We’re nearly through May now, but with all this wet weather we’re experiencing in Guildford, it hardly seems believable that Summer is right around the corner That’s why, for this week’s podcast, we’ve brought on returning guest John B, because his surname sounds like beach, and we like beaches. What’s that? His name is spelled ‘Beech’ not ‘Beach’? Never mind,  I’m sure you’ll still enjoy all the fabulous stories he has to share about his award winning miniature painting skills and newly purchased POWER KITE regardless of the lack of beaches. It’s a very exciting episode, and Alice and Spaff listen on in amazement as Kenny and John recount their perhaps slightly worrying tales of night terrors and lucid dreams!

Also, if you’re an amazing UI Designer who would love to become a molecule, be sure to check the links section below for more information.

• We need a UI Designer
• John’s Warhammer models
• Electricity safety Video
• Portal safety Video
• Men In Black LBP costumes
• Iambic Pentameter Twitter
• Morse Code from dreams
• UK Citizenship test
• City of Metronome

This is a senior role, working across different projects on different platforms you will be responsible for promoting a human centred design approach throughout all aspects of Media Molecule’s prodigious output Although primarily focussed on game Ui expect to get involved in all aspects of the creative process from pitching through to tools development and games design.

As a passionate but pragmatic advocate of all things Ux you will be able to suggest and deliver solutions that will make our games better. This will involve being thoughtful, flexible and able to collaborate in a small, tightly knit and ambitious team. You are an engaging talker, designer and presenter who will be able to nurture the fleck of an idea, getting buy in from your peers and then developing it into something that might just revolutionise the world of games.

Not such a long time ago, in Kenny’s sound room which isn’t very far away, STAR WARS PODCAST.  If you haven’t spotted that thinly veiled reference there, today is International Star Wars day, and so this week’s podcast begins with some Jedi related chatter, before we drift off into the usual nonsensical madness.

Learn of Kenny’s mission to indoctrinate his wife into the ways of Star Wars, Spaff’s love of auto-machine translated edition of Star Wars: Backstroke of the West, why Alice can’t stop watching crazy prancing violin girl, and welcome podcast newcomer Tom Dallaway to the fray! Plus Steven is back to give us an LBP news update, anchoring the podcast back to sanity once more.

Oh yes, I think we are obliged to say the following important thing: May the Fourth be with you.
Yes we did just say that, you have permission to slap us. You can slap us by email if you like: podcast@mediamolecule.com

Note: iTunes will be up soon :) Please bear with us!

• Do Not Want
• Star Wars Uncut
• Otamatone
• Crazy Violin Girl
(Kenny would like to point out that her bowing doesn’t match up from shot to shot)
• Plink
• Russell Crowe in Neighbours
• Cinco de Mayo

We’re off to a rambling start in this week’s podcast, with questions about what exactly it is that Jagermeister’s made of, and how it is that Scrooge McDuck ever managed to successfully swim in his pool of gold coins. But thankfully, for your sanity’s sake (and ours), Kenny, Tom, Spaff, and Alice pull it together and dive into matters of utmost importance: various Scottish confectionery! The topic of the week takes us by surprise, as Tom reveals his childhood brush with fame, having appeared in a newspaper article about potential electrocution. Have you also ever made headlines? Send us your story to podcast AT mediamolecule.com!

Also, please welcome LittleBigPlanet’s new Community Co-ordinator, Steven Isbell, for his first-time Mm podcast appearance! We wheel Steven in to go over the LBP news this week, which includes Update 1.12!

Links Wot Wot:

• Making Rock
• Table Recipe
• Chocolate Courgette Cake

Two molecules have embarked upon a grand scheme to build themselves a robot. What kind of robot though? A pinacle of human achievement to rival ASIMO? A destructive boxy looking war-bot capable of taking down Sir Killalot? A weaponised bot left with the compassion of a human after a lightning strike?

Well, according to Chris, the Mm Bot will be an studio ‘pet’ with the capability to detect faces, and share it’s own emotions through coloured light strips. It will scoot around the studio on wheels, seeking out people to be friends with, running away from people who scare it, and generally being cute. Here’s what it looks like at the moment:

Expect more updates on the bot soon! We <3 Mm Bot!

And we’re back with your second Media Molecule podcast for the week! Isn’t that exciting? It is Easter weekend after all, and as we’ve missed you listeners so much, Kenny, Spaff, and Alice hop back into the sound cave mere days after the last recording. What is it like to see Obama punch a journalist in Mass Effect 3? How awesome is it that Alice has her white robe in Journey? And how dazzled are your ears by Kenny’s use of ‘ting’? You can find out by simply listen-ting!

Last, but not least, this week’s episode sees the second GDC special segment, an audio focussed discussion between Kenny and shiny special guests, Austin Wintory (Journey composer) and Brian Min (Double Fine Production’s Audio Director). We hope you enjoy it!

Shiny Guest Contact Info:

• http://austinwintory.com/
• Austin Wintory on Twitter
• Brian Min on Twitter

Other linkies

• Make your Shephard look like Obama
• Journey Soundtrack previews
• Journey Soundtrack on Soundlcoud

The birds are chirping, the sun’s been shining a bit, the flowers are starting to bloom, and our clocks have gone forward—all signs that spring has sprung! And with it, a shiny new podcast!
It’s been a while, and we’re down a Tom this week, but Kenny, Spaff, and Alice went into the sound cave to quickly catch up on where it is we’ve been this whole time, including tons of fun stuff that’s been happening in the Little Big Planet world!

But that’s not all! This podcast sees the first of two special segments we recorded in our adventures a few weeks ago during the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. We hope you enjoy our two very special guests, Greg Rice from Double Fine Productions and Chris Remo from the Idle Thumbs Podcast. They speak with us about their amazing success on Kickstarter (very exciting and impressive) and then we dive into some wonderful indie games chatter. 

As fate would have it, and as you may have noticed as it is now the 2nd of April and no longer a Friday, we did not manage to get the podcast up last week. So, it looks as though we’re the April Fools after all! See you soon :)

Fantastic Linktastic!

• Idle Thumbs Podcast Kickstarter
• Chris Remo, Idle Thumbs Podcast: @chrisremo
• www.idlethumbs.net
• Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter
• Greg Rice, Double Fine Productions: @gregricey
• www.doublefine.com

LittleBigPlanet Stuff

• Sackies 2011 Winners
• Little Big Planet Karting announcement
• Don’t forget to get your Sackboy Hessian Fragrances, as it’s only available until April 3/4!
• LittleBigPlanet presents Journey Wallpaper!

Games we talked of:

• Joust
• QWOP
• GIRP and Mega Girp
• Blendo games‘s Atom Zombie Smasher
• Stacking

We’d like to introduce you all to a new member of the LittleBigPlanet family, United Front Games and the new project they’re leading on, LittleBigPlanet Karting!

The PlayStation Blog has a full announce article up, with some messages from us, and from the fab team at UFG, and a wizzy launch trailer too, ooh shiny.

It has really been a joy to collaborate with all of the folks at Mm. Since the project’s inception, they have been great partners in getting to where we are today. Looking ahead, we can’t wait for all of the LBP fans out there to get their hands on LittleBigPlanet Karting. The LBP community is unparalleled in the gaming world for the passion and creativity they bring and it’s going to be very exciting to see where they’re able to take this new journey for Sackboy.

Our goal with LBP Karting has been fairly simple – provide a fast-paced experience that captures the best of classic Karting gameplay, married with the unbridled creativity of LBP. This new adventure will be accessible to players of all ages and have all of the variety necessary to satisfy both the hardcore and more casual players.

Head on over to the PlayStation Blog to hear more about the project, and watch the snazzy video!

Break out the bubbly and dance on the tables! At least that’s what we’re doing this week after LittleBigPlanet 2 picked up two awards at this years BAFTA Video Game Awards Ceremony

A small gang of molecules poshed themselves up in frocks and bow ties last Friday to attend this year’s ceremony, where we were nominated for a whopping six awards. We picked up two of those, one for Family game of the Year, the other for Innovation in games, and we’re very proud of them indeed!  Here they are looking all spangly…

Watch Mark, Dave and our Sony Producer Pete pick up the awards, and listen to their obviously very well prepared and historically important acceptance speeches in these fine BAFTA videos.

Family Game of the Year 2012

Game Innovation 2012

It only seems right to finish this blog post with another acceptance speech, or rather an extended thank you to you guys, a terrific community who have made LittleBigPlanet the amazing game it is. We’re fairly sure that in coming years it will be some of you folks picking up awards like this for your own creations, but for now thank you sooo, so much for helping to fill our game with wondrous creations, and fun people to play them with!

Whilst we’re doing speechy type things, we’d also like to offer a very big congratulations to all our friends and peers who were nominated or won awards this year: Good job games people! <3

Do you smell that? Take a whiff—it’s the tantalising aroma of a new gaming device The PlayStation Vita launched this week in the US and EU, and Kenny, Tom, and Alice are feeling the electronic device envy as folks around Mm towers start to unpack their very own shiny new handhelds. Spaff recounts tales of a recent LBP Vita game jam that took place at Tarsier Studios in Sweden. And, exciting news—the Sackies have reached the final phase! All you fine folks can now go and vote for your favourite finalists on LBP.me! 

A lot of traveling is on the horizon for us podcasters though, with Game Developers Conference around the corner, followed by SXSW, so we quickly wrap things up with some fine (quality not confirmed) jokes! 

Have you bought or plan to buy a PlayStation Vita? Let us know what games you’re looking forward to, or send us some jokes (maybe good ones!) to podcast AT mediamolecule.com

What was that thing you talked about during the podcast?

• The Sackies Finalists - Vote now!
• Chewbacca Door
• Follow us on Twitter: @mediamolecule
• Kenny’s site is GameSound.org

April 2nd has arrived, and with it the truth, no more fooling –  I’m simultaneously happy and sorry to say that it is all true: This site will be ‘closing down’ and we really do have jobs at Media Molecule.

We’ll be updating our new home with some introductions shortly, and have plans in the pipeline for all the ways to improve and have fun with the LittleBigPlanet Community, and beyond. There are various things we need to set in motion, move over, archive, change, or fix up. We may not update the news here again very much, but keep your eye on our twitter feed – We’ll keep that updated when we can, and possibly rename it and make it official. Maybe. It’s over here: www.twitter.com/lbplanetoid

We’re just transitioning into our new jobs, learning all the secret things, meeting all the cool folks and signing legal documents; so updates might be slow at first. When we get into the swing of things, you can expect a steady stream of information to come flowing forth!

So, with that in mind, we hope you will all join us over on…

See you there!

Dear Planeteers

As the headlines suggests, we have some good news and some bad news. First of all, let’s go for the bad: I’m afraid the news is true, we are closing the site, and ceasing updates of news articles, features and LBP tidbits, which we have been bringing to you since the start of November last year.

It will remain as an archive of news and features, and the comments will remain open for a time, and eventually all expire so that the site is a static archive of information, forever floating in space.

Do not fear however! We are not leaving the community, the opposite of that is the truth, for we are broadcasting to you now from the offices of Media Molecule, in our new jobs as Community Managers. You heard us right - after a long period of proving ourselves worthy, we have been hired by the creators of LittleBigPlanet!



Whilst we join you in the mourning for this site, we hope you can join us in celebrating our new positions. Everything you love here, we will bring to you again in some form, although what form that will be is yet to be decided, but with the backing of Mm and Sony, we promise to bring you something bigger, better, badder and sexier that the Planetoid could ever become.

Thanks to everyone for sending us news, reading the site, and taking part in the community, and basically helping to make this site so great - you shall not be forgotten, we’ll see you on the other side….. Or other site perhaps? It just remains for us to say, this…

See you shortly,

James and Tom


The Little BIG Planetoid has crashed uncontrollably into the LittleBigPlanet!!!

We and everyone on board have been saved however, thanks to our escape vessel.
Reports from the surface indicate no loss of life below, and minor damage to the Planet itself, thanks in part to its spongy surface.

We report to you now from our escape ship, its limited broadcasting resources running overtime to get you this message.

We have some sad news. With our observation deck gone, our telescopes and consoles destroyed, we will no longer be able to report news, events and happenings on the LittleBigPlanet.

LittleBigPlanetoid will cease transmissions as of today.

We thank you all for your continued support of our publication and media broadcasts, and will bring you further news of what will happen next, once we are safely landed, some time in the next few hours.
But be sure of this - The LittleBigPlanetoid will never be the same again.

Goodbye, for now Planeteers, and God bless.

We are reporting to you now, from the command deck of the Planetoid, which we are about to evacuate. Our escape ships stand by, and will allow us to relay news through our satellites for a limited time. Our observation point has become dangerously unstable, we are plummeting dangerously close to the LittleBigPlanet, and pending a miracle it looks like the planetoid is in for a crash landing! Where’s Bruce Willis when you need him?

Look out below people! Brace for Crash landing.

All systems continue to be on full alert today, and our teams of scientists and brave astronauts are working like crazy to find the source of these disturbances. One thing remains clear though, the stabilisers are rapidly failing and the core temperature of the Planetoid is… scaring us.

Reports arriving to us from surface scientist Kimura by way of the comments indicate some frightening statistics:

Anyway, I’ve had the Supercomputer calculate the orbital paths of the Planetoid, LittleBigPlanet itself, and the MyMoon and InfoMoon. Here’s what it came up with:

• 25% chance of hitting one of the moons, either destroying the moon or the Planetoid;
• 10% chance of hitting one of the moons, BUT instead of destruction, knocking the moon out of orbit and causing the Planetoid to assume a new orbit;
• 30% chance of creating a 5000-sackmile-radius crater in LittleBigPlanet;
• 5% chance of getting a binary orbit with one of the moons, swing around in a stable figure-8 path;
• 20% chance of catastrophic failure (the Planetoid hits a moon, the moon hits LittleBigPlanet, and the resulting collision sends sponge and rubber fragments flying off into the rest of the LittleBigGalaxy);
• 15% chance of the collective Rocket thrust of all the Pods being enough to get the Planetoid back into its orbit;
• -5% chance (yes this all equals 100%) of a team of sackpeople getting into Lyoko and deactivating the tower that X.A.N.A. is clearly using to crash the Planetoid, then using a Return to the Past to fix everything. Of course, what he wants with LittleBigPlanet is a mystery in itself

That pod idea sounds worth a try, we’re gonna get to it. In the mean time, maybe we will have some more cake news to keep us distracted?

Oooh err look over here, part 3 of The Bonus Round on Gametrailers, featuring Alex Evans. (Thanks Robin)

Another delicious and finely crafted cake has been sent our way, this time from an aunt and uncle to their nephew, Gab.

Breathe in its glory!

Check out more shots of the cake over on Flickr. And anyone else out there making cakes, how about sending us a slice to, you know, make sure it isn’t poisoned.

After days of tinkering and freaking out, we think we’re close to working out what’s been going on with our system up here on the Planetoid.

The system is reporting some very dangerous measurements that threaten the very existence and stability of this planetoid.

It appears that we might be falling out of the sky and heading on a collision course with the LittleBigPlanet… errrr help?

- Please stand by for more information -

Dave Smith, the technical director at Media Molecule, delivered a talk at GDC yesterday on the complexities and rewards of implementing physics in LittleBigPlanet.
Gamasutra folk were there recording the events, for us to copy paste their words today. (thank you Gamasutra!)

What is physics in games?

Smith wondered about the original 1981 Donkey Kong. “Does this have physics? I would say yes. You have objects moving, colliding with things… Arguably this is a form of physics.”

Though it’s limited, so is the current definition of physics in games, he argues. “We generally refer to rigid-body physics simulation as physics”; in real life objects collide and deform, and liquids aren’t yet simulated very well. Like with what Donkey Kong chose to simulate, “It’s a question of computing power.”

But with more realistic physics, Smith argues, you can make something that’s more than the sum of its parts—all items in DK act alone; in World of Goo the developers simulate a great deal through the use of springs, and “build complexity, which is interesting and useful in different ways.”

Why implement physics?

“The first possible answer, and I think it’s one a lot of games would give, is to make the game pretty,” says Smith. “It makes the world more believable.”

Many developers think physics allow you to get away with a smaller team, since things are simulated rather than hand-created. “I think there’s some truth and some wrongheadedness about this answer,” says Smith.

“Even though you get a lot of odd behavior [with a ragdoll simulation] it’s preferable to have the odd visual effects than having the characters not respond correctly to the environment,” Smith admits.

“But I think developers feel you can get something for nothing… You can just rely on one or two simple physical principles… As humans I think we’re good at seeing through, seeing to the heart of a game and seeing the true content. You have to have some sort of structured experience you’re given to the player.”

For LBP, the real reason to use physics was to “make use of players’ expectations.”

Says Smith, “From a very early age, we develop a very sophisticated understanding of the world around us. I think this is something games can really leverage. Your players already have a whole wealth of experience to solve problems the game poses.”

When you use physics, then, “You throw up less walls to define what the player can do. The game becomes more believable as the players can do more what they can do in real life.”

To read more of Dave’s very development focused talk, head on over to Gamasutra.

P.S Please bear with us through these bursts of technical failure, we’re not entirely sure what’s happening but we are working around the clock to resolve it!

TNbGs┤dfSDFs^sdRTY!

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Fddh>>>€íóg b۞۞BbB►bnk:op@g*6
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————————————————————————

reboot…

>Power grid online
>Initialising system
>Planetoid systems report

CATEGORY 1
ALL SYSTEMS REPORT

Life support: 100%
Observation deck: 100%
Shields: 99%
Stabilisers: 83% and falling

Zone 1: Systems operating at 98%
Surveillance systems:  functioning at 87%
Broadcast systems: functioning at 90%

*** DANGER ***
Core temperature rising
Stabilisers failing

A video from GDC09, showing the talk which Alex Evans and Mark Healey gave, has popped up on YouTube, giving some interesting insight in to the early development of LittleBigPlanet.
We won’t waffle on, check it out:

There are many interesting things in this video - like the Phil Harrison level patch, or the original sizes and shapes of the concept Sackboy designs. Also shown in the video is a Katamari Damacy costume - something which we can’t help but pray to eventually be released!

Via Mercury News and thanks to cya8a for sending in the Katamari costume screenshot.

Sam Protagonist has just revealed the feature list for the upcoming 1.12 patch, Cornish Yarg.

• There is a new music player which lets players choose their own music from the XMB to play during create mode and in their Pod
• Improved decoration mode makes it easier to customise your Sackboy
• New options to help prevent profiles becoming full of unwanted community objects:
  • Option to delete all (unhearted) community objects and photos
  • Option to select whether to automatically collect community prizes and photos
• A number of improvements have been made to make profiles more robust and to recover from certain errors
• We now support Japanese and Korean IME for text chat.
• Emitter prediction has been improved (this should help fast-moving projectiles e.g. in MGS levels)
• The player proximity switch now has a ‘require all’ option in it
• An option has been added to cycle between various level information when viewing community levels on the earth
• Various LittleBigStore improvements

Wow. There are some great fixes and updates there.
The patch still does not have a date though, but so long as there isn’t an almighty balls-up somewhere along the line, we’re expecting this *soon*, but not before the 1.11 content update which is due next week. Sam’s exact words were:

To add some timing context to this, the 1.11 update, which contains content only, is due for release next week (I’ll update if this timing changes). Cornish Yarg is a little after that release, but I’ll give a better timeline once it’s looking concrete.

Some of you might still be fretting about what this patch is not addressing, but fear not - Sam also has some titbits of information about what else is coming soon.

We don’t yet have a fixed release date for this update, but it has now finished primary development so won’t be too much longer. Additional fixes, particularly for online connection reliability and save game/profile size problems are already well into development and we’ll bring you more news on that just as soon as possible.

w00tage.

Thanks to mnimmo once again for the heads up.

[UPDATE]

Michelle at Media Molecule has posted another lovely list. Arguably juicier than the first one too as it’s worded in a way which makes our tongues swell with anticipation. Loving lists today!

• A super awesome set of 5 new tutorials in “Create Pack 1”! These tutorials unlock some lovely new creative tools to play about with and help you make even cooler levels. The new tools are as follows:
  • Infinite lives checkpoint
  • Visibility tweak option on certain joint objects (to hide these in Play mode)
  • Global settings object (to trigger lighting changes)
  • Tetherless jetpack - [OH EMMM GEEEE!!!!11!twelve!!11!]
• Angle range proximity switch (additional functionality on proximity and magnetic key switches)
• IME text chat support for Korean and Japanese
• Some nifty profile managing tools and menus for better profile management when receiving community objects and photos.
• A very sleek music player which is available to use while in create mode, meaning you can listen to your own MP3s while you make!
• Advanced Sackboy customisation mode to help you decorate all those hard to reach places
• Anton’s sweated blood to try to fix the level loading issues some of you may have experienced, so if you have a broken level, why not give it another go?

Some of you will have noticed some error messages cropping up in some of our broadcasts, we’re not sure what’s causing them yet but the readouts are… interesting. Hopefully normal service will be resolved shortly, please stand by!

It was previously announced that the Buzz! costume would be released today, though a sweet suprise has hit us - it’s a Buzz! mini-pack, yay!

The Buzz! costume is still going to be available, complete with a range of 20 Buzz! themed stickers. Horrah! Quiz themed levels ahoy!

• 1 Costume skin material:
  • Buzz! skin

• 7 Costume items:

  • Buzz! Glasses
  • Buzz! Tie
  • Buzz! Hair

• Stickers

  • Buzz! Button
  • Tick
  • Cross
  • Number 1
  • Number 2
  • Number 3
  • Number 4
  • Lightbulb
  • Buzz! Head
  • Red Arrow
  • Green Arrow
  • Buzz! Logo
  • Orange Button
  • Yellow Button
  • Blue Button
  • Buzz! Left Arm
  • Buzz! Buzzer
  • Green Button
  • Buzz! Right Arm
  • Buzz! Body

No word on pricing yet, though previous mini-packs have all been priced at £2.39 / €2.99 / $2.99 / ¥300. The more observant among you will noticed that this pack contains the smallest amount of content though.
The original announcement thread has been updated from Buzz! costume to mini-pack and now includes prices $1.99/€1.99 (£1.59).

Full details over on the LittleBigWorkshop forums.

Shout out to mnimmo for poking us about it.

Speaking at GDC, Alex Evans and Mark Healey have revealed that there will be plenty more to come for LittleBigPlanet, with Mark saying:

We still feel like we’re halfway through the development of LittleBigPlanet, to be honest

...which is a tasty reminder that the game is still expanding and will be offering even more to the community as time rolls on. If the game really is considered to be ‘halfway’ through development, we can all expect to see some pretty epic updates throughout 2009.

In the months since launch, we’ve been treated to regular free DLC, plus paid-for DLC like that big game changing premium content - the Metal Gear Solid pack. Improvements to the game via patches and updates have also been made regularly - and let’s not forget that the next big patch is due very soon. In fact, there’ll be news on Cornish Yarg later today.

The pair also gave some interesting insight in to the development of the game and the ways in which it has changed since its initial conception. We won’t repeat the article here though, because it’s already been splendidly written over on Eurogamer.

Whilst still hot from the excitement of that BAFTA award the other week, Media Molecule have just picked up 4 new awards for LittleBigPlanet at the Game Developers Choice Awards.

Hosted by the much loved developer Tim Schafer, the awards are judged by a panel of game creators and the award ceremony forms part of the GDC conference in San Francisco. LittleBigPlanet had 7 nominations (out of a total 10 categories) and has walked off with a healthy 4 awards. Congratulations Mm!

The complete list of GDC winners and nominations is as follows:

• Best New Debut: LittleBigPlanet
  • Other nominees: Braid, Sins of a Solar Empire, World of Goo and Soul Bubbles

• Best Audio:Dead Space

  • Other nominees: L4D, MGS4, Gears of War 2

• Best Game Design: LittleBigPlanet

  • Other nominees: Fallout 3, L4D, Braid and Far Cry 2

• Best Downloadable Game: World of Goo

  • Other nominees: Braid, N+, PixelJunk Eden, Castle Crashers

• Best Handheld Game: God of War: Chains of Olympus

  • Other nominees: Patapon, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, echochrome, The World Ends With You

• Best Writing Award: Fallout 3

  • Other nominees: Braid, MGS4, GTAIV and Far Cry 2

• Best Technology Award: LittleBigPlanet

  • Other nominees: Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, GTAIV and Spore

• Best Visual Art Award: Prince of Persia

  • Other nominees: LittleBigPlanet, Gears of War 2, MGS4 and Fallout 3

• Innovation Award: LittleBigPlanet

  • Other nominees: Spore, World of Goo, Boom Blox, Braid

• Game of the Year Award: Fallout 3

  • Other nominees: Fable 2, LittleBigPlanet, Left 4 Dead, GTAIV
• Ambassador Award: Tommy Tallarico
• Pioneer Award: Harmonix’s Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy
• Life Time Acheivement Award: Hideo Kojima

More details about the awards on the official site.

Automatically generated report

CATEGORY 1
ALL SYSTEMS REPORT
Life support: 100%
Observation deck: 100%
Shields: 100%
Stabilisers: 93% and failling
Core temperature rising

Juicy information about the upcoming update patch for LittleBigPlanet known as “Cornish Yarg” has been revealed In the latest Media Molecule podcast.

Some new features, not previously known have been revealed:

• Global lighting controllers (as first seen in the Metal Gear Solid pack)
• In-game XMB music available in create mode (“listen while you work”)

The patch is currently in QA and apparently awaiting feedback from Sony - the final stages of release. Fingers crossed for no major bugs and we should have this very soon.

The Cornish Yarg patch was originally slated for an end of January release, but it’s only now that we have this glimpse of a true release date. It’s also thought that online create mode will be coming with Cornish Yarg, though this is unconfirmed.

It’s also worth mentioning that the podcast clarifies that the Frying pan slap has been available in game for a while now, and makes a Shooting-stars style comedy CLANG! sound when you slap other players with it.

Head over to Media Molecule to listen to the latest and greatest podcast, order find it in the iTunes podcast library.

Thanks for Pixelledfox for the heads up. We were still syncing our iPods for some bedtime listening

[UPDATE]

Sam Protagonist has said on the LittleBigWorkshop forums that Cornish Yarg will not contain the much anticipated online create. A previously leaked updates schedule suggested that online create would be in Cornish Yarg, but Sam says that this is not the case:

Online creating is still coming but it is not part of the Cornish Yarg update. It is planned to be released as part of an update that also tackles some of the latency issues players have encountered to date.
There’ll be plenty more news on the subject when it’s a little closer to being ready to go.

This would suggest that online create would be coming in the “TCP/IP” networking patch to be known as Leerdammer.
You can read his message on the forums.

Yay! It’s DLC Thursday once more and today is the day that the Killzone 2 mini-pack is released! Horrah!

The mini-pack is rammed full of stickers to help you create the ultimate Killzone themed levels. The pack also contains two costumes, and costs £2.39 / €2.99 / $2.99 / ¥300.

But enough chit-chat, let’s take a look inside the pack:

• 1 Costume skin material:
  • ‘Sev’ Skin
• 7 Costume items:
  • Helghast Helmet
  • Helghast Gasmask
  • Helghast Trousers
  • Helghast Vest
  • ISA Battledress Tunic
  • ‘Sev’ Haircut
  • ISA Battledress Trousers

• 32 Stickers:

  • Rank Sergeant
  • Rank General
  • Rank Major
  • Rank Sergeant Major
  • ISA Propaganda I
  • ISA Propaganda II
  • Killzone Logo
  • Guerrilla Logo
  • ISA Logo
  • Helghast Logo
  • ISA Seal
  • ISA Sabotage Badge
  • Helghast Assault Badge
  • ISA Alliance
  • Warning Sign
  • Proceed Sign
  • Caution Fire
  • Caution Stop
  • Helghan Text I
  • Helghan Text II
  • Helghan Text III
  • Helghan Text IV
  • Helghan Seal
  • Helghan Property
  • Helghan Propaganda I
  • Helghan Propaganda II
  • Helghast Tactical Badge
  • Helghast Assault Badge
  • Sev
  • Helghast
  • Bullethole
  • Bulletholes

Head on over to Media Molecule’s article for those official screenshots.

[UPDATE]

There is currently a problem with the PlayStation Store, both in Europe and North America. For many users, it is currently not possible for people to purchase this and other content from the store, but we’re hoping that normal service will resume again soon.

[UPDATE AGAIN]

PSN user BlahYourHamster has created a level containing all the stickers. So you can “see them before you buy”. More info on the EU community forums.

If you entered LittleBigLand’s Crown competition, maybe you won! Now might be a good time to go and check eh?

We have been utterly bowled over by the skill, imagination and time that you fine sack people have put into your creations, many of these levels have been truly magical and you all deserve one of these fantastical crowns, but alas sadly we only had one to give away.

We have all been beavering away trying to play and finish your levels, some we completed, some we didn’t, some very deviously tricky parts in some of those levels!

Finally though we have made our minds who we think deserve to be the winners. So without further ado…

The Winner of LittleBigLands Fantastical Crown Competition is…

We won’t spoil it, why don’t you head over to LittleBigLand to see if you won, or to check out the excellent videos of the winning entries!

Here at the Planetoid, we’ve produced two designer sticker packs so far, and they’ve both been very popular within the community. In order to try and get the very best quality stickers for these packs, we had to do a fair bit of tinkering, testing and fiddling to achieve our results. In this feature, we’ll be showing you how we did it.