I don’t have any pictures, but maybe I’ll get some later. My concept for my latest LittleBigPlanet level was simple – a large mazework of iron girders, which you’d run through at high speed for awhile and then have to solve cute puzzles to proceed. The problem comes with the complexity meter. This is a little red thermometer at the left of the screen that keeps track of the complexity of your level, similar to the one in SPORE. Once it fills, you’re done. ...
I was going to title this, “Friends don’t let friends play Wizard 101” because it’s so addictive, but I couldn’t. I really, really enjoyed playing my current crush with friends this weekend. I have this dream… that someday, I will fight through the Master’s Tower in Ravenwood and at the end of the battles, when I meet the final boss, Pumpkin Head, he will look at me in his terror, and just before I play that final card that will call down a centaur from the heavenly plains upon which he runs to split the villain’s vegetable head with a fierce arrow, he will say… Pumpkin Head will say… ...
Wizard 101, why can’t I quit you? I spent most of the night last night working on my LittleBigPlanet level. Well, almost. I spent most of last night feeling like an idiot. A frustrated idiot. Since LittleBigPlanet is based around a physics engine, everything you make there has to actually work to some degree. I started working on a sorta free-floating player system as is used in the hugely popular Gradius level, and got it kinda working, but I didn’t like it. Then I decided to make a game set not in space, but underwater, and the space ship becomes a submarine – or a bathysphere, really, since the thing has to be connected by chains to a hidden, remote-controlled trolley which handles the mechanism of bringing the bathysphere through the level. ...
I was reading Scott Jenning’s concise explanation of the uproar over Linden Labs’ changes to the open space sims in their Second Life virtual world simulation, and as I read it, I wondered why I never really ‘got’ Second Life. I mean, it has everything I like, right? It’s almost ENTIRELY about community and creating things. All the cool things I am doing in LittleBigPlanet right now, could be done better in Second Life. Second Life, after all, does not restrict your objects to three units in depth, and it lets them turn as well. ...
I got frustrated trying to make my fire beetles for my Befallen Level 0 – Commonlands level. They are supposed to be hard to kill unless they open their wings, exposing the insta-kill button beneath. Coordinating the wings, having the switch be protected until they are open, moving the beetle around, etc. These are hard problems. And then I had this idea, it was right out of Jurassic Park, that scene where all the Apatosauruses are feeding in the trees at night, and one sneezes on the girl? Those long necks rising out of the tree canopy… what if instead of dinosaurs – we used Dippy Birds? ...
What LittleBigPlanet REALLY needs is a command where you can shift EVERYTHING up and over to the right. Creating a level in LittleBigPlanet is just the same as playing a really good game, because, where DOES that time go? Fiddling with the difficulty of puzzles, figuring out just HOW to make bats drop on someone just after they managed to get past the slamming door, getting elevators to work properly, trying to make it dangerous enough to be fun but not frustrating, playing the damn thing over and over and over again … it was 3 AM before I went to bed this morning. ...
Last night was a LittleBigPlanet night. I didn’t know that it was going to be a LBP night, but when I sat down to play, my cat pinned me to the couch and I wasn’t able to leave for hours. Besides, when Stargrace and Sirhyl stopped by the Pod of Love, ready to play, how could I not? Things went pretty well when it was just me and Sirhyl, but when Stargrace popped in, we ALL had problems. I dunno what the deal is, or if this morning’s LBP patch fixed it, but with three, we just weren’t in control. My character would be zipping around, or go in some mystery direction… it was very hard to complete anything. ...
With EverQuest’s expansion, LittleBigPlanet and Rock Band 2 for the PS3 all launching on the same day, deciding what game to PLAY would just be tearing me apart. Thankfully, LittleBigPlanet has moved its launch date out a bit so as to make my life somewhat less stressful. Media Molecule, I didn’t know you cared. Well, actually, it’s because one of the songs in the soundtrack contains phrases from the Qu’ran, so they are recalling every copy of the game so they can replace it, as they would rather not take any risk of offending Muslims. ...
I played LittleBigPlanet right up until they shut down the servers. I even dragged out my other controller and played two sack people at once for some of the co-op stuff. Turns out I was right about why I couldn’t fully complete certain levels – there are trigger stickers, like the star, that you only get several games n to “The British King’s” levels. All were fun. Some were deviously inventive. Exploration is rewarded, and everything you find can go toward making your own things. ...
What SPORE did for Civilization-type games, LittleBigPlanet is going to do for platformers. Nobody will play the game the same way you do, and the longer you play, the more the game will become a unique reflection of your own creativity and the things YOU find fun. Joe, June, Jane and Jack can play it some stupid boring way, but you can skip all those parts and just bring the FUN ones into the game. Or make your own. Or take someone else’s and change it. ...