Garth Hugh, Lead Designer from Cambridge Studio, continues to fill us in on Sackboy's continued adventures on PSP!

PUZZLES!
By Gareth Hughes- Lead Designer

After having resolved an Egg based relationship issue in The Orient and freeing up The Emperor to attend the Carnival of Creators, Sackboy jets off on Dragon Airlines for an exciting new destination.

Word has it that a creative Genie-ous is to be found in The Bazaar, a place renown for its architectural beauty, fantastic markets and crazy carpets!

On arriving at The Bazaar, Sackboy witnesses a scene of brazen simian stealing; a notorious Monkey Thief snatching the Sultan’s lamp. Not just any lamp, but a lamp that happens to be home to the Curator Creator of the realm, the Genie!

After a sack-race through the Sultan’s Palace grounds, the Monkey Thief gives Sackboy the slip and button-holes up in the Thieves Den, a place of puzzles, traps and some rather fetching curtains!

Now, Thieves’ Dens aren’t the easiest of places to get into, but with a bit of thought and a Pizza based distraction, Sackboy manages to sneak in and track down the Monkey Thief. Following a rather fun game of Grab and Swing, Sackboy proves a worthy adversary and retrieves the stolen lamp, setting the Genie free!


As a reward for putting an end to all the recent monkey business, the Genie furnishes Sackboy with a rather more portable version of the lamp, in sticker form. This sticker will prove to be a very useful addition to Sackboy’s puzzle solving Popit.


Returning the lamp to the Sultan proves no easy task, but with a little help from the Genie and his magic carpet, Sackboy makes it back to the palace in good time. Delighted to have his lamp back, the Sultan grants Sackboy’s wish and allows the Genie to attend the Carnival!


Hitching a carpet ride to the next location on his Curator Creator gathering quest, Sackboy touches down on Golden Sands.

Prince Funubis, the Curator Creator of this sandy space, is having some camel related complications and is in need of some Hessian based help!

After lending Prince Funubis a hand to drive his camel train across the scorching desert, Sackboy is employed at the docks to sort and transport cargo destined for the Prince’s latest, spectacular project. This is no easy task; Sackboy will need to put on his thinking cap in order to operate the lifting, sorting and carrying machines.


Can Sackboy help Prince Funubis finish his project? I’ve heard there are some health and safety issues that need ironing out like a particularly stubborn crease! More entries to come!  Stay tuned!

The next LBP PSP Diary entry from the creative folks at Cambridge Studio.

What Makes LittleBigPlanet Tick
Jon Torrens - Designer

What's unique about LBP is that all the behind-the-scenes machines that make the game work are actually created using the tools available to players in edit mode, and are in the level somewhere (just not where you can see them). For example, in the mini-games we have things that have to get faster and faster, like the giant wheel you run on in the China mini-game. The best way for us to do this is to have a little vehicle that moves slowly towards a switch that uses the speed setting. Need something to happen faster? We just speed up the motor bolts on the vehicle. Need something to happen halfway through the game? Stick a magnetic key on the vehicle and a magnetic key switch on its track. The brilliant thing about this is that you have a really simple diagram of what happens in the game. You don't have to think 'Well, the time for the wheel to reach top speed is 90 seconds, and I want the player to have to deal with bombs at increasing amounts, so I'll put bombs dropping on the player at 40, 70, 85 and 90 seconds, you can just place key switches along the track.

A technique we used for repeating sequences was simply having a big disc with a magnetic key on it that rotated past magnetic key switches on a static block behind it. We could move the magnetic key switches into any sequence without having to calculate the exact values required, and to change the overall speed of the sequence we just changed the speed of the motor bolt that made the disc rotate. This might sound technical, but if you're making a slightly more sophisticated level - like, for example, one with emitting blocks that Sackboy has to run across, or a series of sound effects that plays a tune - then comfort yourself with the knowledge that you have exactly the same tools that we had, and with which we managed to make all those lovely story levels you've been playing. Okay, there are quite a few of us, and we had a fair amount of time, but it's all there for you to use. Aren't we generous?

 

Hey LBP'ers!  Wondering what new adventures are in store for Sackboy on the PSP? Check out this sneak peek from Cambridge Studio!

Sackboy's next adventure!
By Gareth Hughes- Lead Designer

Having completed his PS3 adventure, Sackboy thought it was about time he took a well deserved holiday. Even a Sack person needs a bit of relaxation time!

Having visited so many wondrous locations across the LittleBigPlanet already, Sackboy decided it was time to go portable and experience a Walkabout. What better way to unwind his threads than the piece and quiet of Down Under.

After a warm and fuzzy welcome from the locals, it was time to head out into the Outback. Oh my, So much to see and do! A veritable fabric based feast of new Stickers, Costumes and Materials.

Sackboy’s Walkabout had not gone unnoticed! Impressed with Sackboy’s exemplarily, exploratory endeavours, the Mystic summoned Sackboy to the Cave of Dreams. A place no LittleBigPlanetian should miss visiting!

Exploring deep into the cave, Sackboy was soon having a great time swinging through ancient caverns, solving devious puzzles and bagging himself plenty of new Prizes. However, this was no time for such silken shenanigans! A hop skip and a jump later, Sackboy was before the Mystic.


The mystical events that followed this meeting are now the stuffing of legends, best you experience this yourself when you visit LittleBigPlanet on the PSP.

What’s that, don’t leave you hanging?

Oh very well, perhaps there are a few more threads of this story that I can weave together for you!  After being shown a wonderful vision known as the Dreamtime, it was revealed that a new quest awaited Sackboy; to make sure that all the Creator Curators can attend the upcoming Carnival of Creators!


The first of the Creator Curators to be invited is the Emperor of The Orient; a pint sized Pima-Donna who is having trouble with a fire breathing behemoth.  Can Sackboy free the Emperor from this unwanted distraction and get him to attend the Carnival? That’s a question only a PSP owning player such as you can answer!

 

Excited about LBP PSP?  Check out new LBP PSP Diary entries from our friends at Cambridge Studio.

Prize Possessions - Getting Gifts From LittleBigPlanet
by Jon Torrens - Designer

In LittleBigPlanet, there are lots of score bubbles, and then there are PRIZE bubbles. Now, these prize-filled popping spheres - as well as giving you fifty points instead of the score bubble's measly ten - each contain something special. Burst one of these shiny beauties and you might get a sticker, costume, character, music, background, an object such as a lemon or a boomerang, or even a vehicle to place in your levels. Prize bubbles are scattered throughout each level; some are easy to find, and others not quite so easy. And that's not all: when you reach the scoreboard, as well as seeing your score, you get prizes for finishing the level. If you get there without dying, then here you go, more prizes. And if you collect all the prize bubbles in a level, do you know what you get? That's right, even more prizes. Altogether in LittleBigPlanet on the PSP there are several hundred cool things to find, keep, and use however you like. My favourite's the flying saucer costume. Or possibly the rocket bike vehicle. Or the giant beach ball.

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Smash and Grab - The Physics of LittleBigPlanet

 

'Real physics'. The phrase makes a designer's face light up like a child who's just got a big noisy toy at Christmas, and a programmer hold his head in his hands like the parent who's going to have to deal with the following audio torture. LBP has real physics, which is fantastic for the player because it's a little bit like real life: that stack of objects you've built is going to fall apart in a clatter of unpredictability. However, it's a nightmare for a programmer because it's a little bit like real life: that stack of objects you've built is going to fall apart in a clatter of unpredictability, and that's something that in a video game can cause some very nasty problems (or as we say in the technical lingo, make the game 'pop').

 

What LBP has managed to do is allow players to create all manner of amazing things without any problems (within reason. You've got a thermometer on the side of the screen that tells you how close you are to overloading the game and, basically, getting a little big for your physics boots). Make great piles of bricks, cylinders and stars. Or even better, add some collected objects - fruit, enemies, vehicles, bubbles, and then go into play mode and watch it fall, collide, crash and finally come to rest. Then go and get Sackboy to jump up and down on it a bit. Then throw some bombs into the mix. And then set up an emitter that chucks out more bombs. We did this sort of thing a lot when testing LBP, and trust me, it never gets old.

 

The big deal with LBP on the PSP is edit mode, which features a real physics system. It's a part of the game that you can actually play with indefinitely, and discover new things every time you do. Other games have a few objects that you can knock over, but LittleBigPlanet has a lot of them, all waiting to be smashed against each other. Have fun, and enjoy the physics. Please Note: No programmers were harmed in the making of this game. Well, not seriously hurt anyway, nothing that won’t heal...eventually.

 

Check out the latest LBP Diary from SCEE Cambridge's Martin Binfield, Senior Artist for LBP PSP...

"Covering up..."

So you're a little sack person, happily hopping your way through one of LittleBigPlanet's many wonderous environments when you suddenly realize that you're completely naked. Hey, that's cool dude! There are no rules here about covering up so if you want to be running free and easy, we can dig. But spare a thought for the poor costume designers who have slaved away over a hot costume-machine to create custom bits of designer kit with which to get done up like a cat's whisker.

They've taken it upon themselves to construct a pair of themed costumes for each of the Creators' domains on LittleBigPlanet - so when you visit Down Under you'll find a delightfully manly set of shorts, shirt, boots and hat (As with all the best forms of artistic expression, you are positively enouraged to wear a hat), or for the more feminine sack person there's a rather nifty set of glasses, necklace, dress, shoes handbag and, er, wig.

They have even furnished you with a myriad unthemed costume items which you can mix and match to create stunning new ensembles. So you think that hair would go with this dress and those boots? Go ahead! or this nose with that jacket? Mmm, that's suave! Or how about that sword, this bikini, that hair style, those pants, these eyes, that cape, those boots, this hat and that zebra tail? Well, sure, but I think it may be a bit much...

And those who like to surf on the cutting edge of fashion might like to keep their eyes on the preorder incentives and upcoming DLC packs because there's a whole new style coming. And who would say no to a Moon Buggy... or a tank?