Backwards Compatibility: A Somewhat Cynical Retrospective

Strangely, I now also avoid LBP1 levels.

As far as backwards compatability is concerned, it doesn't have too much of an effect on my platforming based levels. However, all my vehicle levels keep getting comments like "put a DCS / gyro etc in there". The point that people are missing is that these were built before LBP2 was announced and if arranged in order a timeline of the development of my understanding of making vehicles and control setups for LBP1.

Am I right in saying there is a means of blocking LBP1 levels on the LBP2 server? If so how?

I still say they should've just kept the good graphics that broke LBP1 stuff, people whine either way, better have them whine over a good looking game, than a iffy one. :/

I find it ironic that everybody has their LBP1 levels locked down in LBP2, meaning that BC was a moot point anyways. :grr:

It also annoys me that the beta once looked more visually stunning than the final product we are playing now, but a subsequent update weakened the overall look of the game so that the new lighting engine would be more compatible with LBP settings. It really wasn't rocket science for us to simply tweak the light settings in our old levels, and certainly in my case, once I had taken 10 minutes to do this my old levels looked better than ever, but since that update neither my LBP1 nor my LBP2 levels seem to look quite so good as they did in the early versions of the beta.

I bet some lot of lock down level actually are playable and are not so different, but got locked because one light looks different, it seems that most level that suffer from new light engine is indoor levels and not all LBP1 are indoor ;] same a people consider there level 1 player only still they work fine with more players.

I think BC was a massive mistake and has caused more major problems than it was worth.

I agree with foofles above that the only things we really needed were the tools and collected materials for creating, and DLC.

As far as levels go, most levels from LBP1 simply don't work or look awful in LBP2 anyway. Most of mine are broken by the new hazard/lighting effects to the the point where it's actually impossible to play them to the finish. To be honest for eager, prolific creators there's no point having them even if they did work because every LBP1 level you have published on your LBP2 moon is one less LBP2 level you can have, so if you want 20 new levels you have to set all the LBP1 levels as only playable in LBP1 in any case, which rather makes it totally pointless having them there in the first place.

Edit because somehow it missed some of my post:

I never exploited any glitches in my levels. No "50+ layers", no "cow glitch", no thermo haxz, etc. My levels also vary with types of environment, if anyone's levels should work, they should be mine, right? Wrong. They are broken, far beyond just a couple of lights being off here and there.

Even my MM picked Cosmic Conundrum is more like a showcase of problems, with none of the enemies destroying properly, making it hard to move through the level, and many enemies not even spawning in the first place. Many of my levels' bosses don't die properly, meaning the level can't be finished. All sorts of gameplay related logic that does not function that either hinders the experience or stops it short copletely.

Many game-vital emitters cease to function, meaning those levels are either not as enjoyable or outright unplayable.

IT's all related to the differences in logic. Eg. In LBP1, it considered connectors to extend the base object for destruction. In LBP2 it only considers glued objects as an extension. It'd be nice to have an option to include non-rigid connections as well in the destruction logic, that would solve so many problems.

I was willing to keep my lbp1 levels live on LBP2 even with the differences in lighting. My levels looked flat, muddy, and hideous in LBP2. But even with that, I kept it up for a time and just left comments "Recommend to play in LBP1" , until I realized that almost none of my levels are able to be finished.

And I agree, LBP2's capabilities should never have had to been held back by anything related to LBP1. The rendering and logic code are so incredibly different.

Mistake? Nah i don't think so

Ability to get level structure from LBP1 levels and have access to them in LBP2 is very useful even if there apperence are diffrent, things you created in LBP1 are always in your hand and you can use pats of older levels in to LBP2. For example let's say you got series that have specific theme in LBP1 and oyu want to continue to do the series in LBP2 with same theme. You don't need to recreate everything from scrach, you can go to your LBP1 level or even reuse whole level with little tuning to use for new LBP2 level

You may not know but Luos and Clay Area 51 hub level was firstly made in LBP1 then upgraded in to LBP2, this shows how BC is actually useful idea. Thing is if they already spend time to make BC then why not allow to play LBP1 levels from the server and let creator ability to lock level if it's really nasty broken? It's not like they are all broken to unplayability

I really hope that this discussion wont encourage MM to fully ignore LBP2 level compatibility in LBP3, or else they want to change complitly way how level is build.

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Originally Posted by Ungreth

I find it ironic that everybody has their LBP1 levels locked down in LBP2, meaning that BC was a moot point anyways. :grr:

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Well, I think most LBP1 levels are locked to LBP1 only, BECAUSE the BC did not work.

I spent countless, countless hours on the lighting of my levels (most are darkly lit with a few hundred LED's, etc. ) and I'm not doing it all again.

Not to mention, some lighting effects are completely gone - I have a level called, Dream Catcher II - Shadow Realm - half the level is effects using shadows - which are now all gone from LBP2. So, in this case, I can't even update it.

I have people leave messages on my profile and PSN, asking me when Dream Catcher 3 is coming out, and I have to inform them that the series is broken and most likely (to my great dismay), will not be revisited.

Each of the Dream Catcher levels took me 5 months each. So to me, to not live up the "looking better than ever" catchphrase, was extremely disappointing - and really just a slap in the face after all my time spent in create. At this point, I'd rather them not have had BC then to have what is basically, an outright lie at this point. And to end my series that I spent almost a year on (it didn't occur to me to wait for LBP2, cause we had the promise it would carry over) - so, a year of work - gone. Very depressing.

All of my levels have been made LBP1 only - but only because they look like trash, or in some cases, are unplayable due to lighting.

It was a huge let down to me. I had friends over, they played my Jumper level and loved it (weren't familiar with LBP), and when they asked to play my other levels, I had to give the confusing explaination that LBP2 is compatible with LBP1, but you can't see my old LBP1 levels cause they are all destroyed. . . :(

Oh well.

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Originally Posted by Shadowriver

Mistake? Nah i don't think so

Ability to get level structure from LBP1 levels and have access to them in LBP2 is very useful even if there apperence are diffrent, things you created in LBP1 are always in your hand and you can use pats of older levels in to LBP2. For example let's say you got series that have specific theme in LBP1 and oyu want to continue to do the series in LBP2 with same theme. You don't need to recreate everything from scrach, you can go to your LBP1 level or even reuse whole level with little tuning to use for new LBP2 level

You may not know but Luos and Clay Area 51 hub level was firstly made in LBP1 then upgraded in to LBP2, this shows how BC is actually useful idea. Thing is if they already spend time to make BC then why not allow to play LBP1 levels from the server and let creator ability to lock level if it's really nasty broken? It's not like they are all broken to unplayability

I really hope that this discussion wont encourage MM to fully ignore LBP2 level compatibility in LBP3, or else they want to change complitly way how level is build.

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My suggestion for an import/upgrade LBP1 level option addresses this situation and is way more sensible. Now you have levels moving forward that people actually care about and can leave the bulk of the H4H and junk levels behind. I don't see having "The ablitity to import levels from LBP and make them look and play better than ever" as such a bad marketing tag line.

I've slowly come to depise all the gltches, they just make creating more tedious...I opted not to use any on my latest level. Give me a proper compression tool, theck/thack layer support, and foreground/background editor over LBP1 compatiblity any day.

The backwards compatibilty is unacceptable for the automatic opt-in...something as simple as a motor bolt for the clubs in my golf level doesn't work...they now fall apart when you swing them...I can't imagine a level more dumbed down than this one and it's flat out broken. I reported so many problems during the beta and NONE got addressed...that's frustratng too, complete waste of my time.

Spoiler - OMG WALL OF TEXT!! RUN!!!

Soon after experimenting with the LBP2 beta, something became apparent to me: the tools in LBP2 were much more powerful than anything LBP1 could have. Not simply the logic gates and microchips, but things like movers, destroyers, anti-gravity, movie cameras, bounce pads, sackbots, etc. All of these things could be made in LBP1, but their implementation would take a significant amount of time and thermo compared to what we have in LBP2. That's when I realized that most LBP1 levels had been taken down a peg right off the bat, because there was so much more we could do now, faster and more efficiently.

My theory is this: after any serious creators started releasing new levels, it would trump any (or at least most) of their previous work by a landslide, without having even fully mastered the tools yet. After a few more months, they become more comfortable with the tools, learn new tricks, and make even better levels. At that point, why would anyone go back to LBP1 levels other than out of nostalgia or curiosity?

That's the inherent flaw I see in backwards compatibility: it's only useful as a transition from the old to the new. Once that transition is complete, the use for backwards compatibility drops significantly. But did we really need that transition?

My opinion is that LBP1 started with a clean slate, and got to have many amazing levels that just kept getting better and better over time. LBP PSP started with a clean slate, and the same thing happened. LBP2 would have been no different if it hadn't had LBP1 levels to play (some creators and players might have been miffed in the first few weeks, but honestly, who would have held out on LBP2 just for that reason?). Whether any of the tools/bugs/story levels would have been improved as a result is anyone's guess though.

I've locked pretty much all of my LBP1 levels from LBP2 because of BC issues. I sometimes feel like unlocking SackMech levels, but then I think: why bother unlocking an LBP1 level when I could upgrade it in LBP2 to be even better? Quickly followed by: if I'm going to upgrade an LBP1 level, why not just make an entirely new level that makes good use of the new tools? I guess what I'm saying is that LBP1 level compatibility really doesn't seem all that useful to me now.

TL;DR : Backwards compatibility is useful in theory, not so much in practice.

Hmmmm... there still not to late for patch tuneing

I will play today some LBP1 (since i didn't play much on them on LBP2), at least known once) levels and see how much they are broken, i still think it's overreaction. All i played was so far some bomb and shark survivals and they work fine. I remember played Luos'es LBP1 level on the beta and it look a lot better then in LBP1

I don't mind the backwards compatibility. I don't play that many LBP1 levels, but that's just because I don't see as many. I'm still glad for it, though. At least the levels are there.

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Originally Posted by rtm223

It's been pointed out to me that I made no mention of DLC / LBP1 create mode assets transferring over. TBH, I kinda considered that transfer of assets would be, as far as possible, an absolute certainty, even with a complete engine change and no compatibility for levels.

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That would seem a bit of a daft decision from Sony's POV. Ensuring all the LBP1 DLC was compatible (including the DLC levels in MGS and PotC, which were probably the two top-selling DLC products) was paramount. Why? So they can sell all that stuff to people who never bought LBP1, and bear in mind the total cost of purchasing all the DLC is significantly higher than the cost of buying LBP2.

If LBP2 is, as it claims, "A platform for games DLC sales revenues", then they need only make level back-compat work to the extent of making the LBP1 DLC levels compatible. Okay, so if this has the side-effect of also making some of the community levels work too, then that's a bonus from a marketing POV, but not a necessity, and that's pretty much what happened.

The decision to do it this way means that, for those who never had LBP1, there is a rationale for those users to buy, not only all the LBP1 DLC, but also LBP1 itself, should they want the materials/stickers in its core asset collection. Had they not bothered with back-compat, that rationale would not exist.

So from a revenues POV, I think they made the best decision - it's unfortunate that some users (including myself) would've preferred a different one, but bear in mind, those users are in the minority.

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Originally Posted by thor

A bit overdramatic about how they "botched" backwards compatibility.

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Not really... I didn't say it was botched, merely that it wasn't quite there... And being not quite there is enough to completely break and ruin plenty of levels... At what point do we consider the backwards compatibility to be acceptable? That you can load a level and it doesn't crash the system?? No, the intent, as evidenced by everything that happened during the beta, was that peoples' existing creations should work as they worked before. They weren't supposed to be ruined, artistically, by the new lighting effects, they weren't supposed to be uncompletable due to changes in the simulation....

I don't even really mind that much that levels were ruined, not really, not for the sake of the levels themselves. It is a question of how did all this actually benefit anyone, and might things have been better for everyone if another route was taken. If so, what might that route be.

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Originally Posted by thor

I can't help thinking that if Mm HAD scrapped backwards compatibility, and instead implemented those few extra features (as useful as they are), people would have been saying "how hard could it have been to get BC? why do we need all of these features when we could have had BC?"

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Indeed, and I totally think that is the case. The games seem similar enough at the core that the BC seems like it should have been a given. But it's not and I guess we had to see how broken things could be before any of us might have realized this. Which is why it is retrospective. Hindsight gets a lot of bad press for being too convenient, but it's how lessons are learned :D

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Originally Posted by thor

Also I see where you are coming from with the suggestions of what they could have done instead, but ... there would STILL have been bugs, because there are ALWAYS bugs in any software. You may also have ended up with features you didn't need at all, whereas now Mm can listen to what the community wants. I think Mm have proven their ability to support the community, so we know that improvements are coming, and that they will be community-driven.

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TBH, I doubt we would have had any bonus features on release... Remember the game was delayed by 2 months and a LOT of the effort spent during the beta period was on getting backwards compatibility to work with beta users existing levels, and a lot of potential bug reporting on new things may have been drowned out by the complaints of old levels being broken (which is reasonable - we were told they should work). More likely we would have been sitting with the game by xmas, and new tools / features / a level pack maybe would be coming to us some time around now. And of course, every piece of software has bugs and in something like LBP, with so many permutations of factors, it's an absolute nightmare... But rushing to deadlines in crunch mode with way too much functionality to develop and test is what leads to bugs in individual units - local space camera not working, points givers scaled over time not working, etc. Forget the big bugs that come from complex interactions of systems - these are bugs at the most basic level of functionality.

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Originally Posted by Shadowriver

Well More logic survival game got lightning not as original and much dimmer and and in Caltron it reduces 2 lifes instead of one (faster logic?). So it's not so bad on my side :p

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You might not think it's bad and that's cool - I don't want to get anyone all worked up over BC issues, because we should be looking forward. But it fundamentally changes the nature of aspects of the game you've created... It's not the same creation anymore. Changing how many lives you have is an inherent aspect of how a game plays and should be a very conscious factor in the design of a game for balancing reasons. So what was the point in them spending so much effort on trying to get the levels to work? Because someone prematurely made that promise to us. That's the only reason.

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Originally Posted by Ungreth

It also annoys me that the beta once looked more visually stunning than the final product we are playing now, but a subsequent update weakened the overall look of the game so that the new lighting engine would be more compatible with LBP settings. It really wasn't rocket science for us to simply tweak the light settings in our old levels, and certainly in my case, once I had taken 10 minutes to do this my old levels looked better than ever, but since that update neither my LBP1 nor my LBP2 levels seem to look quite so good as they did in the early versions of the beta.

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This is actually the most solid example of something we've permanently lost because of the BC promise. Because the old levels were supposed to work properly in the new engine, they "downgraded" the new engine...

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Originally Posted by Aya042

If LBP2 is, as it claims, "A platform for games DLC sales revenues", then they need only make level back-compat work to the extent of making the LBP1 DLC levels compatible. Okay, so if this has the side-effect of also making some of the community levels work too, then that's a bonus from a marketing POV, but not a necessity, and that's pretty much what happened.

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Except it's not what happened. I'd have been happy if the level of backwards compatibility for UGC had occurred as a "side effect", but it didn't. It was an explicit and prominent feature of the product. Too much time was spent on making it work just about hang together in the beta. It was an inherent part of the mission plan, to pull every single level from the original game and not only have them working properly... They were going to be better... Was that really the best thing from a revenues standpoint, or would the simple ability to import your levels to the new editor, with no specific promises that it would be working exactly the same and certainly no promises lies about it being improved, have been just as much of a money maker as ever.

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Originally Posted by Aya042

it's unfortunate that some users (including myself) would've preferred a different one, but bear in mind, those users are in the minority.

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The majority (~85% apparently) of the users are completely casual and never actually create anything. I would imagine (while we're speculating on what everyone wants) the majority of users wouldn't really have cared either way...

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Originally Posted by Shadowriver

Ability to get level structure from LBP1 levels and have access to them in LBP2 is very useful even if there apperence are diffrent,

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I really hope that this discussion wont encourage MM to fully ignore LBP2 level compatibility in LBP3, or else they want to change complitly way how level is build.

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Of course it is useful... But there is a whole world of difference between just getting levels into the editor and a proper backwards compatibility model. I wouldn't want MM and Sony to completely ignore backwards compatibility in future (that would just be rushing from one extreme to the other with no thought for what lies between), but I'd hope they would learn something from this, for any attempts to do BC on any UGC-heavy titles in the future. Because what they were striving for didn't work.

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Originally Posted by Aya042

Ensuring all the LBP1 DLC was compatible (including the DLC levels in MGS and PotC, which were probably the two top-selling DLC products) was paramount. Why? So they can sell all that stuff to people who never bought LBP1, and bear in mind the total cost of purchasing all the DLC is significantly higher than the cost of buying LBP2.

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Agreed, but what does this have to do with the insane amounts of time spent trying to get things to work with the user-levels? Remembering of course that the DLC levels are actually just data downloaded as part of a patch, and could be repatched themselves. To get the DLC levels working well in the new engine and the old could probably have been done as a mixture of minor tweaks to the new engine and minor tweaks to the levels (in a development environment that would allow comparison). Or if need be, they could have gone through the same process as users - create an LBP1 and an LBP2 version. I still think that could probably have been easier to develop, test and verify for a small number of isolated cases than attempt everything.

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Originally Posted by fullofwin

My suggestion for an import/upgrade LBP1 level option addresses this situation and is way more sensible. Now you have levels moving forward that people actually care about and can leave the bulk of the H4H and junk levels behind. I don't see having "The ablitity to import levels from LBP and make them look and play better than ever" as such a bad marketing tag line.

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It needs some better wording, but I think it's bang on the money :p As various people have pointed out, the community did need this ability to bring things forwards. With the game actually moving on like this and effectively making LBP1 (in concept, if not in fact) redundant, the last few months of LBP1 would have been completely dead - as I said before I completely forgot about those people not in the beta when writing my OP. But what we didn't need was something to magically make all levels work perfectly in the new game.


So, I feel like I'm gonna restate my thoughts, having had time to digest more things and take into account some of the aspects that hadn't really occurred to me, as they don't affect me personally... So this is an attempt to sum up the needs of both the community as a whole (difficult) and Sony WRT Backwards Compatibility:

In the transition between one iteration of the game and another, being able to bring content forwards is clearly important. Not only because completed creations could be pulled forward, but also so that the customerbase is not completely demoralised in the lead up to the new game - the inability to bring created things forward would have led to many people simply dropping the franchise for a period of months... Some of them may never return. Even if they do return those months would be damaging. So in some way or another, the data structures should be importable to the new game. Even if some things break or some things look wildly different, it's a huge benefit to us to be able to pull something across.

It's also clear that DLC must be compatible. Creation assets add up to a large quantity of money over time and none of us wanted . Also, DLC compatibility allows Sony to continue monetising existing products, which is profit for nothing. Compatibility of DLC levels is a more complex scenario and requires that in some way the levels bought as part of the level packs should work in the new game. If user-generated content can be pulled forward into the new game and edited at will, then it seems there should be little problem doing the same with these levels.

At no point does the automatic pulling forward of all LBP1 levels actually benefit anyone. Sure, it's not really hurt us, as the scenario I describe above is pretty much what we have now... But I can't help but feel that if what we do have is (more or less) what they had aimed for, a basic export / import facility one way between the games, with some level of compatibility, then a lot less resource would have been wasted and there would have been less design constraints on what could and couldn't have been done. I don't know what the end result of that would have been, but in my experience, less waste and less awkward design constraints normally leads to something better overall.

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Originally Posted by rtm223

Except it's not what happened.

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Source? I mean, how do we really know what the devs spent most of their time working on?

Sensibly prioritizing the goals of a project is important, particularly when you're working to a strict deadline, and if I were the project manager for LBP2, making sure that all the UGC was fully compatible would be pretty low on the list, as it doesn't really generate much additional revenue.

Ensuring that the DLC content worked, on the other hand, would be much higher, because it has the potential to generate quite a bit of additional revenue. Now, given that the DLC levels probably use most of the Create Mode features from LBP1, then once you've ensured their compatilibily, then a fairly substantial proportion of the Community Levels would also work too.

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Originally Posted by rtm223

I'd have been happy if the level of backwards compatibility for UGC had occurred as a "side effect", but it didn't. It was an explicit and prominent feature of the product.

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Okay, maybe "side effect" was a little understated for comic effect. I mean beyond the work required for DLC-compatibility, if there's a small five-minute job they can do to make an additional, say, 5% of UGC compatible, then it's probably worth doing. For example, in earlier iterations of the beta, thin gas was visible - changing it so it's invisible is probably no big deal.

If, on the other hand, there's one or two levels which use some really obscure glitch which would take hundreds of man-hours to make compatible, they probably wouldn't bother.

As for UGC back-compat being explicit and prominent, this article from May 2010 says quite the opposite, making the "...still there, and looking better than ever..." just a bit of marketing spin, which you could read as "the new lighting engine could potentially make them look better, but there's no guarantee they'll actually function as intended". ;)

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Originally Posted by rtm223

The majority (~85% apparently) of the users are completely casual and never actually create anything. I would imagine (while we're speculating on what everyone wants) the majority of users wouldn't really have cared either way...

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The question is, does this majority also buy the DLC? If so, then making that work is a big win for Sony. And it's not as if those in the minority, who would've preferred a better product at the expense of no back-compat, would refuse to purchase LBP2 if they didn't get their way.

QED. :p

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Originally Posted by rtm223

Agreed, but what does this have to do with the insane amounts of time spent trying to get things to work with the user-levels?

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Again, I see little evidence to support the assertion that the devs spent "insane amounts of time" worrying about UGC-compat, beyond what they got for free by making LBP2 DLC-compat with LBP1.

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Originally Posted by rtm223

Remembering of course that the DLC levels are actually just data downloaded as part of a patch, and could be repatched themselves.

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Good point, and they probably were repatched to some extent - given the substantial changes to the lighting engine, there'd probably be a few tweaks required for that, but there's no way they'd go to the extent of rebuilding the whole lot from scratch.

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Originally Posted by rtm223

...being able to bring content forwards is clearly important. Not only because completed creations could be pulled forward, but also so that the customerbase is not completely demoralised in the lead up to the new game - the inability to bring created things forward would have led to many people simply dropping the franchise for a period of months... Some of them may never return. Even if they do return those months would be damaging.

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I think that's a pretty wild exaggeration. If they'd gone along the route of ditching all back-compat, so they could substantially change the format, perhaps by making a full 3D simulation rather than 2.5D, do you really believe the hardcore LBP1 creators would drop the franchise?

Okay, maybe I'm a unusual case, because I was in the beta, but I knew that LBP2 wasn't truly back-compat with LBP1, and I knew that it was so buggy there was no way they'd have time to fix it in time for release, but I still bought it anyway.

Can you name a single person (from the hardcore minority who even cares about this sort of thing) who didn't buy LBP2, or returned it for a refund, because it didn't live up to their expectations?

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Originally Posted by rtm223

At no point does the automatic pulling forward of all LBP1 levels actually benefit anyone.

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Well, it's a small win for Sony, so they can use their spin phrases like "...still there, and looking better than ever...", in the hopes that the promise of some playable UGC from the get-go might attact a few more people, but it's probably marginal.

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Originally Posted by rtm223

But I can't help but feel that if what we do have is (more or less) what they had aimed for, a basic export / import facility one way between the games, with some level of compatibility, then a lot less resource would have been wasted and there would have been less design constraints on what could and couldn't have been done. I don't know what the end result of that would have been, but in my experience, less waste and less awkward design constraints normally leads to something better overall.

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Y'know, that might've worked, actually, although it does place the responsibility of transferring LBP1 UGC to LBP2 onto the creators who made them. But if the level of compatibilty was low enough that the creators would've had to spend a significant amount of time tweaking their creations, they probably wouldn't bother - they're probably far more interested in creating something new, particularly as the new features in LBP2 open up many more creative possibilities.

So the question is, if they want some UGC available from the get-go, is it better to give the users access to the (not insignficant) subset of previously published LBP1 levels which still work tolerably on LBP2, or have faith in the creators to spend their time manually porting their levels, rather than building new (and better) stuff?

Whew.... that was a lot of reading..... O.o

Well, in my case - I'm really glad they make an attempt to include backward compatibility. As a game "engine" I expected some form of backward compatibility. I spent a lot of time on my earlier levels, and would be disappointed if they tossed it all for LBP2. LBP is a form of dev tool, and dev tools generally have SOME kind of migration path.

I've gone through and updated the Splat Invaders series and Roll out the barrel. They've had pretty decent ratings since being updated with some of the LPB2 features.

HOWEVER, implementation probably could have been a bit different. Maybe they should have made the LBP1 levels LBP1 only by default, and advertised levels could be imported and updated rather than advertising them to be backward compatible.

Interesting topic indeed. I was originally of the mindset that BC was a fantastic idea, and yes... even necessary. I remember just before getting our beta keys here in Canada NA, seeing a fantastic video on some of the new lighting aspects of the game. I was blown away! The new hazards in the video looked pretty ugly to me, but I figured they were a work in progress still. The news of the new logic options had me all excited too, as I'm really not very good with it and am a "visual" creator.

When I originally began to learn about the new game, all it's new tools and possibilities, and the fact that it was going to be completely BC, I decided straight away to drop all other projects and begin working on something I could translate into LBP2 that would allow me to simply add new logic or tweaks to in order to finally be able to actually make the kind of level that LBP simply wouldn't allow me to do to any good effect. Perhaps it's my own fault for believing that BC was something Mm already had a hold on. Perhaps some of you may think I was naiive in thinking things would look and perform the same. Truth is, I'm not a programmer and took Mm's word that all those levels would still be there and look "better than ever" (insert slap in the face here).

Fast forward to "Dear Rustbukkit... you noa haz a beeta key!!".

STOKED!

I opened up my beta and began playing. Wonderful stuff! I began playing with the new tools. Wonderfully confuzing stuff! I loaded my old levels. WTF? What is THIS attrocity I'm looking at? I didn't make this? I was completely horrified.

I took quite a bit of flack from several members here for being vocal about my disappointment in the BC issues, as well as some of the changes made throughout the beta. It was pretty unfair of them I think. Especially considering that here we are many months after their statements of "It's only the beta, it's not finished yet, just relax already!" have STILL not changed the fact that the game's BC issues are for the most part broken and LBP levels look just as horrible as they did back then.

When I first joined the beta... the lighting was certainly less than BC and although it looked better, it simply didn't physically perform the same. Big issue for myself and many other creators right there who are "visual artists" and create with this element in mind. Most of my levels were completely ruined due to lighting issues alone. Anything with hazards... forget it.

Then one of the beta patches came along and changed the lighting again. Not only did it still not interact with other objects the way it did in LBP... but now it didn't even look as good. This was the pivotal moment for me. It was then that I finally realized that BC was never something Mm had under control. It was then that I realized we had been sold a lie, and that BC was something that very early on should have been dropped (other than being able to import DLC, and perhaps our objects and costumes). I would have much preferred an official statement from Mm saying, "Sorry folks, we've decided that BC will no longer be an option due to the many problems it's causing between the two game engines. We spoke too soon. We know you will all forgive us and move on because we are for the most part, full of awesome-sauce... and that we all make mistakes sometimes and owning up to those mistakes is always the best course of action. You will still be able to import all your LBP objects and costumes you've created, as well as any DLC you've purchased. But a lot of levels will simply look like garbage or will actually physically be broken and unplayable, so they won't be able to be played at all in LBP2 We are doing this in your best interest... trust us. Mm"

Sure the timing in this may seem a little off for Mm to have sent any inaginary letter like that, but they had to know pretty early on that BC was turning out to be a major issue and very problematic.

I would have much preferred if their time was better spent (as the OP has suggested) concentrating on new tools working properly, and BC issue bugs with the smaller things like deco's showing through things, etc., than spending all that time trying to address the problems of trying to live up to "and looking better than ever" "oops... we spoke way too soon!"

What's done is done now, and I have no intentions of ever going back to anything LBP. I'm still baffled that all the lighting issues this new engine had in the beta are still there, and can't for the life of me figure out why they were missed. There's still plenty wrong with this game, and I mostly blame BC for that. It really ticks me off, when I do go searching for something to play and find that it's a level created in LBP and looks terrible, because frankly... LBP levels have no place in this game's engine if you ask me.

The moment I played my first lbp1 levels in lbp2.. i felt dissapointed..
Even after the huge BC update in the beta.. lights are just ugly..
Lights glitched into the BG just dont work anymore (no longer having fog/raycasting) and I recently found out you cant bolt anything to thin layer (invissi) gas.
Reason why I would want to use thin invissi gas? as its material is stronger on the str. table than holo..
which is so weak it would not be able to steal candy from a comatose baby..
(You can bolt objects in front of thin gas, but not if the thin gas is in front of the object, So I.. or rather clay went back to lbp1, bolted some thin gasses in various ways and when imported it worked)

I also noticed that almost all of my lbp1 levels are uneditable in lbp2 due to overheating.
In some cases I had to remove 2 giant rooms to get the thermo back into an editable state.. which makes me wonder if we really got less thermo in lbp2 than we did in lbp1.
(Even my lbp2 beta levels are overheating in the full game, so bad actually that beh ta 1 is averagely 3 bars over the max thermo)

the only reason I like the BC is that I can get all the glitches from lbp1 (aya's garden of goodies), the lbp1 materials/decos and the DLC.
But besides that.. the BC only annoys the hell out of me..
occasionally you still see "Pool with REAL!! water" levels and the like somewhere in the top 3 list of cool levels and that to me just screams epic fail and occasionally gets a RRAAGGE out of me.

So I fully agree that I rather have a bugless or at least more bugfree lbp2 than having a level BC LBP2.

On the note "I rather have bots that could swim" could be easily solved by pathnoding.. something allready used in the early 90's in most games to tell the AI where it needs to go.. cant believe MM didnt think of that. Pathnodes would solve a lot of things..
especially if you could tell the bots if its on an elevator, has to jump and what not.


I could go on for a long time about BC.. but ill leave it at this.
LBP2 is amazing for what it is, but it could have been so so much more..
we dont have much control on game enders, actual sackboys and even a lot of the logic and materials could have some tweaks/additional tweak menu's to make our lifes much much easier.
but MM chose to not do this, and in the end.. we are victim of this.
(i.e. I wrote a honest and interesting 130 editor suggestions which was plain ignored while most of it would increase our workflow at least a few hours a day.. which would result in able to focus more on the level and less on i.e. tweaking crap.)

oh yea, i said id leave it at this..
I better do that.

wait.. no.. (edit).
160 hour bug that still exists in lbp2... nuff said?

Nice thread RTM, and a nice read at this.

*hug*

This is a tricky question. I thought backwards compatibility at first would be useful but now that we're a couple of months in it's more annoying than anything.

I like the ability to import objects I've made in the previous game but I don't think having things from LBP1 directly accessible from LBP2 has really added anything. I don't even remember the last time I played a LBP1 level.

/shortest response in thread.

lol i don't how BC can be annoying then anything ^^' In general BC is optional figure in the platform and levels a still mostly playable and it mostly for people om "play" side of the game, since creators ofcorse gonna do LBP2 stuff. Besides do you guys 100% sure that game would be better without BC, isn't imperfection of BC is a sign game is better anyway? Look on other BC histories:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

Do this made any PS2 developer to go to Sony and say to block there game in PS3 because it not look the same or uglier, little reminder that some games didn't even been playable. Besides there a reason why stats on LBP1 and LBP2 are different, because they look different in both games, i also heard somewhere else (some people know where) that LBP community don't care about stats and how level is high, so whats the difference? i also read here that some people dont care about LBP1 levels and all it's stuff at all, so why BC ability is so annoying then everything?

I impressed how this game is so integrated to LBP1 content and games themselves and one of biggest aspects i like in LBP2 and this discussion reminds me talk how planed Move DLC is annoying which is pretty much equal to "Omg the added camera support for SDK to iPod touch is so useless and annoying, why they added that there".