You know I had horrible graphics problems with the original release of spore , and had a 38xx version ATI at the time. The only solution I ever found for the dreaded black line corruption was deletion/uninstall of the game and reinstall.
To be honest I never use adaptive Anti aliasing. ATI's catalyst ai is also a bit buggy. Manually set your anti aliasing, turn off the adaptive, turn off catalyst ai and see if you stabilize morriganrant

..............
SecuROM comes from more than just the Sims series, have other games installed Tingeling?

.......
Kernal crashes are something entirely different Exiled. That is the OS having a fit. Check your settings on your torrent downloader. I am sorry that I don't know that exact kernal error, my gut says you are running out of memory during task. Then again your memory could be faulty. Could be a bad sector on harddrive , could be that it is placing part of the download in a system area and pissing off VISTA.

Do a search on google with your kernal dump number and the OS and see what you get.

winrar is your solution to opening those r01-r32 files. If you open any of them ..it will open the whole thing. Or you can right click the files and extract to Here .. and it will take what is in it out.

You will then have a thesims3.iso
IF you use winrar to open that file (which it CAN do) it will whine and complain about copywrite.
Thus.. use demontools or other tools mentioned to "mount" the ISO into a nice handy virtual cdrom. Or even burn the iso with your favorite burning software. (I haven't looked at the size of the iso it might not be easily burnable)

If for some reason you have turned off auto load for cd/dvd's  then you will have to go manually to explorer and find the new drive added virtually/ open your dvd/cdrom yourself and install from there.

Winrar may whine at you if you do not have a registered copy. Just click it to be quiet on that pop up and it will go about it's normal business of being awesome.

If you are using the program defaults (utorrent so on)you are likely pushing your internet connection to the max. There are settings to change upload/download speeds.
Standard dsl/cable 500 down , 12 up is perfectly fine. If you still crash out try reducing the amount of connections (also a setting). I think it defaults to 80, dropping to 50 might help.

This being unable to delete families, presets, and other annoyances is .. well annoying. I guess that is why they gave us the "custom content only" checkbox?

Interesting I will watch for that to show , as it is I dropped that "wish" for growing one til I come across it.

Money is a pain, but this is a good thing. Thus why I was playing the get stuff for food mini game. It is likely that one can tailor this to cheapy style by choosing the favorite food to be something extremely simple. My fault for choosing steak.

mm steak.

Anyway..Relationship is taking it's sweet time. Friends with benefits is what I have so far. Book writing for fun and profit is reasonable. Hacking is amusing but not much different than writing for profit, as far as what you are seeing. I wonder if we can get arrested or found out by the local superspy.
I have a bit of difficulty swallowing this small bedroom community is has not only a super spy training facility, but a space program and an elite science lab.
However this saves me loading screens so I will deal with it.

Anyone else getting a comic book vibe from the setup?


My major worry is I see no means of feasibly having sims from other time periods functional in this neighborhood. One of the damned addon packs better be neighborhood creation or I will find a pitchfork and shove it up EA.
The lab changed to the Sorcerer's training hall , the military building into a keep, Town Hall could be redone cosmetically. I don't mind the rabbit holes at all. SimCity Societies was the same way if you followed a sim around.

ATI's 38xx series had some bugs on the core chip.
We also run into the fact that the game company is told "oh yeah it can handle it" then crash crash crash ..because the actual code used did not match the directx / nor the driver code.

Torrents can and are corrupted ..all it takes is grabbing the hash (ie the torrent) changing the file it is reading and uploading. It isn't terribly difficult.. and at this point I imagine there are some folks trying to get this release off the network.

Demon works just fine "IF" you use an older version and upgrade SPDT (file from microsoft or use google)

NOTE there are many programs out there that will interfere with most iso/cd image loading software just on principle. Ever played a DVD in your drive?
The custom little applet it installs to watch will do as much damage as securom.

Overly aggressive antispyware/antivirus/firewall will crash your game. If the game pings the internet port randomly for any reason, your firewall hopefully blocks it. If it does this by warning you it is blocking it ..said pop up can lock the game if there isn't enough memory to task switch. (has to go back to desktop to allow you to acknowledge the attempt at internet)


So in closing .. my rant is about the fact that this is probably not the game that is crashing.
I have left it playing now for 2 days.
Xp64
ATI -4850 512ram
4 gig system ram
4 core AMD processor (phenom 2 2.
plenty of hdrive space

Installed with dtoolslite 4.30.1 sptd 1.56

I get a very Sims 1 flavor to relationships. It seems you need at least 2 traits in common to provide something to base a romantic relationship on.

This is all random playing. Font issues are annoying, finding seeds for more extravagant things is annoying. Where is the money tree seed?
Keeping a garden, a part time job, a romance and writing is a very very busy time. Hopefully if the romance pays off I can drop one part of the whole.
Neighborhood being alive is nice, no loading screens is nice (even though the travel time can be perceived as one). Jobs being .. find building choose job is very nice.
400 bucks to learn to fish is crap. (Yes I know I can just fish , but when pressed for time..)
Cooking is interesting, but I am not into having a mini game to just keep my sim alive. Thankfully it seems that was already stated as the quick meals are functional for immediate needs.
Personal investing in the sim you create is higher, interest in the townies is lower.
I am back to creating the mate and moving him in next door to find love. There really isn't enough time otherwise.

I am rather wondering where this release did come from ..just idle thinking.

Overall - for my playstyle this is generally better. Sims meets Harvest moon I suppose..

Bah I tend to delete the things I am not happy with. Should stop doing that.






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Edit

HAY GRUMPY GUS...
Mod instructions.
http://www.gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?PHPSESSID=1d8971f37824705e07b1f2a11a510878&topic=14425.0

Well.. there is no benefit from being 3red or 4 red- they both equal warrior.
It "should" have moved your arrow on things that were shifting you in your history. You can press T at anytime to see the history, even if you are at completed. (useful in say creature phase where you may be a few kills or dances from where you want to be)

I have never had a shift of philosophy in Civ stage, but then I haven't really tried.  I find it much easier to swing major arcs in creature or tribal. (say going from green to red then back again before civ)

If it changed you over with no hint of what was doing so in the history that is rather odd behavior.

....

Shiny Buttocks Creature! I should so nab that and put it in my game.
Anyone want a few of my silly guys? I seem to have a thing for monsters.


Trick with Terraforming... find a science philosophy group, befriend, trade often for the tools. Science and Spode folk are all about terraforming.

WARNING -SPODE (religious) hate it when you find artifacts. Go fig.. To avoid war with them , well leave artifacts where they are, tools (which you will find) don't bug em. It stinks as those sets can be a nice chunk of change but hey trading some pink spice will make you feel better over loosing them.

There seems to be a bug during the tutorial on space flight. Make sure when you first leave the world to plant your first colony that when you return you answer the comm before zooming into the planet.

You can't save during the space tutorial either. I have gotten in the habit of saving at the end of Civ stage for two reasons. Sometimes my neighbors are a PITA and I need to rethink what I was doing. The other is to have a recent save location due to the no saving for a small bit at the start of space.

Tips from elsewhere-
Many are stating don't waste that colony on the rock they try and make you use it on. Once you have done the tutorials a few times you have the gist of how to handle it, terraforming your moon is one of the easiest things to do. It also provides you with a quick one two of spice collection. Usually your moon has a different spice, thus buys your homeworld spice at a reasonably high price and can be reversed for the same effect.

Carry a colony in your ship at all times when possible. You never know when you will find Pink or Purple spice.. you can always come back later to make the colony viable.

The clothes in tribal add to your score. If you are going out to impress dress accordingly. There is a Social mask (I usually use it as shoulder cover).. wile you are there pick up the gathering backpack and put it on your guys somewhere. It helps with the whole food collection.

If you are a carnivore hunting a bunch of critters as a tribe works well. If you can pull it off .. the epic monsters have plenty of meat on them. Either way stock up on the foods before deciding what to do about your neighbors. If they get angry, click the green social button to get the social options and wander over and right click their food mat. There you go , insta neutral.

For your first social when you have one instrument, and possibly a low social score with clothes, I recommend going with three tribal members with your one instrument. Easiest way to select is to click them one by one on the side menu, you hold down shift or cntrl and they will stay in a "group" for you. This allows you to choose them based on task, leaving say one or two gathering food.

I cannot stress domesticating enough. It should be the first thing you do. When you get to the last two tribes to befriend/remove you may not even need food gathering if you have collected the eggs from your domesticated animals.
You can have three different animals domesticated, if for some reason they die capture a new one. You must have 15 food , but it only costs 10 to lure them into slavery. (this might be a factor of easy/normal I have played both ways but I cannot remember if normal is 15food or not)

My tribal phase starts as such. I send shaman guy to go befriend first domestic animal. I set the other two gathering/killing/fishing depending on what kind of creature they are and where I want to take them. Shaman returns with his first slave, I promptly send him out gathering food as well.  Now I play the waiting game to get enough to pop out an egg , and the Shaman to return. This "should" leave me with just enough to get another animal. The second slave returns around the same time as the new egg grows up, the other two return with food baskets and I should be able to get the third animal. One more brief round , and the first other tribe has shown up, I have three animals now producing eggs. I take one gatherer and stick them on get eggs duty and grab three guys and my shaman heading to the "new" people. I equip them with a weapon/instrument depending on what I am doing and get them dressed for the occasion.

After this it is a matter of keeping that egg basket empty, and handling the tribes as they show up in turn. I often have the shaman gift aggressive tribes on the way home from the first win as they are triggered then.

....
In a related way here is something I am sure you will all be curious about when you hit space.
If you play as three or four of the same color trait, you will end up with one of these:
Green: Shaman
Blue: Trader
Red: Warrior

If you play as half and half, you will end up this way:
Green and Blue: Diplomat
Green and Red: Zealot
Blue and Red: Scientist

If you play as all colors at least once, depending on which one you played twice:
Green: Ecologist
Blue: Bard
Red: Knight

Bard:             Soothing Song - Calming effect on other races
Ecologist:    Safari Vacuum - Abduct multiple animals from planet
Zealot:    Fanatical Frenzy - Take over a Planet Religiously
Diplomat:    Static Cling - Stun all ships and turrets on a planet
Scientist:    Graviton Wave - Destroy all structures on a planet
Trader:    Cash Infusion - Buy any planet you're trading with
Shaman:    Return Ticket - Instantly return to your home system
Warrior:    Raider Rally - Flood an enemy planet with pirates
Knight:    Summon Mini-U - Warp in a friendly spaceship to help
Wanderer:    None - Default trait if you start in the Space game

There is a small exploit in space level for basic terraforming tools (atmo generator , 3 plant types and the basic eco level of animals).

Don't finish the terraforming tutorial.. use it elsewhere than where your people desire, like over on that other barren waste that has pink spice on it. Throw a colony , do the normal terraforming and you have a functional money producing location as you can have a factory there. (no spice from a colony untill there is one).

Also tips-

If you are being hounded ..earn a colony somehow and head for the rim. One can rebuild the empire out there. You don't have to keep your homeworld to stay "alive".

---Probably lots of spoiler typeness in here be warned---









I really enjoyed going the economic route at Civ phase. That requires killing at least 2 tribes in Tribal Phase.

Space... whew space. Yeah, that's a doozy. Lots of folks with advice out there. The best piece of advice I have seen so far is remember terraforming tools work in both directions.

For a rather non military space group.. removing the planet's viability from under them seems to be a ideal prospect.
The reason behind this is you get 1 colony on a barren->T2 planet. If you knock them out of T1 you get a city with nothing but a cityhall and any defenses it had. This at the least makes them loose a ton of sporebucks and is a more manageable target.

There are 9 philosophies. They are generally based on the color of the "cards" you get at the end of a "phase".
I am sure someone will find the spreadsheet promptly, but there is a nice list of what it requires to get to what in the EA-Spore forums.

The noise ratio is going up in the EA-Spore forums. I am hoping to find a less .. noisy place to discuss strategies. Anyone have links?
I am aware of the Spore forum at the Sims Community forum as well.

This has the nasty version of Suckyouwrong in it.

As there is already a patch out for SPORE, and it seems to only come through the EApleasehurtmedownloader. I wonder if this is their new tactic. No patch 4u if you do not install their crud.

I officially call that shiny buttocks creature.


There is a need to remember as you wander into Civ stage and Space that doing things may be more round about than one might expect. For instance, it is important to note that the Economic Civilization has no military. That means they do not attack anyone.

This does not slow them down, and may make them impossible to deal with when one is playing against them. I am not sure. It was the first Civ level I attained.

Money is power!

-stares at the space stage in awe-

I have nothing else to say .. my god its full of stars.

There is a 1000 creature Torrent for download. In addition sharing these things is incredibly easy. Email a .png file of your critter.

/documents/mysporecreations/whatever kind of whatever you want to share

This was a big thing for me to find out so I will share. To load the critters you either find,save,email or download if you are not using the sporepedia is very easy and not intuitive.
You put the game in windowed mode, go to the directory said .png is in. You drag said .png file into spore. There you go all loaded.
After the hassle I have dealt with in all the Sim games in sharing content this is very simple and rather unexpected.

To get to windowed mode is a "uncheck" in the graphics menu or Alt+Enter.
I opened my "in game" sporepedia and dropped things from there. I have to say that this is rather slick. So if we wanted to share our content without the perils of the Online sporepedia, we only need the .png file to do so.


For your clicking pleasure..........
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4337557/Spore_1000_Creatures_Pack

My habit of various nicknames started at a young age pays off once again!
Oh Mea Someoneelse, I hardly knew ye.

I find myself enjoying this game entirely too much. Starting from cell and only letting them have what they come across has made some interesting messes of creatures.

My sadness is no underwater/flight from creature phase. I see a expac with all that in there.
Try the poison on the cell phase, you don't have to fight at all.

The question about how you start..First load of game requires you do the previous level to access the next. This means you must have done cell/tidal pool to get to critter, critter to get to tribal so on. From that point on you can create something "at that level" and play it one level beyond what you got to. The downside of this is they do not get their evolutionary powers, which can change the way things are going quickly. The first species I got any distance came into Tribal phase with this rain that heals, and a firework that raises those that watch it's relationship to the tribe.

I am finding depth in odd places and empty holes that imply content might be forthcomming. My thought for the underwater is if you do for some reason swim out into water as a critter you will get chomped.


Last but not least, omnivores rule. If it lives , we can eat it.

Heck.. unrar and rerar it, that is what RaR was made for.

I was delighted to do random searching and find Spore was ARRable, I am further delighted that Sporepedia is easily downloadable. I hope if a bunch of MATY like this we can perhaps have a Spore corner.

Usually I delete every time I load up Sims 2 and wonder what I was doing. This can be rather frequent as some days I don't remember that I just loaded the sims.

Currently- I just made a huge ruleset to replicate Dune as best I can. Something about the Bene Gesserits always sends me screaming to the sims to breed monsters.

Comodo Firewall is nice.. bit complicated and can easily lead to you leaving yourself open if you let it default. With it set to paranoid it can be annoying in a different way because you cannot open a single program without it questioning if that is what you ment to do.

Zone Alarm is a old standby if you are looking for basic protection.
Both of the above are free and easily found by a Google search.

I would strongly recommend NOT getting anything with the name Norton on it.

With windows firewall alone you have put on a light coat to go out in zero degree weather...

I am having some of this errata as well..wondering if it conflicts with the normal marriage last name chooser thus causing some of the arch and too many sims on lot issue.

I will note that I married someone who I obviously should not have (vacation sim? I think..) and thou it said she moved into the house she did not. When returning to the house she was not there, and any attempts to find her proved futile. I shrugged and attempted a new marriage for that sim and that got me the too many sims on lot you must move someone out.

Could this be conflicting with lotfullofsims as well?

My tight pants threshold is to the point of squeezing my neck, I will look in and see if anyone else has these issues in a few days.

I too would love to hear progress. Not that my wanting to means diddly..

Lately , and mostly due to this thread, I have been using two random files. (plop a copy of randomstuff in a seperate folder give it a new txt file good to go)

First deals with names, aspirations, college, ltw, job if not decided by the former entries. Then I added in lifestyle. Currently it is supernatural with plant, werewolf, vamp (no zombies..just no) then gay(otherwise they are allowed to decide for themselves but this makes sure I have a few same gender couples), traditional (marriage and wife doesn't work) , religious (no work for anyone , farm, try for baby is set to always, marriage isn't mandatory generally depends on the preference of the sim. I am going for multiple types of religions under one heading.)then Modern which is standard simming.

After this comes a yes/no for the random life event file. I roll the random event at teen (along with everything else). Killing kids is annoying, easier to do it at teen onward. Some things are timed. If they roll a mid life crisis that takes effect when the age bar during adult is halfway. So they go along having this normal life , but they have a waiting time bomb in their "fate".  Some of them are instant. (house destroyed, murder)

I decided to play this on that megahood (all the maxis hoods together). Currently The travellers are vampires, Don is a religious nut married to Nina. The Dreamers are a gay family. I haven't had so much fun with this game in ages.