chik chik chik

posted by Andy

We have backyard chickens! Someday we'll be enjoying fresh eggs, but for now we'll have to make due gazing at 10 of these cute little buggers in a large Tupperware bin with a heat lamp.

We'll keep about 5 and give the others to some friends who already have flocks. They're not too bright, big surprise there, but they transform into a feeding frenzy when given a little dab of unsweetened yogurt.

Spore Creature Creator

posted by Andy

While digging around the Spore info I ran across a cool trick they're using to import community shared critters into the game - simply download the image and drag it onto Spore.

My first thought was, "How'd they do that?"

It's not a GUID filename, too easy for users to screw up. Maybe embedded EXIF or similar metadata? Nope, couldn't find any. Then I happened to look at the alpha channel for the PNG image. By reducing the alpha mask to 1 bit at the low and high ends reveals some hidden watermark data.

Apparently the creatures only need 2k of data to define their parts, placement, size and paint styles. The game fills in the rest.