random, unlike the lottery for any other tiers, and you can't effectively trick the game into unlocking a line of parts by giving your creature one of them because of this (though, why bother if you're already using a cheat and can put any parts you want on it before starting?). Is this intentional, or an unintended side effect of how the part unlocking process was set up? I'd bet the latter, but I can't say for sure.

If anyone else wants to comb through my data to double check me or look for any other patterns or conclusions, feel absolutely free! I didn't bother actually doing any non-basic math here, so it's very possible I missed other interesting tidbits.

yet more minor prima guide observations

interestingly it shows stats for level 1 glide, which no part actually has in the final game. here it says that level 1 glide can only flap twice before having to land. can anyone confirm if this is true if a part with level 1 glide is modded in?

not sure whats going on with the health added here. in actaulity, level 1 adds 2 hp, each level adds 2 more until you get to level 5 adding 10 hp. not A HUNDRED??

this also is the case regardless of whether youre editing a 40 base hp or 100 base hp creature (so the most hp you can have is 110). i dont know where they got these numbers from

this section covers which cell parts unlock which respective parts (either guaranteed or randomly), which i covered in a recent post. the weird thing here is that it refers to these eye parts as mouths??

it is true though that beady eye unlocks these eyes

this also doesnt get into detail that the mouths you can unlock depend entirely on what card you finished cell stage with, and the choice of the cell mouth on your creature doesnt actually affect it. you can only get the toucant mouth if you finish the previous stage as an omnivore, or start creature stage as an omnivore

the associated part unlocks seem accurate though to what spore has internally, though it doesnt show the amount of parts per category that can randomly unlock

also arent those unlocks for your initial selection in creature stage, not stuff you get from bone piles?

this suggests that you have to use a part in order to have a better chance of unlocking better levels of it, not just having to have it on your creature at all. is that true? if you have a part and you dont use it, do you still have a higher chance of unlocking its upgrades?

for the lists of each creature part it says that sense and limb parts are still unlocked the same way as the other parts, ie you need to have the first column from a part in order to have a better chance to unlock the rest of the column. but thats not true! both of these (or at least the senses) unlock in a completely random order in the final game

this says you can get dna from bone piles, which doesnt seem right to me. also it refers to rogues as mini-epics interestingly. it also doesnt mention that eating eggs gives you 25 dna

reading too much into it but this kinda reads like migrating is optional. i guess it technically can be if your creature doesnt evolve at all (i have even beaten creature stage like this), but either way, your mate is at the migrated nest so you have to move there either way

this again, which is not applicable to the final game

funny enough jumping or gliding DOES help with reaching fruit, but only that you can click on fruit on a bush from a distance and then jumping and/or gliding just teleports the fruit to you so you dont have to walk all the way there

interesting that it says "colloquially". im assuming these werent always called rogues? i thnk the internal name is MiniBoss

"almost never fatal" ??? interesting that they dont refer to them as spice geisers though

do meteorite craters have a higher density of better bones? (falling) meteorites dont deal that much damage either, not as much as this claims

its also funny that they call forward to space stage here all of a sudden

#spore #spore 2008

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