[PS3] LittleBigPlanet 2

Do they give you a common way to share modules (not entire level, just parts and components) ?

Aye, but it's the idea that excites people; which can be hard to come through in posts/videos too. It's like seeing the first "Hello World" program on the homebrew scene.

 

Just like LBP1 you can send people objects. You can stick logic on a block to share, so you can reuse other people's devices or compositions. just as you could LBP1, only you are sending compact little chips instead of scary monsters of pistons and proximity switches!

 

You're being harsh for a Beta test, where people are exploring what it can do and prototyping, and their creations are going to be wiped and unuseable. The creator could pour hours and hours into crafting something much better, but then it'd be destroyed, and they wouldn't be spending their time exploring other game types as well. Look at it for what it is and the potential it shows for the future, for those who are going to sink weeks of their life into creating their masterpieces. How's about a side-scrolling point-and-click adventure game, for example? Something I hadn't thought of until now, but thinking around the presentation of this shooter, it proves such a project is possible.

 

Yes, a Carnival or Gallery Shooter it is. Only missing element is the Move integration

 

I don't understand why MM stubbornly insists on floaty rather than precise controls.

 

I think the floaty jump may be tied to the dynamic physics. It is interesting in some levels (e.g., making SackBoy jump off a speeding train).

I think the Direct Control is a good sidestep for levels that need precision controls. I would like to see what MM does with the physics in their original levels.

 

MM won't be keeping the beta levels?

 

I'll note that I had died a couple of times due to the frsutrating jump. There's a great new level where pressing the Square button toggles platforms and doors open and closed, so you have to switch platform states mid-air. A few times the jump mechanics in that level saw me not jumping when I pressed the jump button (not tied to square button; that's the default physics in action). It's such a shame! So much in the LBP universe is right, but the underlying control hurts the players too frequently.

 

I've been saying this forever, and for some reason everyone continues to ignore me:

YOU CANNOT "FIX" THE JUMP WITHOUT BREAKING THE REST OF THE GAME.

It's just not going to happen, it is all built into the physics engine.

 

I'm not sure if you can get rid of Sackboys floaty physics using direct control. Not without taking away other movement controls. Sackbots have the same physics as Sackboy, and rebuilding all his movements with movers is either very complicated or impossible.

It's disappointing because it gets in the way of both playing and creating.

 

Well, we all know my stance, I disagree. Playing patiently and understanding the physics (basic physics) makes the game substantially easier to play. Sure, it'll slow down gameplay, but there is a lot to be said about understanding how a game works. It's not the best for accessibility, but that doesn't mean the game is unplayable or broken in anyway.

 

Even if you aren't going use Sackboy physics for jumping and such, because you want make a top-down game, the physics are still there and getting in your way. There is no off switch. Making something as simple as a top-down race game surprisingly difficult to create. All because you have to add logic to counteract gravity. There are several workarounds for it, but depending on how much you want to get rid all the negative side-effects and whatever else you'll want your vehicle to do, become increasingly complicated.

 

Huh ! Didn't know the Sackbots are also floaty. If so, a lot of fans will complain. The level creators will have to do more play testing with their levels as a result.

If this is the case, how realistic is it to expect Move integration in LBP2 ? Does it mean that Move pointer will be floaty as well ?

 

We don't ignore you; we just don't agree. I've responded several times to say you don't have to break the physics to change SB's behaviour. It's absolutely possible within the physics engine to have a more reliable, responsive jump.

Also, if you turn the gravity to zero, it highlights a fault with the landing response. SB will jump high, land, and then a moment later perform a little jump as if recoiling from the landing. Scale the gravity up a bit and this jump exists but smaller. I wondered if there was actually a tiny jump in normal condition, and if you press just at that point, that'd break your jump, but I couldn't deliberately recreate it in some testing. Inconclusive, but I remain suspcious!

That depends in some part on what you're trying to do. If you want inertia, it's a pig, but absolute stop/start motion is there for top-down. If you add a motion control with 100% dampening (100% of acceleration, so if acceleration is 60%, set dampening to 60%) then the object will ignore gravity altogether. At least, in direct motion. The joystick rotator seems a bit buggy to me. I incorporated it today into a Tanks concept, and found that moving down is faster than moving up, adding gravity. I set the tank to zero gravity I think. Still, shots fired are golf-balls with gravity to set to zero, bounce set to 100%, and they'll fire and bounce around the walls just as you'd expect.

Sadly the camera is broken so I couldn't actually play the level, and after wrestling with 2D view, had to abandon the movie camera and use a game camera which isn't as nice. And then I was struggling with an ammo system. The counter only has count-up, or count-down, but you can't increment and decrement. So once again, like LBP, to achieve what you want to needs a lot of thinking and jigging about with components to make the think you actually want! I am a bit surprised some of the choices from MM, as they've got these systems that they've opened up, but then have seemingly arbitrary limits on how they work where the idea of 'opened wide' points to some very obvious extras that are needed. Like having a counter or timer control feed an analogue signal out, rather than just triggering an on/off state!

Sackbots are in essence Sackboys, only configurable controls. You can connect direct-control input to a Sackbot via Remote Control. Direct control consists of a grey cube-like component. Stick it on a bit of scenery and it opens to a chair Sackboy sits in to drive. Stick it on a microchip and you can turn it into a receiver. The receiver will responded to any user input from a direct-control chair that's on the same wavelength. This means you don't need wires trailing from your control chair all around the level. When connected to a Sackbot, you can set it to override the Sackbot's AI, and the Sackbot then controls exactly like a Sackboy. You can then wire up the DS3 controls to other actions for the Sackbot or the level, but you cannot inherently change it's behavior away from a Sackboys. So addressing the jump issue, you could go funnily retro and have a linear upwards motion, but that's about it. I suppose you could have a teleport method instead, spawning a Sackbot and destroying the old one perhaps. If you want to control a different character, "Mr. Polystyrene Block", there's no impulse type motion component. Movement components apply a direct speed AFAICS. You could maybe apply a short (0.2 seconds), lowish power upwards thrust. Or go a bit extreme and apply a series of changing speeds, 0.1 seconds at 5 cm/s, 0.1 seconds at 4 cm/s, 0.1s at 3 cm/s. Or maybe fire one Movement control that applies a high speed for a fraction of a second, and then activate a different movement control that adds dampening.

Well, the thing is, if you have a vision for a type of behaviour, more often than not you'll need to experiment to find a way to implement it. That's why I'm suggesting that you don't go in with a vision, but instead play LBP2, play with the controls, and then see what's possible and build to its strengths. If jumping is what it is, work with that. Either create a level where jumps are simple, or create a grappling level where it's not an issue, or go with something that doesnt involve jumping and is more puzzle based. After the hours I spent on LBP1, this is definitely what I'm looking at doing. Just like real game developers, you don't really want to be solving tech problems, but actually thinking up ideas and putting them in.

 

Shifty - That's just a consequence of generally natural physics. Falling will have a recoil. There are RULES in LBP, most of which apply in reality as well.

I want you to jump, and then as soon as you hit the ground, jump again. You simply cannot. Objects that hit the ground have recoil, as every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Understanding basic physics goes a long way to actually being able to play LBP w/out any problems.

 

2 things tho:

1) These are the 1st gen of LBP2 games - they will improve
2) Thing is, LBP (and obviously moreso LBP2) gives the chance for people (like me) to "make games" - something I cannot otherwise do - the satisfaction and sense of achievement from making a half-decent "game" and having people leave positive feedback must not be ignored here - and imagine how many potential future stars are being born thanks to LBP giving kids this 'power'

 

From what I've read it's more likely complicated - however, it only takes one person to "crack the code" and share the knowledge and the snowball effect will happen

 

You're saying when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and jumped, standing perfectly still when landing, he spontaneously floated 3 foot into the air on landing?

NOT BECAUSE I'M LEVITATING 6 INCHES WHEN I TRY TO JUMP THE SECOND TIME!! That's a whole different issue, conservation of momentum.

Now I'll agree that MM have gone with a simulation of real-world limits, in that SB isn't made of rubber and can't jump full height without some preparation, so if you press jump too early after landing he'll not jump as high. However that's a wrong choice IMO. It's evident in the way people play the game that they don't expect it, and don't care to learn it, and get frustrated with it. The difference between stringing together a series of full height jumps and having a half-height jump in the middle is all of a frame or two - if the player presses the button a frame too early, they'll not get as high as expected. And if this is momentum based, then that recovery period will change with jumps from different heights or from jumps from moving platforms, making it incredibly hard to adapt to.

As the overall engine isn't based on real-world physics, as it supports things like floating platforms, no restitution in LBP1, disappearing materials, spontaneous creation and such, MM are perfectly positioned to change this aspect of reality to enable jumping that fits players' expectations instead of follwing Newtonian rules that don't make for the most fun experience. Or at the very least, if they are going to have unconventional gameplay physics, explain it in the friggin' tutorial! Get Stephen Fry to explain that poor little Sackboy needs a little rest between jumps and you can't expect him to bounce everywhere like a bouncy ball, to educate the players instead of throwing them repeatedly against a brick wall until they either get it knocked into them or give up trying! That's plain bad game design. Games are supposed to be fun. If there is an element that isn't fun for the people who bought your game, you missed a trick.

 

I've just fired up LBP2 to try some stuff out. The good news is that Sackbot animates according to whatever motions you apply, so if you stick a Mover on him with a movement right, he'll animate a run cycle right. And if you apply an upwards movement, he'll jump. I tried an upwards impulse on a timer, and that makes him jump. However, this upwards force is in addition to Sackbot's natural jump, so I couldn't replace the jump mechanics completely. And most disconcerting, you could of course press the jump mid-air to have SBt take a mid-air leap! Stick some wings on him and you have an excellent Icarus and Deadulus game in the making, but to replace SBt's jump, you'd need to limit input to a condition of being in contact with a ground, and I can't see a way to do that. Impact sensors aren't limited to direction AFAIK, and only record an impact, not a contact, so even if you had a reset jump on landing, if SBt lands on a disappearing platform, he'd be able to jump in mid air.

 

Nicely done