Building Editor

Introduction to the Building Editor

The building editor makes its appearance in the Civilization phase and it is used to design all the buildings within your cities. The appearance of your city can be a represenation of what type of civilization you are creating - maybe it is very technological, to signify that your species is very cold, calculating and imperialistic or maybe the city is organic, to signify it is a peace loving people. You don’t have to create every building, as Spore not only ships with preset structures but also downloads designs from other players that resemble your own style.

Being the Architect

The building editor works a bit differently than the other tools you will have played with before this point. For the first time, you no longer use a Mr. Potato-Head like getup, instead of attaching objects to other objects (ie. organism and creature editors), you are blending shapes into other shapes. It’s closer to Lego’s than anything. For example, if you were to place a long cylinder in the middle of the editing field, you could then move a sphere so that it is partially within the cylinder (intersecting) - the end result is a cylinder with a round projection sticking out of it. This is a very simple example, but it does show you just how much control you have over the appearance of the buildings you are creating. Every piece can be blended into another piece as to create a shape that would not otherwise be available to you. Parts can also be stacked in whichever order you prefer, regardless of size and weight. The distortion tools are also available with this editor, hence every building part can be distorted to fit your needs a great deal (size, angle, thickness, length etc). We’ve seen such a wide variety of different buildings that you probably would think impossible to make - including a giant Christmas tree headquarters!

What can be created

This is not a comprehensive list of the building types/purposes, as unfortunately these sort of details have not been clearly discussed yet. However, there are a number of structures that have been identified from screenshots and videos.

• General Buildings - the types themselves are unknown, but the city has a number of ‘general’ buildings that serve its people in a certain way. An example of this would (possibly) be a factory. Players will probably spend most of their time designing these buildings.
• Gigantic Walls
• Anti-Air turrets, missile and pullet/particle based
• Anti-Land turrets
• Missile Silos
• Farms
• Roads

Building Editor Interface

1. Roof - Choose from a wide selection of roofs, including domes.
2. Block - This is a tab with a number of solid shapes and blocks, it can be used as the foundation for more complex buildings.
3. Windows - Vast array of windows to choose from.
4. Doors - Everything from double french doors to circular space age openings.
5. Miscellaneous (Assumption) - Things that don’t quite fit in the other categories.
6. Lights - Large number of lights, including massive spotlights.
7. Design - This the area where players can design their buildings.
8. Paint & Texture - Area where players can color and texture their creations to their liking.