Finally, after several weeks of work, I’ve published my first LittleBigPlanet level. To find it, fire up LBP, go to the search feature, and enter “Tender Buttes”. It should come up. Click through for some more screens, some planning drawings, and a little bit of griping.

Update: Media Molecule picked Tender Buttes as one of their… uh… picks of the week! Also, there’s a video of someone playing it, and not finding ANY of the awesome secrets! The video’s after the break.

Some thoughts:

• Media Molecule’s levels are too good. They set the standard so high, it makes it that much more difficulty to make something of comparative quality. This isn’t a bad thing, of course, it just means more work. And work is what it ends up being – after the fun part (designing the level and prototyping the different mechanics and such that’ll go into it), the only thing left is to grind against the editor to make it presentable. Yes, I know that’s how all good things are made. But that doesn’t mean it’s not work.
• The editor is very powerful, but it’s slow. Completing tasks is just not as easy as it would be with mouse control, keyboard shortcuts, and an all-around more robust application. The developer would say it’s like that on purpose, because it needs to be as simple and accessable as possible. But to achieve the results you see in the included levels, you need to work with the editor very heavily, and when you start doing that, the simplicity ends up weakening the tool. I am heavily skeptical that the included levels were created with the editor as it exists in the actual release. I would guess there’s a more powerful PC-based editor at their disposal, or at the very least, there are some advanced controls or manipulation tools available to the developers. Prove me wrong, Media Molecule!

• Weird glitches make things frustrating. While focusing on one area of the level, I may pan back over to an earlier area and find that some of the geometry has shifted sideways. In Tender Buttes, I have padded tops on some of the platforms. Unless they were glued down, I would occasionally find one or two had inexplicably shifted. A better example is the bird’s nest – often I would pan back to where it was supposed to be sitting, and I’d find it had fallen off the ledge. I haven’t been able to figure out what causes this.
• The corner-editor is unpredictable. To get really fine control over shapes, it’s necessary to use the corner editor. Unfortunately, sometimes the vertex points would be unwilling to move. Sometimes it seems that it would be the complexity of the shape, often if two different shapes were intersecting. Sometimes glued shapes would refuse to cooperate. Sometimes the corner editor wouldn’t work if an object was simply resting on the ground. And yet, I’ve had times where it would work fine in each of the previous scenarios.

• The dialogue bubbles don’t allow for a lot of text. I know, no one wants to read a novel while they’re playing through a level. However, the current character limit is just too short. The ability to include as little as one hundred more characters would really increase the flexibility.
• And of course, making game levels is a long, slow process. You build something, play it, see if it’s any fun, and repeat. But again, that can apply to any creative pursuit. And Media Molecule deserve a lot of credit for making it as easily as conceivably possible to build/play/build/play etc. That doesn’t change the sad, universal fact that making anything of quality takes time and effort. If they can manage to make a piece of software that fixes that, I’ll buy ten copies. Maybe twelve.

Additionally, since I’ve spent so much time with the level, it’s very hard for me to look at it objectively. I don’t know which parts are dull, which parts are too hard, and which parts there should be more of. So I turn to you – go, give it a play, and let me know if it’s a good time. Drop me an email, or leave a comment either on my LiveJournal or over at LittleBigWorkshop!