Archive: 13 posts

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In playing with the LittleBigPlanet creation mode, here are some ideas I think would heavily improve the creation engine: 1. Allow us to temorarily remove layers and work BEHIND walls. It is really cool that we have 3 layers of floor and 4 layers of thin walls, but when you try to do complex levels it becomes confusing when you can't just make a wall disappear to work with what's behind it. And if you try to "dig holes" to work behind, objects that are mounted on the walls may suddenly disappear (I inadvertantly lost all mounted cameras and emitters just trying to straighten out the material they were mounted on). 2. The objects that have already been emitted in a limited emitter should be reset to zero when playing. 3. It would be great to add some kind of floating labels to a level that disappear when playing just to keep things organized. Some of my levels are starting to have hundreds of wires running everywhere without any ability to label anything to remind me of how it works. 4. Things get glued to other things way too easily, and this creates technical issues when trying to unglue them. Nothings worse than starting to play your latest changes and realizing a huge chunk of your level was inadvertantly unglued and destroyed many hours of work. :hero:

2009-01-06 20:06:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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1. Nice idea, Id love it. But then again, if you have build some levels you kinda get the feeling for it, and assamble the level in such a way that no layers will hinder you. (always do foreground last for instance) 2. YES! 3. I use talkers (telling me what the switches do), sometimes create lines of dark matter between them to make them organized.. wont use that much space since you prolly allready used the dark matter material.. (Ill call it DMM from now on). also I try to keep most switchboard near the stuff they are attached to. 4. I suggested (among many things) a "target glue".. that would be really helpfull. But its also part of the "mr bug" that is atm destroying random accounts as we post

2009-01-06 21:47:00 Author: Luos_83 Posts: 2136

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1. I agree, however I have run into situations where it would be GREAT to get behind the walls because something behind the wall isn't working exactly as planned - and the wall has decorations on it that then need to be removed. Take a look at my Splat Invaders Deluxe level sometime.... 3. I do similar things (and they are GREAT ideas for people reading this forum), but man it would be great to zip around a level and see what things do. I have levels that have literally 60 wires running around a specific location. I've organized it the best I can, but it is still easy to make a mistake and detach the wrong wires when tweaking.... 4. Absolutely. I would rather it not glue at all unless I target it. Things just start to act really flaky when a lot of things are glued together.

2009-01-07 04:14:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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I don't know if you've played my level before, but I have something like 300-400 wires in one area of it. I don't think your idea is bad by any means, but I wouldn't personally use it. What I do is just trace the wire. What I would like to see, though, is the ability to highlight the wire to more easily trace it.

2009-01-07 04:28:00 Author: BassDeluxe Posts: 984

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I would appreciate the ability to enter the create mode with other players online, I know there are a few people on these forums I wouldn't mind double teaming a project with. I also wish there was an invisible tool, so you just click wahtever and it makes it invisible in play mode. I also wish there was a way to emit something and then have a switch that wasnt emitted attatch to it, same with ropes. For instance you could make a grappling hook really easily by having it spawn something with such and so velocity with a rope attatched to the gun. Highlighting switches would be nice. A background layer for custom backgrounds. More sounds would be beautifal as well as the ability to change the shape of camera zones and pictures. Thats all I can think of off the top of my head.

2009-01-07 05:55:00 Author: Hexagohn Posts: 335

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The second point in particular sounds like a fantastic idea. When I was first working with emitters, I would test it out in create mode, and then set it to play mode and have nothing happen. If you tweak an emitter before a switch is attached to it, especially if it has a max emitted number, you will often find it starts emitting and will break down in play. Nothing short of deleting the emitter and building a new one will fix it. It's just not intuative at all that it keeps a permenant memory that does not reset when you swap to play. --- As for the other things, hyper complex wiring I tend to have paper blue prints for, and a very specific order for the switches so that I can more easily trace what each one does. It can be a problem though when I can't find the blueprints though. The TSR rocket of mine has some hyper complex switch systems, you can see almost all of them if you check out the level. Even though the switches are very dense at some points, like the base of the gantry, it's in a logical order that I can refer to easily to find out what's happening when tweaking. It's all just a matter of pre-planning. There is no way you could make a boss like the Collector, for example, if you did not have blueprints. Even if you could label the wires, this would still take a huge amount of time to do. It would be nice though to have a better highlighting system for the wires. Like clicking on them and it highlights the switch and the thing it activates. That would be handy and make sorting through dense wiring sections easier.

2009-01-07 09:15:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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My "nightmare in darkness" at least has 600 switches and hence at least so much wires. What I do, i do not.. i repeat i do NOT!! add any detail to my level untill the gameplay from begin to end is totally fine. only then I start working on the details.

2009-01-07 11:33:00 Author: Luos_83 Posts: 2136

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The second point in particular sounds like a fantastic idea. When I was first working with emitters, I would test it out in create mode, and then set it to play mode and have nothing happen. If you tweak an emitter before a switch is attached to it, especially if it has a max emitted number, you will often find it starts emitting and will break down in play. Nothing short of deleting the emitter and building a new one will fix it. It's just not intuative at all that it keeps a permenant memory that does not reset when you swap to play. --- As for the other things, hyper complex wiring I tend to have paper blue prints for, and a very specific order for the switches so that I can more easily trace what each one does. It can be a problem though when I can't find the blueprints though. The TSR rocket of mine has some hyper complex switch systems, you can see almost all of them if you check out the level. Even though the switches are very dense at some points, like the base of the gantry, it's in a logical order that I can refer to easily to find out what's happening when tweaking. It's all just a matter of pre-planning. There is no way you could make a boss like the Collector, for example, if you did not have blueprints. Even if you could label the wires, this would still take a huge amount of time to do. It would be nice though to have a better highlighting system for the wires. Like clicking on them and it highlights the switch and the thing it activates. That would be handy and make sorting through dense wiring sections easier. Blueprint is a cool idea. Clicking on a wire and having it completely highlight would be FANTASTIC. This would be my #1 choice. One thing I had been using is dropping a "magic mouth" onto each separate piece of dark matter and explaining what the different pieces do. I use a different "shelf" of dark matter for each part of the logical flow. However, even though there are definately some work-arounds it would be GREAT to be able to drop comments in. I'm a software developer and I get used to putting comments on things so that I can look at the screen and understand the flow. I may be spoiled by this when it comes to LittleBigPlanet, but it is SO CLOSE! (by the way, don't think because I'm a programmer I think I am any more adept at these tools. Just pointed it out so you know where I'm coming from.) Also, when I do multi-layering work it is great to be able to remove layers and see whats behind things. Definately all the replies so far are fantastic, but you would be amazed at how a few of these things would just put the whip cream on top of one of the best design tools ever! For it to be perfect I think the following rules would need to be followed: 1. Nothing should just CHANGE without notification. So, if you are doing something in the designer that will make cameras or switches disappear, LBP should tell you so you have a choice not to do it or can find another way. 2. There should never be a reason to "remove" game play elements just because you used multi-layers and had not planned for a caveat. 3. There should be a nice way to visually label. I can certainly live without all of these things and will continue to absolutely love this game, but imagine how more sophisticated the levels would get if authors did not have to worry about these things while designing. If I was using a development tool for work and had to worry about some of my logic disappearing in the middle of development, or being unable to easily change a design.... well, you can only image... My "nightmare in darkness" at least has 600 switches and hence at least so much wires. What I do, i do not.. i repeat i do NOT!! add any detail to my level untill the gameplay from begin to end is totally fine. only then I start working on the details. Okay, quick true scenario here. I built Splat Invaders Deluxe. TON of wiring. Finished the level. Blorf went in and tested it for me, found a flaw in how high my aliens were spaced apart. Went in and had to unglue many of the alien ships and re-place them a little differently. Had to take out the wall, which had decorations... Unglued a single alien. Every tiny thing became unglued. Had to re-glue things together which caused some items that should NOT be glued. Had to back track. Finished fixing everything. Put the wall back in. Went out to try the game. I had not noticed that when drawing the walls back in 30 sound objects disappeared off screen. Re-created all of them and re-attached all 30 switches to the aliens which cause them to trigger..... The change that should have taken about 5 minutes took 3 hours.... I completely agree with your design philosophy, but the problem is sometimes you need to go back and tweak and change things, and this area is a weak point in the LBP editor

2009-01-07 18:29:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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First idea's great. Like "Game view, Front view, Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3" (tick boxes so you could use both 1 on its own and 2 or 3 together)

2009-01-07 19:26:00 Author: Pinchanzee Posts: 805

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I completely agree with your design philosophy, but the problem is sometimes you need to go back and tweak and change things, and this area is a weak point in the LBP editor I agree, I have been screaming that at least twice. It would be very handy. And I am sure you have a decent workflow.. But for the ones that are struggeling: https://lbpcentral.lbp-hub.com/index.php?t=t=7199

2009-01-07 20:00:00 Author: Luos_83 Posts: 2136

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I agree, I have been screaming that at least twice. It would be very handy. And I am sure you have a decent workflow.. But for the ones that are struggeling: https://lbpcentral.lbp-hub.com/index.php?t=t=7199 Yes, I suppose it is not really the initial workflow I have had problems with. Most of my issues have been caused by trying to improve existing levels. Unfortunately, I'm far more technical than I am artistic. When it comes to the "look" of my levels it is more trial and error. So I end up needing to do a LOT of tweaking.

2009-01-08 19:05:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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ID like to take a look at your levels, *writes down psn* If you are really technical, you might come in hand

2009-01-08 19:07:00 Author: Luos_83 Posts: 2136

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ID like to take a look at your levels, *writes down psn* If you are really technical, you might come in hand PSN: CuzFeeshe Splat Invaders Deluxe, Dante's Temple, Jacques the Acadian Warlord, LBP Playstation Home. Splat Invaders deluxe is probably the most technical (although it's deceptively simple looking). Keep in mind, also, I don't really attempt to design around being technical (it's too much like my job...). Just try to make the games fun. But if you look in the forum, I've been busy finding little answers to issues out there (such as the off-object wiring save bug in the latest LBP patch that I found workarounds to). Edit: I just removed Jacques the Acadian Warlord from LBP - design was decent, but the game was kind of a stinker. Ok, this topic is officially dead. Here's what I'm taking away from it: 1. Labels would be nice, but I suppose magic mouths placed on my off-screen objects will work. 2. Would be GREAT if I could see a wire highlight so I could see the flow 3. Would help with complex designs if I could hide layers and work behind walls.

2009-01-08 19:57:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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