Archive: 27 posts

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I recently put a lot of effort into a level that corrupted into a "failed to load level". It totally bummed me out.. ..but my creative juices couldn't stay away for too long.. So i started a brand new level. Completely fresh. My plan this time was to back it up online.. ..and then continue to republish it as a locked level. But then, today, as i republished my progress i noticed that my level, which i never played online myself, has acquired a play count of 4. Where did that come from? Who is and how are they playing my level? I have at least 2 theories. But i'm wondering if anyone has any insight or experience with this. It feels a little like finding a peephole in my shower. :/

2009-04-01 23:11:00 Author: Unknown User

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Yeah... My locked levels have gotten this as well. The best educated guess is that it's Mm's moderators giving it a spin and making sure there's nothing nasty or illegal in there. It is their server after all. By the time my last level was unlocked and published publicly it had almost 20 plays on it. I can attribute two of those to myself, and there was about 30 minutes when I had accidentally republished unlocked, then changed it, so I suppose someone could have gotten in during that window. But in answer to your question - it's pretty common, but no one seems to know for sure who it is playing them (I really think Mm is a solid guess though).

2009-04-01 23:18:00 Author: v0rtex Posts: 1878

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I'm guessing MM "moderators" as well. If your level contains a scoreboard, it seems that sometimes they leave a score too. I got somebody with a score of 0 on a locked level of mine that nobody had the key to when the score was posted. That's actually impossible to achieve on that particular level because there are score bubbles that you cannot avoid picking up - impossible to achieve unless they are using special properties of the game not available to us (well duh, they are playing a locked level without a key - no telling what else they might be able to do ).

2009-04-01 23:25:00 Author: tameturtle Posts: 150

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I had this happen today... I posted my locked level, and a bit later there was plays on it... AND 2 SCORES! So I'm able to tell WHO was playing it. Drilled down to them and they are definately not mods - they were, in fact, kind of crummy kid creators who had hearted the trophy and H4H levels and had a bunch of things like that of their own. I THINK there is probably some short time between the time you publish and it really is locked.

2009-04-01 23:27:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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yeah.. mm moderators was my guess number 1. my guess number 2 would have been that it accidentally popped up on the "new" page allowing some random player or two to stumble into it.. hmm... a little nervous if its a random person, but... i suppose its better than losing all my progress on another corrupted level

2009-04-01 23:29:00 Author: Unknown User

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I think it's safe to say that the plays on my locked levels are not from normal players - there's no way around rating it after playing unless you log off before finishing or quitting. Now maybe once or twice that may happen, perhaps, but the last one got played 27 times in a row without getting rated.

2009-04-01 23:35:00 Author: tameturtle Posts: 150

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It's not MM checking your levels guys. It's simply a bug with publishing a level locked. This happens since release. Media Molecule don't have a system in wich an employee check new uploaded level. Level are only checked when they reach a certain number of "good grief". Otherwise they don't even check them. .

2009-04-01 23:42:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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How do you explain a score of zero on a level that cannot be finished with that score?

2009-04-02 00:11:00 Author: tameturtle Posts: 150

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How do you explain a score of zero on a level that cannot be finished with that score? Are you sure it can't be done? Maybe a "failed to upload score" ends up a zero on the leaderboard until you actually score again. .

2009-04-02 01:51:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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I do believe there's a thread for this already (Semi-locked levels) am i right?

2009-04-02 02:01:00 Author: Silverleon Posts: 6707

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Yes, I'm sure it can't be done, Ranger. I've had "uploading score failed" before and when it happens there's no trace of your score on the MM servers. (It happened to me on on a few levels that didn't have a fully populated top ten, that's what makes me so certain.) Besides, my locked level got a lot of plays hours after being republished. If it were accessible for a very short time upon republishing as has been theorised here, those plays would have happened right after republishing, not hours later.

2009-04-02 09:09:00 Author: tameturtle Posts: 150

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Yes, I'm sure it can't be done, Ranger. I've had "uploading score failed" before and when it happens there's no trace of your score on the MM servers. (It happened to me on on a few levels that didn't have a fully populated top ten, that's what makes me so certain.) Besides, my locked level got a lot of plays hours after being republished. If it were accessible for a very short time upon republishing as has been theorised here, those plays would have happened right after republishing, not hours later. Possibility are way to large to have an affirmative. -It might not happen all the time that a "0" is registered because of a network bug. -There can be database bug -It's possible something got corrupt in the transfer Many score bugs are apparent in the game and its envirronement but we aren't placed to determine exactly why. As for the plays on the level, it can be many things too. I didn't mean to say it's "impossible" that Media Molecule would be playing levels, just highly unlickely considered they already explain the way they work with their moderation and they said playing/spotchecking levels isn't part of the way they work. Just to theorise even more. Did you notice that when a level is locked, you can't even select it? This means data meaning "this level is locked and you can't enter it" is sent at the same time you refresh your search, each time you receive "data" to display the planet. Let's say there's a bug that when you publish a locked level, the locking info happens a bit later for X reason. Let's say I have time to catch your level during a refresh BEFORE it's actually locked. If i'm not refreshing my planet or my search for HOURS or even days, I would still enter your locked level even later and then give it a play. So this theory (that is just as fair as other valid ones) is debunking your argument the play that appears later. If you really think about it, we can always theorise of possible bugs or reasons for this thing to happen, we can't say "IT IS X thing" right now. At least there's an argument for the theory that there's more chances its a locking bug than Media Molecule playing. The bolded part of this very post. .

2009-04-02 16:56:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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Believe what you will, Ranger.

2009-04-02 17:05:00 Author: tameturtle Posts: 150

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Believe what you will, Ranger. I don't believe a thing. You believe want you want. My point is just that we can't make a affirmation when it's not sure that its what happening. It's just food for thought and we discuss this interesting situation. I don't need to remind you that there's a possibility Media Molecule is spotchecking some levels without telling people or saying otherwise. It's one of the many possibilities --- but just one of them. You sound annoyed at me because i'm telling you it might not be as simple as you think. Don't be! Develloping and debugging a software, even just isolating bugs isn't always simple. I'm backing this "not so simple" affirmative here with my 5 years of experience in this very industry in QA.

2009-04-02 17:24:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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We all believe what we want, that's what you do, that's what I do. Let's agree on that, and have a nice day. Cheers!

2009-04-02 17:35:00 Author: tameturtle Posts: 150

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We all believe what we want, that's what you do, that's what I do. Let's agree on that, and have a nice day. Cheers! I agree I can't ask you to believe something. Just leaving you a nice day with some last food for though: I do not "believe" in anything personally. I "know" or "don't know" things. .

2009-04-02 17:46:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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I believe you mistake belief for knowledge, my friend.

2009-04-02 17:53:00 Author: tameturtle Posts: 150

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I believe you mistake belief for knowledge, my friend. Nah, just telling you I don't have beliefs, I only have knowledge. "Belief" does not apply to how I see life. Anyhow, that another subject for another topic. .

2009-04-02 19:26:00 Author: RangerZero Posts: 3901

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I've had this problem with every locked level I've ever published. I don't really worry about it to much, but if anybody is worried about people playing their levels just put your entrance in a remote area, and lock it in a triple wide layer of material.

2009-04-05 05:49:00 Author: smasher Posts: 641

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Wow, Ranger, you and tame sure went off topic didn't you? XD Anyways, back on topic This problem has never occured to me yet just in case i usuallu just block the entrance by putting a matterial all around it so in the senario that someone actually plays it they don't get acces to anything.

2009-04-05 06:27:00 Author: Silverleon Posts: 6707

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I've published the very first work on my new level and locked it. I thought it was a bug because after I exited the locked level from the planet there was still one guy playing it. I waited for quite a while but the icon did not disappear. Someone was playing it. This was around 2-3 in the morning here in europe. My guess is they have a team all dressed up in suits like the dharma employees from Lost and they have to reset the cool pages each week or else the littlebigplanet will explode!

2009-04-05 11:11:00 Author: BasketSnake Posts: 2391

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temporarily hiding the start gate in a tapped area is a really good idea.. thanks Silverleon & smasher1973.. i love imaginative solutions.

2009-04-05 18:41:00 Author: Unknown User

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Another solution would be to stick some gas over the start point so as soon as the player spawns they die until they run out of lives.

2009-04-05 18:52:00 Author: Ayneh Posts: 2454

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This happened with my DMC III level - I locked it and published it so I could make some slight changes, and then when I got back it had gained six plays in a space of three hours or so. I rekon that it is the mods poking in as well, they do have the authority to do so after all...

2009-04-05 21:35:00 Author: KoRnDawwg Posts: 1424

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Hmmm... I had the same thing happen to my level! It was an online storage, where I could stick things in prize bubbles and go there whenever I need something. I locked it and published it, and I went to the level for a few things, and I noticed there was 1 play. The PSN was just a bunch of random letters and numbers, and I don't remember the level being rated. My guess is that Media Molecule has permission to access those levels, and choose not to rate them. I don't really mind people playing my locked levels, It doesn't have anything personal..... EXCEPT ALL MY OBJECTS THAT WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE GIVEN/COPYABLE!!!!

2009-04-08 01:46:00 Author: tjb0607 Posts: 1054

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I've been watching this on each new level I publish locked. My theory is this: when you you publish a locked level, there's a flaw in the system that for the first few seconds it's playable until the lock kicks in. I've had a score or two appear only immediately after publishing... and when I drilled down into those players, they were definately NOT mods. They were regular players that may have had a few junky levels up.

2009-04-08 02:36:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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It's.... them... No but seriously, I would have to agree with Ranger. It's most likely caused by some bug, it can even be so simple as this. Some dood checks the New Levels list, see's yours(the level has not kicked into "locked" mode yet) but his mommy comes home and he's not allowed to be playing right now, he leaves the ps3 on, turns off the TV and goes does his homework, several hours later, he comes back, now with permission! He turns on the TV, the world is still not refreshed (which would be the bug in this case) and he plays it. That theory, would explain the plays you get hours later. I'm pretty sure it's not MM though, I'm almost 100% sure actually, they even said themselves, they only check levels that have gotten a decent amount of "good griefings."

2009-04-08 02:43:00 Author: Whalio Cappuccino Posts: 5250

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