Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

by novojnsn
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Original Post

Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

[ Edited ]
★★★ Newbie

tl;dr: I never got it to run, my recourse is to ask for a refund.

 

Just bought SPORE for Mac from Origin (digital download) for my very excited chidlren, ages 8 and 11. They pooled their money to buy it. I tried installing it, patching it, and running it, but it crashed on startup after showing the splash screen.

 

After much reading and ranting, I have started a step-by-step process to get it installed. Here is what happened:

 

Uninstalled SPORE. On a Mac, this is blessedly easy.

 

Ran Origin, and re-installed SPORE.

 

Hit the Play button, and refused to install patches or updates.

 

Got the registration dialog. Successfully entered the long alphanumeric code behind the "i" button in the Origin listing for my copy of SPORE. Had to copy it by hand, because, of course, copy-paste didn't work.

 

SPORE started, and I said no to updates. Long darkness, then the opening screen, but stuttering and with a lot of graphic artifacts. Then what I presume is the SPORE registration screen I've read about shows up, but only behind a flickering mass of white pixels and what look like scan lines from an old CRT... can't do anything.

 

Try quitting, and it does, sort of but tells me I can only Quit SPORE from within the game. Hit okay and it takes me back to the game. Eventually i have to Force Quit SPORE with the Activity Monitor. Ugh.

 

Start SPORE again. This time I agree to a patch, thinking maybe the graphics drivers need to be patched. It does this, patching me from 1.0 to 1.0.1 or something. I refuse the next round of patches, game starts, same deal, glitchy graphics, inability to see flickering login screen, Quit tells me I can't, and I force quit.

 

Run SPORE again. Agree to the next set of patches. Now we are up to v 2.00.000.1885. Same deal. Glitchy graphics, cant see the login, can't quit, force quit.

 

Run SPORE again. Agree to the *next* set of patches. Now I'm up to 3.00.0000.1940. Same deal. Glitchy graphics, can't see the screen to login. Quit, tells me I can't and I go back to the app, and lo! I can see the login screen! I click to make an EA account, and the windowing can't draw the next window, I get the flickery mess. So, quit, force quit.

 

Run SPORE again. Agree to patching it again, one more step. Now we're up to 4.00.0000.2535... then mysteriously updates again to 4.00.0000.2756. Huh. Run it, startup screen is still glitchy, can't see the login screen, I hit quit, expecting the same thing and... what? it quits, but not before showing me the login screen in glorious full graphics for a split second.

 

Guess we can quit normally now.

 

Run SPORE again. No update requests. According to this article: https://help.ea.com/en/article/installing-spore-patch-5-1-for-mac/ it appears that 2756 is the latest update.

 

Again with the glitchy graphics. Again I can't see the login screen. End result, unplayable.

 

I think my children would like a refund.

 

Edit, for completeness, my system:

 

iMac

3.1 GHz Core i7

16 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB

running OS X Mavericks (10.9.4).

Message 1 of 9 (8,927 Views)

Re: Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

★★★ Guide

Hi, if you're still here I'd like to help you with this issue, unless you have already been refunded. 

Message 2 of 9 (8,868 Views)

Re: Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

★★★ Newbie

I have very similar symptoms on my mac.  Can't see the screens behind the scan-line drawing artifacts.  It looks to me like Spoe is trying to write the video memory direcly.  Can anyone help?  Are there any configuration options that fix this failure?  Or let me ask a different way, has *anyone* been sucsessful at getting Spore to run on a recent mac?

 

Message 3 of 9 (8,864 Views)

Re: Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

[ Edited ]
★★★ Guide

Spore seems to have issues with newer platforms such as Windows 8, I am however not sure about Mac because I do not use it, but if you're experiencing artificats I could look up on the Sporum. I'll dig around.

 

In the mean time, please look in the master thread for mac users that have Spore issues: http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/31948.page your issue might be here. 

 

 Also, try making sure that your graphics drivers are fully up to date.

 

I've had a little search around, are your problems similar to these threads?: http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/44078.page and/or http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/80936.page

Message 4 of 9 (8,861 Views)

Re: Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

★ Novice

FYI, Spore is Unplayable on 10.9. I have attempted to run and patch it both directly from origin or from disks. Simply doesn't work, hasn't since 10.9 was released. EA should stop selling it and advertizing Mac compatability given that it doesn't run on the currently avalable operating system.

Message 5 of 9 (8,847 Views)

Re: Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

[ Edited ]
★★★ Guide

EA will keep selling it because they get money from it. Spore seems to work on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and moderatly on Windows 8. I am not a Mac expert, but I am sure there is a work around on the most currently updated version. I would love to help if I can, that's if you want me to? 

 

At the time of Spores release Mac compatability was acceptable, but because the updated version of Mac is ahead of it's time, I would have to blame the people at Mac, since they made changes to make Spore unplayable, although I know not much about it. 

Message 6 of 9 (8,845 Views)

Re: Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

★★★ Newbie

I just ran into this same issue and found a solution that worked -- third post in this thread:

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4140565?tstart=0

Message 7 of 9 (8,603 Views)

Re: Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

★★★ Newbie

For me it says it’s complete but then when I press on it it makes me install it again and it keeps doing it

Message 8 of 9 (1,122 Views)

Re: Getting SPORE to work on a Mac... was I successful? Nope. Refunded.

★ Guide
Hi, @ggghhhu56! If you're using macOS Catalina, I believe you will not be able to install it. macOS Catalina dropped support for all 32-bit apps.
Message 9 of 9 (1,046 Views)