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Spore Creature Creator posts

Filed under: Hacks, Mac mini, MacBook

Run Spore Creature Creator on unsupported GMA 950 Macs

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Jun 17th, 2008


Quite a few users were frustrated to discover that the recently released Spore Creature Creator won't run on Macs with Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics (basically Mac minis and older MacBooks). An enterprising TUAW reader has come up with a solution. Clancy posted the following instructions:
  1. download trial
  2. click show package content
  3. open resources folder
  4. open tginstall.plist in Property List Editor (Having xcode installed helps)
  5. Click the root triangle
  6. scroll down to InsufficientRenderers
  7. Change Intel GMA 950 OpenGL Engine to Intel GMA 850 OpenGL Engine (or something lower)
  8. Save and run the installer
Clancy reports that the Creature Creator is running fine on his Core2Duo Mac mini with this modification. I'm not sure how well this will hold up on the full game (though the GMA 950 is supported on Windows), but if you have an unsupported Intel Mac and would like to have a look it might be worth it.

Update: It seems clear from the comments that this is only working on the Mac mini and not on the MacBook.

Tags: Spore Creature Creator, SporeCreatureCreator

Filed under: Gaming, Leopard

Spore Creature Creator now available

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Jun 17th, 2008

EA has made the Spore Creature Creator trial available for download on both Mac and PC. A while back EA promised simultaneous release for Mac and PC, and they seem to be on track with the Creature Creator which is available for purchase at $9.95.

The Spore Creature Creator is a preview and demo for the full Spore game, which is scheduled for release on September 7. As you might expect from the name the Creature Creator allows you to build and customize creatures which you'll later be able to use in gameplay once the full game is released. I've been playing with the trial this morning and it does look very promising.

The Spore Creature Creator is Leopard and Intel Mac only. It requires at least an ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100. It will apparently not run on computers with the GMA 950 integrated graphics chipset on OS X (though, it will on Windows). The trial version can be downloaded directly from the Spore trial site.

Thanks, Shiraz!

Tags: Spore, Spore Creature Creator, SporeCreatureCreator, tweet-this

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