Galactic Adventures has only been out for a few days and there’s already more than 1,000 community-created adventures available for download. So with so many adventures, how do you make yours stand out from the crowd? There are a few simple things you can do to increase the visibility of your adventure in the already crowded Sporepedia. Think of the Adventure Title Interface as the marketing panel; click on the blue “Name Your Adventure” button at the bottom of the screen in the Adventure Creator. Here you can write a description for your adventure, enter keyword search tags, define the genre, and assign detailed view pictures. While all of these fields are important to fill out, the detailed view pictures are critical. These four images appear on your adventure’s title card in the Sporepedia.
So how do you take a good picture? I like action shots so I start up the adventure and advance to an act I want to show an image of, such as a battle scene. While the action plays out, pause the game and enter freecam mode: Press Ctrl+Alt+C to enter freecam mode. This allows you to move the camera anywhere on the planet. And since the game is paused, you can take as much time as you want to frame the shot. When you get the shot you want, press the C key to take a snapshot. Repeat the process at least four times so you have four different shots. Once you have your shots, return to Build Mode and assign the detailed view pictures. Make sure you select your best shot for the first slot, as this is the image that appears on the front of the adventure’s card. The three other images only appear on the card’s expanded view when you click on the blue information bar at the bottom of the card in the Sporepedia. Now that you have four good images, a description, tags, and genre, your adventure should stick out a bit more.
By the way, I uploaded a new adventure a few days ago titled Colonel Grihm’s Last Stand. It’s a defense-based adventure…and it’s really tough. My goal was to make an adventure worth a lot of Spore Points. And it seems to have worked. Currently, completing the adventure earns your captain 75 Spore Points. So feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. I’ll give you a hint…use the grenades!
Galactic Adventures is out now and as of this post there are more than 140 community-created adventures available for download. Among the new adventures is Spice Trouble, the adventure we created for our 
Ready for the release of the Galactic Adventures expansion? It comes out this Tuesday, and it looks like we’re not the only ones eager for the release. With the help of Maxis, the writers behind 
One of the most exciting features of the Galactic Adventures expansion is the new Adventure Creator. This allows you to create your own planetary adventures consisting of a variety of activities and goals. Even more exciting is how easy it is to share these adventures with the Spore community, allowing others to edit and tweak your adventures. But don’t worry, every time an adventure is edited, the original author retains credit within the adventure’s legacy, listing all contributors. So what does it take to create an adventure from scratch? I spent a couple of days at Maxis talking to the producers about their process. After all, why not ask the pros? They break the process down into several logical steps:
Since there’s only a couple of weeks to go until Galactic Adventures is released, I figured this would be a good time to discuss some of the new elements of this expansion. In particular, the new captain parts. In all, there are 32 new captain parts that enhance your captain’s abilities. Some of these parts are weapons, useful during combat-oriented adventures. One of my favorites is the Swarm Magnet, a ranged weapon that summons a swarm of viscous insects to attack your target. But there’s also social-based parts, helpful for boosting your captain’s skills during social interactions, such as the Fettipopper. This device launches confetti into the air, helping impress others during pose-based social interactions.
Last week I had the opportunity to visit Maxis for a couple of days to take an early look at their new expansion for Spore, 
