Electronic Arts has released the first patch for its problematic PC smash Spore. ‘Bout time too!

Version 1.01, as it is snappily titled, sorts out a number of known annoyances and even chucks a handful of cheats into the mix for good measure. Alas it does not address the hairiest, ugliest bugbear of all - namely the harsh digital rights management measures built into the game that, among other things, prevent it being installed more than three times - ever.

But back to the patch which, as you’ll see below, comprises a veritable smorgasbord of useful fixes and features. Deep breath:

New features
* New Cheat: “evoadvantage”. Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
* Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the ‘i’ key.
* New Cheat: “blocksmode”. Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
* More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: “stylefilter -microscope” or “stylefilter -norainbows” or “stylefilter -nextgen” to see the new styles
* Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the “hot and high atmosphere” type

New Graphics/Aesthetics
* Animation improvements
* Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
* Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures

Tuning
* Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
* Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn’t pay
* Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Miscellaneous
* Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
* Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
* Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
* Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
* Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
* Fixed problems with the “Rolling Thunder” and “Deja Vu” achievements not being awarded as they should
* Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
* Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
* Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
* Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
* Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
* Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
* Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
* Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu

So there it is. Hopefully something in the above list will guarantee that the game installs properly first time, every time, and runs 100% crash-free thereafter. As for the ongoing DRM issues, well maybe that’s something for version 1.02. Hey, we can all dream can’t we? Can’t we…?

See www.spore.com/patch for more info.