Archive: 20 posts

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Chances that this thread has been done before = 90.87% Chances that I'm going to make this thread anyway since I can't find one like this = 100% What is the most difficult challenge you had to face while creating? Quite simply, when you're trying to do something in LBP2 create mode, but it's hard. This isn't where you complain about a feature or lack thereof in create (eg, there are no disco lights on AND gates), or a bug, but rather where you are trying to make something work, and for some reason it is hard to make it work. For example, trying to make a certain effect, or gameplay element, or logic object, or level in general that was made challenging by bugs, no idea about what is going wrong, or the thing just being hard to do. I'll start: Back in 2011, I was working on a movie called How Media Molecule Got the Idea For the Negativitron. I was interested in their inspiration, and many others were as well (since it got on the cool pages). The idea for the movie was that Media Molecule's maid accidentally turned a vacuum cleaner onto its highest setting, causing it to fly around the building and suck in a bunch of stuff and then explode, thus giving the surviving employees the idea. Most of the movie was quite easy to make, except for the part where the vacuum cleaner flies around the building. The vacuum cleaner was meant to fly around for a while, dragging the maid with it, then fly through a small space to a higher floor, get stuck, and then explode. I had no move pack back then, meaning I had no motion recorder for the vacuum's movements, so I used a controlinator on the vacuum, with the left and right sticks hooked up to an advanced mover and joystick rotator, respectively. A sackbot would be in the controlinator, with an act behavior that would drive the vacuum when it was activated. Something would always go wrong, though. The vacuum would break, or would miss getting through the small space, or would not land (get stuck) properly, or the maid would get crushed, or one of the sackbots would go on strike and refuse to work for me; etc. Even if the whole thing worked while recording the sackbot actions, it would fail when the scene actually came. Why was it so hard? Well, the space the vaccum had to fly through was small, as I've said before; but also the vacuum was constantly moving (since the maid was like, vacuuming), so where it was when the movie started was definitely not the same place as when it started flying around. Also, analog sticks hooked up to advanced movers tend to be very inaccurate. Even if you do the exact same thing every time, you would end up in a different place. After about the 150th time trying, I had finally got it. I play tested it twice to make sure it was right, then published the movie. The ordeal was over. Tee hee, no it wasn't. LBP2 wanted to spit in my face so the very moment I published it, bugs started appearing, and I learned that a level on your moon in play mode and the same level published act differently. For starters, the maid must have been made weaker by the transition from my moon to my earth, and she got crushed by the vacuum cleaner, making the last scene in the movie showing her very much alive in the building wreckage look stupid. Worst of all, this level got on the cool pages, so thousands could see the bug. I tried fixing it, but the second I went back to it on my moon, the vacuum didn't land properly and skidded across the floor so the scene of the vacuum about to explode became the scene of the particle of air the vacuum just flew by about to explode. Numerous attempts to fix it failed, as the sheer inaccuracy of the advanced mover, sackbot, and analog sticks was like an unwanted randomiser for my vacuum. After another 150 tries, I eventually just gave up and locked the level. Fast forward a few months, and I had gotten the move pack. The motion recorder was a godsend-it was actually ACCURATE. I was able to perfect the vacuum scene on my second try, and it has worked ever since. I am still kicking myself for not buying the move pack earlier. And that's my story. So... What's the most difficult challenge you had to face while creating?

2012-08-04 22:16:00 Author: Kalawishis Posts: 928

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I'm going to say that sometimes, the pistons break even if you make the right choice when it comes to creating. I don't know how they break. I didn't even mess with them. I'm also displeased when I screw up the logic on anything.

2012-08-04 22:39:00 Author: Apple2012 Posts: 1408

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That sticker bug where the edges of large thin layer scenery shapes start to display the various stickers you have used elsewhere in the level. It should have been patched 3 years ago, yet it's still there and it annoys the heck out of me. Oh, and the lack of a split camera option for co-op gameplay, meaning one player gets timed out and eventually dies when they move out of the camera's range. It makes top down co-op levels where 2 players should be able to act independantly of each other unnecessarily complicated and restrictive to design.

2012-08-04 22:49:00 Author: Ungreth Posts: 2130

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When you work on something for a while and make great progress... Only for the game to freeze... (Insert massive swearing)

2012-08-05 00:48:00 Author: JamesDNaux Posts: 757

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I think I must have worded this thread a bit wrong. This isn't really a thread to talk about things in LBP2 Create Mode that annoy you, but rather to share stories about difficult challenges in LBP2 that you had to face and overcome (or give up on) that were frustrating. I guess that I conveyed the wrong idea. I should probably re-word the title of this thread and the OP. Sorry about that.

2012-08-05 02:55:00 Author: Kalawishis Posts: 928

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Trying to create when the bailiffs are knocking at my door. Very off putting.

2012-08-05 08:14:00 Author: GribbleGrunger Posts: 3910

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My checkers level was particularly frustrating. Plenty of times, I thought the logic was complete, only to find another thing that went wrong. I have another level which is pretty much done, but I haven't bothered publishing it yet where my logic starting failing because there was too much, so I basically just had redo it all!! Wasn't worth it in the end really, it's been sitting on my earth, locked for 5 months!

2012-08-05 12:50:00 Author: Ali_Star Posts: 4085

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I've been having fun and games using movie cameras for a 2D non-scrolling platformer. Trying to figure out a way to have Sackboy respawn on a previous screen after death almost crumbled my brain. It sounds so simple it's ridiculous, but I couldn't find any easy way to seamlessly turn off the last camera used and activate the one at the spawn point. I was either left with no Sackboy and an infinite view of the death scene, or the camera would pop out of the fixed scene and revert to normal view, which I wasn't really happy with either. Finally managed it in the end but not without days of very frustrating trial and error and a whole load of overly complicated logic.

2012-08-05 13:28:00 Author: Kiminski Posts: 545

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Trying to make a walking vehicle AND make it look good. I eventually got it with the help of an amazing tutorial, but you know how evil wobble bolts are. Tweak this, move that, position this, and it should work EXACTLY how you want it to, but it has to be precise. I tried making a slow-motion sequence for a sackbot level. The sackbot would be launched into the air, the slow motion would activate, and a button sequence would show up. I spent a good amount of time perfecting the logic and hooking up this to that, making sure everything was organized and would work properly, but for SOME reason, LBP said "No." I spent hours rewiring the logic, testing it out, trying to figure out what was wrong, but I couldn't. According to the logic, it should have worked PERFECTLY, but it didn't because logic's a troll. I just trashed the idea. :hero: I could go on for years about the various difficulties I've encountered while creating.

2012-08-05 13:29:00 Author: Sackpapoi Posts: 1195

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So far, my hardest challenge has been building two levels simultaneously in a way that one is an upside-down and twisted version of the original (think Castlevania SoTN's castles). These are two MASSIVE levels, too... like an hour of gameplay each, filling most of the entire space allowed for a level on the map. Just inverting a level this size was enough of a mind-bending task. When it comes to creating the content, not only do you have to make sure that changes in one are reflected in the other, but you have to make sure every platforming section functions both normally and upside-down, that the floor of one room can function just fine as a ceiling on the other side, etc. I still get headaches thinking about it =P

2012-08-05 14:51:00 Author: Unknown User

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The most difficult thing I've had to do so far is based on my project to create nearly all the logic for a 4 player, co-op (using versus screens though) top-down shooter, where players could switch between 4 different soldiers, enter vehicles, pick up/drop weapons, jump, sprint, and otherwise do everything you could do in Battlefield 3. Then disaster struck. I was sick for a few weeks, broke my leg, and an uncle passed away from a gunshot wound. Needless to say, I was no longer in the mood for creating, not enough time and lost all desire to make a shooter. Of course, it doesn't end there. A month later I go back to LBP2 and discover my profile died. I had backups, but not one that was completely up-to-date. Coming back to it 4 months later, I load the outdated profile, but realize I have no idea how to use what I had already made and give up on the project. ~3 months of creating gone to waste, and it had some spectacular potential. I'm planning a remake after my current project, though I'm going to need to remake all the logic. With university getting more difficult (a safe assumption ) and the release of LBPV, I don't think I'll have the time to start another project in LBP2. The loss of the project wouldn't be so bad, if it were not for my lack of time to create. This was really the only project I had continued beyond the initial stages, and losing it effectively killed my creativity for a time.

2012-08-05 15:24:00 Author: SSTAGG1 Posts: 1136

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Trying to make a walking robot (with legs). I tried for 4 days straight until I rage quited!

2012-08-05 16:28:00 Author: BillyCrash100 Posts: 134

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What I struggle with is sometimes costume making, cause if you mess up, it takes a while to undo it.

2012-08-05 16:47:00 Author: amoney1999 Posts: 1202

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Making the realistic & dynamic ammunition logic system for my level Zombie Epidemic (http://lbp.me/v/czqhd7) was downright difficult. Prior to me making the logic, no one I knew of had made logic like mine and used it in a level. Most reloading systems seem to omit something very important. Some give you infinite reserve ammo. Others give you infinite clip ammo. Others give you both but force you to expel bullets in the clip ammo before reloading. My logic, when I constructed it, gives limited clip ammo, limited reserve ammo, and the ability to reload at any time. I'm talking about before I constructed my logic, not after, however. I had no clue how to possibly do any of this, and so I started on my epic 7-day journey to get it done. Thankfully, some of the community was there to help. I learned about comphermc's feedback loops and figured that something like that would be useful. I dissected pivottt's Health Meter Toolkit and the Creator's Toolkit, and after that, I started piecing together the puzzle. I didn't have the whole system made for me from the start, however. Sure, I had the pieces, but they weren't all that easy to assemble. (A photo of my logic will prove that.) It got devilishly difficult to get the logic together when I came to the math for reloading. 5 hours and a loss of sanity later, I solved it, and finally came up with something brilliant. (At this point, I've gotten lost in my own logic.) ...Except for that it took a ton of thermo. I spent another 5 hours on another day losing my sanity correcting the logic so instead of one ammunition system for each gun, it was just one ammunition system, period. The system ended up being as complex as any other major system currently in my level, like the multiplier system, the complex health system, and the wave system, but it required significantly more troubleshooting than anything else in my level because it was largely new ground. (The multiplier system was also new ground, but it's based around one feedback loop affecting the amount of points given for zombies killed, which isn't too difficult to work with. I should be giving myself more credit for creating it though, since it's just as groundbreaking as the realistic ammunition system. It is a custom-made multiplier system.)

2012-08-06 04:35:00 Author: BIGGamerer Posts: 182

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For me : Making Logic for your level and it doesn't seem to work after you make it. I'm talking about huge complex logic.

2012-08-06 16:22:00 Author: SackBoy98 Posts: 588

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Finishing a game.

2012-08-06 16:49:00 Author: Unknown User

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This happened yesterday: I worked 90 minutes on a level and forgot to save it! http://i49.tinypic.com/1zgc5c4.jpg

2012-08-09 15:24:00 Author: L1N3R1D3R Posts: 13447

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Well, my own inexperience seems to be my biggest stumbling block. Like lately, I'd been trying to make a one layer thick car so I can have three cars race excite bike style on a course. I'd gotten my hopes up with thech and thack only to have them dashed on the rocks due to the noticable gap left by the elusive thock layer. I was even more dashed when I found out that not only is thock unobtainable, but mock thock can be incredibly frustrating and glitchy stuff to work with. Not only that, but a car taking up one level made of theck thack and mock thock is as heavy as a three layer object, making my light car handle like a tank. I was about to either consign to having a car with a thock gap or go back to a car that used two thin layers, when working out another problem in my head solved this one. It turns out, I don't need thock at all and the only thack I need is for the tires. It also solves most of the weight problem too, because it also decreases my need of the theck layer to the far side door, wheel wells and motor anchors. All I have to do is expand my thack layer to a thick layer and paste it over my theck layer. I cannot wait to go home and implement this.

2012-08-10 18:30:00 Author: DreadRandal Posts: 434

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What's the most difficult challenge you had to face while creating? I can name a few. Mm breaking crucial aspects of Create Mode with patches, like the live emitter Boredom. I battle this by doing other games/activities for a while Randomness of the physics engine. Stuff that falls, pushes, snaps, congests without a clear explanation Finding acceptable compromises, like the fact that beyond a few bits via score it is not possible to transfer information in between levels. I had to come to terms with that when it became impractical to stuff everything into one level together. I also didn't want to use password systems Kill count buffering, score logic that I have been doing over and over again (and I will probably revise it again for the next release) Analog logic and many of its quirks And right now, movie making. I find it so hard

2012-08-11 08:17:00 Author: Antikris Posts: 1340

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Randomness of the physics engine. Stuff that falls, pushes, snaps, congests without a clear explanation That's a good one, I remember having to spend a few days investigating an unidentified crunch sound in one of my levels. Absolutely infuriating lol.

2012-08-11 11:12:00 Author: Kiminski Posts: 545

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