14 DAY TRIAL // EA and Maxis have released a patch for the Mac version of Spore, bringing the game to version 1.1. According to the two companies, the patch offers a variety of bugs and performance tweaks, but also delivers a “cheat” that turns a creature into a blocky representation of itself. Another such cheat, allowing players to start a new game with a more evolved creature, has also been included. A new inspection feature for browsing part stats applied to a creature rounds up the list of main additions.
While PC owners can also download their installer package to update their copy of spore, Mac users can only obtain the patch by firing up Spore on their computers. The game will prompt them to install the patch which, according to EA and Maxis, brings the following enhancements:
Features • New Cheat: "evoadvantage." Enter this cheat when 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.
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.
“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,” reads a post on the official Spore website. “We managed to squeak in a few fun things too...” and the post continues by detailing the above-listed new features and tweaks.
Remember to accept the update as soon as you start the game next time you decide to play. Come back with a comment and tell us how it worked out for you.