SPEED CREATE by Mnniska

A new fan-created video series called SpeedCreate. Love the new approach and helpful tips/ideas passed along to the rest of us.

Thanks!

LittleBigPodcast – Episode 156 and Muppets DLC

Thanks for keeping us updated on the latest!

Speaking of the Muppets, the new DLC is available NOW! Here’s a look at the trailer…

Make sure to pick up the level pack to gain access to new levels, stickers, sounds and a cool new tool! Also it includes the Rowlf the Dog costume, my personal favourite Muppet… who’s yours?

The 2011 Sackies – Nominations Needed!

With the Golden Globes behind us and the Oscars coming up soon, awards season now here in full force, so it’s time for our own special LBP awards, called The Sackies – and we need your help. Check out how you can help nominate the best levels out there via LBP.me – just find the level and look for the special Sackies nomination feature at the top of each level. Nominations will be closed on Feb 6th, and then voting will begin and go until Feb 20th with winners scheduled to be announced the week after. So, nominate your favourite levels now!

Sackboy takes an award Home

Speaking of awards, last month Sackboy won the best PlayStation Home Companion of 2011 award over at Alphazone4. Almost 1000 people voted and Sackboy came out top so we just want to thank everyone who took the time, we hope he continues to entertain.

Other LBP News…

LBPCentral Community Spotlight Episode 76

Thanks for the round-up. This episode highlights a handful of new games uploaded recently:

• InterKinetic
• The Hollows of Thronwood Thicket
• Super Special Awesome Christmas Level
• A Christmas Tale: Santa ClaWs is Jelly
• Escape from the Mines!
• Sealed Fate – Chapter 1
• Aeon Quest
• El Guero’s Disembodied Genius
• The Cillian Saga part 2
• The Ruins of Kalahr

Exciting Times at Media Molecule

• Happy belated Birthday to Mm (Jan 4th) – click on over to the Communities’ B-DAY card and add your own special message to Mm

• Mm Podcast 15 – New Year’s Resolutions

…More Thank Yous…

And a special thanks to everyone in the community that act as our eyes and ears on the interwebs for the rest of the community to enjoy, including LittleBigLand, LBP2Blog, LittleBigPicks, RocketCheetah, and many many more!

Vita Rooms

With the PlayStation Vita launching next month we’ll be holding an event in London from the 17th through to the 23rd to allow everyone a chance to get some hands-on time with the lovely new device. Oh yeah and LBP will be there! Sign up on the PlayStation Access Facebook page to keep up to date and apply for an invite to the VIP night.

We’ve been running similar events in Manchester and Glasgow over the last couple of weeks and they’ve been great, we’ve really enjoyed meeting everyone and showing off the game. Hope to see even more fans at the London event.

In 2009, we ran a series of awards to highlight the best of the best amongst the LittleBigPlanet community. These awards were dubbed The Sackies, and recognised Players, Creators and Sharers alike. Over two years later, I’m proud to announce that The Sackies have returned.

A key part of The Sackies is highlighting different elements of creativity within the community, and so we have identified some key categories for levels to fall into, categories such as best use of story, best multiplayer, and best use of sound.

With nearly six million levels to pick through, we’ve decided to hand over the reins to you, the community,  to pick the levels and Creators who should win some of these prestigious awards. If you head to our community portal LBP.me and sign in, you can nominate 100 levels for each of the categories. The option to Nominate can be found on every level and creator page.

After a few weeks we will identify the top levels in each category, and everyone will get one vote to decide the overall winners!

Previous winners of The Sackies have gone on to find fame and fortune, and some even jobs within the industry. For the rest of us, we found great levels to play and inspire us; who’s to say what we might find this time?

Get nominating people!

To celebrate the launch of Assassin’s Creed Revelations this month we’ve gotten together with our friends over at Ubisoft to bring the legendary assassin Ezio Auditore back to LittleBigPlanet.

The Old Ezio costume comes with a selection of stickers to help build some cool levels and the whole package will be available from the 16th of November on PSN.

If you want to know more about Assassin’s Creed Revelations and the world of Ezio then check out site:www.assassinscreed.com

You can also download this killer wallpaper while you wait!

Available in multiple formats (including PlayStation Vita!) here

Tomorrow is going to be and an epic day!  The LittleBigPlanet 2 Move Pack will be available on the PlayStation Store with tomorrow’s store refresh.  The amazing downloadable pack includes tons of new gadgets and tools, giving you the power to CREATE awesome new levels for your Move controller (this eventually means tons of free user-generated “Move” games available to everyone for free).  But most importantly, the Move Pack contains an epic new storyline titled “Rise of the Cakeling”

The LittleBigPlanet 2: Rise of the Cakeling Move Pack (add-on) will be available for €7.99 in Europe.  Note – you must have LittleBigPlanet 2 to play.

What’s New

With LittleBigPlanet making its way to the PlayStation Vita, we have lots to more features to share.  Stay tuned as we highlight different features over the next few months, but for now, check out this online interview with one of the members of Tarsier Studios.

Community Corner

Our epic community continues to wow us with new games/levels.  Check out some nuggets that we found over the weekend.  As always, thanks to our creative creators for sharing these games (and fans that record these and post in the interwebs…)

Epic sidescrolling shooter: Great work PSYNTENS!

1.06 update goodness! – BludgaBoy’s tutorial on new features within the update.

LittleBigPodcast: Episode 137 - Our “forever fans” are still at it with a new podcast.  Can’t believe you guys are on #137!  Epic WIN!

Question of the week: What’s your favourite Pop-it tool? (respond in the comments below)

Four million – or more exactly, 4,141,742 at the moment I’m writing this. Wow. If you played LBP solidly, 12 hours a day, and only played each level for 5 minutes, it would take you *taps calculator frantically* more than 78 years to play through all of them. Phew.

Here’s an additional message to all of you from the folks over at Media Molecule…

For us the most exciting thing has always been seeing what the community does with a LittleBigPlanet game when they get their hands on the new features and tools. We’re constantly delighted – and amazed – by their ingenuity and creativity, and it’s so inspiring to see the level of affection that exists for LittleBigPlanet amongst fans around the world.

Contraption Challenge 13

Next news – the LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge has returned! If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about – the Contraption Challenge is a long-running series of tasks to test and reward the creativity of the LBP nation, ably coordinated by community members Nuclearfish and Chimpanzee and the Official PlayStation Community Team.

The challenge this time is to construct a working submarine – check out the full details on the official PlayStation Forums. The closing date is this Sunday, the 17th April, so there’s still time for you to get involved by submitting your own entry (although it might mean pulling a couple of all-nighters!). Alternatively, you could just check out some of the great submissions on lbp.me using this handy link.

If you only look at one thing this week, check out the teaser trailer for the new series of contraption challenges if you didn’t see if a couple of weeks ago – it’s all kinds of awesome.

Upcoming Downloadable Costumes

Finally, an update on some of the imminent downloadable goodness coming to LittleBigPlanet 2. Our next release on the PlayStation Store will be the Tron: Evolution Minipack, which will be released on 27th April at €2.99 / £2.39. In the pack you’ll get two brand new costumes, plus a batch of handy new stickers – here’s some shiny neon pics…

May will see the release of the Killzone 3 Minipack – and I couldn’t resist giving you a sneaky look at one of the two costumes from that pack, as I think it’s one of the coolest LBP costumes I’ve seen. Behold, the Hazmat Trooper…

Combine this together with the original Killzone costume kit (which is fully compatible with LittleBigPlanet 2, remember) and you’ll have all the tools to recreate the battle for Helghan down to the finest detail. With rather more sponge, of course.

For updates, follow @LBPContraptions on twitter or check out the LittleBigPlanet forum.

A few weeks back we told you all about our final LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge. Hundreds of entrants and death-inducing contraptions later – we have 5 finalists for you to check out!

The final stages of the Contraption Challenge require you, the PlayStation Community, to vote for your favourite contraption. To vote, you’ll need to head over to the Official PlayStation Community forums but before you do that you should check out the finalists’ levels in the video below.

Of course, if you’d rather play them in their entirety you can just boot up LittleBigPlanet and give them a try yourself. Check the video for the level names.

The competition is really tough this time around, so it’s important that as many of you vote as possible. The winner will receive a 46″ BRAVIA TV so choose carefully!

To submit your vote, head over to this thread on our forums. Once there, follow the instructions in the first post. You’ve got until Thursday 16th December to submit your vote, and we’ll be back here on the blog shortly after the vote ends to announce the winner!

It’s over to you!

Hello Sackfolk!

Our 12th, and final, LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge has arrived over at the Official PlayStation Community. To celebrate a whole 2 years of contraption creating madness, we’re offering you the chance to win a 46″ BRAVIA TV!

As the contraption challenges always result in utterly mad, sometimes outright bonkers creations being let loose on LittleBigPlanet; we figured that our final challenge deserves a suitably chaotic theme.

In CC12 – you’ll need to create a Sackboy Exterminator.

Your Exterminator could be anything! From a machine that chases Sackboy and destroys everything in its path, to an evil spaghetti-monster with multiple attack phases. Think of it as a boss or an enemy but without the need for Sackboy to fight back. The crazier and more original your idea, the better – but it should certainly inspire Sackboy to run like his little life depends on it.

To take part in our challenge, just troop on over to the Official PlayStation Community forums. There, you can find all the instructions you need to enter the competition. The challenge is open now, so get to it!

Oh, and Big news for Irish entrants! Courtesy of SCE Ireland, the top ten Irish entrants into LBP CC12 will be invited to join a separate competition in which you’ll create an Irish themed level. You’ll be invited to a live event in Ireland with PlayStation and Media Molecule, where your Irish level will be judged by the Media Molecule team. With a whole host of other goodies on offer at the live event and a chance to meet the team behind LittleBigPlanet, you really don’t want to miss this one.

Finally, don’t shed a tear – the LBP Contraption Challenges will be back again in LittleBigPlanet 2. Keep an eye on our forums for news!

You can also follow the LBP Contraption Challenges on Twitter, YouTube and even iTunes.

Good luck!

Hey, True Believers! Coming soon to the PlayStation Store will be a whole series of official Marvel comic Super Hero and Super Villain costumes for your Sackboys and Sackgirls. Starting July 7th and every other week following, we’ll introduce four different Marvel Costume Packs, each with five different costumes depicting Marvel’s mightiest Super Heroes and most dreaded Super Villains. Starting Monday, Marvel.com will unveil the glorious details for each costume. But for now, here’s the full list to let your imagination run wild…

• Captain America
• Daredevil
• Doctor Octopus
• Elektra
• Ghost Rider
• Green Goblin
• Hulk
• Invisible Woman
• Iron Man
• The Human Torch
• Magneto
• Mystique
• The Punisher
• Rogue
• Spider-Man
• Storm
• The Thing
• Thor
• Venom
• Wolverine

Plus, we’re also unveiling a spectacular Marvel Level Kit, which includes a four levels of adventure against the evil plans of Magneto. And of course, while you play through the levels, you’ll collect a huge assortment of Marvel-themed music , objects , materials , stickers , and a special “Rooftop” background to help you CREATE your own dastardly levels. Stay tuned to more details on the Marvel Level Kit next week. Till then…

Make mine Marvel.

– Andy Knowles, Designer

The final level. No pressure, then! To be honest this level was a bit of a headache. And not just a normal headache, but a big, fat headache, one of those ones that the ibuprofen doesn’t even take the edge off.

The main reason for this was that, like Jon’s submarine, the jump jet is effectively ‘floating’, and so can be really difficult to control. Now, Jon’s luckier than me because the sub’s supposed to be underwater, so moving really slowly is a good thing. Not for a jump jet though, eh? Oh no, something like that’s got to be moving pretty quickly. And we want it to have controls for four directions, not three (the sub is naturally buoyant). Four controls for one cockpit. Grrreat.

And another thing: the trouble with something as big as the jump jet being made to move at any speed greater than ‘quite slow’ is that you can’t see where you’re going. With the tank, for example, you can point the camera in front of it, and as long as Sackboy’s on-screen, everything’s fine. But the tank only needs to move forwards in its levels; the jet has to be able to go forwards, backwards, up, down, in fact it’s more than four directions because you can go diagonally as well.

The point is, I cracked it. The jet has a variable counter thrust when the player lets go of a control, making it stop quickly, so that you don’t fly into any of the hazards. The cockpit walls, floor and ceiling are all controls, meaning you just have to grab in the direction you want to move. The jet also gets locked into place whenever a magic mouth triggers making sure the player doesn’t fly off in a random direction while they read the text. The cameras are set up in the level (and not on the jet) so I know they’re always pointing in the right direction.

Okay, that’s my last development diary for the ‘Turbo! Pack’. We hope the insight into what we did was helpful to you. We’re looking forward to what you, the community, start doing with all these magnificent machines.

Enjoy!

‘Turbo! Pack’ Development Diary 12: ‘Plane Stupid’

– Sarah Hefford, Artist

Daga daga daga! If we’re perfectly honest, the jump jet caused us rather more problems than we would have liked. It’s such a cool vehicle though we struggled through, since we couldn’t bear to let it fall by the wayside. The plane itself again follows the military style from the last two levels, so you can now expand your domination of land and sea by taking control of the Little Big skies too!

As with all the other vehicles we designed what the jump jet looked like before we designed the level, because its capabilities really defined what sort of gameplay we could use. This one took a little more thought than most of the others however. The first major decision we made was to build the jet from a front-on perspective, whereas all the other vehicles (barring the pogostick) are portrayed from the side. This was because it had to be very balanced in order to have as much control over flight as possible – the solution to this was to make it symmetrical, and enclose Sackboy in a small space so that his weight wouldn’t upset the balance as he moved from side to side.

Originally it only took up two thin planes and one thick plane, but fairly early on we decided to make it use two thick planes and two thin planes, so that it had space for a cockpit that could be reached by running up the wings.

Recreating the jet out of 3D meshes was simple because the design was so dependent on its shape to start with that all we needed to do was give it a splash of colour. Actually this was probably the easiest part of the whole level! Did you know you can manually alter how big the bevel on a material is? Using the Corner Editor tool, move one point (one near a corner usually works best) really close to another and you should see the bevel get smaller. If it doesn’t work at first, try picking another point to move. Since our stickers only cover the front of an object, this is really useful for using stickers to disguise materials that have a noticeable bevel, such as dissolve, pink and peach floaty.

From an artistic point of view, the main problem that we’ve had while building this level is that the jump jet’s flight is blocked by objects in any plane except the front thin (unless they’re made of gas). In addition, we’ve had to be careful that there aren’t any weird nooks and crannies that the jet could get snagged on. To maintain the freedom of flying we’ve had to leave as much open space as possible without allowing you to wander off and get completely lost (eek!), whilst at the same time providing enough interestingly shaped landscape to let you know exactly where you are in the level. This means being really cunning with our materials in order to signpost the different areas of the level as much as possible, and the stickers have to be really punchy and stand out. As Andy said, headaches all round.

Since this is the last level in the ‘Turbo! Pack’ we won’t give too much more away. Those tricksy toy soldiers are up to something though, so expect big explosions and tons of destruction. Oh, and a nice happy ending.

Sam Dickinson, Designer

The Bridge Builder was a tricky proposition, because it had to be able to move around easily, but also create a bridge that the tank could cross (and the tank is a pretty weighty engine of destruction). Also, the gaps had to be big enough that the tank couldn’t just roll across them, and so the actual bridge emitting bit was getting a bit big and unwieldy. So we made bridge sections that cleverly expanded immediately after emitting. Not only is it useful, but it looks cool too!

We found that you can have fun emitting bridge sections while swinging the bridge emitting arm around. We also found that the bridge sections can get in the way, and that you can just emit lots on one gap to easily bridge it, so we limited number of bridge sections that can be emitted to one at a time.

The tank was good fun, but we decided that what we also wanted something that actually fires missiles. Technically (here comes the science bit), the tank fires projectiles, which aren’t self propelled, and we want missiles, that zoom towards their target rather than arcing towards them like a grenade (okay, not very scientific).

Making these guys actually go in the right direction was quite a challenge. Have a go yourself and you’ll see that quite a few factors come into play: what it’s made of, the angle it’s launched at, exactly where the rocket is attached, the power of the rocket, and the position of any explosives attached to them. Lots of fine tuning (and the invention of the microbomb) later, and it was done. Lovely.

‘Turbo! Pack’ Development Diary 10: ‘Tanks A Lot’

Jason Evans, Lead Artist

Aaaah more tanks and destruction. Spiffing stuff. Here the landscape of the level changes once more as we introduce the bridge builder and missile launcher. These vehicles are both built in the same style as the tank, so you can create a whole matching army assault force should you so wish.

A problem that we encountered however, is that if you want the vehicles to be able to run side by side you’re kind of limited to using stickers and the front thin plane for decoration. The vehicles in this level only take up two planes each (a thin plane and a thick plane), so they can drive past each other easily as long as the back and middle thin planes are kept free – we also use this handy tactic on the crane and cement mixer in the construction level (Construction Derby).

As previously mentioned, the military levels see the introduction of not one, not two, but eight (yes really!) different toy soldiers. Well OK, four different ones, in two different colours. We really love these little guys. In fact, we love them so much we stuck brains on them so that we could blow them up. Ka-boom indeed!

Whilst previous levels have been wholly based around using the vehicles, this level sets you loose to explore more on foot. Did you ever get a shiny new toy, and have more fun building a fort out of the box? We certainly did, and this “homemade” aspect was largely our inspiration for this level. The style is quite simple but very strong and effective, making great use of cardboard materials and some wicked new castle-themed stickers. We’ve also put our lovely fire effect to good use in order to make certain sections look like they’re smouldering away, again in combination with some cunning sticker usage.

To all this we’ve added a good spattering of 3D objects to pep things up – look out for some cunning secret areas to make sure you pick all the prize bubbles up! Rounding things off is a rather unusual boss that you have to defeat using the rather satisfying might of the missile launcher. We don’t want to give too much away however, so you’ll just have to believe us when we say it’s wheely good…

Gather round Sackfolk, and listen up, we have something to show you! Now sit down, take a deep breath, and look at this; it’s our brand new game, LittleBigPlanet 2!

Everyone here at Mm Towers is incredibly excited and proud to officially announce our new game. It’s been a long time in the making – a lot of hush-hush and knowing winks – but we’re incredibly excited to be lifting the veil at last, and showing you what we’ve been up to for the last year or two.

We simply can’t wait to tell you everything about it, there’s so many new tools and objects in here that will grant you ultimate creative power to build amazing things, not just vastly improved levels, but entire games too – you’ll see!

We’ve also built a grand adventure of our own, using the very same tools you’ll have, and filled it up to the very brim with new characters, stickers, objects, things, wotsits and fluff, all spread generously across a set of themes that’ll take you all around the cosmos and back, as you try to save creator curators everywhere from a mysterious giant hoover-type thing!

There’ll be lots more info over coming months, but for now, why not sit back and watch this new trailer we’ve cut out and glued together especially for you! Check out the official announcement page to find out more!

Ah, the Submarine. We don’t have water in LittleBigPlanet PSP, so the submarine was going to be a very different challenge to the other vehicles, because it has to have an almost neutral buoyancy. Let’s put it this way, it took a lot of trial and error. The submarine is naturally buoyant, and sinks by emitting a metal block in its base.

Something I hadn’t realised is that all the gadgets have their own weight. Now, this only comes into play when you’re creating something that requires an exact amount of buoyancy to counter balance Sackboy’s weight. And sure enough, once I’d got the sub ‘floating’ just right, I needed to add the rockets, and they each had their own little mass which I had to allow for. Also, they have to be at the same height as the centre of gravity, so as not to rotate the submarine when they’re firing.

Another problem I had was that if Sackboy dies while in the submarine near the start, the submarine’s new version can’t be emitted because the old one’s in the way. Solution: when Sackboy’s absent (dying removes him from the level momentarily), metal blocks are emitted inside the submarine to make it nice and heavy.

Useful Submarine facts:

1. The control platform only rises when there is a blue magnetic key near the conning tower.
2. The submarine hatch opens when Sackboy is near it. If Sackboy is on the control platform when it’s in its lowered position, he’s far enough away for it to close.

Try making your own submarine, with some torpedo launchers and more powerful rockets.

Next, it was the tank; probably the most fun you can have that doesn’t involve cake (we like cake). Unless you’re blowing up a cake with a tank, I suppose.

Anyway, we needed a rolling machine of awesome destructive power, and all was going well until we realised two things:

1. Our impact shockbombs are a bit big to put on a tank missile, and are very powerful (they can push objects around a lot when they go off).
2. Caterpillar tracks are ridiculously intensive on the game’s physics and can affect the game’s frame rate. It’s not that they can’t be done, but we want to fill our levels with lovely stuff, and they just weren’t important enough.

So we decided to do the following:

1. Invent microbombs! These puppies pack the same lethal punch as the impact shockbomb – they’ll kill Sackboy or any unprotected creature brain within range – but they won’t push objects around at all. They’re small, red and we love them. Ka-boom!
2. Forget about caterpillar tracks.

We really enjoy that moment when you bring the tank’s gun turret down to bear on a helpless character/creature. Complete the ‘Sub Standard’ level to get the tank and the submarine. To get all the blue toy soldiers, you’ll need to ace the level and collect all the prize bubbles.

A submarine and a tank – great work. What’s next on the list? Something that makes bridges? We’ll look at how we got on with that next time.

‘Turbo! Pack’ Development Diary 8: ‘Sub Standard’ – Jason Evans, Lead Artist

Whist our previous levels take place on shelves and tabletops, we now begin to venture into the unknown realms of the carpet and the vehicles (and characters) enter a new, military-based style. Did we hear someone say “toy soldiers”? Hooah!

But first, the submarine. Does anyone smell something fishy? Alas, as you may have noticed, we don’t have water – but we think we’ve done a pretty awesome job of creating an aquatic environment. We’ve made a couple of materials specifically for the purpose, including a cool purple Coral and some funky neon Pink Gravel – you’ll find these under the “Stone” category in your Popit.

To create a sense of depth, fade stickers are particularly useful. We put them on top of the new water plant stickers that we’ve made, to create the illusion that they are far away in the murky depths. The submarine itself works very well considering the difficulties that the design team faced, and again we’re providing you with all its separate components so that you can build your own version…or weird mutated version. We wanted it to look like a well-loved bath toy that had been used so much that the plastic had a rough, limescaley texture, so it’s quite unique. Out of all the vehicles that we’ve made so far it really stands out because it looks so fun and playful.

The tank was kind of the basis for all our military vehicles, and the style we aimed for here was that of durable toys that were good and solid. The design team had done a really great job building the basic vehicle, so all that was needed was to add a little colour and detail to the overall shape. Since unfortunately we couldn’t use caterpillar tracks (they do work though – try it!), we’ve gone for nice chunky wheels that we’re sure you can find loads of uses for. Add to that some really bold shapes, an awesome camouflage metal material, and some bright yellow highlights and you Sir have a very fine looking tank!

Now where would we be if we couldn’t blow anything up with our lovely tank, hmm? Very sad Sackpeople indeed. Impact explosives won’t physically blow material up and leave a hole, and using dissolve everywhere can look kind of ugly because well, it’s only ever going to look green and stickered. But we’ll let you into a little secret – it’s amazing what you can do with an unprotected brain and an emitter! Add some linear and angular velocity to your emitted fragments for a proper explosion effect, and don’t forget to add some stickers to the blast hole to make it look nice and charred.

We’re not sure what you’d choose to blow up if you had an army of tanks, but personally we went for dolls houses. Don’t try this at home kids.

When I was young, my pogostick was one of my favourite things. When we came up with the list of vehicles for the this pack, we had mostly wheeled vehicles. I decided to just make the pogostick anyway, because I thought it would be fun to see what happened, And it worked!

It can be a little tricky for people to control to begin with, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be bouncing pretty long distances. Boing!

‘Turbo! Pack’ Development Diary 6: ‘Hopping Mad’ – Laura Dilloway, Artist

When Andy first handed this level over it was visualised a lot less clearly than the first two levels, and was literally made up of rubber blocks dictating where the floor and various objects should be! However the necessary parts of the level like the logic and basic landscape took up very little thermometer, and because of this we could pretty much go to town and add as many stickers, objects and materials as we wanted.

We really had a lot of fun doing the art for this level! This was made easier by the fact that there were only a couple of small design considerations that had to be taken into account. Firstly, that once you got into the pogostick there could be nothing in the back thick plane otherwise Sackboy would plane switch back out again (and where would the fun in that be?); and secondly that the pogostick worked better when the floor was rubber.

Like all our other vehicles, the pogostick itself is a 3D object. There was quite a lot of head-scratching over the design to start with because obviously if we made one that was realistically proportioned then it would be about half the height of your Sackperson. In other words, ridiculously tiny. We think our solution works pretty well however!

For something so simple, this level is a real success. It just goes to show that you don’t have to make something massively complicated for it to be fun! Remember though, that when decorating, less is sometimes more. Don’t go too crazy with your stickers and materials just because you can.

Now, what are you waiting for? Hop to it!

The first was the Forklift Truck. It worked exactly how we wanted, but unfortunately it was prone to falling over when lifting a heavy load. So what we did was attach some peach floaty material to each load, to make it a lot lighter and stop the forklift falling over. Just like in real life, the pallet was essential to allow loads to be lifted easily.

Next, we wanted to pick up some really big things. So we made the Crane, with a hook. Then we realised that it would be even cooler to be able to pick things up if they didn’t need something for the hook to attach to. So we made a claw attachment and now we can grab almost anything – as long as it’s not gigantic! THEN we thought it would be great to make something which would allow Sackboy to reach new areas and move things around with him, so we made the platform attachment. Finally, we wanted something to act as a wrecking ball (because we just couldn’t resist a little tiny bit of smashing things up), and had lots of fun attaching random objects to the crane arm with a winch, like wheels from other vehicles, toy soldiers etc. So we thought we’d leave you to do the same.

We love cement mixers, and had quite a time making one that:

1.) Sackboy could get into easily.

2.) Could lay cement.

3.) Looked like a cement mixer.

But we cracked it. The cement mixer’s probably the largest vehicle in the entire pack, with wheels that are about twice the size of Sackboy himself. The Monster Truck doesn’t even come close!

Okay, we can pick things up and move them around, but what about using a smaller vehicle? It’s bulldozer time. But this is no ordinary bulldozer. What we really needed was to be able to move things around and then put them behind the bulldozer itself. Now, real bulldozers can’t do that, but in LittleBigPlanet, pretty much anything is possible, right? This bulldozer can raise its blade right over and tip things out behind it. Problem solved!

So there you have it: how we made all the vehicles for our construction site level. Next time, I think we’ll do something silly.

‘Turbo! Pack’ Development Diary 4: ‘Construction Derby’

Lisa Harmon, Senior Artist
As we mentioned before, we had so many great ideas for new levels that we couldn’t bear to leave any out! Each level in the ‘Turbo! Pack’ has its own theme. The first was racing, and rather unsurprisingly this level is based around the idea of a construction site so we’ve deliberately made it really cluttered and full of loads of different objects. To supplement the vehicles in the pack, we have also created a very juicy range of 3D objects with which to populate the levels. Erasers? Check. Fluffy dice? Check. Along with many other items you might find lying around a kid’s bedroom, these not only look great but they’re great fun to play around with, and we’re sure you’ll come up with loads of ingenious and troublesome ways to use them!

This level also introduces not one but two new story characters that are also 3D and can be collected in prize bubbles as their separate components. If you really wanted to there’s a couple of heads you could attach to the crane as wrecking balls… not that we would condone such things!

The new theme really started to come into its own with this level, with the use of lots of bright colours and in particular a lovely pale coloured wood. We’ve made an entire set of new materials that hopefully you’ll find as useful as we have done! Amongst other things we’ve also made some materials that look like plastic to really get that “toybox” feel.

We really loved the idea of roaming around various objects and pieces of furniture that you might find in a kid’s bedroom, or perhaps exploring the vast unknown that lurks beneath the bed… and this is really reflected in the plethora of new content that we have made. One thing that has been really important is maintaining a sense of scale across all the levels, despite how different they are from each other individually. We did this by reusing key aspects of environment as much as possible, such as the books, coloured table tops and drawers. This also helped to really unify the ‘Turbo!’ theme as a whole.

So remember, the next time your parents or significant other (or both) tell you to tidy your room because it looks like a bombsite, be sure to inform them that actually you’re planning an intensely complicated LittleBigPlanet PSP level and that it must not be disturbed under any circumstances. And then maybe hide the vacuum cleaner, just in case.

‘Turbo! Pack’ Development Diary 1: ‘Short Circuit’ – Jon Torrens, Designer

Here at the Cambridge Studio, we’ve been playing a lot of community levels, and we’ve been really impressed with a lot of them. In fact we’ve been so inspired, that we decided to create something special that we hope will, in turn, inspire the community: the ‘Turbo! Pack’.

We want the ‘Turbo! Pack’ to be full of cool vehicles, with some action-packed levels to use them in. Currently we’re working on a race level, where you get to drive a Monster Truck and a Racing Car.

Lots of creators like to make a rocket car of some description, but there are a couple of problems with super fast vehicles in LittleBigPlanet:

1. Sooner or later you’re going to hit the edge of the level.
2. There’s no penalty for going too fast.

Just moving very fast is all very well, but we wanted to have circuits, like a real race track. At first we tried a vertically scrolling track, with emitted track sections, like a shoot-em-up. But no cornering was required. Our solution? Stick the car to the track’s surface using rockets (which we have seen done in a community level), and move the car round the edge of a central object, a little bit like driving along the surface of a really small planet. Go too fast and you’ll detach and crash.

Then we realised that as well as race cars, we like souped-up hot rods, so we made one of those. But this time, we wanted a different way to stop the player just going flat out, so we made it so that the hot rod’s engine can overheat if you rev it constantly. When you hear the warning sound, you need to step off the gas, or you’ll find yourself going nowhere fast.

Speed, efficiency, and a nice flat surface are fine for race cars, but we all wanted to drive a behemoth, and thus was born the Monster Truck.

We wanted to use motor bolts instead of rockets for the Monster Truck, but motor bolts make wheels start turning very quickly, very suddenly – which meant this bad boy tended to fall over, because its centre of gravity was so high. What we needed was gradual acceleration, and the mechanism we made for this is pretty simple: grabbing the accelerator sponge contracts a piston, with a magnetic key on the end. Its magnetic key switch is set to speed, and connected to the wheel motor bolts. The closer the magnetic key gets to its switch, the faster the wheels go; the piston takes a couple of seconds to contract, so time the wheels take to reach their top speed is a couple of seconds (and not a couple of hundredths of a second). Problem solved. The Monster Truck’s still a bit unstable, but it can roll over all kinds of rough terrain.

And that’s how we made our first three cool vehicles. You can find some of them (and their individual parts) in prize bubbles scattered throughout the level. Complete ‘Short Circuit’, and you’ll get the Red Racing Car and the Hotrod. But for the Blue Racing Car and the Monster Truck, you’ll need to collect all the prize bubbles in the level.

‘Turbo! Pack’ Development Diary 2: ‘Short Circuit’ – Laura Dilloway, Artist

We’re all really excited by the new theme we’re developing for the ‘Turbo! Pack’. It’s been through a few iterations because you’ve given us so many ideas that we had to find a theme that would encompass them all, but we think we’ve finally cracked it. We wanted something completely different from the story levels, so for Sackboy’s new adventures you’ll be leaping and bounding through a particularly well-stocked kid’s bedroom. Ever built a race track out of books and rulers and anything else you could find to hand? Constructed cardboard box forts and staged extensive battles with your toy soldiers? Well that’s exactly what we’ve done! We hope you’ll be as inspired by all the new possibilities as we have been.

The race level was a bit of a funny one in terms of art, partly because some of it is pretty abstract and it was hard to keep it within the new theme, and partly because there’s just so much of it! Jon mapped out the level very comprehensively when he designed it, so transforming it into the new theme was fairly easy to visualise. The only problem was the memory thermometer! There are four distinct sections that have each been dressed in a slightly different way, and it was a struggle trying to make each area look cool and interesting with a limited number of materials and stickers (and without sacrificing any of the level design). Optimisation was really important on this level, right down to completely streamlining all the logic!

Working on the vehicles for this pack was really great fun, and this level gives you three awesome new cars. To make all our vehicles extra special we’ve created them using 3D objects. “That’s cheating” we hear you cry! Well maybe a little. But we’ve also provided you with every single vehicle and every single component part of that vehicle so that you can build your very own crazy contraptions. Hot rod engine with a racing car chassis and monster truck wheels? No problem.

Next time, see how we made something more constructive…

The 10th LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge is finally over and the winner has been chosen!

A few weeks ago we set the challenge to make an amphibious vehicle – something capable of crossing both land and water. You responded with over 1000 levels, and after many hours playing through and judging them we were left with six epic finalists, which you can see in the video below!

Then we left it to YOU to decided which was the ultimate amphibious contraption. Fast forward a week later and we can now reveal that the overall winner is……

Congratulations Asbestos101!!! You’ve won yourself a copy of LittleBigPlanet on PSP, as well as a shiny new PSPGo to play it on!

Well done to all the other finalists and to everyone else who entered – there were so mnay great contraptions this time that we’re making a second video to show others we really liked, which will be going on our YouTube channel very soon.

Don’t forget that you can also follow us on Twitter for all the latest info about the event and remember to keep an eye out on the forums for the next challenge – it’s going to be another good one.

The decision was an easy one after meeting five young, talented people with a massive ambition to redefine video games as we know them and create and grow a fantastically talented team at Media Molecule. This was followed by a fantastic exclusive relationship that culminated in the launch of one of the most innovative PlayStation games of recent years. Of course, LittleBigPlanet needs no introduction here, as it was thanks to you that it became a best selling PS3 title when it released in late 2008.

The acquisition will enhance the talent pool within SCE, protect past and current investment and ensure a solid base for future investment. Media Molecule have exciting projects in the pipeline and we’re looking forward to sharing these with you in the not too distant future.

The most important thing is that nothing will change from your perspective; Media Molecule will simply continue to make great games. Welcoming Media Molecule into the PlayStation family will allow us to better support their future titles and ambitions.

In case you’re still wondering why we would purchase a developer who has only one game under its belt, allow me to present to you their list of awards and accomplishments — just click “more” below. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s an enviable list.

I have no doubt that this will mark the beginning of an even more exciting relationship with Media Molecule for the future.

Tokyo Game Show October 2008

• Future Award: Winner

Famitsu Magazine

• Platinum

E3

• IGN Best Platform Game of E3 2008-Runner up
• IGN Best PlayStation 3 Platform Game of E3 2008-Runner up
• IGN Special Achievement for Technological Excellence of E3 2008-Runner up
• IGN Best PlayStation 3 Artistic Design Game of E3 2008-Runner up
• IGN Best PlayStation 3 Multiplayer Experience of E3 2008-Runner up
• IGN PlayStation 3 Special Achievement for Technological Excellence of E3 2008
• IGN PlayStation 3 Special Achievement for Innovation of E3 2008-Runner up
• IGN PlayStation 3 Most Anticipated Game of 2008- Ranked #5 out of 10

• Game Critics Best E3 2008 Console Game
• Game Critics Best E3 2008 Social/Casual/Puzzle Game

• GameTrailers Best of Show E3 2008-Runner up
• Game Trailers Best Playstation 3 Game E3 2008-Runner Up
• Game Trailers Best Innovative Game E3 2008
• GameTrailers Best Online Game E3 2008-Runner Up

• G4TV Best of E3 PlayStation 3-Runner Up
• G4TV Best of E3 Online Multiplayer-Runner up
• G4TV Best of E3 Best Original Game
• G4TV Best of E3 Best Innovation-Runner Up
• G4TV Best of E3 Game of Show

• GameSpy Top Ten PS3 Games E3- #2 out of 10
• GameSpy E3 Staff Picks

• GameSpot Best Stage Demo E3 2008-Runner Up
• GameSpot Best Platform Game E3 2008
• GameSpot Best PS3 Game E3 2008
• GameSpot E3 Best of Show 2008-Runner Up

• PS3 Fanboy Best of PS3 Exclusive E3 2008

• Ripten Best PlayStation 3 Game E3 2008
• Ripten Best Game of E3-Tied with Fallout 3

• 1UP Best PS3 Game E3 2008
• 1UP Game of Show E3 2008

• WhatIfGaming Best Platform Game E3 2008
• WhatIfGaming Best Artistic Design E3 2008
• WhatIfGaming Best Multiplayer Experience E3 2008
• WhatIfGaming Most Gracious Technological Excellence E3 2008
• WhatIfGaming Revolutionary Design E3 2008
• WhatIfGaming Best Console Game E3 2008
• WhatIfGaming Game of Show E3 2008

• Kotaku Best Original Game E3 2008
• Kotaku Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game E3 2008

• Game Pro Best of E3 Silver Winner

• Cheat Code Central, Favorite Game of 2008
• Cheat Code Central, Best Platformer of 2008
• Cheat Code Central, Best PS3 Game of 2008
• Cheat Code Central, Best New Character of 2008
• Cheat Code Central, Most Creative of 2008

• GameSpot, Best Implementation of User-Generated Content of 2008</li
• GameSpot, Best Graphics, Nominee
• GameSpot, Best UK Developed Game, Nominee

• GameTrailers Best Action Adventure –Runner up
• GameTrailers Game of The Year-Runner Up
• GameTrailers Best PS3 Game-Runner Up

• GameZone Overall Game of the Year – 2008
• GameZone Best PlayStation 3 Game of the Year – 2008
• GameZone Best Overall Platformer – 2008

• IGN, Best Platform Game of 2008 (for PS3)
• IGN, Best Artistic Design of 2008 (for PS3)
• IGN, Best Local Mult-player Platform Game of 2008 (for (PS3)
• IGN, Best New IP (for PS3)
• IGN, Most Innovative Design (for PS3)

• USA Weekend (online) – “The Best Video Games of 2008”

• The Onion’s Best of 2008 List

Edge December 2008

• Best Game: Winner
• Best innovation: Winner
• Best visual: Winner
• Best developer: Winner
• Best online experience: runner up

Pocket Lint Awards

• Game of the Year 2008-12-17

Spike TV Video Game Awards December 2008

• Studio of the Year: Media Molecule Winner
• Game of the Year: Runner-up
• Best Performance by a Human Male: Runner-up, Stephen Fry as LBP Narrator
• Best Original Score: Runner Up
• Best PS3 Game: Winner
• Best Soundtrack: Runner Up
• Best Graphics: Runner Up

Gameplayer.com

• Most Influential Developers of 2008 (with other Developers)

Feb-09

Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Awards

• Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction
• Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering
• Outstanding Achievement in Character Performance
• Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction
• Outstanding Innovation in Gaming
• Family Game of the Year
• Console Game of the Year
• Overall Game of the Year

• Best Multiplayer Game in Troféu Gameworld (Brazilian) www.heroi.com.br
• Best international game at Deutscher Computerspielepreis. (German) http://www.deutscher-computerspielpreis.de/9.0.html
• Platform Game Of The Year at Swedish Game Awards 2009 in Stockholm
• Best Platform Game of the Year in the Norwegian Game Awards http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/03/05/kultur/spill/gullstikka/5149468/

Mar-09

• BAFTA Video Games Awards – Artistic Achievement (Winner)

Oct-09

• Golden Joystick Family Game of the Year (Winner)
• Golden Joystick Family Game of the Year (Winner)

Nov-09

• BAFTA Children’s Awards – Video Game (Winner)

Contraption Challenge 10 asks you to build an amphibious vehicle, that’s a vehicle that can cross both land and sea to you and me, and as always we ask you to do it with style.

The more creative, original and functional your contraption is, the greater your chances of winning. Need inspiration? Just check out our LBP Contraption Challenge youtube channel to see all the entries from past challenges – or start LittleBigPlanet on your PS3 and search for ‘CC10 – Example’ to see a basic entry our event creator Nuclearfish.

Wanna take part? All you need to do is sail over to the Official PlayStation Community forums and give our LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge 10 thread a read.

Oh! I should really mention, the winning contraption will win a downloadable copy of LittleBigPlanet PSP and a PSPgo to play it on! Sweet huh? But hurry, you only have until Sunday 28th February to build and submit your contraption. Be sure to read the Contraption Challenge thread very carefully for instructions on how to enter.

If you want to follow the Contraption Challenges more closely, you can find us on twitter, youtube and iTunes!

Good luck,

MB

This month in our LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge – we asked you to build us a “Gap-Crossing Vehicle”! You, the Official PlayStation Community responded admirably, hurtling off to your local ‘My Moon’ to create your contraptions.

The votes are in, our monkeys have counted them and I have the super-special privelage of announcing that the winner of Contraption Challenge #9 is…

CC09 R.O.B.B. (Rusty ol’ Bridge Builder) by ROGUE—Elite!

Congratulations ROGUE—Elite – you’ve won yourself eternal glory and sunshine!

So – with Contraption Challenge #9 over and done with, we thought it’d be a great idea to take a look back at the last 9 months of LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenges. Forum member Chimpanzee has put together this video showing off the Best of the LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenges so far, check it out:

Awesome no? Don’t forget to tell me which was your favourite in the comments!

Contraption Challenge 10 is starting very, very soon and we’ll keep you updated right here on the PlayStation Blog as to its progress. Be warned – you DO NOT want to miss out on CC10, it’s going to be a good one!

For more information on the Contraption Challenges, visit us in our LittleBigPlanet forums, or check out our YouTube Channel.

Until then –

MB