Archive: 9 posts

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Creative Class: LittleBigPlanet 2 When we first described the then-unnamed LittleBigPlanet back in spring 2007, we began with the little things. The way you can change Sackboy?s expressions with the D-pad, and move his head and body with trigger buttons and tilt controls. We eased our way into explaining a revolutionary game with an ethos ? play, create, share ? which was transcendent, beautiful and inspiring, and all too susceptible to being dragged to Earth with leaden exposition. Seeing its sequel three years later, on a warm spring evening in developer Media Molecule?s Guildford studio, we face a similar test. Not the same ? we no longer have to explain LBP?s fundamentals. The original has sold over three million copies, and its players have uploaded 2.3 million levels and played them somewhere around half a billion times. Media Molecule, meanwhile, has now recruited ten per cent of its staff from its playerbase as designers, and ?play, create, share? has become almost common, a part of console games from Guitar Hero World Tour to WarioWare DIY, Far Cry 2 to ModNation Racers. http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_avalonia_21.jpg This time around, the challenge is to tease the magical possibilities from a game which is the same ? sort of. LittleBigPlanet 2 is not a radical reworking of its predecessor. It's still, at base, a platformer with those divisive three planes and floaty handling. Edit mode looks and behaves the same. It will feature a set of Media Molecule-designed story levels, and will also be backwards compatible with all ? or at least most of ? LBP?s community levels. But, alongside a new, sharper, graphics engine, Sackboy will bring with him some vital new tools. The kind of tools which have the potential to empower creators to levels far beyond what they could do in LBP. ?Prepare to have your head melted,? says technical director Alex Evans as the core team members prepare to show off just what will make LBP2 a step change. And then he says the sentence that?s key to understanding what we get to see: ?It's no longer about making levels, it's about making games.? And what games we see ? and imagine ? over the course of the presentation. Asteroids, Snake, Micro Machines, Bionic Commando, Plok, Gradius, Choplifter, Puzzle Bobble, Shadow Of The Colossus, Space Invaders, A Boy And His Blob. LBP is already home to brilliant, creaking imitations of some of these games, of course, and more besides. They only barely function and are hardly fun to play, but are awesome in their invention and proved very quickly that LBP was about more than platforming. ?One of the things that excited us most was when people did stuff that wasn?t obviously platform games; when people took these tools and made a shoot ?em up or a calculator,? explains creative director Mark Healey. ?That was the spark for LBP2. We?ve added some überfeatures to enable creators to make lots of different gaming experiences.? ?The nice thing about making a game like this is that we could look at what people like,? says Evans. ?That crazy Japanese guy made a Gradius ripoff, but how do we make it so it's not just the crazy Japanese guy; how do we make it possible for a significant part of the create audience?? http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_avalonia_152.jpg So that?s the philosophy. But what are the means? As ever with LittleBigPlanet, they?re simple, artful and dizzyingly powerful. Media Molecule is well aware of how deep an impact an apparently small addition or new tool can make to the game, so each of LBP2?s new features we see is judiciously chosen. And, taken at face value, some are even slightly underwhelming. To that end, when we?re shown the grappling hook, the first of the presentation?s reveals, we hardly feel our heads melting. A power-up in the mould of the paintinator from LBP?s Metal Gear Solid DLC, the hook is thrown out with R1 and attaches to any grabbable surface until you let go in the same way a grab would normally work. You can reel it in and out by pressing up and down on the stick, and also swing, your tether flexing with a satisfying ?boing?. ?Like everything in LBP it's simple, physical and tactile and feels great,? says Healey. ?But you can get very good at it ? there?s a lot you can add with just that feature.? And so we begin a level together, one that will ship as part of a game that?s called, at present, Tower Of Woop. We ascend its vertically scrolling height using bouncepads (another new addition) and by grappling on to sponge outcroppings, competing for score bubbles all the way. As a measure of mood, the music is Deodato?s rendition of Richard Strauss? Also Sprach Zarathustra, that disco take on the piece made iconic by 2001: A Space Odyssey. As we get higher, the complexity rises, from a trifling swinging challenge to a gigglingly baroque arrangement of bouncepads and grapple points by its end, as if an expression of the designers? building confidence and inspiration as they explored a new tool. http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_devinci_55.jpg ?I?m looking forward to seeing how people mix it in,? says Evans. ?We?ll use it purely ? it's the community that does the mash-ups.? And then you start imagining the possibilities ? it would be trivial to attempt a Bionic Commando-style assault course, and surely the grapple could emulate Half-Life 2?s gravity gun. But it's in its interactions with all the other tools in the box that the grappling hook?s real potential lies ? including LBP2?s as-yet-unrevealed additional powerups, the only glimpses of which we get are their names in Popit: ?magic glove? and ?bag?. There?s no more time to wonder, though, because we?re already on to the next stop. ?In LBP we had non-player characters, but they were marionettes,? says Healey. Media Molecule?s homemade characters, built from the same materials as any level structure, had great personality but were hardly intelligent. LBP2?s NPCs, called sackbots, will be as intelligent as you want them to be. You can drop them into a level in Edit mode, whereupon they stand there until configured in a way just like any other object in the Popit. They can wear any costume you have, so they can look like any Sackboy, can be resized and animated to different movesets, from robotic to zombified. Healey spawns five or six, sets them to act like zombies and has them follow Sackboy, and off they go, arms outstretched, chasing after him. Configure them to be harmful and electrify them and they?re suddenly an enemy. You can set them to patrol and bind them into specific areas by tweaking whether they?ll avoid danger, switch planes, be able to jump and be afraid of heights. It's possible to spawn 20 or 30 ? the limit is defined by the thermometer. ?We?re trying to allow a lot more of everything, but it will crucially be a lot more balanced,? says Evans. ?Before, you?d hit your switch limit and you?d be done because it had a limit. Now we trade memory and CPU ? lots of sackbots are fine, you just have to skimp elsewhere.? Is it possible to grapple on to a sackbot? Naturally. And what about making a massive one for an instant Shadow Of The Colossus boss? It works, if rather chaotically. And we jump into another of Media Molecule?s levels for the finished game. Playing with Healey, we?re tasked with rescuing sackbots from a factory styled with a mixture of Soviet industrial propaganda and LBP?s eclectic mash of pop and realism. Freeing each set of robots, which follow the nearest player and winningly sport hearts for eyes, increases the challenge of keeping the crowd safe from a variety of dangers such as crushing ceilings. http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_factory_70.jpg It's breezy stuff, and here, crucially, the AI is set to exhibit only basic behaviour. Intermediate level creators can have sackbots switch between preset behaviours ? perhaps benignly patrolling until a player nears, whereupon they become electrified and chase after them. ?But it's trivial to do that,? Healey declares. ?Wait for it ? I?m going to reveal something about sackbots. They have a circuit board.? Microchips aren?t exclusively for sackbots, but together they form a profoundly powerful symbiotic relationship. In LBP, the kind of complex logic boards which power the notorious ?Little Big Computer?, a fully operational calculator, have to be situated in the level itself. But sackbots have a microchip which can be opened to reveal a discrete space for logic that?s separate to the level itself. Logic which can inform sackbot behaviour, and is powered by a new set of gadgets that will ease the complexities of creating common electronic processes. ?That?s where the fun begins,? says art director Kareem Ettouney. In the hands of LBP?s most talented creators, it's hard to know the bounds of what they can achieve. ?We will have an Intel in LBP ? there will be someone who makes it,? says Evans. ?I hope no one gets annoyed with the random gadget,? worries Healey. ?People have spent ages making their random devices, and now it's a single object.? And that means logic is now portable. ?It's a great thing for sharing,? Healey continues. ?For LBP?s end boss, the logic took up most of the level and was ridiculous ? it was like old mobile phones with a battery that came in a case. Now, you can put it in a microchip and give it away as a toy.? http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_nu_bots1.jpg Factor in the ability for creators to record performances for sackbots, moving them around as you?d move Sackboy, along with the option to record audio for character dialogue and voiceovers, and you can imagine them being given a real breath of life. And, as with all these new features, recording performances also dovetails with another of LBP2?s big additions: machinima. ?In the first game we had bits of story, and the features we had which supported it were limited ? we had animated mouths and text bubbles.? But when various players began to attempt to extend LBP?s potential as a storytelling device by using its limited camera-framing capabilities, the team realised there was an appetite for more formal tools. They?re aware that movie-makers might not have the same degree of interest in LBP?s lovably arcane tools as game creators, however. ?We thought that we wouldn?t only service the hardcore or the workaround creators,? says Ettouney. ?Making movies is a very different process ? you don't do puzzles and progression, you do narrative and expression.? It's a subject that?s clearly close to Ettouney?s ambition for LBP. ?We want to mix metaphors which haven?t been mixed before, and make screenshots you haven?t seen before. With the movie-making tools, you can show it. The thing with levels is the clash between functionality and aesthetic ? if you want to get impressive and moody you can hinder the gameplay. Cinematic can unleash a new way of seeing LBP.? http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_nu_control1.jpg To demonstrate the simplicity of the tools, senior animator Francis Pang, who led the development of Sackboy in LBP, creates an instant music video. ?I?d like the cinematic aspect to be fairly easy to get in to ? as an artist I don't want to get into the electronics, I just want to frame the action,? he says as he places ten sackbots onscreen and randomises their appearance from the test PS3?s store of every DLC costume released so far. The stage has been ready-rigged ? two torches are wired to flash on and off, but it's down to Pang to arrange and shoot it. He records a dance and applies it to all the sackbots by dragging a selection tool around them and places three cutscene cameras around the scene, setting their angle, zoom, depth of field, camera shake and transitions including cross-fade and zoom-fade. He then wires them to a randomiser gadget, sets the level to play, and that?s the job done. The result, a pulsing, restless series of shots of crazily dressed gyrating sackbots, is surprisingly effective. ?That?s how simple setting up the cameras is,? says Ettouney. ?Then you spend all your time dressing your sets, making your characters and flowing the story.? We see one of the cutscenes Pang has made for Media Molecule?s story, which takes place before the sackbot rescue level. Filled with assured pans and framing, it's narrated by a depressed robot called Clive, lamenting the invasion of his home, the Factory Of A Better Tomorrow, by space monsters. ?It was a haven of neo-capitalism; good times,? he moans. Considering it's currently being voiced by one of the programmers, it's already in good, knowing, wry shape. But it will have to stand up to the combined efforts of LBP?s community. ?One of the really tough things for our poor little designers is that they have to compete with the community but have to use shonky, not-quite-finished tools,? says Evans before explaining that now no designer at Media Molecule uses any other tools to create levels than the ones that ship with the game. ?It's frustrating to me as a programmer because we?ve got all these tools that are now mothballed. They refuse to use them. It was an aim on the first game and now they?re an albatross around my neck! No cheating or lying. They could have cheated ? that?s what?s galling me! And they?re not ****ing cheating!? http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_nu_light1.jpg This is all very well, but what about the whole ?making games? thing in LBP2? What we?ve seen before builds on what LBP already did, but there?s no sign yet of that profound leap. Turns out it's our next stop. ?This was originally going to be the one feature in LBP2,? explains Evans. ?This is so ****ing insanely powerful it hurts.? Having seen it, we still haven?t quite got our heads around the full potential of what it can do. But we do know it currently sports quite the worst name for any game-changing feature you?ve ever heard: the SixAxis Direct Control Seat. Put at its simplest, it's a tool that allows creators to map controller buttons to any object or function in the game. It's embodied by a seat ? when Sackboy jumps into it, the control scheme switches. So far, so simple. Healey builds a quick and dirty car with a two-way switch on top, in the manner you might in LBP. It works, but there?s no subtlety to the control ? it either moves back or forward at a constant rate, and that?s it. To prove how easy the Direct Control Seat is to use, he deletes the switch, mounts the seat in its place and opens its microchip. On it is a representation of a DualShock 3. He wires its tilt inputs to the motor on the car?s wheel, and there it is: a tilt-controlled car ? analogue, of course. He then puts a horn sound effect on the car and wires the circle button to it. But that?s just the start. Healey spawns a sackbot, configures it to use direct control and follow Sackboy, and it suddenly jumps into the car to pursue him. You can wire a sackbot to direct control, too. Or lots of them; some to tilt, others to the thumbsticks, perhaps. And what about two players controlling one sackbot ? one the jump and grab, the other its movement? ?It allows you to invent your own control mechanisms, essentially,? he says as he loads a level of vehicles he?s building. ?I can now finesse handling. It means you can pretty much make any 2D game you can think of. I've even thought of faking some 3D games.? http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_nu_light3.jpg The scope of what direct control brings to LBP2 begins to dawn. Healey has made a flying robot chicken with feet from which he?s programmed sackbots to hang. There?s Snake in the form of a hairy caterpillar, viewed, as far as the player?s concerned, from above (though it's actually moving on a vertical wall), which grows when it eats score bubbles. And here?s a metallic fly that shoots lasers and has an abdomen made from an old-fashioned microphone. The fly handles with beautifully damped inertia ? the other secret to direct control is that you can control the controls. ?There are things that you can attach to control momentum,? says Evans. If you don't like Sackboy?s controls, you can create your own and apply them to a sackbot which you can play as instead. You can have the seat located away from the controlled object, and limit the time the player can sit in it and count the number of attempts made. It's not a jump to imagine an arcade machine being built in a level. Can a controlled sackbot then sit in another Direct Control Seat? ?We haven?t tried that, but yeah?? says Healey. ?You can imagine the community going quite mad with it.? ?It's enough to base the game on,? says Evans. ?I imagine people building epic game levels which are wrapped around a story which turns them into complete games.? ?The thing I?m looking forward to, which I know will happen, is for people to invent a new game,? replies Healey. If LBP?s community activity to date is anything to go by, he?s probably right. http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_nu_micro1.jpg The beautiful thing is the simplicity of direct control?s concept and the spiralling complexities of its ramifications, especially when used in conjunction with the rest of LBP2?s toolset. ?We?re trying to make really simple ideas that lead to maximum possibilities,? says Evans. ?Very simple games like Line Rider let you do something very specific, and then you get the Unreal modding community, which is ****ing hard to do. We?re finding that really powerful but still accessible point between. We?re not pretending that it's quick to do a cutscene, but it's fun. We want it to be enjoyable. It's not a process of editing and numbers, it's always physical and made from simple rules.? The fear is that all this potential for creativity will be tied to the same community and level-promotion infrastructure that has tended to conceal some of LBP?s best community levels behind a mire of low-grade Trophy-awarding and copycat dross, though Media Molecule would never, ever, say that. ?I call it the App Store effect,? says Evans. ?It happens to the best of us, including Apple. You put something on the front page, it gets lots of sales, so it stays on the front page and it becomes stale very quickly.? The best way of finding the good stuff in LBP is therefore not browsing the Cool Levels moons. LBP2 begins to address that by presenting levels as a more user-friendly list instead of LBP?s hotchpotch of moons covered in level badges. As you browse through them, the background displays the home moon of each creator. Creators? moons are shopfronts; place decorations and stickers and arrange your level badges and you can attract players and start setting the scene for your games. ?The number one thing we missed in LBP was how you advertise levels you spent a weekend making,? says Evans. ?You had to sit on a forum and ask people to search for your level or PSN ID. Now you have more ways to entice people in to find your stuff. We want to visualise people very easily and simply, so you can tell what kind of person they are. Think eBay ratings on steroids ? it will motivate people to be community players; everyone will recognise them and they can wave their huge creator ****, effectively.? http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_avalonia_150.jpg Another big development in LBP2?s community infrastructure is the concept of journalists. In its predecessor, the best way of finding the good stuff was to surf the networks of respected creators? hearted levels, using their knowledge to find the gems. LBP2 will deliver a feed of other players? activities to you, what Evans is calling a stream, Facebook-style, of friends? played, hearted and published levels, high scores they?ve beaten, comments and ratings they?ve made. Friend the ?journalists? ? players who get a kick out of finding great levels and sharing them ? and you?ll mainline the good stuff ? and they?ll be rewarded with community points. ?I realised the value of Twitter is not about ?I?m doing a fart right now?, it's about subscribing to the right people ? and if you do, your feed is a constant feed of good ****,? says Evans. There?s a question that hangs over all this intoxicating potential. Is there any need for LBP2 at all? Wasn?t LBP fundamentally meant to be extensible, the game to end all games? Couldn?t LBP2 be an update to the game three million people have already bought? ?There?s a lot of code change under the hood,? says Evans. ?It's as much a production question as it is a technical question. Yes, it could be an update, but it would be a 4GB update, because there?s that much new content and code ? more than you?d get in most sequels, without a doubt.? ?If we said we?d do it as an update, in the same form, this load of DLC would be ridiculously expensive, because there?s so much value in all these different bits,? adds SCEE producer Pete Smith. ?Plus, there?s the whole story mode.? ?The business model needs to evolve,? declares Evans. ?DLC is still selling to a converted audience, but as a disc, LBP2 can sell to an audience which maybe hasn?t bought in to LBP. That Blu-ray experience is still massive to consumers. I want people to come to LBP2 fresh; I don't want to sell to the same three million people, thank you very much. I want to sell to everyone who owns a PS3, and then some. It's more than just an extension.? And it is. But you can?t help thinking it's going to be a hard sell, especially when its new features are so carefully crafted to sit naturally within LBP?s original toolset, even as they profoundly stretch and expand all the formula can be. In the need to support everything LittleBigPlanet already is, lest it upsets its existing community, Media Molecule is tied to making its sequel, if only on the surface, look like feature creep. The proof will be, once again, in what happens when the community gets its hands on it. All we can be totally sure of right now is that Media Molecule is bringing two years? experience and a raft of extraordinarily empowering new ideas to bear on LBP2, many of which it's designed to make their powers accessible to more than just the creator savants. It therefore seems inevitable that the community will go beyond LBP?s fascinating but jerry-built pastiches and invent new games in LBP2. But until release, we?ll all have to consign ourselves to waiting and pondering the vast possibilities. Creative Class: LittleBigPlanet 2 |Edge Online (http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/creative-class-littlebigplanet-2)

2010-05-27 17:23:00 Author: Lucky Posts: 3

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I added the direct link to the article online! Thanks for the info!

2010-05-27 18:06:00 Author: schm0 Posts: 1239

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My favourite quote : "everyone will recognise them and they can wave their huge creator ****, effectively." I like how when you browse over someone, you can see how they decorated their moon, that's ace.

2010-05-27 18:33:00 Author: Asbestos101 Posts: 1114

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Wow, I can't believe I just read all of that... Although there's not much new information, there was one or two hidden bits of information that we didn't know.. And I'm getting really excited about the new camera tweak menu... http://www.edge-online.com/files/EDG215_f_lbp_nu_light1.jpg At the moment we have just the top line. EDIT: The cameras are white now?!

2010-05-27 19:45:00 Author: Doopz Posts: 5592

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I wonder if the direct control seat will cause a huge wave of tutorial levels by the creators in each of their levels.

2010-05-27 20:06:00 Author: BasketSnake Posts: 2391

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EDIT: The cameras are white now?! The cutscene cameras are white, the regular scene cameras are still black!

2010-05-27 21:57:00 Author: Unknown User

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I bought this magazine the other day, as well as amazing artowrk and more game stills not shown here there are other titbits that go along with stills that are really insightful. Do you think it would be a good idea to scan the whole 8 pages of interview in??

2010-06-01 14:36:00 Author: Hallm3 Posts: 252

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I bought this magazine the other day, as well as amazing artowrk and more game stills not shown here there are other titbits that go along with stills that are really insightful. Do you think it would be a good idea to scan the whole 8 pages of interview in?? They already did no?

2010-06-01 15:19:00 Author: Silverleon Posts: 6707

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They already did no? Lol, I dont know, did they? is there a thread with them on? I'd like to know what people thought of it all

2010-06-01 16:20:00 Author: Hallm3 Posts: 252

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