LittleBigPlanet: Water! Kraken Infested Pirates of the Caribbean Levels, 12-22-09

Brainiac 8

Speed Racer wrote: »

Yeah that's really weird.

Okay so someone break a tie for me. Which should be the premise for my sci-fi level?

1. Aliens in giant War of the Worlds-esque robots are invading your farm.

2. You are an android sent to repair the electronic brain that controls the city.

Robots going into a raccoon infested city to save their pet cat.

SAW776

Speed Racer wrote: »

Yeah that's really weird.

Okay so someone break a tie for me. Which should be the premise for my sci-fi level?

1. Aliens in giant War of the Worlds-esque robots are invading your farm.

2. You are an android sent to repair the electronic brain that controls the city.

You are an android sent to repair the electronic brain that controls a giant war of the worlds-esque robot that is invading someone elses farm? :P

If that doesn't suit you, I'd go with the first one.

Speed Racer

SAW776 wrote: »

Speed Racer wrote: »

Yeah that's really weird.

Okay so someone break a tie for me. Which should be the premise for my sci-fi level?

1. Aliens in giant War of the Worlds-esque robots are invading your farm.

2. You are an android sent to repair the electronic brain that controls the city.

You are an android sent to repair the electronic brain that controls a giant war of the worlds-esque robot that is invading someone elses farm? :P

If that doesn't suit you, I'd go with the first one.

I sat down to try and doodle out the level and I realized that I have no ideas for the farm one other than the giant robot walkers! So the other one it is. I like the way that the robot walkers look in my head though so I might try and shoehorn one in.

I also thought about making a giant gundam-esque robot that the player could control, and I think it would work, but camera issues would lead to it really not being anything other than a technical feat. Making it small enough that a camera could show relevant information would kind of ruin the fact that it's supposed to be a giant robot. Oh well.

SAW776

I have realized that even though I can do something and make something work, it's not necessarily going to be fun in context. I've been working on an RPG skill-ish system for a set of levels, and though I actually got the basics of it up and running, it's become clear that having to stop and whip out your popit to activate 90% of the abilities is just a bit much.

Every once in a while isn't bad, to maybe shift between 2 major abilities or something, but other than that, it just isn't very feasible, even if it works.

Speed Racer

On the other hand piloting a giant robot and punching/lazering dinosaurs would be fucking rad and it sucks that it's not gonna work out.

dookieagain

So, does anyone know roughly how many material sets it takes to kill the thermometer? I don't want to make an uber short level, but to get the very jist of my level together I'd need at least 2 major material changes (3 pretty divergent locations) and I'd rather not be limited to like a single hallway of each. :P

Speed Racer

My castle had a good amount of different materials and I only filled the thermometer to about halfway between 1/2 and 3/4.

SAW776

dookieagain wrote: »

So, does anyone know roughly how many material sets it takes to kill the thermometer? I don't want to make an uber short level, but to get the very jist of my level together I'd need at least 2 major material changes (3 pretty divergent locations) and I'd rather not be limited to like a single hallway of each. :P

Isn't the ammount of thermometer a material takes up the same whether it's one block or a ton of blocks? So just make 1 block for each type of material you'll be using and you should see the effect on the thermometer.

At least I thought that's how it worked--I thought it only needed to load each texture/material once.

MetaHybrid

SAW776 wrote: »

dookieagain wrote: »

So, does anyone know roughly how many material sets it takes to kill the thermometer? I don't want to make an uber short level, but to get the very jist of my level together I'd need at least 2 major material changes (3 pretty divergent locations) and I'd rather not be limited to like a single hallway of each. :P

Isn't the ammount of thermometer a material takes up the same whether it's one block or a ton of blocks? So just make 1 block for each type of material you'll be using and you should see the effect on the thermometer.

At least I thought that's how it worked--I thought it only needed to load each texture/material once.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how it works. I also try to work around using different textures by just placing stickers of the materials I want on blocks I'm already using. You lose some of the quality, but for some textures it's hard to tell the difference.

cheez

Man, I need to beef up my sackfriends list and get back into this. Persona 4's completely dominated my gaming hours recently.

EliteBattleman

I've been working a level of mine and finished the first small area of it.

I decided to publish it to gather feedback regarding difficulty.

I posted it off the SE coast of Africa, right on Madagascar. It's called "Neon Race UNFINISHED".

The entire thing takes maybe 30 seconds... unless you die a lot.

Speed Racer

Wyth wrote: »

Aww I totally missed out on the level competition, well I take about 3-4 weeks building a level anyway so wouldn't have made it in time anyway.

Yesterday I ran into my first thermometer problem. I've got this castle wall/tower thing built up from loose bricks glued together (quite easy if you use the grid).

In my level I want to bombard the wall with a bunch of impact explosives. If I let some emitters fire away at it the thermometer fills up within 20 seconds, the emitters stop firing and I get a warning stating I should use less stickers. If I try the same in the "play" mode I don't get a warning but the emitters do stop firing after roughly the same time. (I did rewind the earlier blowing up ofcourse, so I didn't save any emitted explosives).

I've seen other levels (including MM ones) using a bunch of explosives without trouble, my guess it is because I bombard quite a lot of different blocks... One explosive blackens about 5 to 20 blocks. Any workarounds? Making the tower out of a single block would truly ruin the look of the thing. One solution is limiting the total amount emitted and slowing the firing times but that would mean less bang and thus less cool.

I thought of how to solve this!

Have the emitters shoot big black metal balls with speakers rigged up to make an explosion sound effect on impact. Looks basically the same to the player without creating excessive soot effects!

EliteBattleman, I really like the idea behind your level. Near the very start when you have to jump over the fire, I'd say make the piston extend just a hair lower. Also, on the spinning wheels, make the second one spin a bit faster so it's a little easier to reach the sponge above.

Wyth

Speed Racer wrote: »

Wyth wrote: »

Aww I totally missed out on the level competition, well I take about 3-4 weeks building a level anyway so wouldn't have made it in time anyway.

Yesterday I ran into my first thermometer problem. I've got this castle wall/tower thing built up from loose bricks glued together (quite easy if you use the grid).

In my level I want to bombard the wall with a bunch of impact explosives. If I let some emitters fire away at it the thermometer fills up within 20 seconds, the emitters stop firing and I get a warning stating I should use less stickers. If I try the same in the "play" mode I don't get a warning but the emitters do stop firing after roughly the same time. (I did rewind the earlier blowing up ofcourse, so I didn't save any emitted explosives).

I've seen other levels (including MM ones) using a bunch of explosives without trouble, my guess it is because I bombard quite a lot of different blocks... One explosive blackens about 5 to 20 blocks. Any workarounds? Making the tower out of a single block would truly ruin the look of the thing. One solution is limiting the total amount emitted and slowing the firing times but that would mean less bang and thus less cool.

I thought of how to solve this!

Have the emitters shoot big black metal balls with speakers rigged up to make an explosion sound effect on impact. Looks basically the same to the player without creating excessive soot effects!

EliteBattleman, I really like the idea behind your level. Near the very start when you have to jump over the fire, I'd say make the piston extend just a hair lower. Also, on the spinning wheels, make the second one spin a bit faster so it's a little easier to reach the sponge above.

Ahaha, I like the way you think but wouldn't you miss the explosions? I've now liimited the amount of bombs fired so it will be a 40 second long bombardment and that won't mess up the thermometer too bad. I did some tests and the problem indeed is the soot effects on the excessive number of blocks. I've also found out that dark matter won't get sooted, not usefull to me right now but hey, the more you know.

I've also finished my hybrid explosive/sackboy launching autoloading trebuchet, I'm sooo curious to the reactions but I want to finish the level first, which still might take a while.

EdS25

So it's 4 am, and I've just published my 2nd level (Intergalactic Planetary 2 : Jupiter). There's been some other nights I've actually stayed up until 6:30 in the morning in create mode. Even in my WOW days I didn't stay up past 2. Needless to say I'm addicted. Unfortunately I will need to put this aside so that I can, I don't know, find a job.

IP2 didn't turn out quite as epic as I hoped but I think there's definitely glimmers here and there of my original vision for the level. It's still amazing to me how fluid the creation process is : some stuff doesn't work but turns out better, other ideas I thought were relatively simple wouldn't work even after hours of tweaking.

Oh well. sleep now. enjoy. (hopefully)

SAW776

I have too many ideas. >.< I start working on one, and then another one distracts me, so basically I'm never going to get anything more than barely started, let alone finished.

Blaaargh.

Wyth

SAW776 wrote: »

I have too many ideas. >.< I start working on one, and then another one distracts me, so basically I'm never going to get anything more than barely started, let alone finished.

Blaaargh.

Try to sketch out an entire level on paper, that might help you to stay focused.

SAW776

Wyth wrote: »

SAW776 wrote: »

I have too many ideas. >.< I start working on one, and then another one distracts me, so basically I'm never going to get anything more than barely started, let alone finished.

Blaaargh.

Try to sketch out an entire level on paper, that might help you to stay focused.

Hm. That's not a bad idea.

Cause as it stands, I start thinking of mechanics, and then I keep going with the mechanic and thinking how it would be cool in this kind of level, and then oh, it would be awesome used in that way in another level. And then I think of more mechanics, and then it just spirals horribly out of control.

But maybe if I focus on sketching out a level rather than just thinking of cool technical things, I'll stick to it.

urahonky

Spent an hour to make some lame ass level that didn't even work correctly. I now have a new found respect for you guys that are professional designers. :P

LutExIV

So I have Sackboy's Castle Adventure (pt 2) almost done. I was able to intergrate a day/night shift part way through the level. I think it looks pretty good, so I am trying to hurry and finish this so I can get some feedback from you pros out there.

EdS25

Yes, they need to add a lighting/background color toggle switch ASAP. They use it themselves in one of the MGS levels so you'd think they'd give us the power. I needed two scenes in my latest level to be in "space", so I set the lighting and background appropriately. But that meant I had to light the entire rest of the level manually, which sucked. Not only because of the interface but because I am terrible at it. Wyth, your level has some of the best lighting I've seen yet - do you have a design background?

Speed Racer

urahonky wrote: »

Spent an hour to make some lame ass level that didn't even work correctly. I now have a new found respect for you guys that are professional designers. :P

I think making a level like that is probably a necessary first step.

Also I am incredibly pleased with how my characters for my sci-fi level have turned out thus far. They look almost identical to the doodles I made, and even though I can't draw for shit, my lame doodles seem kind of endearing when they're cardboard cut-outs instead.

SAW776

Speaking of creatures, I have a question--is it better to make your creatures without brains if you can? Like, use sensor switches and such instead if you can? I ask because when I was messing around, a certain number of brains was a certain amount of thermometer, but then, once you went above that number, every additional brain caused the thermometer to jump more than the entire former group.

I was just thinking, because someone said earlier how their zombie level was short because of how much space their creatures took up--and after seeing how brains seem to work, I can not understand how that happened. But, at the same time, using switches doesn't seem to have nearly the same impact on the thermometer, while they seem to be able to fairly easily mimic everything but the walking. So, if you can, isn't it a much better idea to build your creatures brainless and automate them in other ways?

Speed Racer

I tend to not use brains a ton, but not for any particular reason. I just don't usually like how it looks. I mostly just use them if I want something to dissolve without being made out of dissolve.

EliteBattleman

So I'm trying to put something in my level that exists in the story mode.

It can be best described by this picture:


It's like the game from MXC, where they run across the dominoes that fall over... only the dominoes are small pieces of wood/cardboard. It's in one of the story levels a couple times, and I'm having trouble building it without it completely falling apart.

Suggestions? Anyone know if I can just pick up the object somewhere?

MetaHybrid

EliteBattleman wrote: »

So I'm trying to put something in my level that exists in the story mode.

It can be best described by this picture:


It's like the game from MXC, where they run across the dominoes that fall over... only the dominoes are small pieces of wood/cardboard. It's in one of the story levels a couple times, and I'm having trouble building it without it completely falling apart.

Suggestions? Anyone know if I can just pick up the object somewhere?

Yep, the object is hidden somewhere in the islands' first level.

EliteBattleman

Ah, cool. Thanks.

SAW776

They really need a 40's detective costume. Grey Fedora + matching rain coat.

Speed Racer

You get a raincoat in the Wildenress but I agree about the fedora. My Rorsack costume just doesn't look complete without it!

MetaHybrid

So does anyone here know how the guy that made the Puzzle Train made the moving background? I want to add that to my Sci-Fi level if I can.

Speed Racer

Presumably the whole thing is on some kind of conveyor belt.

unintentional

GUESS WHO IS BACK FROM DOING STUFF

(hint: its me)

I'm trying to make an interesting level based on wobble/motor bolts. So far I have a couple of neat contraptions.

You know the Great Magicians Temple where they have fireballs being emitted and you have to jump to the next platform? Well MY platforms are slowly rotating cubes suspended by motor bolts.

Darth_Mogs

So, that, uh, big space board thing from the very last level, is that also in a level? I don't know if I got it, or if it's possible to get it or if I'll have to make something of my own.

Please tell me it's not in The Bunker. Please.

EDIT: In lieu of double-posting, has anyone played the 'Runner' (Formerly Mirror's Edge) community levels? There's an obvious sign of the vent you have to go into for one of them, and I'm wondering how that was made as well.

Egos

I'm really wondering if going through the Story levels and taking notes of what they exactly did would be of help. I get the feeling it would be and it does seem encouraged (by the fact they make all triggers,bolts,etc. visible).

I might try though I get the feeling it will be extremely tedious.

Speed Racer

Hey, I know some people had wanted to know how some people got the silhouette effect that's in Pixelated and Sackhouette, and I just accidentally figured out how.

Go into the lighting settings in Gadgets. Max out both Lighting and Darkness. Then, use Fog Color to determine what you want the background color to be.

Wyth

EdS25 wrote: »

Yes, they need to add a lighting/background color toggle switch ASAP. They use it themselves in one of the MGS levels so you'd think they'd give us the power. I needed two scenes in my latest level to be in "space", so I set the lighting and background appropriately. But that meant I had to light the entire rest of the level manually, which sucked. Not only because of the interface but because I am terrible at it. Wyth, your level has some of the best lighting I've seen yet - do you have a design background?

Uhh thanks . I don't have a design background (well I'm a software designer but no graphic desingn or anything). For my level I've just twiddled around with the global settings until I liked the look and afterwards I just dotted some lamps around. The lighting was mostly an afterthought.. Guess I'm talented :P.

I second the MGS global settings switch, could really use it in Jack McSetback II. That makes it so much easier to make a dark cave halfway through your level without making you entire level in the night or fiddling around with big lights..

Speed Racer

I am doing some fun lighting stuff with my level, and yeah it would be nice to just adjust the lighting with a switch, especially since it seems like lots of lights is causing my level's framerate to dip, even though I've only just cleared 1/4 on the thermometer.

Dissociater

I can't wait to finally dive into this game, if only I had more free time. I got it at christmas but shortly after I got it my ps3 broke down and I had to send it in to get repaired. Just got it back last week and now LBP is in a queue of games.

EdS25

Wyth wrote: »

I just dotted some lamps around. The lighting was mostly an afterthought.. Guess I'm talented :P..

Yeah, that makes me feel even worse.

So I didn't want the bomb/spike room of IP2 to become like the sun in IP1 and prevent everyone that bothers to try my levels from finishing them. So I reworked it drastically. There's still a little bit of player choice (you can either flip all the platforms or just a couple) but it should be 100% completable now. I had fun with the bomb room the way it was but admit about 10% of the time I would also get stuck. Oh well.

I had a disaster after I fixed that tho. Somehow even though that is pretty far from the boss, working on that room broke the boss. He wouldn't dissolve when "dead". (It's a protected creature brain to dissolve the body once you've destroyed all 8 legs. The legs are just on inverted proximity switches.) No matter what I did it was fucked. I couldn't even set up new things within the level and dissolve them properly to try and test it. The thermometer was only at 75% so I don't know if it was a glitch or what. Luckily, I had v1.0 still so I was able to copy the entire room and boss from there into v1.1 Moral : BACK UP (not only Save Level As but I would recommend backing up to SDs as well).

Egos

Wyth wrote: »

EdS25 wrote: »

Yes, they need to add a lighting/background color toggle switch ASAP. They use it themselves in one of the MGS levels so you'd think they'd give us the power. I needed two scenes in my latest level to be in "space", so I set the lighting and background appropriately. But that meant I had to light the entire rest of the level manually, which sucked. Not only because of the interface but because I am terrible at it. Wyth, your level has some of the best lighting I've seen yet - do you have a design background?

Uhh thanks . I don't have a design background (well I'm a software designer but no graphic desingn or anything). For my level I've just twiddled around with the global settings until I liked the look and afterwards I just dotted some lamps around. The lighting was mostly an afterthought.. Guess I'm talented :P.

I second the MGS global settings switch, could really use it in Jack McSetback II. That makes it so much easier to make a dark cave halfway through your level without making you entire level in the night or fiddling around with big lights..

So you did Jack McSetback ? Thats one of my favorite levels kudos

David_T

So... anyone had a problem with the sensor switch? I'm trying to make a fairly standard door, but whenever I attach a sensor switch to the piston and change the behaviour to Direction, it suddenly can't switch off. It works fine when I walk up to it and it raises the door but then it switches to always being on. No matter how far away I move, the eyes are constantly lit up and the door ain't coming down again.

Every other behaviour, it works fine. Direction, nope.