Little Big Planet is out for a while now. That's right, I wasn't going to talk about Lebanese Pounds (LBP) here but for your information: 1 Lebanese pound = 0,000525065336 euro's as of today, so technically it's almost out. I'm not going to talk about Lupker-Bouckaert-Peeters either.

Like it says in the title, the purpose of this blog is to help you creating an awesome level. You might know everything about the editor but maybe my tips can help you make creating a bit easier. Who knows.



By now everybody should have played through the story levels by now. Or maybe even aced all the levels (Ha-Puken, you're a bastard!). By doing this you have collected enough objects to create a kick-ass level for the whole world to play. I know I did and it was hard. It's not hard to create a level, you can make one in a couple hours. But I'm talking about a good level. A level with stuff to do and maybe even an decent story behind it. I found also found out that if somethings broken in a level people just don't feel replaying it. I for one usually don't. If I'm stuck I'm getting the fuck out of the level and give rate it with 1 star. It's kinda harsh but I've seen too many broken levels.

First of all: There are a few minor 'bugs' issues to be found in the editor. Sometimes stuff just disappears out of nothing. I also found out that buildings get un-stuck quit easily. When doing a final test on my level I jumped on a button and instead of getting rid of one small part of dissolve material THE WHOLE FUCKING LEVEL COLLAPSED! It scared the living crap out of me. I thought a week worth of creating flew right out of the window. But thank god for the rewind function. It looks like the game makes a snapshot of your level and saves it to the hard-drive every time you change something.

A couple of tips:

Grids:
When creating something it's hard to make it symmetrical (or perfectly horizontal). If you press start, look at the top of the menu. There you can find 'No Grid', 'Small Grid' etc. Choose 'Small Grid' and your pop-it moves over the grid. I'm telling this because it isn't in the tutorials anywhere. I just stumbled upon it and it helped me a lot.

Material changing:
When creating something complicated it is sometimes very hard to see what you're actually doing. The way the zoom and camera change function is set-up doesn't help you very much. You have to back out all the way until you select the pop-it. So you have to let go of what you're holding and get floating. That's the only way you can change the camera. Media Molecule isn't going to change that. There aren't any buttons on the dual-shock (or any other controller you fanboy!) left to do so. So to see what you're doing change the material into glass. Major surprise: You can see through! It helps a lot. One other thing, change stuff into Dark Matter if you don't want to glue it down yet. It'll stay there. If you want to leave it un-glued just stick to the Dark Matter. But slap some stickers on it, because everybody will recognize Dark Matter and it doesn't look good if you use it too much.
Experiment with different material. If you want something to be solid and straight, use Wood, Stone, Glas or Metal. If you want it to be grab-able stick to Sponge etc. Some materials are round... You get the point, right?

Glue shit together:
Like I said stuff gets un-stuck quite easily. Before finishing your level make sure everything is glued to the floor. You don't want people raping your level by dragging the floor around. You can just pick up your whole level and stick it to the floor but that usually makes some moving parts to get stuck as well. There is another way which is maybe easier if you don't want to glue everything down. It's hard to explain without a picture so I made a simple drawing to explain. Watch below this paragraph and you'll see what I mean. When playing a lot of user-created levels, I found out that people don't think about gluing stuff that much. Jet-packs need to be glued down otherwise you can take it with you and completely skip the whole level. Or levers even. You can grab onto levers and by doing that you can drag them anywhere you want. The lever can get in the way and break your devices. I said it before, people will usually not replay your level if something like that happens. And you don't want that to happen do you?



Red = your level/building/something else that you want to stick to the floor.
Black = your pop-it with selected material.
Blue = the actual floor of the level. Not the one you created.

Now, you can pick up the red square and glue it to the floor but that also glues the red triangles to the square. If you don't want that you can simply drag them away and pick up the square. If that's the case do that. But if your level is finished there will be more than 2 objects (hopefully). In that case you don't want to/can't get all the loose parts out of the way. Here's what you can do:
Select the same material as the object you want to stick to the floor, and make sure you select the right 'dept'. It should be the same size otherwise this trick doesn't work. Start 'drawing' somewhere in the object and drag your pop-it into the ground. Doesn't have to be very far, you just have to touch the floor for a bit. This way the game will recognize that you touched the floor and it gets glued to the floor. So What you did is, you glued that particular part to the floor. Now do this with everything you want to glue to the floor and you're done. Always do this when you finish your level. Just to make sure. One can't be too sure right?


Be creative:
Don't copy any of the shit you found in other levels. Either the story levels or user created levels. It's stupid. I don't want to play 'The Bunker' all over again. I already did. Media Molecule did a better job at those levels than you could ever accomplish. Just make everything by yourself. Sure you can use something for inspiration but don't copy the complete contraption/character/level. They put that in there for kids that want to have fun with the level creator. We're all grown-ups with a sense of imagination. Let your creative juices flow and create your own stuff. Ha-Puken looked for a pic of something on the internet, printed it out and created it. Great idea! Copying something like that is fine. Don't copy something 1 on 1, adjust existing ideas. people will like to play creative levels. That's the way you want to do it too.

This might be something personal but don't copy any existing game. I don't like to replay the first level of Super Mario World. Nintendo did a good job. You don't. Media Molecule is going to ban those levels anyway so don't let your hard work be in vain.

Inspiration:
If you're out of inspiration just play the story levels again. You might find something there to build a story around. Or play some other user created levels. It's a good way to get you started. I just got my inspiration by looking at all the stuff I collected. A very simple sticker made me create a whole level.

Copy/capture:
Maybe the best option in the game. They tell you how to do this in the tutorial. But you can save your created objects. This is so damn handy. You'll soon find out that you're going to fuck up a lot of times. You don't want to end up re-creating something that took you over an hour to create in the first place just because you made a mistake.

Hide:
In creation mode you can see every single object. In play-mode you can't. If you don't want to spoil the hidden mechanics of your level just hide it. When you see a speaker when, for instance a door slides open, making a sound it ruins the imagination. Or lets say you want people to drag something somewhere it isn't fun to see the magnetic switches on the items. Media Molecule did show everything in the story levels but that's to give you ideas. They want you to create levels. You, on the other hand, want people to play it and not to steal your ideas.

You're stupid, dumb and forgetful:
Don't think you did something. Make sure you did it. Even if it feels stupid. Check everything the whole time. A human being is very good at multi-tasking but they can't memorize everything. To save you a lot of headaches check everything before you think you're done.

Test:
Test, test, test! Test the living crap out of your level. I don't mean just play your level. Do some genuine bug- testing. Pull on everything, jump on everything. Basically try to break your level. Rape it! If nothing breaks you did a good job. Even better, let someone else test it. As you would know you can't create levels in multi-player right now, Media Molecule will release a patch anytime soon but for now just cheat the system a little. Save your level and invite one of your friends into you pod. Then select the level on your moon and play it. Don't say what to do just let him/her go their own way. Look what they're doing and what they're missing. It's like writing something. You know what it says so you'll read over minor mistakes. LBP is nothing else. Why do you think game developers hire testers? They want the to break their creations so they can fix it.


Stuff I would want Media Molecule to add:



I would really like to have a bit more songs. I'm already getting sick and tired of hearing the same songs over and over again. Maybe they can license some songs or something (note: NOT MUSLIM!). Or maybe some different genres. Metal, Ska, Punk, Techno, Hip-H... oh no, not that. The argument against it would be that it doesn't 'fit' in the Sackworld. But do take in consideration that you can choose Zombie costumes. I would love to make a zombie level with The Misfits or Balzac songs playing in the background.

I would like them to take a look a the zoom and camera-change function. It's a pain in the ass when you have selected your object and it's the perfect size but you can't see it and have to let go of the object. I stated that already but this is the most lacking function. I can't emphasize it enough.


That's it. This is all I can tell you. Everything else you can find in the tutorials. Did I forget something very useful that's not in the tutorial? Is there something you want Media Molecule to add? Please tell me and I'll update this blog. Let's make it a Cblog LBP help blog. Or something with a better sounding title than that.

All I've got left to tell you is have fun creating awesome levels!