[ACTIVE] Megaman Legends LittleBigPlanet Project

[smokeeye123]

Thanks for the input everyone! ;D

Anyways, I'm all up for taking requests on what to do next. (I'm adding Yuna to the list =P) It would be especially awesome if you could provide a side view of the request to make it easier to recreate...But even if you can't find one or just don't want to, I will still probably make it.

I was also debating whether to just copy and paste character models onto "cardboard cutouts" in the game as I think they would look best this way. However, I will build at least one character for you guys to compare along side a copy and pasted one.

And don't worry, I will do my best to take a video of every level I make and put it on youtube.

[smokeeye123]

Ok, just a small pictureless update.



I haven't done much work on the Legends LBP level as I am trying to contact someone I discovered on MLU.ocm who is doing the exact same thing I am! I'm hoping we can work together to make the Legends remake in the near future.

Here is one of his videos on youtube about his Megaman Legends levels.

- www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJp-rdfvjGU&feature=channel_page

You can view all his videos by clicking on his profile.

[Darfox8]

Hey whats up yaw. I'm not sure if I've even talked on this thread but I trying to finish up the first level of what is hopefully a long and successful project.

I fell behind early on because I had to go to a medical clinic multiple time the first week I started working on it. That and I'm trying to beat Persona 3 FES which my friend let me hold. I've almost given up on playing these two games at the same time and I'm just going finish up the level as fast as I can. If I work with the speed and progress from these last few days I'll be done before the week end, but I know my self better then that. I'm sure I'll take a break here or there, or fall back into playing some other game alittle bit(when it doesn't feel like an obligation it's alot more fun unfortunately).

There are some amazing creators out there but I'm definitely not one of them. Which is a shame because if I could make a level as good as the Little Big Contra guys then these levels could even get news stories on gaming websites like 1up or kotaku. I've only made two levels before this one. The first one was based on Castlevania:SotN. I made it during the beta and it was pretty terrible. I just wanted to get something out before the end of the beta so I had fun building the level. The second one was based on the first episode of Trigun and it wasn't quite as bad but since I actually tried really hard on this one it makes it even worse. I had some fairly big ambitions but since I didn't fully understand how to use the switches and tools I had to constantly scale back my(already modest) ambitions. The level turned out pretty mediocre.

Above was my auto-biography on LBP, I guess. Below I'll actually talk about the MML level I'm working on.

Now I have alot more solid understanding on switches. The solutions weren't that difficult but they required one to really think outside of the box so I never would of figured them out on my own. Thank god for the tutorial video that Media Molecule put out.

With these tools I keep mentioning I get to plot out the closest things that Little Big Planet has to cinemas. It's something that would be essential to creating the beginning where Megaman takes the Refractor and then runs out before he's trapped in the room. Removing one item from the environment(the Refractor) sets off this Rub-Goldberg-esque contraption behind the scenes. It causes the room to shake, triggers dialog from Roll telling you to hall ass, makes these deadly doors try and trap you, and a few other things that I hope make the opening impressive.

One of my biggest regrets from my past levels was how drab everything looked. So I went on a mission to create very elaborate designs for the walls in the Ruins. The game has a thermometer that fill up as you put more geometry in the level. I previously had trouble filling it up so I thought that that the game had a huge amount of memory, and it does but, when you start making the walls very unique it starts to fill up pretty fast. So I'm saving the elaborate walls for the more important sections of the level.

Another thing I'm doing is making Roll a more integral part of the level. I'm designing forks in the path and as you approach them Roll warns you to wait a second while she scans ahead.(kinda like the game, right?) It's difficult to guess what players will do when text pops up and tells them to stop playing for a few seconds. I tried to warn players ahead of time, before they see any forks, that there are plenty of booby traps all over the place and that Roll is the only way you could avoid them all. I also try and communicate that the "wrong path" has extra goodies so that if they feel like getting 100% they should just disobey Roll when ever possible.

Enemies are tough because they fill up the thermometer pretty fast. Or atleast for me they do since I'm not that efficient when making them. The Zakubon I made is pretty elaborate and I think it's pretty good, but I wonder whether or not it's a bit over-engineered for being the default enemy in the game. I've done almost every object I'll need except for the Reaverbot that hangs from the ceiling and drops bombs. I guess I have to do him next or I'll just forget about him. I also need to design a different wall texture and the energy force-fields. Oh and the transformers you have to knock over to disable the force-fields.

You really can do almost anything in LBP you just have to be smart enough or slick enough. And they keep adding new tools like the "Lighting Trigger", with this I can make the level imitate the game even more. And soon we'll have water to play with which is obviously important for this game.

Sorry for the Mega-post. I haven't even talked to smokeeye in a while so maybe he already made the whole freaking game and I'm wasting my time. Either way I'm definitely going to finish this level and I'll hopefully post some nice pictures or videos.

[smokeeye123]

So yeah...I took a small break from the level when I realized that the online pictures were insuffiecient enough for me to model and create in the game. I am going to have to take pictures of certain reaverbots, bonne machines and textures to further the project.

However, today I checked out the beginnings of Darfox's level and was pretty impressed. It starts out in original ruin in MML1 and actually has you grab the refractor and run away as fast as possible from the falling doors. The textures in the background in at least the first part are great. The only things to nit-pick I can think of are Roll's annoying voice (lol), the gigantic reaverbots, and that some of the doors and extras didn't really fit into the MML universe. All that aside, once online creation is patched into the game in like a month, we will have that all worked out and can really begin working on and perfecting the 1st level.

I may update the thread with pictures of his level if he lets me play it again tomorrow, but if not don't expect any other kind of update for awhile as I will be slacking off and not doing anything of importance working diligently to model and finish multiple reaverbots and machines within the game.

[Darfox8]

The giant Reaverbot is my original mistake. I thought I could design it super sized(because it would be easier) and scale it down but it became disfigured the smaller I made it. That's the smallest I could make it. I think I found a very obvious way to make the rest of the level look as good as the beginning. I mention that the wall texture was pretty expensive in that it took up alot of memory of the level. So I couldn't make every single wall look like that. But if I take a picture of the wall and stick the picture all over the map it might look just as good. This is an obvious solution that I should of atleast tried by now but it didn't even occur to me. Goes to show that I still got a long way to go to before I'm a good creator.

Oh and I think I'm going to remove the aspect of the level where Roll tells you to wait until she scans ahead. She'll still warn you of the possible booby traps but it'll be all in one word bubble. The reason for this is that I've tested it on two people and they were both confused. I realized that when I play user made levels that I have little patience for anything the creator might be "trying out" and I mostly just want to see how well they created their level.

Last thing I'd like to say is that we shouldn't over engineer these levels. We should focus on getting them out. I'm not saying we should aim for quantity over quality but if we fuss too much over this first level we might not get ahead.

[Captain Amadeus (Legendary Em)]

Alright, so I finally got around to watching the videos you Darfox made. Needless to say, my friend and I (who was also watching) were blown away by it.

Please keep working on this project! There are less reasons for my to pick up and play Little Big Planet every day, but this one might just get me interested in the game again.

[Darfox8]

I'm glade I caught this. I haven't made any videos. I'd hate to take credit for other peoples work so if you've seen someone's videos then they weren't mine. Including me and smokeeye there are four people that we know of that have done or are working on MML LBP levels

My level has been going very slowly because I honestly don't know what to do. I started to design a puzzle but I'm wondering if that's the smart thing to do. Should I try and make a cool LBP level with the MML theme or should I try and copy the original game as accurately as possible. If I where making a cool level I'd include the kind of basic stuff that's fun in LBP like swinging or grabing stuff. But it I make a accurate copy of the game then that stuff wouldn't mesh well. Get it? What does Legends Station want? I think it's far easier for me to do a fun level that only has the style and mood of MML(since the original game is 3D and not 2D anyways).

Also I need to admit that my birthday was a few weeks ago so my friend bought me GTA4 and tomorrow I'm buying Uncharted 2. This doesn't mean the level on hiatus or anything. But I'm definitely going to play those games too.

As I said before we shouldn't over think these levels. If we do the project may be endanger of meandering(which I guess I'm already guilty of).

[Captain Amadeus (Legendary Em)]

I don't think you'd be able to beat the guy who's videos I've been watching; they are amazing. You'd have to do something different and only related to Legends, not a remake of it.

[Darfox8]

Oct 12, 2009 16:46:04 GMT -5 Captain Amadeus (Legendary Em) said:

I don't think you'd be able to beat the guy who's videos I've been watching; they are amazing. You'd have to do something different and only related to Legends, not a remake of it.

I guess I'll take that as a challenge. I made sure I warned smokeeye that there was no guarantee I'd make an awesome level. I only promised him that I was going to work hard on it, and I guess I have, but I could always work harder. I beat Uncharted 2 the other day then I let my friend borrow it so I could focus on the level. I think the biggest danger my level has in being a "bad" level is that it might be schizophrenic. One of the rules of LBP level creation is to decide what type of level your going to do and stick to it. Either a short pretty level or a relatively drab level with lots of gameplay. At first I was going for pretty and now I'm going for gameplay. I hope this switch isn't jarring for someone playing the game. Or maybe it'll create a nice balance.

I've definitely decided to not replicate MML too directly. Since I'm only doing the first segment of the game, it would make a boring LBP level. So I've focused on making a neat level where your searching a way out of a ruin while dodging booby traps(and getting as much items as you can on the way out). I'm going to try and close out the level relatively soon. I'll make sure I mention these forums in the description of the level. If more able LBP creators want to recreate and "overwrite" my first level, I encourage it. If this project builds momentum I think there should be multiple version of all levels, and afterwards the community could choose which ones are canon.

[Darfox8]

Finally a real update from me. Unfortunately your probably not going to get anything from anyone for a while. I don't want to speak for smokeeye123 but I think the project is in indefinite hiatus.

Here's the video from my level. It looks crappy because it's filmed off my TV.

Here's the link. I'm not sure how to embed.

I have two more videos that are like creator commentary. You hear my crappy voice talking to my idiot friend as I explain how I made the level. I will hopefully have those up tomorrow.

[smokeeye123]

Well, it's been awhile...



-Update V. END?-

As you can see Darfox has created an admirable Legends remake within LBP. The "Full fledged remake" of Legends within the game is over...UNTIL LittleBigPlanet 2!!!

Hopefully Darfox can help me fully recreate the series (or at least more memorable parts of it), with these greatly expanded tools.

Admins/Mods, please lock this topic, as I will be creating a new one after LBP2 comes out.

I'll be back.

[Qwertman]

Yo, i've never played LBP but it looks fun. Any chance the PSP version would connect to this community (correct me if I misunderstand how this works).

[Darfox8]

May 14, 2010 15:56:02 GMT -5 Qwertman said:

Yo, i've never played LBP but it looks fun. Any chance the PSP version would connect to this community (correct me if I misunderstand how this works).

No the PSP does not connect with the console LBP. It'd be neat if it did, but the game(from what I understand) works way different. Like the PSP version only has two planes instead of three.

I moved to Chile two months ago and I finally got to hook up my PS3. I checked the status of the Legends level I published and it's doing alright. I believe it has four stars out of five, about 80 plays, and ten hearts, and it seems all the tags are positive. No one tagged stuff like "Boring" or "Drab", which I was definitely afraid of. And if you read the comments you get plenty of people who appreciate the "Legends" aspect of the level(which at times I thought it was almost non existent).

One of the big problems with LBP is that it's hard for your new level to get out there to the public. And thankfully LBP 2 seems to be fixing that. It seems there's going to be a whole community website dedicated to queuing levels for you. Also LBP2 has these "Sackbots" which are basically NPC you can program AI into. And we might be able to change the physic and movement of the player character. There's soo much to LBP2 but there's also so much we don't know. I hope there's some sort of beta.

If anyone gets the chance to play the level I'd appreciate hearts, for the level and the creator(only if you think I deserve them ofcourse lol). I'm only missing two Trophies in this game. Creator which has to have like 50 hearted levels(I think I got this already) and like 30 hearted creators( only have like 10 hearts as a creator). And I'm also missing the one about playing a level with three people on my friend list. I only have like two people on my friends list who play LBP lol.

[smokeeye123]

Just posting to let you know I'm still alive and still brainstorming for the LBP2 project.

Maybe I can draw some sketches and ideas and show them to you guys? Input, input, input, you guys want it, I'll make it.

LBP2 comes out November 2nd, but I'm fairly sure I'll be in the Beta, so I can start work earlier.

P.S I know this is said about every single project on here, but THIS WILL NOT BE VAPORWARE!!!

[Darfox8]

I'm currently working on a Trigun LBP level. It's really taking alot out of me like most of my levels have. I'll try and finish it way before LBP2 comes out so that I'll be freshly energized when I finally get my hands on it. Shouldn't be too much of a problem since November is kinda far away, but if there's a beta... it'll be relatively soon and I don't want to get caught with my pants down.