Archive: 22 posts

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LBP3's right around the corner, so I figured I'd share a neat little trick I found on one of the final days of the beta. Since the beta has already ended, I'm not able to get any more photos than these ones that I already had, and I'm also not able to double check to make sure I described everything properly, but once the game comes out, I'll edit this post and make sure it's all good. Good? Good! Let us get into it. So as you may know, LBP3 took a page out of LBPVita's book by including a slider inside the tweak menu of almost every object that allows you to make small adjustments to the depth of the object. I believe it's labelled as "Position in Layer." Unlike LBPVita, however, the slider does not range from -20 to +20. It only goes from -10 to +10 this time. This seems like a bit of a downgrade. Admittedly, I was pretty disappointed when I found out. Then I had an idea. That idea lead to this monstrosity: http://i.imgur.com/MwU7TOF.png Above: 108 thin blocks back-to-back ranging from the front to back of the level By using an Advanced In/Out Mover's positional setting in addition to a timer, you can create a crazy amount of sub-layers within the 16 regular ones. They have a few limitations but I'll get to those in a bit. They definitely do have some uses, and they're not anywhere near as annoying to work with as the buggy unstable ones in LBP2. Heck, this isn't even a glitch. It's just abuse of the new layer tools. Here is what you'll need in order to create 'em: Microchip Timer Advanced In/Out Mover Follower Place them and wire 'em up like this: http://i.imgur.com/pa5GXiV.png Above: How your microchip will look You don't need the circuit node, but you need something plugged into the timer so it doesn't start counting by itself. Now we'll get into how to tweak everything. Follower: Max Speed: 100 In Out Speed: 0 Acceleration: 100% Stabiliser: Yes Minimum Detection Range: 0.0 Maximum Detection Range: 0.0 Trigger Angle Range: 360 Layer Detection Range: 0 Allow Up-Down Movement: Yes Flee Rather Than Follow: No Follow Tag of Character: Character Advanced In/Out Mover: Maximum Speed: 100.0 Allow Pushing: No Front Layer: 1 Back Layer: 16 or 17 (for thin layers) Movement Type: Positional Timer: Target Time: (I recommend anywhere between 200 to 500) Current Time: (Leave this for later) Input Action: Start/Stop Now that everything is set up, you can move your object forward and backward by raising or lowering the "current time" setting on the timer as long as the object it's placed on is dynamic, and your level is unpaused! No more layer limitations! ...Well, actually yeah, there are still limitations. This can cause graphical bugs similar to the ones found with decorations in LBP2. It's difficult to explain, but there are some odd perspective problems with these sub-layers, and you might have to fiddle with them a little bit in order to make them look alright. They only seem to happen with thick objects though. Thin ones work pretty well. You also can't glue them to anything. You'll need to just use the follower for that (which might not be perfect, but it works). Regardless of their problems, I know at least I'm going to have a lot of fun with these, so I'm sure at least a few others will find this as neat as I did. http://i.imgur.com/b4Jj3EH.png Above: An assortment of thin slides made to look like a patch of grass When this game does come out, I'm totally trying to incorporate this kind of thing into my level visuals. Thanks for reading my garbage, by the way. I know I'm awful at explaining things. I'll answer any questions that anyone may have, though.

2014-11-08 04:09:00 Author: KlawwTheClown Posts: 1106

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I knew there was something slightly different about the sublayers but I couldn't put my finger on it. It would have been nice to have 20 because it gave you the option of having at least 4 'pronounced' layer ****s in order to create an embossed look. Two is fine and perhaps three at a squeeze, but it's far more subtle and only really that noticeable when lit. Thanks for the tutorial!

2014-11-08 09:50:00 Author: GribbleGrunger Posts: 3910

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A very useful tutorial, I can see this technique being used a lot to create some cool and subtle visual effects. You can optimise the above circuit more by replacing the Follower with an anti-gravity tweaker set to 100% dampening. In LBP3 the anti-grav tweaker will not stop an object moving in and out (only up, down, left, right, and rotation). If you want to stop an object from moving in and out then you need to set part of the object to static.

2014-11-08 12:36:00 Author: fluxlasers Posts: 182

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Cool. But couldn't you use a battery in stead of the timer?

2014-11-08 13:45:00 Author: Rogar Posts: 2284

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Cool. But couldn't you use a battery in stead of the timer? Yeah, you could use a battery it will do exactly the same thing. However, a battery only has a resolution of 1%. If you want more fine control over the Z position then a timer will be the best choice. You could use a battery and get fine control over the Z position if you set the range of the Advanced in Out Mover lower. Which method a creator uses will depend on their own particular application or preference.

2014-11-08 14:16:00 Author: fluxlasers Posts: 182

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What a fantastic tutorial KlawwTheClown. Thanks for sharing your interesting find. It will be a useful trick to all to share. Really well found and done man.

2014-11-09 14:03:00 Author: Sean88 Posts: 662

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Neat! This is very helpful. I'll try this tutorial once the game comes out!

2014-11-10 04:09:00 Author: Dandu Posts: 29

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if you dephysicalize the cardboard, you can use the positional setting on each one to get (2^31)-1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Range_of_floating-point_numbers) decorative layers

2014-11-10 05:51:00 Author: amiel445566 Posts: 664

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Very nice little trick, I thought about something similar, but I'm sure it wouldn't have worked out as well as this... this seems more solid

2014-11-10 11:48:00 Author: AcAnimate Posts: 174

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if you dephysicalize the cardboard, you can use the positional setting on each one to get (2^31)-1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Range_of_floating-point_numbers) decorative layers How did you even calculate that!?! I can't think of a use for even just a thousandth of all those sublayers, except for maybe the visual illusion of a gradually curved piece of material through the z axis (think of a top-down half pipe). I'm not even sure it would work, but you might be able to use a TON of dephysicalized sublayers to do something similar.

2014-11-15 23:01:00 Author: MisterPotatoHed Posts: 21

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How did you even calculate that!?! I can't think of a use for even just a thousandth of all those sublayers, except for maybe the visual illusion of a gradually curved piece of material through the z axis (think of a top-down half pipe). I'm not even sure it would work, but you might be able to use a TON of dephysicalized sublayers to do something similar. calculated because LBP uses floats, and that is the accuracy range of a value in english: thats lbp's accuracy for everything

2014-11-15 23:27:00 Author: amiel445566 Posts: 664

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I'm not sure about the exact number, but each layer is (approximately) 100 pixels thick. This will give around 1600 different depth positions across the 16 layers.

2014-11-16 00:27:00 Author: fluxlasers Posts: 182

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I'm not sure about the exact number, but each layer is (approximately) 100 pixels thick. This will give around 1600 different depth positions across the 16 layers. wow, thanks for that number fluxlasers, sure cleared up alot (my initial thought was ((2^31)-1)/16 sub layers)

2014-11-16 05:54:00 Author: amiel445566 Posts: 664

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I know you guys are masters at logic, and a noob like me's just coming in and asking a dumb question, but what exactly is this used for?

2014-11-16 23:35:00 Author: gurren009 Posts: 2592

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I know you guys are masters at logic, and a noob like me's just coming in and asking a dumb question, but what exactly is this used for? It's pretty much just a way to move things part-way between layers. Like... You can shove 8 thin layers together to make one thick layer. Example (http://i.imgur.com/QDEuWSP.jpg) (Gigantic image warning)

2014-11-17 01:41:00 Author: KlawwTheClown Posts: 1106

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I've been asking a few questions to get a definitive answer on how many sub layers there are in lbp3 and I've found that my statement above is wrong. Amiel was right, the position is based on the float value of the signal, so there is a LOT of sub layers. Apologies if this caused any confusion.

2014-11-20 19:17:00 Author: fluxlasers Posts: 182

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Does the layers collide?

2014-11-20 21:29:00 Author: Willman4 Posts: 170

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I just tried this with a dephysicalized neon light (the long bar in the thin layer) and got it into approximately the middle of the thick layer (used a battery at 97%). Then, just to see what would happen, I glued it to a thick piece of sticker material, slapped a powerup handle on the thick material and captured it as a powerup. The light stays right in the middle of the thick sticker material and I can carry it with me from layer to layer. There are occlusion effects as mentioned in the first post (essentially, the engine determines that you can't see the object because it's technically behind something else so it just doesn't draw it) but it works. Thanks for the tutorial! [edit] It took some doing but I was able to work this into a stable powerup that works in play mode. I was having the darndest time trying to build a lightsaber powerup that looked right (building it out of materials resulted in it being too thin or thick when rotated over sackboy's head and building it out of decorations didn't give me a good enough beam), but using this trick I'm got the neon light embedded halfway into the thick layer so it matches up with the handle.

2014-11-22 09:59:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Does the layers collide? Yep, if they're not dephysicalised, they will collide with things as long as they're actually touching. You can kind of walk across a thin material this way, but the animations look a bit strange. I just tried this with a dephysicalized neon light (the long bar in the thin layer) and got it into approximately the middle of the thick layer (used a battery at 97%). Then, just to see what would happen, I glued it to a thick piece of sticker material, slapped a powerup handle on the thick material and captured it as a powerup. The light stays right in the middle of the thick sticker material and I can carry it with me from layer to layer. There are occlusion effects as mentioned in the first post (essentially, the engine determines that you can't see the object because it's technically behind something else so it just doesn't draw it) but it works. Thanks for the tutorial! [edit] It took some doing but I was able to work this into a stable powerup that works in play mode. I was having the darndest time trying to build a lightsaber powerup that looked right (building it out of materials resulted in it being too thin or thick when rotated over sackboy's head and building it out of decorations didn't give me a good enough beam), but using this trick I'm got the neon light embedded halfway into the thick layer so it matches up with the handle. Oh cool! Yeah, I probably should've mentioned that you can glue these to things, but if you try selecting them then they will pop back into a normal layer and fuse together. Seems fine if you're really careful though.

2014-11-22 19:48:00 Author: KlawwTheClown Posts: 1106

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This is quite an interesting thing you discovered and thanks for sharing. I might give this a try if the thermo plays nice.

2014-11-24 05:28:00 Author: SirenScribble7189 Posts: 52

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I have a teeing weeny question. What does the follower do exactly? Just wondering.

2015-02-21 23:53:00 Author: Amigps Posts: 564

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I have a teeing weeny question. What does the follower do exactly? Just wondering. Making the material Static will cause the layer effect to not work, so you use a follower or an anti-grav tweaker to hold it in place. Followers have the bonus effect of being able to be moved around in playmode.

2015-02-22 02:00:00 Author: KlawwTheClown Posts: 1106

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