I don’t have any pictures, but maybe I’ll get some later.
My concept for my latest LittleBigPlanet level was simple — a large mazework of iron girders, which you’d run through at high speed for awhile and then have to solve cute puzzles to proceed. The problem comes with the complexity meter.
This is a little red thermometer at the left of the screen that keeps track of the complexity of your level, similar to the one in SPORE. Once it fills, you’re done.
The same happens in miniature with the complexity of individual shapes. Every object you create from scratch starts out as various geometric primitives, which you then carve or combine with others to make objects — a process called Constructive Solid Geometry, or CSG. When dealing with something as massive as a maze, I’ve been bumping up against this time and again. I’ve dealt with it by carving the maze into large chunks, which let me get away with running secret tunnels through it.
Back to the complexity thermometer. I don’t know how the Media Molecule LBP levels get so incredibly complex. I started off with a puzzle where you use a rocket sled to push you through an area you can’t walk through. It’s a really complicated machine which rolls the sled back to its home after it crashes, so you can try again if you didn’t make it the first time. The barrier you are flung over is a complicated pile of machinery with a little spring-operated mechanism to keep it all from falling apart. Following that is another rocket sled to cross the bottom, which tosses you onto a piston-driven platform that flings you way up and deep into the maze.
This is the opening of the level, and once you know the course, you can get to this point in about fifteen seconds.
And that brought the complexity meter to about 20%. Adding the next puzzle — one where you have to jump on cushions being fired from a cannon to reach a high crawlway (and, if you keep going up, a secret passage) — and the beginnings of another — where you have to fling a balloon into an overhead opening in order to lower some stairs — brought me to 30%.
I’m really getting concerned that some of the set pieces I have yet to do — a cart race and my Dippy Bird area — will fill the meter. But what I’m doing just doesn’t seem as complicated as some of those MM levels. Plus, I still have to put the point bubbles, prize bubbles, NPCs who give puzzle hints, and the polish in. I left the entire back plane empty so I could fill it with stuff going on in the background, but my original designs of having giant pistons and gears going on in the back probably won’t happen.
My largest issue isn’t really an issue. But this is taking an incredibly long time. Doing level design with a PS3 controller and level after level of menus for everything is tedious to begin with. Having to deal with the physics engine for everything is also not as cool as it should be. I wanted to have flying fish swimming through one of the sections. Making flying fish was no problem, but putting the brains on them so they could be destroyed by the player weighed them down so much that they just ended up pinned to the ground and looking really pathetic.
I guess no design survives implementation.
I ran some more user-created levels to get inspiration. There’s a LOT of great designers out there.
I’ll be glad when I’m done this one. It’s been a real learning experience, but it does have some nice points. It’s big, so I can try different things, and it’s not based on anything, like an EQ dungeon, so it doesn’t have to make any sense. There’s no room for rocket sleds or pillow cannons in Befallen. But based on my experiences with the maze, Befallen will be a lot faster and more linear when I do get back to it. In retrospect, it was stupid to try and do Befallen as my first level. Especially since the dungeon itself has no specific goal. Dragons of Norrath missions would be way easier to rip off.
4 thoughts on “LittleBigPlanet level design issues”
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“I guess no design survives implementation. ”
This would make a fitting epitaph for the MMORPG industry someday, don’t you think?
It’s been true of every software project on which I have ever worked. It’s a real problem for the industry in general, and usually results from people not having a clear idea of what they were going to do heading in, and that’s certainly been true with LBP for me.
The best player-created LBP levels I have played have been either the very simple ones with a single concept, well executed, or really fast moving ones that throw one puzzle after another at you.
The best one I played, that I actually went back and played again, was a race that was called Ninja something, even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with ninjas. But it was fast paced, some of the puzzles were clever, and it flowed well.
There’s no way I can match Media Molecule’s levels — they probably spent weeks on each one, and had better tools, and developer support. But I think I can eventually make a level other people will have fun playing, even if it isn’t much like my original design.
Nice writeup.
I don’t have a PS3, but I’ve been wondering if LBP will actually be as popular as predicted because the level design seems to require some sophisticated planning and awareness of limits. There’s a big difference between players’ customization by mere selection (ala an MMO’s character customization) and customization by ordering, arrangement, sizing, etc.
Do you think level design in LBP will intimidate many players? Can it be overwhelming?
It is very simplified — no scripting aside from using their pre-scripted objects and the environment cues they use to move. No importing assets.
If your level idea ISN’T a Sackboy running around and jumping on things, LBP will not be your friend. You can make complicated machines in game, but it is not easy at all. LBP objects have bad failure modes — when it doesn’t like something, oftentimes parts of the object just poof without any clue as to what just happened. I’ve had complicated things become impossible to do. Eventually the game trains you — like the importance of using the grid tools and making artificial flattened surfaces with small areas to use as attachment points.
Making levels in LBP is a lot of work, and a lot of that is having to do creation in-game. The camera always seems to have a tough time looking at what you want to look at. When objects are glued together, it’s usually impossible to get them apart again without rewinding, which could undo changes you didn’t want to undo. Non-linear systems are wildly unpredictable. The frame rate of the game is unable to show intermediate frames of fast moving objects. Things get stuck to other things at mysterious times. Sometimes motors just stop working for awhile, then restart later. Sometimes objects with brains forget what they are doing and stop working, which usually requires rebuilding the object.
And there’s NO WAY of taking a picture in the game and getting it OUT of the game that I have found.
As an introduction to level design, I think it’s decent. Pro designers will likely have little trouble. New designers, like me, are gonna have to go through a learning curve, and that’s that.