Come to think of it, I agree with Hotcakes. What this creature creator gives me control over is raw "stats".
Well I hadn't actually thought of that but you're right. There is no connection to the aesthetic and its abilities... I could be wrong (memory permitting), but I could have sworn in the Creature Creator if you add two sets of the same feet, you would get double the stats, at least. That got cut out too.
Anyways, I've developed two case studies I would like ppl to look at-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-262774490184348066
The creature at 16 minutes and the creature at 21 minutes.
Then, in Spore, do a search for 'gdc 06' and grab tweety and the nameless one.
Watching the nameless creature side by side to the 06 demonstration, there are two noticeable differences- in the demo, each leg moves independantly. Left, middle, right. What we have in today's Splorth is a creature whose left and right legs move as you'd expect, but the middle leg has no idea what the f it's doing.
So difference number one is that even if it is procedurally animated (which I still doubt but this is not a good demonstration of it) the new routines are broken anyway. They had 2 years to -improve- this. Sure it was just a demonstration, but the code was there. What happenned to it?
Second diff is that the tail no longer sways. My tail has an arm attached because in the demonstration Will says he is attaching a grasper, however it does behave and look more like a mouth. So I attached a grasper anyway. In the 06 demo you can see the swaying as the creature walks.
In Splorth, the tail is rigid. The arms sways somewhat.
These changes are most noticeable with Tweety Bird. In the demo Will shows how Tweety's top heavy structure lends to him almost toppling over when cornering - in Splorth, Tweety is completely rigid.
The fairly basic 2x2 feet configuration happen to move mostly the same.
I don't know how you can say the animation is "canned". Certainly it had to be programmed at some point, but considering the limb configurations you can do (tripods, bipeds, octopeds, branched legs, etc., etc.) it's definitely not "canned".
I definately think canned is the perfect word for it. On creatures with more complicated leg configurations, they don't move independantly as the creatures in the 06 demo did, it's just a simple left/right movement order (sometimes reversed if there's an easy front/back configuration) - this is relatively easy with a basic skeleton/joint system and some animation blending.
On the other hand, perhaps the fact that the system is now broken is indicative that it is procedural.
But yeah I'm sure they have some animation transformation tools so they can map one animation to multiple creatures as well.
The way I see it, it's no different to the range of animations each npc in Vice City, San Andreas or 4 are able to play. Just with more or less limbs doing the same thing as each other.
Whereas in the demo, it -seemed- like there was more variety based on the actual limb configuration. Hard to tell when you don't get to play it yourself though.
One thing is a tech demo, another an open ended creature creator with tons of different combinations.
I find this the likely explanation, however after seeing the demo (and the Robyn Williams demo) again it certainly -seemed- more realistic and robust to me.
EDIT : I won't even begin to rant about how in the GDC demo the cell stage still looks awesome and well, everyone's mentioned the water stage before...
Actually I even liked the way the UFO is represented in space stage better. Oh and civ stage looks like there used to be some kind of game attached to it. I guess I should rag on something about the tribal stage... well actually all the crature movement and reactions to things 'plonked' on the ground (ie spears, drums, campfire) appears to have been completely removed, except for the canned animations when you force click them on the campfire that already exists.