Archive: 6 posts

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[compiled from the answers SamProtagonist has given on eu.playstation.com] Sam Intro I'm the one they call Sam. I work for SCE with the producers of LittleBigPlanet, and spend plenty of time working with the gang at Media Molecule. I'm here to make sure your questions are answered ensuring your suggestions and feedback is heard by the right people on the team. I've been a bit elusive for the past week for reasons which may become obvious, however I'm here to make sure everything you say here is listened to. Shared Level Changes Going to have to get this confirmed, but the belief here at present is that once a level is published/shared online it is considered "sealed", therefore any changes to it would be considered a new level, which would remove any ratings and feedback it had received. Visiting players to your level who leave stickers and other mess around the place only affect their instance of it, not the original version. Again, I need to get this confirmed, but I don't believe a revision system exists where it versions one level. 19-08-2008 Flagged Levels? Nothing happens to a flagged level until a moderator has seen it, and while we have measures in place to deal with report spammers, it should never affect your levels if you've done nothing wrong. Lag, Voice Comms, Buddy Joins Is online play going to be stable? We're confident it'll be totally playable. Obviously with any online game latency can be a performance killer so there are going to be plenty of things that may cause problems, but from what we've seen so far it should be smooth. Voice comms? Yes. Can your buddy join you mid-game? Yes indeed. Short answers are good answers. Level Creation, Filling 100 Slots? Based on my own experiences with create I suspect people will remake their own levels repeatedly, refining and improving the ideas initially worked on. Revising your ideas helps make them stronger and more effective, so I suspect it'll take a while before we see many people having filled their 100 slots. Contraption Creation and Creator Paths 1 - Will there be deeper tools to create more complicated items? I'm not sure just how complicated you're thinking, however with the tools already available you can create some very complex devices if you put your mind to it. With a suitable use of triggers and motors you can build something that appears extremely complex despite being made up of simple parts. To draw a comparison, think of the amount of power a simple device which alternates between 0 and 1 can do when put in parallel with many others. Taken at face value the tools may seem exceptionally simple - because they are - but used in numbers and with creative thought there is an enormous amount possible. 2 - Do you need to play through the game to gain access to the tools? There are two paths to gaining access to the Ceate tools : the first is, yes, to play through the game, however the other is to work your way through the Create tutorials, which will take a while to complete but will put you in very good position to become a master Creator. Online Moderation We'll take whatever action is appropriate with regards to SCE policy and the law in general. More specifically than that it wouldn't be appropriate to mention at the moment. More Online Moderation If you spot any content, or behaviour in multiplayer you believe is unsuitable, a quick button push allows you to report it. It will then be investigated by the moderating team who will take the appropriate course of action. This ranges from removal of content to permanent banning depending on severity and whether the person involved is a repeat offender. LittleBigPlanet is intended for everybody, so we have to ensure the content and behaviour in the game is suitable for everybody. Photos while Playing? You certainly can. You can then use those photos as stickers within your levels. I foresee infinite regression being quite popular.. 18-08-2008 Importing Images The developers have the ability to import whatever images they wish into the game - after all that's how all the original stickers were added, so for advertising or content further down the line we may add in additional images for a variety of reasons, as you'd expect. Inability to import graphics directly shouldn't limit your creativity at all. The existing toolset and what can be done with it is vast. Using the stickers provided with the game increases that size exponentially, and then with the ability to grab further images with the PlayStation Eye gives you limitless ability to expand your options in the game. I'd suggest that before seeing anything not present as a limitation, see what you can do. If you've got a killer image you simply must have in the game, then use the PS Eye - with some ingenuity you'll make it work. Then again, with some ingenuity you may not need it in the first place. More Importing Images We're well aware that people would sooner be able to import images direct from hard disk in addition to using the PlayStation Eye option, however for launch that'll [pseye] be the only way to get fresh sticker images into the game. I'm pretty sure that with good lighting and a steady hand you'll get decent results even if it isn't the most elegant way to get the job done.13-08-2008 The only way to import fresh images into LittleBigPlanet is using the PlayStation Eye. This may be disappointing to those who've already been busily creating art for the game using their PC however you shouldn't see it as a complete inability to use that content you've created. While limiting content import to PlayStation Eye only may reduce the flexibility you have in adding fresh content to your game it shouldn't stop you importing all your created works in either by taking a snap of the screen of your PC, or of a printout of the item in question - no, it's not quite the same, but it doesn't mean your work is wasted. There are several reasons this limitation is in place, however one of the more significant ones is that levels that use a lot of bespoke imagery get to be very big in terms of size very quickly. The Create thermometer fills up very quickly if you're capturing or importing a lot of new images. Custom Level Size Limitations? If you wanted to create 100 monster huge levels, filling the thermometer to bursting, then you could, and nobody would try to stop you. Locally you can store as many big levels (up to the thermometer cap, and the 100 level limit) as you like, providing your hard disk has space. When uploading you have far fewer slots to play with (the number is still being finalised) initially, but you're not limited by level size beyond the thermometer cap. Thermometer and Moon Slots Your moon has various sized level slots available on it and these dictate the size of the thermometer you have. This is so that small levels, mini-games or object only levels don't end up being housed in the largest level slots available. How the largest levels compare in thermometer size to the original game levels I don't know at the moment, and I'll try to get an indication of what, if any, difference in scale there is. Amulets and Special Items? "What do you think about amulets? Objects (like clotings parts, stickers and so on) that increase the sackperson abilities. Something like "fireproof robe" that extends the time a sackperson could withstand fire." Amulets as described above is a viable idea for the game, and they'd probably be introduced as paid content after release. However, and this is important to note, were there ever introduced items of content that gave Sackboy an extra "ability" of some kind (and I'm not suggesting this will definitely happen) these items would not be a pre-requisite to do something else in the game. Shared Levels You have a limited number of online slots to promote your content through, so you'll be regularly changing what you've got online I'd imagine. Level Creation The depth of the create mode in the game is such that you will be overwhelmed by choices unless you go through the tutorials which are carefully designed to introduce you to creating in such a way that you learn the entire toolset effectively. Imagine, if you will, that you want to build a table in real life. You're given a load of wood, screws, nails, tools and a workshop to build it in. You've never seen any of these things before - it's going to be pretty tough to know where to start. Then imagine that you don't even know what you want to build, just that you want to build something. Confronted with all this stuff with no plan and no real idea what the individual tools do, you're going to be pretty confused and doubtless see it as too hard. Transparencies and Stickers There isn't an image editing tool in the game along the lines you're thinking, so alpha blending isn't going to happen within the game engine - in fact I'm curious as to which parts of the E3 presentation you felt were blended in this fashion as I'm not convinced the game would support stickers with an alpha transparency going on. Yes, the presentation did "cheat" a little by adding stickers specifically for the presentation to the build of the game, however you can import any image you please with PlayStation Eye if you use a little ingenuity. Shaping Stickers As far as shaped stickers go, I suggest a process like this - snap your picture, slap it onto a piece of cardboard in game, cut the picture out so it's the right shape then Heart the finished piece so it's ready to use any time you need it. So while all images come in as rectangles to begin with, after a couple of minutes tinkering you can have them the shape you want them. Water? Rather than just thinking "water" consider liquids as a whole. With various colouring options, viscosity, turbulence (I'm just suggesting options, there's nothing designed here) or the ability for it to leak out of things. Part of the reason for liquid not being included is that there's a huge amount you could do with it, so if and when it in introduced it needs a lot of thought attaching to it. The main reason for it not being in the game to begin with is that it's not completely necessary - I played an underwater level not so long ago which used jetpacks to simulate swimming and it worked very well indeed. Simulating water, waves, lava and so on is definitely going to be popular on the creating front, so rather than look at liquid not being present as a let down look at it as a challenge! USB Camera? If your existing camera works with your PlayStation 3 it should work with LittleBigPlanet. I need to get this confirmed, but certainly that's the opinion here at the moment. 14-08-2008 UK Coverart For once I can confirm that this is definitely accurate. That is indeed the European cover art. Actually, to update what I said previously - this is the cover art for most of Europe. There are some subtle changes to the stickers in some countries. EU Preorder Goodies Europe will be getting similar pre-order goodness in the near future, however due to the number of individual countries to organise this process always tends to take a little longer than our friends in the US. We'll let you know as soon as pre-order options are available. Download Only? LittleBigPlanet will definitely be released on Blu-ray throughout Europe. Springs? Yes indeed. However there are plenty of choices open to you if you want things to pop out, spring up, drop down, sproing unnecessarily and generally surprise the pants off anyone playing your levels. Building Materials There are a stackload of materials in the game for launch, ranging from various different kinds of wood, metals, fabrics, stone, cardboard and special materials with unusual properties. I like some of the ideas on your list, but I'm also pretty sure you won't be short of building materials when you get the game. Selling Your Levels That's about the size of it. There will be nothing of this kind whatsoever in the initial release of the game, however it is something that may happen further down the line.13-08-2008 What kind of prices is Sony thinking for selling user-created levels? Woah there! Hold your horses! As I mentioned right at the beginning of this thread, we're not talking anything concrete here right now. The whole concept of users selling their creations to each other or through Sony somehow is entirely hypothetical at the moment. Yes, it's being considered and ideas worked on as we see it as a good way to reward users for their creativity while encouraging people to create more, however if and when anything like this is introduced it will only happen in line with feedback and suggestions we've had from the LittleBigPlanet community - so this is your chance to make sure your opinion is heard. Limits on Stickers During Play? "So say I have just made a level and completely filled up the Thermometer, does this mean when I play with freinds we will still be able to stick Pics from the Eye all over the leve orwe wont be able to because the level is already at its capacity." I have to get this confirmed, however (and great question btw) I believe the thermometer allows for additional items to be added during play - much in the same way as the original story game allows. I'll check into whether there are caps imposed of play-based decorating and stickering.12-08-2008

2008-08-20 08:57:00 Author: docpac Posts: 601

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Magic Mouth and Text The "Magic Mouth" as it's known is the mechanic by which you are told in the game what you need to do to complete your objectives in the game, and yes you can use this to enter text into the game, but it only appears in this fashion (ie players have to choose to read it). For some of the latest presentations of LBP the Media Molecule team have used some extra stickers specifically for that presentation which will not be available in the final game, so while they're not using any tools you won't have access to, they have used additional resources where appropriate. Save Your Stickered Sackboy? "i know you can put stickers on him/her, but i'm asking if you can save them" Sorry for the delay in answering, but yes you can. You'll also find that when playing multiplayer you'll frequently be "attacked" by other players who are very keen on decorating every square in of you with springy eyeballs. Fortunately you have to option through Popit to wash you costume of anything you didn't put there. PS3 Exclusive To put a stop to this one right here - LittleBigPlanet is only being released on PlayStation 3. That is all. LBP on PC? Just to confirm what you already know - LittleBigPlanet will be available for the PlayStation 3 only. This display case was most likely a standard display template in a store somewhere - not a deliberately misleading maneuver, but entirely untrue nonetheless. Seating Arrangements and Release Date I sit next to the lead producers of the game here at SCEE, and we've not released any dates as of yet other than October. So regardless of where you've seen it, until you read it here, it's speculative. Sponge or Bubble? These items were originally made of sponge so were referred to, unsurprisingly as "sponge". However, this has now changed and what you're looking for are bubbles, and there are two primary kinds to be on the watch for - The most common bubble is the main scoring method in the game (excluding time-based scoring). Effectively the more of these bubbles you collect, the more points you score. The second type of bubble contains items you can use in the game, from stickers to costume parts to complete items, there are a whole bunch of prize bubbles out there for you to get your hands on. These also count towards your score on each level. So the word you're looking for is Bubble. * I tried to leave out the really really old stuff and any info we already had. Still plenty of good stuff!

2008-08-20 08:57:00 Author: docpac Posts: 601

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Jeez man...that's very nice! Thanks a lot..this is GREAT information! Also, many thanks to Sam! He's great! =D

2008-08-20 09:11:00 Author: Stix489 Posts: 2080

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It's interesting to see the evolution of this game. Things get put in and taken out quite a bit. And thanks Docpac, that is a great summary.

2008-08-20 10:14:00 Author: Robinhood Posts: 79

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God, docpac, you really are dedicated when it comes to this stuff.

2008-08-20 12:30:00 Author: bbroman Posts: 1374

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I may be less active when the game comes out. besides, learning is fun!

2008-08-20 12:57:00 Author: docpac Posts: 601

Posts: 1077139    Threads: 69970    Members: 9661    Archive-Date: 2019-01-19

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