The LittleBigPlanet experience starts with players learning about their character's powers to interact physically with the environment. There are obstacles to explore, bits and pieces to collect and puzzles to solve – requiring a combination of brains and collaborative teamwork. As players begin to explore, their creative skills will grow and they will be ready to start creating and modifying their surroundings – the first step to sharing them with the whole community. Creativity is part of the gameplay experience and playing is part of the creative experience. Players can make their world as open or as secretive to explore as they like. When it's ready, they can invite anyone within the LittleBigPlanet community to come and explore their patch -- or can go and explore everybody else's.
News:
October 9th, '07 - *New* Info. on Enemies - There is not a health system, but there will be ways to die.
September 20th, '07 - "...although Evans was non-commital on a release date, he did mention that there were plans for a slow roll-out of a public beta this year starting, jokingly, with his mother and expanding bit by bit from there."
September 20th, '07 - The scoring system is shown. Players can add gates to their levels. Once a player goes through the first gate, the score starts counting down. Once you get through the second gate, the countdown stops, and you are rewarded with the amount of points that are left over.
September 20th, '07 - "Sponge" has been replaced by "Fluff." The more you collect in a level, the more points you get.
August 24th, '07 - "You can choose from gears that move either left or right."
July 27th, '07 - "There are a lot of materials to work with, ones that we don't even expect. We've only seen a hint of what's to come," according to Wilson.
July 27th, '07 - The GDC stage demo they showed was nothing compared to what you're able to create in the game. They didn't even use a fraction of the tools available to them, and it's possible to create a slew of multiple paths and exits. He confirmed that there are numerous search/filter functions, allowing you to find levels easier.
July 27th, '07 - Enemies Confirmed.
General Information:
-Console: PlayStation 3
-Media: Blu-Ray Disc (Rumor: PS Store Download)
-Price: Blu-Ray Disc: $59.99 (unconfirmed)
-Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
-Developed by: Media Molecule
-Genre: awesome cool
-Release Date: 2008
-Players: 1-4 (Online 1- cool
-http://www.mediamolecule.com/games.html (Official Website)
Overview:
The LittleBigPlanet experience starts with players learning about their character’s powers to interact physically with the environment. There are obstacles to explore, bits and pieces to collect and puzzles to solve – requiring a combination of brains and collaborative teamwork.
As players begin to explore, their creative skills will grow and they will be ready to start creating and modifying their surroundings – the first step to sharing them with the whole community.
Creativity is part of the gameplay experience and playing is part of the creative experience. Players can make their world as open or as secretive to explore as they like. When it's ready, they can invite anyone within the LittleBigPlanet community to come and explore their patch -- or can go and explore everybody else's.
This genre-busting PS3 offering is turning with its quirky ragdoll, unique patchwork visual style, and revolutionary approach to level design. While you and three friends can simply tussle and hop through premade 2D stages, the game's true appeal lies in the ability to design and share your own levels.
The goal with the game is to have users creating tons of new content that will continue to keep the game active long after release. Sony has confirmed that there will be a group of set levels ready to play out of the box -- and even a single-player offline mode for those who don't want to experiment with the community ideas and simply want to play it like they would a traditional platformer.
There are plenty of questions remaining about LittleBigPlanet -- such as how involved the single-player/story experience will be, if there will be more to the gameplay than presenting levels for players to get from the beginning to the end, and just how far the game's community elements will go -- but it's clear from the reaction to the game so far that it has already won over many fans.
Characters:
Affectionately dubbed as "Sackboy" (or "Sackgirl" ) by Media Molecule developers; they're tiny little creatures that are able to run around the world's horizontally scrolling levels of the game, overcoming obstacles as they go. Using the controller, you're able to move your Sackboy around the levels, jump by pressing the X button, or grab onto items (or other Sackfolks) by pressing R1. Simple controls combine with cute design to make Sackboys adorable right from the get-go.
The enemies will range from little robots that simply roam from left to right to spectacularly complex beasts that pose quite a challenge. We've recently built this big, huge giant, and, as with other objects in the game, he's composed entirely of materials that you wouldn't expect. He's quite intimidating, and shows the possibility of what designers can create.
By default, Sackboy is made out of a drab, brown burlap material, but you'll have tons of ways to customize your personal Sackboy on the fly. By pressing the square button you bring up a menu where you can choose from different heads, body materials, and accessories. With just a few clicks of the X button, we were able to outfit our Sackboy with a fancy top hat, a superhero cape, a dandy Wyatt Earp moustache, and a pirate's hook hand.
Performing all of the standard actions is quite simple, though moving between multiple 2D planes -- such as jumping from one block to a block technically behind it -- will take a little getting used to.
You may remember seeing one character slapping another in the GDC video. This is actually accomplished by holding down the R2 button -- giving you full movement of the character's arms with the analog control sticks -- and then performing the actual motion of slapping someone else with one of the analog sticks.
Each button on the direction pad represents an emotion for your character (up = happy, down = angry, and so on), and interacting with others in different states of emotion will offer unique results. Two happy characters will high-five, for instance, whereas they wouldn't if one were unhappy. You can also tilt the Sixaxis to control your character's head movement -- it's fun, but actually easy to forget about.
None of this is fundamental to the core gameplay -- it's just there for deeper, and funnier, character interaction. And it seems like the type of stuff that will become second nature with play.
Creation:
Creation couldn't be simpler: You and up to three pals all hop into an expansive 2D stage (although most levels feature three distinct planes) and start designing the layout in real time. The E3 demo allowed you to swap between five different stage backdrops on the fly -- the quaint English Garden (that's the one the GDC level used), a sun-parched desert, a spooky graveyard, a relaxing Zen garden, and a stark, THX 1138-style blank slate for you uppity avant-garde types.
How does the creation system work? Pretty easily actually. Once a player has decided to manufacture something, they simply need to tap the square button and bring up the onscreen menu. Once the HUD is active, users can then scroll through a series of material and item types and pick the things they want to work with. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of pieces to scroll through, but they're themed to the selected backdrop.
Once players have selected their background and item types, the creation process begins. Each object is entirely physics-based too; so if a ball falls from the sky and lands on a hardwood floor then it will react just as it should (as will all objects). Once users have chosen what they need, they can further customize them by adding stickers, changing their position, or erasing parts of these objects entirely. Players can even put items together to create new working contraptions -- cars, carts, you name it. You can place as many objects as you like in the world.
In addition to the huge number of stickers that will be available when the game is released, players will be able to upload their own designs to their sticker albums for use on any object they create in the game. The game is even smart enough to have stickers wrap around 3D objects in an intelligent manner.
The E3 demo of the game featured a good number of items to create including sponge-like squares, woven bowls, and chili peppers as well as a huge host of simple objects made of metal, wood, and various cloth materials. Developers are promising many more shapes and objects to build with in the final build of the game, as well as downloadable content in the future.
These simple objects can easily turn into quite complex ones with the help of some simple helper parts and tools that greatly expand the depth of creation in the game. For instance, creating an object on the outside edge of another will cause them to merge when you finish their summoning, resulting in a shape that is the combined result of the two basic forms. As an example, the two Media Molecule developers quickly created a wooden snowman-like construct using only resized circles--you can resize and twist shapes in the world before you summon them by manipulating the right stick.
Other tools in the game include a simple bolt that will help you mechanically attach one object to another, glue splats you can place in order to stick two parts together, and cogs which add movement to your object. To demonstrate, the developers created a working wooden tank from several precut wooden shapes and what looked to be yarn spools. After gluing the main part of the tank's body together, the developers attached bolts to the yarn spools and then stuck those on the tank body to create a working tread. It's important to note that multiple players can work on the same object (or create separately) at the same time in LBP--indeed, both developers were busy constructing their own individual parts of the vehicle. The whole process took maybe two minutes and, after it was done, the two Sackboys were able to ride on the rolling tank; they even added some decorative stickers for added flair.
Another cool tool at your disposal is a "cut" tool that will let you remove sections of any object in the game. The cut tool comes in several shapes--square, circle, and triangle--and just like a "real" object, you can manipulate the size of a cut shape in order to remove exactly what you want. An easy example of the cut tool was a huge wooden block, which the developers sliced sections from, in order to create a makeshift staircase that the Sackboys could then climb to progress through the level. In our experimentation, we noticed that when cutting a hole in the middle of a fabric object, the game will intelligently "stitch" the remaining fabric around the new hole.
You'll be able to move objects into the foreground, center, or background of the level. For example, if you wanted to add wheels on either side of a piece of wood, you could do so simply by making sure that one set of wheels was set to the opposite (that is, far) side of the wood. The depth of object placement is fixed in the world, and you can choose between preset distances by pressing the shoulder buttons on the Sixaxis controller.
So what do you use all of this customization for? The easy answer is just to mess around and have a good time. The more compelling answer is to create objects you can share with your friends. Any object you create can be sent to a friend, who can then add on or subtract from it, and send it on to someone else, essentially creating an endless cycle of creativity as the object moves around from player to player. Developers showed off a couple of examples of objects created by Media Molecule staff simply using the shapes and tools found in the demo build--standout examples included a huge lumbering, mechanical dinosaur, and an absolutely mind-blowing binary adding machine made out of wood.
The best thing about this entire process, though, is that you can build entire worlds populated with funny gadgets and obstacles in minutes. LittleBigPlanet is one of those rare examples of finding something that really is limited only by your imagination. Expect plenty of awards for this one in '08.
According to a Sony producer, someone fairly experienced with the game's level design tool could probably put together a level of the demo's size and complexity in a few hours.
Extra Notes:
-A Public Beta will be available this fall.
-A downloadable demo will be available late this year.
-4 players on one PS3, can play online with 4 players on another PS3.
-Players can create levels that are "miles" high.
-There is no set limit on the amount of objects a player can place into a level.
-Players can unlock new material by playing pre-made and user-created levels.
-Downloadable content will be available.
-LittleBigPlanet wins Best Original Game for the 2007 Game Critics Awards.
-"We've still got loads of cool stuff to show off, LBP still has some secrets up its sleeve," says Alex Evans.
-You can choose which direction you want the gears to spin.
-There are 3 different depth levels. When creating objects, you can change the level and depth with the Sixaxis's shoulder buttons.
-The enemies are mostly built things.
-You can essentially create your own enemies.
-The enemies that will ship with the game will be more complex.
-The ways you beat them will typically be with physics and the environments.
-The game will have bosses as well.
-There is not a health system, but there will be ways to die.
Kratos Sackboy...
Other possible charecters with default items...
Creations/Levels
This link will take you to the YouTube channel that has all the LBP videos you can see...
http://www.youtube.com/user/littlebigplanetvids?ob=4
