14 DAY TRIAL // Upon flooding forums with negative comments regarding the latest-released patch for Spore, in the end, it was still the commenters who solved the problem – not EA, and not Maxis.
Spore user frustration reached a critical point this month with gamers reporting computer lock-ups, crashes upon entering a planet's atmosphere in space stage, no sound, all this after force-quitting an installer that hung at 90-95% progress (in most cases). However, “those who did a force quit may not have waited long enough,” reads a post on The Sporum - The Official Spore Forum.
“I ran top from the terminal, and the iPatch was indeed running, just not giving any useful feedback,” nmcvaugh explains. “But after about a half an hour it did finish. This is on a 2.4 GHz dual core MacBook Pro with 2 gigs RAM. So give it time - I'd guess older systems would take an hour or two.” But, while nmcvaugh found a way to eliminate crashes and sound issues, he also mentions some “bad reactions from the patch,” namely including scanner issues. Spotting a user saying his game worked fine after patching was like finding a needle in a haystack. But we found one! A little later, we found more.
Sporum user winkin claims he paid a great deal of attention to his iPatch, and was patient with the installation process to ultimately enter a perfectly-functional Spore game.
“Okay. So I wasn't that far (space) into the game when the patch came out so I decided to reinstall again without removing the previous program. I have a Mac so, of course it asks you and I said yes. After the re-install, I opened up the game and let the patch work for about 15-20 minutes (until I started hearing music playing) and came back. I did not loose [sic] any of my game. It was still there. I didn't loose a think [sic] and I play for about 4 hours yesterday and I had no more freezes and the sound was working fine. So mine is working fine now. If I do have any issues, I will let you know.”
Finally, Spore player Stuart also reports (on this blog), “I’m not sure that the patcher is actually hung. It may just be very slow ... as I was typing this the patcher finished and Spore launched! It probably took about 30 minutes. So my recommendation for those that haven’t Forced Quit out of the patcher is to be patient.”
Those of you who haven't gone and deleted original files from the Spore directory, as well as those who just put the game aside, waiting for the next patch from EA and Maxis, should probably try installing the patch again. This time, however, follow Stuart's advice. Post a comment afterwards / share this article so other Spore Mac players know what to do.