Paintinator Speculation

Well, today's the day when the new Metal Gear Solid level pack launches. We are all excited, and I just want to highlight some information, and point out some information that you may not have known about.

Firstly, You can't grab anything while holding the gun. To me, that is extremely disappointing. Just imagine the possibility of holding on to the bottom of a helicopter and shooting everything below you. Not even that! What are we suppose to do when were holding the gun and we need to pull a switch? Media Molecule should have just used L1 to fire. This is like not having the ability to grab and lift things with the jet pack. This is severely limiting and I home Media Molecule either explains their logic behind it, or provides a remedy.

Second, your paint balls take the color of your pop-it. This is a nice detail and it lets you customize how your going to shoot things. In the picture above, there is two green, a peach and a blue on the score board, and it clearly corresponds with the Sackpeople's paintinators. So make sure that you have a different color pop-it than your friends, or else you won't know who's shooting what!

Now this part is just speculation, but it looks like you have a depeting amount of paint in your gun. Presumably, that is what the meter on the top is for. I would imagine that it refills once you walk over another Paintinator power up.

Speaking of the "power up", yes, you do need to pick it up, much like the jet pack. You cannot put it on like a costume, so you cant use it in your pod, or in levels that don't have the Paintinator in it.

Some final notes about all of this new stuff. When you hit one of your friends, it has been described as a "weak slap". You can still play with the Paintinator if you didnt purchase the level pack, if you play a user created level with it in it. If you want to play the new story levels, then you need to join a friend who did purchase the level pack. If you play the new levels and you didn't puchase the level pack, then you can't keep the new items, including the Paintinator. The level pack should come out around 8:00 pm est, but that's not always a guarantee.

Finnaly, if you cant wait until this evening, then head on over here for some gameplay videos. Warning: Contains Spoilers.

Publishing 101

If you have been reading the official Media Molecule blog (you do read the blog for the studio of the year, right?) then you should have come across an article that gives some tips on increasing your levels traffic. If not, well then, you can read it right here.

#1. The Title

This is the first thing your potential Player will see, so you have to make it exciting. If the Player thinks that no effort has been made on the Title then they will think the same about the level.

Here are some bad examples of titles that Players will probably avoid:

• Unnamed Level
• My First Level
• A Random Mess v1.3
• Blah Blah Not finished yet

…and here are some good examples:

• Temple of the Enchanted Stone (Of Doom)
• Wibbly Wobbly World
• Adventures in Pirate Bay
• Sackboy goes to Electric Funky Land

If you’re lucky, the Player will dive straight in, but for more picky Players you’re going to have to do a bit more persuading.

Now it’s time for the next hook, The Badge.

---

#2. The Badge

This is also one of the first things your potential Player will see, maybe even the first, if it’s done well enough.

Badges look good when they use bold colours and fit nicely onto a round badge. Badges don’t look good with lots of detail on them, say, a zoomed out PhotoBooth/PlayStation Eye image.
Here are some steps on how to make your Badge.

1. Go to your Moon and create a new level.
2. First choose a material and then make a round shape.
3. Now use stickers (the bigger and bolder the better) to make a nice design.
4. After you’ve finsihed your design, press Start and go into Front View, this will give you a nice flat view of your Badge.
5. Use the ‘Take a Photo’ tool of your design, now get the edge of the design right to the edge of the photo frame and take the photo.

You should now have a nice picture to put on your Badge.

---

#3. The Description

It’s so sad sometimes when a great level has no Description. For the more wary Players (who haven’t been swayed by your witty Title and funky Badge) a Description can make them want to play it.

Here are some basic rules on how to write a Level Description:

1. Write 2 or 3 small paragraphs, nothing too long though, keep it short.
2. Make up a story and put that in the first paragraph.
3. Second, tell the Player what the goals are in the level something like ‘race the cheetah’ or ‘find the hidden gold’.
4. Optionally, if you want some feedback from Players, tell them to leave you a comment.

A Description can seal the deal and also, its something to read whilst the level loads, so that’s nice.

---

#4. The Location

Now, this can be tricky. The position you publish your Badge to will be the position everybody else sees. For example, if you publish it in Australia, Players will access it by rotating the LittleBigPlanet to
Australia.

So, here’s the tricky choice, do you publish where everybody else is (usually the top part of the LittleBigPlanet) or, do you go where nobody else is and stand out from the crowd? Hmmm, I’ll leave that decision to you.

---

#5. Uploading Pictures

Have you ever wondered why some levels have pictures and some don’t?

The secret is the Upload option in Popit. How?? Where?? I hear you ask, OK, I’ll explain: When you take a Photo (including PhotoBooth photos) they are saved into ‘My Pictures’ in Popit. Find the Photo you want to Upload and press the Square Button and a menu will appear with lots of options, Upload being one of them.

Any Uploaded pictures will appear in the Level Information when Players select your Badge. Don’t panic if they don’t pop up straight away, it can take maybe 10-20 minutes for your Photos to appear.

---

#6. Advertise

After you’ve Published your level, you can also go onto the Internet to spread the word. Here’s a couple of official places places you can have a look at.

LittleBigWorkshop
Official PlayStation Community : LittleBigPlanet

Or you could try fansites like:
LittleBigMadness
LittleBigLand

(or in our forums, or LittleBigPlanetoid's Big Book of Little Levels)

Have a search round the internet, there are plenty of places to share your work! Add them to your Facebook page, or just email your friends.

Don’t forget to post some nice pictures as well, so that Players can see what your level is like before they go searching for it. Also, why not grab a camera, try making a movie of your level and put it on YouTube. We loves us some Youtube.

These tips may be obvious to some, but there are countless examples of decent levels with no description. Plus everyone wants to increase the number of plays on their level.

Metal Gear Solid Trophies

In case you were wondering, the trophy list for the new trophies in the Metal Gear Solid level pack have made it out. They offer some interesting information on how the new game play mechanics are going to work.

QuickFire Artiste
Fire 40 paintballs in under 5 seconds

Rexecutioner
Destroy the Metal Gear REX boss

Ace Act 3 and Act 4
Ace Act 3: The Mission and Act 4: The Level Factory

Ace Act 5: The Boss
Ace Act 5: The Boss

Paint Splurge
Fire 5,000 paintballs

Diamond Hunter
Destroy the 5 hidden target diamonds in Act 4: The Level Factory

Thrifty Painter
Complete Act 3: The Mission firing less than 125 paintballs

METAL GEAR SOLID® Booty Master
Collect all of the METAL GEAR SOLID® prize bubbles

Paint Sharer
Publish a level containing the METAL GEAR SOLID® Paintinator Powerup

Thrifty Rexecutioner
Destroy the Metal Gear REX boss in under 2 mins 30 seconds

Virtual Survivor
Achieve a score of 3,750 in the VR Survival Challenge

There you go, but I counted 11 trophies, but there may be a secret trophy. Remember, the level pack will cost you $6 (a steal in my opinion), and will be released on the 23rd.

For those of you who are wondering how you will purchase it without a credit card (thank you economy), many stores now carry PlayStation Network cards worth $20 and $50, including Blockbuster and Wal-Mart...

!!!

Last post, I briefly mentioned a Metal Gear Solid level pack, and Sony has released ll of the information we need, an a cute trailer. First, and probably most importantly, is the level pack itself. It features a Gurlukovich soldier costume, 72 stickers, 12 materials, 10 decorations, 18 objects and most excitingly, a paintball gun called the "Paintnator". With the paintball gun, you can fire it at enemies (with a newly added depleting health bar), new paint switches, and at your friends! It also includes some paint generator tool thingy, presumably it's the thing that makes those exclamation marks in the trailer below.


The level pack also includes 6 new levels to find all of the items in, and 12 more trophies for us to unlock.

You don't need to buy the pack to play, but there will obviously be some restrictions.

* Non-MGS Level Pack owners can PLAY the MGS Story Levels by joining a “host” who owns the pack and play the levels online together. Now you won’t be able to keep any objects, but you can have tons of fun just PLAYing.

* MGS Level Pack owners will be able to CREATE levels with any of these items (including the Paintinator) and SHARE them online for everyone to play.


Separately, there will be a Metal Gear Solid costume pack, featuring 3 costumes (featuring the much desired Old Snake) for $2 each, or a pack of 4 costumes (includes Raiden) for $6.

Both of the packs will be sold separately on the PlayStation Store for $6 each. They will be released on the 23rd.

ANOTHER surprise for us is the release of a new patch for LittleBigPlanet itself, and this one is rather significant. Some of the features I found were the inclusion of the PlayStation Store into LittleBigPlanet, a revamped search feature (finally), refined text chat, a "save level as" under create, and the ability to export in-game photos to your HDD (sadly, the reverse is not possible, yet).

Stuff!

Guess what we're getting... that's right, STUFF! Level pack stuff to be precise. Coming this Thursday, the PlayStation Store will be updated with the first "Level Pack". This pack will be based around a Christmas theme, and will include two new costumes (Christmas Tree headpiece and Gift Wrapped Sackboy), one new material (Wrapping Paper), two new items (a festive sleigh and a festive light), six new decorations (including a candy cane and a festive baubel) and "a ton" of new festive stickers. This pack will go for $3 and will be available for a limited time only...

In other news, the Hong Kong store will have the Metal Gear Solid costume and level pack, so hopefully those will make it stateside soon.

Street Fighter attacks LittleBigPlanet

This week, we get a new costume pack, containing several characters from the Street Fighter series. You can pick them up for $2 each or $6 for all four of them.

This week's costume-of-note is made by Joee94. When I saw this picture on LittleBigPlanetoid, I laughed so hard... Never gonna give you up.....

I will be posting some unique articles shortly, addressing LittleBigPlanet, and some of the cool community things I have found. So keep checking back!