Kandinsky-inspired Little Big Planet Level

I've been playing Little Big Planet recently. If you don't know Its a PlayStaion 3 physics based platformer that allows the player to create there own levels and share them with other players. It's a very good game the jumping can be a little floaty and not being able to use the D-pad to move is a it annoying but otherwise its great, and its good to see a 2d platformer getting such a strong backing by a big company like Sony.

You can have up four players playing sanctimoniously which is great fun, I dont think my game would work so well in co-op as each player would be setting off difrent sound boxes and the reulting audio would be a bit of a mess. I guess I could make it so the player in the lead or the player with the most collectibles controls the music. I think ill concentrate on getting a good single player game done before thinking about multiplayer.

I have been looking at a lot of user generated levels for inspiration and I found one by
Richard "KirbyKid" Terrell he has created a musical platform level in Little Big Planet inspired by Kandinsky's Improvisation #1 painting.

Heres a liknk to his blog where he elaberates on the creation process.

http://critical-gaming.squarespace.com/blog/2008/11/24/improvisation-1.html

A video of the level.


In order to make the level sound like it does he had to put sound objects into the playfeild, here is a diogram he made showing where all the sound elelments are placed.



He also has some good tips on making platform levels

" * Check Points: I think everyone can learn from the example I set in Improvisation #1. Though I didn't put a single hazardous element in the entire level, I still added 3 checkpoints. I did this for a few reasons. 1) Especially in LBP, players will always find a way to kill themselves. The game is just too emergent to eliminate death altogether. 2) If the player ever fell to the bottom of the level, they always have the option of trying again and teleporting back up.
* So, if your level is more dangerous than Improvisation #1 by any degree, then you need to be sure to place check points that demark gameplay ideas.

* Level Boundaries: Make sure that you take extra precautions to seal off the "level from the level." What I mean by this is, we're given a very large space to create a level in. If you don't use all of that space, be sure that the player can't escape into the "no man's land." Remember, LBP is very emergent. Just because you don't think players can slip through the cracks doesn't mean they won't.
* Also, if you have an "elephant graveyard" of spare bits and broken bobs hanging out in your no man's land, then be sure to delete them. There's no point in wasting server space or prolong the download times. Just because it's electronic doesn't mean we should be wasteful."