[PS3] LittleBigPlanet 2

[deathindustrial]

I'd say Sony should make QR code standard for PS3. I should not need to type in promo-codes. They should be able to encode special deals and virtual items in events and print advertisement with QR code or barcode.

Off topic but this seems like it could be a nice vector for brute forcing the entire promo-code space. A lot easier to have your netbook iterate through all possible codes in front of the ps-eye instead of having to manually type them out (or rigging up some keyboard data emulator).

Cheers

 

[patsu]

For public promo codes, it will be "available to all while stock lasts" anyway.

For secret promo codes, use it with caution. You can introduce delay, limits, and user confirmation to chop up the process.

For book's ISBN numbers or product IPC code, it would be more fun when Amazon made their catalog available online.


I wonder if you can defeat simple facial recognition and voice print login someday.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I see, guess it's a pretty smart design decision by MM then since they could have just gone with any other conventional way of rendering.

Alex was working on this lighting method before Media Molecule existed. He and Mark and whoever else were probably looking for an opportunity to creating something that uses it, which perhaps is why their prototype for their creator platformer was 2D; that had this in mind.

Shifty, what exactly are the advantages of irradiance slices ?

It looks flippin' amazing!

What makes it different and how ?

It's a rough approximation of volumetric GI, so you get ambient occlusion shadows per object, convincing soft lights, and light bleed that actually looks as if it's secondary reflection. The end result is very natural. Faster GPU's could work with higher resolution slices and produce even better results, though I'm curious what advancements MM have found with the same hardware now they're on version 2 (at least( of the lighting algorithm.

 

[patsu]

More details in the Edge article:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21217521&postcount=1865

I got my copy of Edge. There's actually a number of subtle but interesting revelations in there not yet reported, AFAIK. I'll just list them in no particular order of importance:

- "We've made a couple of tiny tweaks but there won't be anything instantly obvious", says Healey re. Sackboy's default controls

- Music for 'Tower of Woop' level is Deodato's rendition of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra

- Sackbots can be set to avoid danger, enabled (or disabled) to switch planes and jump, or be afraid of heights...all ways of binding them to specific areas.

- Edge says it's possible to spawn 20 or 30 sackbots in a level.

- Evans explains some changes more generally regarding thermometer "We're trying to allow a lot more of everything but it will crucially be a lot more balanced. Before you'd hit your switch limit and you'd be done because it had a limit. Now we trade memory and CPU - lots of sackbots are fine, you just have to skimp elsewhere."

- To answer a question I had about Sackbot behaviour, sackbots can have one behaviour set...

- ... or on a more intermediate level can be set to switch between preset behaviours e.g. benignly patrols until player nears, whereupon they can electrify and chase after them...

- ... or on a more advanced level can be controlled by microchips which house existing types of logic, and new types of gadget to ease creation of common electronic processes.

- Two of these new gadgets are mentioned: a randomiser ("I hope no one gets annoyed with the random gadget", says Healey. "People have spent ages making their random devices and now its a single object.")

- The other gadget suggested at in a picture caption is a gadget for 'control tweaks'; see below for a bit more on that, one suggested later seems to be a momentum control gadget.

- The disco scene uses the randomiser; 3 cameras with different properties and transitions are hooked up to a randomiser, leading to a pulsing series of shots. Camera transition options include cross-fade and zoom-fade.

- Matchmaking now tries to match you with players with similar taste in levels based on your stream etc.

- Someone asked if 'burning' would look better; it's one of a number of improvements they've made in the rendering. Evans says "Play the Darkness story level - same content, but fuck me it looks different" With the transparency changes they cannot guarantee 100% that all levels that use exploits will work properly.

- You can wire multiple sackbots/direct-seats to one controller if you want ("some to tilt, some to thumbsticks if you want"). Or multiple controllers to one sackbot.

- Some of the direct-seat vehicles Healey's made include a flying robot chicken with feet from which he's programmed sackbots to hang; a hairy caterpillar (the one viewed from top-down) that grows when it eats score bubbles, Snake-style; and the metallic fly with the laser gun.

- You can finesse handling as you wish; Edge notes that the fly handles with 'beautifully damped inertia'. Evans says "There are things you can attach to control momentum".

- You can limit the amount of time a player spends in a direct-seat, count the number of attempts made. Edge asks if a direct-seat controlled sackbot can enter a direct-seat. MM says they haven't tested that 'but yeah...'.

- Another camera option, for cutscenes, seems to be 'fade audio'.

- Browsing levels now seems to be via a list...when a level is highlighted, the creator's moon is shown in the background.

- They suggest that a class of player will emerge that everyone will want to follow in their stream...people with a knack of highlighting and finding great content. They say these people will be rewarded with 'community points'.

- You know those 'other new gadgets' MM won't reveal yet? Edge says it spied perhaps two of them in the pop-it: 'Magic Glove' and 'Bag'. I think I know what the latter does, at least...

- New filters added include x-ray, and 'vectorise' (e.g asteroids style outlines) These can be applied locally, to specific areas.

 

[Arwin]

What can I say? Sweeeeeet. :smile:

 

[JardeL]

30 sackbots? Damn, we need 2 more to complete the chess pieces. :smile:

 

[patsu]

Tentative (?) LBP2 box art:

This game. They need to make educational games on the platform. I can see "LittleBigPlanet ABC", "LittleBigPlanet Numbers", "LittleBigPlanet French", "LittleBigPlanet Math", blah...

I will buy them because I don't like my kid to sit too close to the PC when he plays educational titles there. I noticed that kids tend to sit closer and closer to the screen, with a bad posture. The PS Move controller should come in handy here for big screen tutoring.

Would be great if they support educators to make warez.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Have they fixed the floaty jumping ? It made me stop playing MM levels and instead Igorged upon user made levels as they tended to be less harsh in punishing slight offsets in my jumps !

 

[patsu]

I think they decide to keep it to maintain backward compatibility. The level creator may be able to tweak the controls for SackBots and SackBoy. Probably should wait for more info.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Also, Finding good levels was .........what can I say, not possible?(for me atleast, with limited time n all) The only way I could find good levels was by going to deepbrown's planet and chcking out his favourites !
I think there should be a monthly list of best levels this month or something , chosen by MM , so that atleast one gets to play some tried and tested good levels when one sits down to play. The community needs dev support to survive and propagate well.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Oh,BTW, I just loved the underwater level by Jardel(?) ! The boss fights were immensely satisfying. On a complete opposite was a TUBE level by someone where u just ride the train from ur hotel to the london airport, but it was very sweet and relaxing !
My prediction was that LBP was the Next big thing ! Bigger than Halos and CODs, I frnakly wonder why didn't it turn out that way ? It was the most fresh and long lasting self sustaining idea ever !

 

[patsu]

Yeah, the level hunting process is cumbersome and not fun. Easiest way is to find good levels on the web, and then try to search them in-game.

Don't miss out Quaz51's 15 square puzzle game.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

My prediction was that LBP was the Next big thing ! Bigger than Halos and CODs, I frnakly wonder why didn't it turn out that way ? It was the most fresh and long lasting self sustaining idea ever !

I think gameplay mechanics were the biggest culprit. And maybe the limits of cooperative creation and needing to playt the game a couple of hours to get enough good stuff to work with. They was quite a high entry barrier that deterred a lot fo folk I think.

And the finding levels. Especially in the early days where the most popular levels stayed on top which of course got them the most views which of course kept them on top. MM spoke of players who found the best stuff and became popular for that ability, like you are using deepbrown, but I don't know how big that was.

BTW MM have an account with their favourited levels and creators, but it wasn't publicised in LBP. Can't remember the name off hand.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I loved everything about LBP, but I didn't think the platforming controls were very good. They seemed a little unresponsive and floaty. I also really didn't enjoy the three planes of depth, and didn't think it worked very well. Really, if they tighten it up, the game will be incredibly good.

 

[tha_con]

I don't think the game needs to be tightened at all. It has it's own identity, and trying to forcibly make the game Mario is ridiculous, IMO. If people stop expecting Mario, then they'll learn the finer and more intricate properties in the LBP Platforming world.

 

[patsu]

The physics is what makes the game unique and open ended (e.g., run into an object, which topples and hit another one, so on and so forth). It's like our toy house in real life.

I think they should make SackBoy track the controller closely when it's a clean jump. Apply physics (on other objects) only when it comes in contact with them. I am sure they have playtested it since it's an obvious suggestion. Wonder if it will play funny.

 

[joker454]

I always assumed they made the controls floaty to make the game easier, since you get more time to respond and control your dude in the air, to make corrections basically. I think I prefer that for LBP because in a game like Mario you can jump on the enemy anywhere, whereas in LBP sometimes you have to jump on a specific part of an enemy, so the floaty controls let me control where I land better.

I'm not sure about having three planes of movement though, seems like two would be enough, and maybe would minimize a bit of confusion and getting stuck/trapped on some user made levels.

 

[Arwin]

I'm not sure about having three planes of movement though, seems like two would be enough, and maybe would minimize a bit of confusion and getting stuck/trapped on some user made levels.

LittleBigPlanet PSP actually only uses two planes, but I don't think that makes a very big difference. I think visual cues could actually help better. It was mentioned that 3D actually made a world of difference for LBP in that particularly seeing on what plane you were running was suddenly perfectly clear. I think there are definitely other cues that could help here.

But I also firmly believe that there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to the controls. There are definitely traditional platforming situations where this would come in handy, but also in the user defined levels it is going to help a lot. They mentioned in one of the interviews that now users can make the perfect double-jump, put it on a chip and give it to other people. That kind of thing alone is going to make a big difference in what is possible in user-defined levels (could be fun for a moon themed level to have reduced gravity), but obvioulsy also in the single player.

That said, LBP PSP certainly shows that designing levels with the strengths of the game in mind helps a lot too.

 

[patsu]

LBP2 preview:
http://www.gamepro.com/article/previews/215146/littlebigplanet-2-preview/

As expected, they moved the Internet integration and publishing feature to LBP2.

Evans then turned his attention to LittleBigPlanet 2's social integration. These may seem less exciting innovations than the new creation toys, but it's here that the game has to excel if it is going to connect the right people with the right content. The team at MM created a new website that provides a unique page for each player and level, along with a simple URL. Here, players can view each other's creations from any browser, and add them to their stream so they're ready to play next time they launch the game. As Evans puts it, "if you've spent all weekend creating a level, this stream provides an easy way for friends to hear about it -- it's a canvas to show off what you have created."

On AI:

Related to Sackbots are Circuit Boards, another new addition to LBP2. In addition to enabling creators to layout complex logic connections and then hide them away, Circuit Boards allow players to save that precious thermometer juice. No longer do creators have to conceal complex tangles of logic strings behind curtains, they simply pop them onto a Circuit board and hide them away. Circuit boards also form the brain of each Sackbot, and can be tweaked to achieve a specific behavior. Other objects can have a Chip attached, allowing access to a Circuit Board and its suite of behavioral programming. As Healy suggested, this enables expert creators to make "Artificial Intelligence chips for certain enemies or bosses and then share them with the community". It also makes it possible to run "navigation Artificial Intelligence challenges," where programmed Sackbots must navigate their way out of a maze unaided.

On [strike]gestures ?[/strike] recorded performances. They didn't elaborate on PS Move integration.

In his hands, using the standard LBP gesture controls, the Sackbot comes to life. What we don't realise though is that this performance has been recorded. And what's more, the Sackbot can now be asked to pull it out on demand.

To demonstrate fully, Pang creates a dance video set with multiple Sackbot's dressed in various garb performing his recorded dance, and with complete control of camera angle, zoom and depth of field. As he shows off his creation, Pang's understated tone gains more passion as he suggests that these performance and camera tools enable video creators to "take all that LittleBigPlanet 2 gives them and put it to use to tell stories and make movies".

The article also talks about LBP controls (Whether it should control like Mario or Sonic or none of the above)

 

[Billy Idol]

I don't think that the floaty jumping is the problem. I think that the physics of objects+the floaty jumping is the problem: when you jump on a platform, in LBP it typically moves and reacts on your impact...this makes jumping from this platform very difficult. When you are playing with a friend, the second one who jumps now has the problem that the platform moves, so it is even harder for him to jump!
Floaty jumping is not what I typically like, but I really think the problem is the combination with the reacting platform...