[PS Move] + LittleBigPlanet 2 = Even Endless-er Possibilities (Story + Paint Studio!)

[Shin-Ra]

LittleBigPlanet 2 + PlayStation Move = Even Endless-er Possibilities
+ Posted by Alex Armour // Manager, Public Relations

You keen-visioned PlayStation.Blog readers are bound to know that the LittleBigPlanet 2 PlayStation Move DLC was officially announced at the E3 PlayStation press conference (huzzah!). You were no doubt left with questions around what it does, how it works and what marvels will be possible once our army of LBP creators get their hands on it.

In a nutshell, the PlayStation Move Pack lets you create levels with (and for) the PlayStation Move motion controller, and it includes a set of levels built by Media Molecule to make your creative juices juicier. LBP has always been all about communities creating and sharing, so rather than show you our 200-slide marketing presentation, I’ll hand you over to Andrew, AKA Chimpanzee, creator extraordinaire and editor of the splendid Rocket Cheetah, for enlightenment…

Back in May I was lucky enough to be invited to the hallowed grounds of Mm Towers to check out the new LittleBigPlanet 2 features they were working on and hang out with some well-known Creators to see what they could do with them. We all knew that Media Molecule were working on an update to the game, introducing brand new tools which make use of the PlayStation Move motion controller, but what we saw was so much more than LBP 2 with added ‘waggle’.

15 members of the community from as far afield as the USA and France descended on Media Molecule’s Guildford studios and to kick things off we were given a brief demonstration of some of the features of the Move Pack.

Looking back, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by how much was being given to creators – after all, Media Molecule aren’t exactly known for doing things by halves. Aside from features that people are expecting, the Move Pack also includes a wealth of amazing new gadgets and tweaks which Creators have either been asking for forever or don’t even know that they need yet, but will soon wonder how they ever did without.

First up was the Manipulator, a power-up which can be dropped into a level to instantly enable Move gameplay. It works just like other power-ups that you’re already familiar with; It’s equipped when a player walks over it and can be removed with the power-up remover. With the Manipulator, the player aims by pointing the Move motion controller and can pick up, move around and carry grabbable objects using the trigger. It has a set range (similar to that of the grappling hook) indicated by a translucent orb around Sackboy.

The Moveinator is the PlayStation Move’s equivalent of the Controlinator. As well as all the standard buttons, it gives Creators access to all of the Move’s sensors: Gyroscopes for rotation and tilt on all and the accelerometers to detect up. down, left and right movement. Anyone who’s used the Controlinator in their levels will find the Moveinator’s circuit board very familiar. All of the outputs can be wired-up to Mover logic to allow the player to control any object directly.

Combine the Moveinator with the Move Cursor and you’ve got instant point and shoot gameplay. Just plonk one of these new logic chips down on the Moveinator’s circuit board and you’re given a reticule which you can aim with the PlayStation Move. You can customize the pointer to be any sticker you like and you can even tweak a range of options to have it change color or even switch to a completely different graphic when it hovers over specific objects.

To illustrate how some of the new features could be used, we were shown a few of the MM-made levels that’ll be included in the downloadable pack. It’s the largest piece of DLC that Media Molecule have released so far and the variety of gameplay is bound to inspire Creators to come up with even more exciting and original ideas. The main story levels consist mainly of puzzle/platformers where you play using with a DualShock or Sub-controller in one hand and the PlayStation Move in the other – a control scheme that was surprisingly easy to get used to. But the mini games are where I was really blown-away. One was a Labyrinth-style game where you had to tilt the Move to guide a ball through a maze-like track. In another, you had to use the Move Cursor to arrange objects, conveyer belts and bounce pads on a board to guide a dumb Sackbot from one side to the other.

Overwhelmed? I was. But grab a cup of coffee and take a deep breath because we aren’t even nearly done yet!

Next we we shown some of the smaller but equally pleasing new tweaks and tools. Firstly, Media Molecule have been listening and have delivered on a much-requested feature: Multipliers on Score Givers! Huzzah! You can even tweak how often the score is multiplied and by how much. They’ve also introduced Speed and Rotation Sensors which output if and how much an object is moving, which I’m sure will be music to many Creators’ ears. There’s also a new Slicer Tool. This works in a similar way to the Corner Editing Tool but allows you to pick any two points on the edge of a shape and slice it in two – a big time-saver.

Yet another new tool is the Move Recorder – a new logic chip which records the fluid motion of the Move controller. This allows Creators to give realistic, organic behavior to any object and anyone who’s used Sackbots’ “Act” function will instantly recognize how it works.

Well, that’s about it. Oh wait, no it’s not!

Just a small thing really, no big deal, it’s just that LittleBigPlanet 2 now has a freakin’ paint studio! The fully-featured Sticker Creator takes you to a whole new interface where the Move controller is your paint brush. Excuse me while I gush here for a moment but it really is no exaggeration to say that the artistic types among you will be able to create fully-fledged masterpieces with this. There’s a selection of brush types, shapes and colors to choose from and you can also change the brushes opacity, allowing you to blend several colors together to get that precise shade that you’re after. You could also take any existing sticker and use it as a brush or stamp. I used it to make a rather lovely ocean of bright yellow rubber ducks but you could of course get a little more creative with it and compose hundreds of different stickers together into something incredible.

The paintings you make can then be used as stickers in-game, shared in prize bubbles or exported in high-resolution to the XMB.

With all these awesome new stickers you’ll be making, you’ll want a way to display them in their full glory in your levels. Mm has you covered, yet again, with the new Sticker Panel material. This mysterious new substance is magical; draw out a block of it in Create mode and as soon as you stick a sticker to it, it becomes completely invisible, leaving only the sticker behind. Sticker Panels behave in a similar way to the Hologram material in that it has no physical properties, can pass through other objects and can be stacked on top of one another in the same layer. However, unlike Hologram material, a Sticker Panel doesn’t affect the sticker’s color or opacity… unless you want it to of course.

Phew! That about does it for my ‘brief’ round-up of the LBP 2 Move Game Jam. It was a truly amazing to see some master Creators in action, let loose with some new toys. I really cannot wait to see what the rest of the community does with them.

A huge thank you to Spaff, Tom and everyone at Mm for making it happen and to everyone who was there on the day for letting me tap them on the shoulder every 10 minutes with a curious “Whatcha dooin’?”

[Shin-Ra]

Best of all, you can now slap with a flick of the wrist, not just your thumb.

http://www.mediamolecule.com/blog/ar..._jam_hands_on/

The Players at the Jam made some rather nifty things, and we were so proud of them we showed them off to people at E3…there should be some videos appearing sooner or later of the things they made, we’ll update you with those when we have ‘em!

http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/sho...-The-Full-List

You'll all be glad to hear that the NDA has finally been lifted from the Community GameJam Move Edition!
So I can now tell you all about the new contents to be found within the upcoming Move Pack!

To begin with, here's a rundown of the highlights of the pack!

New Power-Up - Brain Crane

The Brain Crane is a new hat that Sackboy can wear that whilst active will allow him to pick up and move any grabbable object using the PlayStation Move, provided that the object is not too heavy and that Sackboy himself is not standing on the object.

New Tool - The Movinator

Essentially the PlayStation Move equivilant of The Controlinator.

Contains a fully customisable layout of the PlayStation Move that can be used to map your own controls and functions to it, in exactly the same way as you would with the DualShock and The Controlinator.

New Tool - Move Cursor

This new tool allows a creator to create their own custom in-game cursors whilst using the PlayStation Move.

You can use any in-game, DLC or custom Sticker during your cursor creation and you can also toggle whether the cursor can pick things up, can move in and out, whether grabbable objects will be highlighted upon hovering over them and whether the cursor requires a tag to be active.

New Tool - Move Paint

This is a big one!
Move Paint will allow you to create your own custom stickers using the PlayStation Move!
There's an assortment of brush types and a wide colour palette available whilst painting.

These Stickers will also have transparent backgrounds, so you're no longer restricted to the same old rectangular custom stickers! Additionally you can paste in other Stickers during your creation and edit them accordingly.

This Tool can infact be used during Create Mode and Single Player Play Mode.

New Tool - Material Slicer

Using this tool, you can cut through any object. It works much like "connect the dots", where you are in control over where the dots appear, and then the game slices the object accordingly.
Sliced pieces continue to be glued together after the slice, but their complexity can hereby easily reduced. This is very useful for those objects who have become "too complex" or are nearing that state.

New Tool - Move Recorder

Much like the previous Sackbot Recording tools, this tool will allow you to record any motion caused by using the PlayStation Move and then can be set to playback for your movie-making, level creation purposes.
Similarly these recordings can be set to loop and and have their speeds adjusted.

New Sensor - Speed Sensor

Can sense speed and you can toggle whether to sense the speed of only one direction or to allow all directions.

New Sensor - Rotation Sensor

Can sense rotations and again you can toggle whether to sense rotation in only one direction or in both directions.

New Sensor - Angle Sensor

Can be set to sense something within a specified angle.

New Material Type - Sticker Panel Material

This is another huge addition to the PlayStation Move Create DLC Pack!
You can set the colour and transparency of this Material.

So ssentially you can use this is an opaque version of the Hologram Material.
Meaning that no longer will your in-game sprites and other Hologram-based creations will have that semi-transparent look about them.

On top of that though, you can set the Mateiral to be completely transparent too.
Which makes it perfect for some aspects of Sticker placement.

New Score Giver Tweak - Score Multiplier

In the Score Giver, you can now tweak to enable or disable multipliers for your creation.

New Player Sensor Tweak - Detect Unspawned Players

Player Sensors can now be set to "Detect Unspawned Players". This can be very useful for triggering opening cinematics, only when every player in a session has successfully entered the level.

New Grab Sensor Tweaks

You can now choose to tweak whether the sensor activates when grabbed by a Sackperson/Sackbot, by the Move Wand or both.
You can also cause objects carrying the Sensor to glow slightly when you hover the Move Cursor over said object.

New Material Tweaker Tweak

The Material Tweaker can now select whether an object is grabable by a Sackperson/Sackbot, by the Move Wand or by both.

Other Notable Highlights From The Community GameJame

In-Game Store Overhaul

The in-game Store has had a major overhaul and DLC is now arranged in the order of Level Packs, Downloaded Packs and Outfits. In turn, each of these tabs are now listed alphabetically.

Selecting a Level Pack will open that Pack's level selection.

Selecting a Downloaded Pack will display a list of all the costume pieces, stickers and objects contained within the pack.
Each costume piece can be individually selected from this list and placed on your Sackboy.

Outfits is the recognisable list of complete Outfits for your Sackboy to wear.

Finally you can also Text Search the in-game Store.

Move Pack Level Rundown

This is just a quick count of the levels contained within the Move Pack, although please be aware that since I was playing an earlier version of the pack, this could still be subject to some change before release.

1 x Introduction Level
4 x Main Story Levels
1 x Boss Level
7 x Side Levels
1 x Tutorial Level for one of the above mention Side Levels
2 x Versus Levels
2 x Cutscene Levels

Total New Levels = 18

New Music Sequencer Instruments

At the Community GameJam, there were an additional 17 new Music Sequencer Instruments.
However again, these were very much in a developmental stage still and may be subject to some change before release.

Hands-on with the PS Move Pack

https://twitter.com/#!/LittleBigPlanet

.@T3hJake move is a brand new story! Toy story pack is a whole other set of levels and costumes!

In LBP2 move, the colour of the move glow matches your popit colour.

.@madduey "can we use the move to design our own stickers or artwork for our levels?" Yes! The paint tool is POWER!

@Bakscratch Tags can filter move levels - but all 4.3m levels will work with move controls anyway, so no need to swap controllers inbetween!

.@Doopz479 yes, the Motion Cont. is used to aim the paintinator, and the navi to run and jump. The Move button jumps, trigger fires / grabs

.@Plasmavor The story involves an evil cake that tampers with one of Victoria's experiments, and goes mad with power!

. @BradleyO_O Move controller doesn't replace normal controls for create, it adds to them - like having a paintbrush and a pencil

.@Bakscratch The Move is used to create alongside a dualshock. You can use it to record motion, or paint your own textures.

.@waspennator You can make prehistoric moves with one of the new tools - the cursor tool. It allows for so much more than prehistoric moves!

.@PiccasoPickard The cursor object has its own circuit board for logic, so you could and keys or tags in there for followers etc.

.@SkelIy yes - you could use the Move to 'pull' or 'push' objects into different layers

.@Bakscratch The Movinator can be used to wire up all the imaginable move directions, so yes, tilt

@MulriIronDude There are 5 x 2 parter story levels with full cinematics, and 7 mini games, inc one vs game.

.@Bakscratch I played through the MGS pack with it yesterday, it was really fun. Lots of people say they prefer the Move over the dualshock.

.@Bakscratch Move controls are backwards compatible with every other powerup. So you can play all 4.3m levels with it.

.@FullMetalGlicoz you can play with navi / dualshock in one hand, and motion controller in the other. You don't need a second player!

We don't yet have a price to announce for the Move pack, it won't break the bank though! #lbp2move

.@SkelIy The Move pack will be a DLC pack, but it's much bigger than all the previous ones!

[Shin-Ra]

Hands-on With LittleBigPlanet 2’s Move Pack
+ Posted by Sid Shuman // Senior Social Media Specialist

Formally announced at PlayStation’s E3 2011 press conference, the upcoming PlayStation Move Pack for LittleBigPlanet 2 will greatly expand the game’s already prodigious creation suite and add countless new gameplay variants. Based on my hands-on time, PlayStation Move support radically evolves the gameplay possibilities of LittleBigPlanet 2, whether it’s flinging and manipulating objects using the new Brain Crane power-up, creating outlandish Move-focused minigames from scratch, or animating characters and props by recording your PlayStation Move gestures.

“It’s the biggest update we’ve ever done,” Media Molecule’s Level Design Lead Kengo Kurimoto told me during a guided tour of the update last week in New York City.

When the Move Pack hits PSN this September, LBP2 owners will find six new Story levels in a Move-focused mini-campaign that picks up where LBP2 left off. One of the most significant gameplay enhancements comes as a potent new power-up called the Brain Crane. Like a telepathic revamp of the Power Gloves, the Brain Crane enables Sackboy to pick up and manipulate objects with nothing but the power of his tiny sawdust mind. You aim the Brain Crane by aiming the PlayStation Move and grab an object by pulling the trigger. Once the object is firmly in your grasp you can tug, lift, or wrench it to your heart’s content. The Brain Crane opens up inventive gameplay opportunities: yanking open weighted gates to solve puzzles, tugging spring-loaded platforms to make high jumps, or flinging your co-op comrade into a magma pit because…well, just because.

PSB: How early in the production of LittleBigPlanet 2 did you think about PlayStation Move support?
Kengo Kurimoto, Level Design Lead, Media Molecule: “We were very aware of it. It would’ve been nice to include it in LittleBigPlanet 2 from the start, but time constraints made that difficult. So we made Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves as well, which was a demo to show what we could do with PlayStation Move. But the LittleBigPlanet 2 Move Pack is the full shebang…It took a lot of iteration. We had so many ideas…we went through and picked the best of them for the Move pack”

Sackboy’s six-level Story is orbited by a constellation of Move-enabled minigames that leverage the Move in wildly different ways. In my favorite minigame “Fast Food,” I tilted and twisted the PlayStation Move in order to guide a ball through an elaborate maze studded with traps and gadgets. The tilt control felt vastly more responsive and consistent than similar labyrinth games I’ve played on mobile phones, while the arcadey mechanics and chirping audio made it feel like a slower-paced game of Pachinko played with one ball.

I was also impressed by “Defence Mechanism,” a simple tower defense game that leveraged the Move’s precision cursor functions. A horde of enemies slowly advanced to the center of the screen and my helpless Sackbot buddies. Using the Move, I erected electrical barriers by placing lightbulbs into sockets strewn around several enemy paths. “It gets fiendishly difficult later,” Kurimoto cautioned me…and he wasn’t kidding.

I also played a deceptively simplistic puzzle game that showed shades of Rube Goldberg called “The Tail of Claude the Field Mouse.” The goal is simple: land a ball in a cup at the bottom of the screen by moving levers, tilting platforms, and arranging other objects. In a multiplayer-focused party game, I competed with Kurimoto to line up colored squares and detonate them. After only a few minutes of gameplay, it was clear to me that the Move Pack open up quite a few new gameplay genres that wouldn’t be practical when played with an analog stick. “For these kinds of games,” Kurimoto noted, “being able to move the cursor quickly and accurately is key. And the Move is sophisticated, with a lot of sensitive sensors.”

The fan-favorite Create mode is also getting a big overhaul to tap into Move’s motion capabilities. First things first, though. Using the PlayStation Move in the Create mode won’t allow you to magically draw platforms or geometry at will — for that level of ease, you’ll have to wait for LittleBigPlanet to make its touchscreen-friendly PS Vita debut. Instead, what you’ll get is a heap of potent new tools that tap into every command that Move supports: pointing, rotating, twisting, tilting, shaking, swinging, and practically anything else you can think of.

The key lies in the Moveinator, modeled off LBP2’s Controlinator in that it enables you to assign actions to every button and function of the PS Move — buttons, tilting, pointing — using a kid-friendly visual programming style. Kurimoto demonstrated the Moveinator flexibility by building a working, steerable cardboard rocketship (complete with laser cannon!) in less than 30 seconds. “One of the most powerful things about LittleBigPlanet 2 is the intercompatibility of the tools,” Kurimoto said. “They all work with each other.”

Other details abound. A new Move Cursor gadget will make lightgun-style games a breeze to design, the Move Recorder function enables you to record a gesture and apply it to any object (digital puppeteering, anyone?), and a Sticker Creator mode turns your Move into a paint brush for designing custom art.

After my demo ended, I was left with the feeling that I had only scratched the surface of what will be possible with LBP2’s Move Pack when it hits PSN this September. What new feature are you most interested in experimenting with? Leave your top picks in the comments!