Rush of Battle - LBP2 Song Guitar Tab

So now and then I figure I might as well share a bit about how to play some the more popular Foof Tunes in LBP2! (And otherwise!)

This is one of my favorites to play, I'll often play this for fans as I pop into their games. The Rush of Battle (at the end of Maximum Carnage - Level here http://lbp.me/v/xnbyvw , song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iGNq2jlet0 )

The two main riffs to the song are pretty simple to play. Tempo about 180 bpm, the beginning starts in E minor like so:

That goes twice and then it switches to A Minor like so: (just move up a string!)

Then it goes into my favorite riff in the song, starts on a D:

This plays 3 times and then:

And then we just start the whole thing off of an E!

This 3 times again, and then:

And those are the two basic riffs to the song!

Methods to the Madness - User Interface

Part 2 of the "Methods to the Madness" series of posts will deal with User Interface. A good user interface is essential to any good gaming experience. It must be clear and concise to fit the purpose of the game. Of course the first thing you should do is decide if your game even needs one - sometimes the best UI is none at all! But when you do, everything should be clear and non-distracting.

Creating text in LBP is a bit of a chore. In Essence of Madness I created an entirely new curvy font set to replace the pixelated letters in Corridors. But how? 

Hamster Tubes. Yes, Hamster tubes!

They align to the big grid perfectly, and I just shaped all my letters out of hamster tubes and then stenciled them out with cardboard - making for perfectly aligned curves. To do that just overlap the shape with any solid material and it will embed the letter. You can then subtract this stencil from another slab of material to create a character in any material you desire! Everyone has their own methods and there are plenty of fonts available in the community, but you know me - I like to do everything myself. :)

After text, the symbols and colors are very important.  It's usually best to stick to a tight theme of colors within each user interface.  You'll find in Essence I like to stick to shades of blue and silver to fit the cold depths of space motif, but use green and red for the health display.

In Corridors of Madness I used the game's Counter to give a visual cue for the health, but in Essence I felt I had to go a step beyond. The health display became an EKG.

To create the effect I used a series of timers set to "Start count down" hooked up to cross sections of an EKG line display. With these timers on a looping sequencer, it means it will just fade between cross sections giving the effect of the moving line. 

Once the health drops beyond a certain threshold, I activate a different series of these to turn the line red and flash the word DANGER.  The sequencer is also faster in this mode.

 One key thing to keep in mind when designing UIs is that holographic material works by adding its color to what's behind it.  That means if you put a black sticker on it, it will be invisble. This means you can create sprites by using the color black as a mask. All the cursor graphics use this in Essence. 

Another big element of a UI is being able to move through different gameplay and/or menu screen. I personally like to achieve this by using multiple controllinators and activating them on demand.

If you put a wireless controllinator on a microchip and then deactivate the chip the controllinator will not respond to input. So you can use to separate all your submenus and gameplay types instead of using millions of AND gates! I just wire the outputs of a selector into these.

I hope this helps give people some ideas for constructing the UIs in their LBP2 games!

LittleBigPlanet 2 - Dungeon Crawler concept

Well folks, here's more from me in LBP2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmzE2VcOsgI

This uses similar concepts to my pseudo-3D raycaster except the 3D illusion is even more fake and you're restricted to moving in sort of "tiles" and can only turn in 90 degree angles.

Those restrictions make it easy to make some detail though, in this sample I have 3 unique "corridor" tiles, corner tiles, and a "dead end" tile. Also a "Monster".

I'm thinking of making this into a full fledged game complete with mazes, doors you can unlock with keys, and of course monsters. Also need to improve the rendering process slightly. It only uses about a single notch on the thermometer so it has plenty of room for variety!

The main differences between this and my other ray caster are that this launches a single ray outwards and while it does stop when it hits a wall, it also reads every grid tile it hits before it gets there - the other ray caster is not bound to a grid and only reads up to a wall. I will provide a very in-depth series of videos about both systems, including the full theory and implementation through the next couple of weeks.

But in short, for each level of distance there is a slice on the display, that is why it has this gridlocked sort of appearance. A very necessary limitation to achieve the cool textures. Which are at the moment just cheated with stickers, as indicated by their low resolution and the beta info text in the bottom corner of each slice. Higher quality art can be done by manually drawing with holo material.

LittleBigPlanet 2 - Get modularity with microchips.

Did you know you can turn microchips into easily reusable functions? You can give them custom-named inputs and outputs and use them just like the built in logic tools!

Check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiPXvpBaNKU

Here is a small tutorial that should give you some ideas on how you can create easily reusable pieces of logic that I will henceforth call functions.

When you wire to and from a microchip, it creates ports and will remember where each port is wired to, so you can then copy the microchip and plug in any acceptable input into a port. Functions do not have to return anything, but in this simple example we're going to make a function that implements a "dead - zone" : The signal will only be used if it fits within a certain % range.

A sequencer set to "Input Mode : Positional" Will use its analog input to adjust the current play cursor to fit within the given % of the total range. Confused?

For example: If your sequencer has 10 columns and you feed a signal of 50%, the cursor will rest right between column 5 and 6 - activating anything there such as batteries and tags.

I use this to provide a threshold. Keep in mind, only the absolute value is taken into consideration: A value of -50% will still be halfway on the sequencer.

Anyway, hope this helps. This is fully scalable to any amount of inputs/ outputs until the game crashes. :) Just remember the one on the bottom ALWAYS activates/deactivates the entire chip.

LittleBigPlanet 2 Music - Lonley Galaxy / Cosmic Tears

Clicky here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFNFa4uRt10

This was a song I wrote by request for a space theme. I think it turned out pretty well! I have the MP3 of this straight from the PS3's audio out. I am going to be transcribing this to real midi so it won't be gone forever when the beta ends.

LittleBigPlanet 2 - Basic Menu Tutorial 1.

(Check out the youtube video here)
(On Tap Function, Signal Inverter)

So let's make some fancy menus for custom options and other doodads! I've designed multiple methods for this and I'm going to

present what I think are easiest to visualize.

To make a menu you pretty much just need 4 basic components:

1) Visual cue to the items you can select
2) Some sort of selection indicator. Either a little dot or overlay, or even something that follows triggered magnetic keys.
3) A selector or series of selectors
4) A way to cycle through the inputs.

First, draw up your menu's layout. Also include what will be the indicators that can either light up, become emitted, etc.

Experiment! Use physical lights in LBP, use sackbot animations, the sky's the limit.

Typically people use a controllinator to handle UIs. To perform a simple, single column UI list you can use a single selector set

the number of options in the list, and wire each selector output to your indicators in order.

You can wire a directional output (such as the left analog stick or D-Pad) to the cycle of the selector. A positive value will

cycle forwards, a negative value will cycle backwards. If you feel the input isn't cooperating in the order you'd like, you can

invert the signal (See SIGNAL INVERTER blog post).

Using a series of AND gates, fed by selector outputs and your method of selection (For example, wiring the X output of the

controllinator into the other part) you can then fire off functions for each individual option. Maybe begin a cut scene, change

your sackbot's animation, play a fart sound - anything!

If you feel single column menus are too simple, try out one with multiple columns! A method I find that's easy to follow is to use

one selector for the rows, and one for the columns - So if you have 4 rows by 2 columns :

SELECTOR A is set to 4 slots - Cycle through this with your UP/DOWN methods
SELECTOR B is set to 2 slots - Cycle through this with your LEFT/RIGHT methods.

I also use a grid of AND gates to combine them, so in this case we'd have a grid of 8 AND gates and just go in lines adding the

selector outputs to the AND gate inputs.

It is these AND gates that indicate your selection. From here on you can continue the single column menu's approach, use AND gates

with your grid AND gates, and your confirmation method, to fire off your "Do Option" function for each choice.

Simple... but complicated. Enjoy and make your own UIs! Remember there are multiple methods to doing anything in engineering, you

might find methods of doing this that you find easier or more efficient - Good! I can't wait to see what you all do.

LittleBigPlanet 2 - On Tap Function

Simply use a counter with a limit of 1 that resets itself to create a function that outputs only once per cycle.

For example - The X output of a controllinator into a counter of 1 that outputs to both its own reset input and some menu function.

I have previously described an overly complicated version of this, because in the version of the code I was running at the time, the counter resetting itself took precedence towards resetting and wouldn't output to the rest of the chain. Now a counter can reset itself while still outputting to other devices.

LittleBigPlanet 2 - Signal Inverter.

Signal Inverter

This is an extremely simple utility chip.

To invert a directional signal you can just take a
(1) directional splitter and then put the + output of that into the - input of a (2) Directional Combiner, and then take the - output of the (1) Directional Splitter and punch that into the + input of the (2) Directional Combiner; essentially reversing the signs.

Presto!

A pseudo-3D Raycaster in LBP2?... YES!

Yes it is true, I am insane. I have been toying the last few days with many ideas to implement a raycasting renderer in the LittleBigPlanet 2 Beta similar to the ones in games like Wolfenstein 3D or Ken's Labyrinth. Of course I don't know if I'm insane enough to implement texture mapping, I think I'd settle for at least differently colored walls.

Youtube Link here: LBP2 Raycaster concept

This is not using any glitches (eg. 50 layer glitch) to accomplish its goal and of course would allow full movement on the horizontal plane.  I am attempting to raise the resolution but so far my efforts result in catastrophe, the game hates it. I'm still going to try to at least get a better video up.

LittleBigPlanet GOTY edition starring - ME!!!!!

Yes, that's right, I created one of the bonus levels for the LittleBigPlanet Game of the Year edition. Although this is a little late, I guess, here is my personal introduction that can be found on the blu-ray disc.

My interview is right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzESxyqRcT4&feature=related
(CREDIT GOES TO CogSpartan457 for taking/uploading the video)

A video of my level is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bghwANdxK18
(Credit goes to JHKthree for taking/uploading the video)