Archive: 18 posts

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Psn: Sehven Level Name: Starfighter http://i50.tinypic.com/9sywls.jpg http://i45.tinypic.com/r9ef68.jpg Dogfight enemy fighter and missile ships while working your way to the enemy mothership. Having difficulty taking them down? Grab a powerup to give your ship temporary enhanced weapons or invincibility. Features two small one-man starfighters and a slew of enemies to fight. A dozen is a slew, right? It's all the thermometer would let me get away with. Dodge the enemies' plasma shots and shoot down their homing missiles. The starfighter stays level at all times to provide accuracy in shooting. The ship fires a slow stream of paintballs at the enemy and can collect powerups to increase its firing rate or shoot five paintballs at once to quickly decimate enemies and more easily shoot down missiles. And then there's the shield powerup which gives you invulnerability to enemy plasma shots and makes missiles detonate before reaching you. The shield lasts just under 30 seconds and the weapon powerups last around 35-40 seconds. http://i49.tinypic.com/21wzrc.jpg If you're having difficulty with the mothership, don't give up. I've included a death counter that will dispense more and more powerups for you as you rack up deaths. Die twice during the boss fight and you'll be given a machinegun powerup. Die again, and you'll get a shield. The fourth time you'll get a shotgun, and the fifth time you'll get a shield and shotgun that will respawn after a few seconds... so there's no excuse to die a sixth time. Make it to the end and grab the key to the locked prize and tutorial level where you can get everything to make your own starfighter level. I admit that the scenery side of things is a little sparse. It's just a starfield and you're flight path is surrounded by blue gas. I tried making a nebula type thing to sticker onto the background here and there, but I couldn't get it to turn out good. If the lack of scenery bothers you and you have specific suggestions on how to improve it (not just "Put in more scenery, man") then let me know and I'll see what I can do.

2010-01-19 11:30:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Hey, I will try out when I get on my PS3, nice to know you finished it!

2010-01-19 20:49:00 Author: tanrockstan34 Posts: 1076

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I literally JUST played your level and I really like it! My suggestion for scenery would be to use asteroids (both large and small) along with black gas (make sure asteroids are where the player cannot go into it easily). You could paste down most of the asteroids and add motor and wobble bolts to others to make it more realistic. Hope I helped!

2010-01-20 09:18:00 Author: RobotCrash Posts: 121

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Yeah the scenery does need work but I guess that comes second to the hole I found in his level.

2010-01-20 12:52:00 Author: tanrockstan34 Posts: 1076

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Oh come on. I had that hole fixed literally five minutes after I left your moon yesterday. Can't believe it'd slipped by me until then. Thanks again for pointing it out. Asteroids would be perfect and I could probably squeeze enough into the level to make it work for very little thermometer cost. I should make a few planets off in the distance, too (using the 3d glitch). I'm surprised the level isn't doing better. Sure it's not especially exciting visually, but it's gotta' be the most playable vehicle in all of little big planet. Everyone always makes cars which can only go two directions and almost every flying machine I've seen has been complete crap when it comes to control. The exception would be Wexfordian's helicopter level which basically works about the same as my ship (the player is has a jetpack and uses it to carry the vehicle around). His level design was better, though. The way that the ship stays level, can transform from right-facing to left facing, and can pick up powerups, were all, I thought, pretty innovative. And then there's the homing missiles. I don't know--maybe homing missiles are common--but the first I'd ever seen a missile that can accurately home in on a player (and will favor one player over another instead of jamming up in multiplayer) was when I invented it. I've also built one that can home in on mag keys, but it jams if there's more than one key in range. It's actually pretty simple: it has a thin layer glass rail behind the missile and emits dark matter tracks facing the direction it needs to turn with 180 degree prox switches on each side of the missile, triggering the emitters. The tough part was making them survivable cuz they're way more accurate than I expected them to be and you can only slow down a missile so much before it just falls out of the sky.

2010-01-20 23:26:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Played your level again. Very awesome, the asteroids are really cool. The Blue outline gas is still a bit weird to me (when I suggested the asteroids I meant use them as boarders and turn the gas black. Ooh, idea, maybe you could put some sort of story element into it saying it's some part of a star or a space storm or something of that sort. It would seem very different than just "Oh look, blue gas." Really enjoy playing your level. I sent you a friend request on PSN if you'd accept it I could throw ideas at you. Heh.

2010-01-21 08:29:00 Author: RobotCrash Posts: 121

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This was a pretty interesting idea, but sadly it was more frustrating than fun. I think with a ship as slow and un-maneuverable as this, you'd be better off making enemies in swarms that are easy to kill, like Gradius. Though the Gradius ship could really haul ***. Maybe experiment with enemies that are harder to hit, but die in 1-2 hits and come in larger packs? The enemies were actually quite interesting though, changing direction when needed, and actually posing a threat when you can't get a good target on them. It was probably unintended, but one of them even sank into the blue gas to avoid my fire. As said above, the gas is a big put off, a more thematic surrounding would be better, an enemy base, and asteroid field^, a moon or crater. Or atleast cover the gas with a thin layer.

2010-01-21 17:10:00 Author: Arion Posts: 17

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The ship is slow and hard to maneuver? You know you're just flying a jetpack and carrying the ship around on your sackboy right? Have you tried holding down the X button? It's still a little slow, but I think the maneuverability is just fine. If I keep my distance from a missile ship, I can zip up and down fast enough to shoot down all its missiles even without the machinegun or shotgun powerups (but if you keep them on the very edge of the screen, they won't shoot at all, making them easier to pick off). The asteroid field/gas thing is next on my to-do list. I hadn't really thought of the the gas as that much of an eyesore, but Robotcrash's suggestion of using asteroids for the border sounds good and I think it'll look a lot better than the blue gas does now. If I can pull it off right, it should come out looking awesome. What do you guys think of the planets in the distance? As for the enemies, the thermometer really really hates them for some reason. Otherwise there would be more. I could probably simplify their shots a bit: it's a plasma ball glued to a thin layer of pink floaty glass, with an emitter and switch on the glass and a key on the plasma. The only way I've found to accurately register hits from non-paintball ammo is to use the plasma ball as a sort of p-switch. When it's triggered, it emits a spark effect that has the mag key to tell the ship to register damage (fire a paintball at the paintswitch). I can probably simplify the spark effect and cut down on thermo, but it hasn't been much of a priority cuz it would take forever to replace the ammo in every emitter (ok, it'd take like 20 minutes) and I doubt it would get me any more than half a bar of therm back. I didn't plan on the one sinking into the gas, but when I saw it happen, I thought it was pretty cool. I think there's actually two or three that can do it. If I hide the gas and go with an asteroid field, I'll probably have to change that: it'd send the wrong signal to the player that the asteroids aren't actually dangerous.

2010-01-21 19:49:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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I will make sure I can't find another area to break it. Also the reason why the thermo hates the enemy ships is because you can fit 51 creatures into a level before the creature thermometer overheats. Remember the big thermometer is really a bunch of smaller ones.

2010-01-21 20:44:00 Author: tanrockstan34 Posts: 1076

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Hmm.. I wouldn't think of the enemy ships being able to avoid the asteroids as much as weird. Maybe they are space pirates that have a colony somewhere in the asteroid belt, so they are use to avoiding them. As for the low-ish number of enemy ships, you could try to make a bunch of really small ships (with exposives on the ends) that work like the more recently popular "Sack Tracking Shark". it's pretty easy to make and I would be able to help you if you are on when I am next time I get on. It could work really well. You could do a bunch of different things: Explosives on the tip to explode when it comes in contact, Explosives in the center (with explosive boxes for that extended explosion effect), or other things to avoid using emitters for the explosives. And, if they are too close to one another they could set off a chain reaction! May want to try to find a way to cut down on critter usage and go for some other things. I mean, someone could make a thing not unlike a creature made to avoid players, but without the brain. I'll just have to play with you on LBP next chance I get. Heh.

2010-01-22 08:56:00 Author: RobotCrash Posts: 121

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Well, there are a lot of creature brains in the level, but they're only for killing things; I hardly ever let the creature brains control my creatures. There's 27 brains at a time, though the therm thinks there's 29 (the ships at the checkpoint won't emit until starting point is destroyed and even then they'll only emit if the other ships are destroyed too, but don't try telling the thermometer that). Each enemy ship has two. The boss originally had eight: two protected that die when he runs out of hitpoints and six unprotected that you had to shoot along with each of the gun covers to trigger his transform and vulnerability. The other six, like the six gun covers had mag keys on them with an inverted mag switch that would open the boss' missile launchers and set the ship to vulnerable, so you had to destroy all 12 targets before you could work on the boss hp, by which time a barrage of plasma balls was coming your way. Unfortunately, I have the absolute worst luck with creature brains breaking, which resulted in the boss being indestructible about once out of every three times I played. I have the same problem with the smaller enemies: every once in a while, one just refuses to die after running out of hitpoints. As for homing in on the player, the missiles already do that. I've got their rockets set to the absolute weakest they can be without falling out of the sky and they're still REALLY hard to avoid, so I don't think I'd want to do that with the enemies. I suppose I could keep the enemies on pistons but have them home in on you. In my original plan, the enemies would actually retreat from you but it made it too hard to shoot them down, so I abandoned that idea (if it had worked well, I would have experimented with enemies being able to detect and dodge your paintballs and even trying to work their way behind you). Unfortunately, the biggest limitation in doing this kind of level on lbp is the camera. If it could zoom out about twice as far, it would make for a much better spaceship level: you'd be able to see the missiles from further away, making them easier to avoid/shoot down, and chasing retreating enemies would work better too. So I think I'm done with this level now. Maybe some new scenery idea will hit me and I'll try to work it in, but for now I'm happy. I may do a sequel, and if so, I'm thinking about keeping the player in a set area and use a scrolling background. I'll also try to make enemies emittable so I can get away with having the player fight more of them before getting to the end of the level. I suppose I could try parallaxing the background and enemy ships to make it seem like you can move faster than you really can (meaning, if you fly up, the background and enemies move down a little to make it seem like you flew further/faster). It'd be tricky to make it work well, but I bet I could do it. By the way, if you haven't played the level since yesterday evening, check it out again. I've done the requested scenery changes: asteroids and invisible (black) gas instead of blue, there's a comet that goes by at one part and I've even worked in a little (very little) Sehven style humor.

2010-01-22 19:33:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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This looks cool. I'll have to try it when I finally get my PS3 fixed.

2010-01-22 21:39:00 Author: TheJollyRajah Posts: 466

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Thanks for the feedback everybody, especially RobotCrash for the aesthetic ideas (looks much better than before) and Tanrockstan for pointing out the flaws and how to fix them. One last bump of this thread before I let it fade into obscurity.

2010-01-24 07:53:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Hoi, don't let it go into obscurity! I'm going to play the level tonight and get my friends to play it too. You can't give up on your levels! Just keep ADVERTISING!

2010-01-24 19:32:00 Author: Richasackboy Posts: 619

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Finally got to play this level, and I have to say that i'm impressed! The visuals were great, the controls for the ship were simple and effective. I only saw a couple pieces of dark matter when the ship turned around... but other than that it was flawless from what I saw. Every other level like this is only one shot, so I was glad to see that I didn't just get one chance to get through it. Great Job!

2010-01-24 21:03:00 Author: shawneboi Posts: 221

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When I said I would let it fade into obscurity, I just meant that you can only bump a thread like this so many times before it starts to **** off the mods. As long as there's feedback, though, I'll keep responding. Found out the other day that the ships can break: thought I'd covered that possibility but I was playing two player and my ship broke like 3 times. Might have to look into that. I'm also thinking of experimenting with jump_button's technique of applying a little bit of upward pressure from the piston (set it's strength to like two or three instead of zero) that might increase maneuverability a bit. Yeah, the one shot vehicle levels always annoy me. It was a LOT of work making them emittable and it used more thermo than I really wanted to give up, but it was worth it. If it had been one shot, I would've had to leave the missiles out of it, cuz nobody would want to play a second time after getting blind-sided by a homing missile, and I would've had to turn down the power on the boss' guns or cranked up the ships HP. It would've ruined the level. By the way, has anybody found the cheat codes and tried them? Haven't heard anything about that.

2010-01-25 19:50:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Nope, haven't found any -however, I did notice that I got electrocuted inside the vehicle a few times...

2010-01-25 21:33:00 Author: Richasackboy Posts: 619

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Electrocuted? Are you sure? I didn't think there was anything electric in the level. Well, the ship shoots electric paintballs, but I can't imagine how one of those would hit you inside the vehicle it's being fired from. Are you sure you weren't being hit by plasma from the enemy ships? If that's the case, then I'll need to see if I can figure out how it's getting inside the ship.

2010-01-26 05:12:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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