LBPC4: The Fourth Wall by comphermc

Pretty cool. Made me realize that my tv is too dark, cause I had a hard time seeing, but after watching the trailer, it seems to be fine. :(


Anyway, really impressive design. And really neat to see you step into something a bit more abstract. Great work again.

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Originally Posted by comphermc

[Very Hard]

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Pfft. It was insanely easy. Please reserve difficulty hints like "Very Hard" for the Roller Inc. series. Thanks! :p

I guess you were right when you said Limbo would be fairly straightforward to recreate on LBP, although I wasn't actually expecting you to do it. A few comments follow:-

I did notice a few puzzles which were virtually a direct rip-off from the original, but I was pleased to see a couple of more original puzzles. I was particularly impressed by the ladder-climbing mechanics, plus the way it tied into the prolog/epilog was quite neat.

On the negative side, I think the keyword is "unforgiving". The key difference (IMO) between this level and Limbo was that in Limbo, once you know how to solve all the puzzles, it's actually a very simple game to play, whereas with this level I found it was still rather difficult even when the solutions are known.

For example, some of the timings left very little margin for error, and given that some of the gameplay mechanics are a little unreliable (most notably the platform edge-hanging/jumping), it becomes more "frustrating" than "challenging" in places, which is a bit of a shame. Would it not have been possible/better to have the Sackbot automatically grab onto platform edges like in the original?

There's a few other minor tweaks I'd like to suggest (like a couple of camzone changes), but it might be easier to show you in OC than try to describe in text. Still, overall, it was a darn good level. :D + <3

Not sure why you're entering this in the LBPC contest - you already have a crown, and given you're a filthy Planetarium splitter, I'm not sure you're eligible for an LBPC Contest pin. ;)

Oh, and I'm expecting a decent recreation of Braid for your next level. Good luck. :p

Hey, thanks for the feedback, everyone.

I suppose I didn't realize going in that others might not be able to see as well in the dark sections. If you watch the trailer, you can see that the gray sections can be dark, but don't really blend in terribly with black (assuming your TV has sufficient gamma differentiation). I don't plan to change it, as when it gets too light, it really loses the effect I was going for. Apologies if it made it that much more difficult for you.

I realize that some parts have some pretty tight platforming. Yep. I am of the belief that most levels are too easy, and I want to add something for those looking for a bit more challenge. I personally didn't find it too frustrating, but I understand that there's a learning curve. I don't feel bad for killing you with infinite respawns, for what it's worth! :P

Aya - I originally had it grabbing automatically, but I ran into all sorts of other issues (think what happens if you try to drop off a ledge that would be able to be climbed up). As for entering - I must have all the pins!!! (this one doesn't have a crown) :P It was just really funny coincidence that the theme of the contest matched up so well with what I was already working on. Also, the puzzles that were "straight copies" were some of my favorites. I wanted to share those with people who never have any intention of playing LIMBO. Hopefully the original ones made up for it... hopefully. :P

Looking good comph, like everthing of yours ;) Sorry your trip got delayed to Europe, I knew you wanted to go and all...But it was nice(the level) and I hope you enjoy yourself when you do get to go to Europe! ;)

Tbh, the flag [VERY HARD] is overkill for this, in fact only roller Inc 1 deserves that level of warning

But I guess no harm covering your ***, people are quick enough to hate anyway, safer to ward off those who just want to grab a rocket, get thrown thru the level and land in 10,000 score bubbles... Oh that sounds like fun to you? Hmmm, can't remember the name of the level, oh well, just have to play one of the other 4 million clones of said level :)

Oh, I forgot to answer an above question: How do ladders work?

Basically I am using an advanced mover to isolate movement to one direction. I just use a sequencer for the arms and upward movement - no acting involved. As for lining up the arms with the railings, that was just tweaking the speed of the advanced mover to fit the rung separation. As long as he "attaches" to the ladder in a decent place, it should roughly line up.

Since I have the time, I'll probably do a tutorial on both that and ledge climbing. They are pretty straightforward, so it should be pretty easy.

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Originally Posted by comphermc

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Awesome... I always wanted ladders In LBP. but making it by hand
sounded to hard in my head and i've never up until now
seen anyone do it very well. so i've never took the time to try for myself~
*mew

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Originally Posted by comphermc

I personally didn't find it too frustrating, but I understand that there's a learning curve.

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Sure, but you've no doubt playtested the level many times, so it's nigh-impossible for you to envisage the level thru the eyes of someone who's playing it for the first time.

Penalizing the player because of their own stupidity is fair enough, but doing it because it takes quite a long time to adapt to the nuances of the control system seems a little unfair.

To be more specific:-

Spoiler - Feedback containing possible spoilers

First of all, there's something that feels a bit off about the Sackbot in general, as if it walks slower than a normal Sackperson, or possibly there's some input lag, and when falling down from a grab (e.g. in the rotating section where you have to land on the box) the left/right control feels different than a typical level, making it quite tricky to successfully land on box rather than the electrified floor. What you ultimately end up with is a variation of one of the 'challenges' from LBP1's "Fire Pits" level, i.e. "can you successfully land on a skinny platform?", combined with the challenge of adapting to the control variations enforced by the Sackbot's logic, which, to me, is not much fun.

Secondly, in the section with the moving platform, towards the end where you have to hang from the platform to avoid the circular saw blade, about 75% of the time when I pressed X to remount the platform, the bot didn't quite move far enough to the right to make it back onto the platform, and fell to its death. The reason I say "frustrating" is that the last respawn point is quite a long way back, so I had to redo that section several times.

Thirdly, in section with the platform which you can control its vertical position with a switch, and you have to jump as the platform is ascending in order to make it onto the (much higher) platform above, it feels like you cheated there, and rather than rely solely on LBP's built-in physics, you used some sort of timer such that the Sackbot does a sort of 'super jump' only if you jump at exactly the right time. Problem is, I didn't make it after the first few tries and the jump height was so much lower than the platform, I figured maybe it wasn't possible, and I was supposed to do something else, perhaps involving jumping an grabbing onto the chain hanging just to the right. Perhaps it's worth removing that chain so it's more obvious that timing the jump up is the way to proceed, or have a lesser 'super jump' if the timing is slightly off, so it's more apparent that the jump is actually possible.

Finally, I found about 10% of the time, the Sackbot doesn't successfully grab edges of platforms and/or doesn't make the jump onto the platform as per my second point above (which is not much, but enough to be irritating), so if that's not something you can fix, then I'd suggest trying to avoid penalizing player when it does occur, in terms of not having a fatal section below, nor forcing then to replay too much of the level to get back to where they were.

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Originally Posted by comphermc

I originally had it grabbing automatically, but I ran into all sorts of other issues (think what happens if you try to drop off a ledge that would be able to be climbed up).

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Yeah. I s'pose LBP is unlike most other platformers in the sense that a Sackperson doesn't have a 'static direction', i.e. it doesn't face left or right when standing still.

Would it be possible to take the left/right output from left stick of the main controlinator, feed that into a direction splitter, then feed those outputs into a two-port selector, which could then be used to infer which direction the Sackbot is 'facing', which in turn could be used to determine whether or not the Sackbot should attempt to grab the edge of a platform or not?

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Originally Posted by comphermc

As for entering - I must have all the pins!!!

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:D

Fair enough. Good luck getting the "Employee of Media Molecule" pin. :p

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Originally Posted by comphermc

Also, the puzzles that were "straight copies" were some of my favorites. I wanted to share those with people who never have any intention of playing LIMBO.

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Sure. That wasn't a criticism per se, just an observation. There's definately much more in this level for people who haven't played Limbo before - even those puzzles which weren't straight copies are much easier to figure out if you've played Limbo.

Spoiler - Feedback containing possible spoilers

The biggest difference is that in Limbo, in sections where you invert the gravity for objects only, you can't grab onto a box, and use it to get you to the ceiling, so it was nice to see you exploited that mechanic in-game.

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Originally Posted by Aya042

First of all, there's something that feels a bit off about the Sackbot in general, as if it walks slower than a normal Sackperson, [...]

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Yeah, he walks at about 80% speed. This was done intentionally. It was to increase the tension in the timed sections and allow players to analyze the surroundings more easily. Again, learning curve. I am okay with the fact that it doesn't feel exactly like LBP; I've gotten quite a few comments lauding the fact that it feels like another game.

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[...] or possibly there's some input lag, and when falling down from a grab (e.g. in the rotating section where you have to land on the box) the left/right control feels different than a typical level, making it quite tricky to successfully land on box rather than the electrified floor.

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That section is admittedly weird, only because the pivot point of whole room is not where you might expect. I had to do it that way so that it could rotate while still being flush with the electrified floor prior to spinning. On the floor under where you have to land on the box is where the pivot is located... Funky yes, but if you wait until the box pauses (comes to rest), you can easily swing over it, THEN drop straight down.

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Secondly, in the section with the moving platform, towards the end where you have to hang from the platform to avoid the circular saw blade, about 75% of the time when I pressed X to remount the platform, the bot didn't quite move far enough to the right to make it back onto the platform, and fell to its death. The reason I say "frustrating" is that the last respawn point is quite a long way back, so I had to redo that section several times.

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Yes, this was a concern. I'm not entirely happy with the climb mechanic. I've found that if you press the stick in the same direction as you want the bot climb, he doesn't fall. I could have disabled player controls, I s'pose. (That's exactly what I did in the tutorial on ledge-climbing that I'm uploading now.)

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Thirdly, in section with the platform which you can control its vertical position with a switch, and you have to jump as the platform is ascending in order to make it onto the (much higher) platform above, it feels like you cheated there, and rather than rely solely on LBP's built-in physics, you used some sort of timer such that the Sackbot does a sort of 'super jump' only if you jump at exactly the right time. Problem is, I didn't make it after the first few tries and the jump height was so much lower than the platform, I figured maybe it wasn't possible, and I was supposed to do something else, perhaps involving jumping an grabbing onto the chain hanging just to the right. Perhaps it's worth removing that chain so it's more obvious that timing the jump up is the way to proceed, or have a lesser 'super jump' if the timing is slightly off, so it's more apparent that the jump is actually possible.

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No tricks, just LBP2 oddness. As with all LBP obstacles of this sort, you need to jump BEFORE it reaches the top. For whatever reason, this was less forgiving than what I'm used to.

[spoiler]

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Finally, I found about 10% of the time, the Sackbot doesn't successfully grab edges of platforms and/or doesn't make the jump onto the platform as per my second point above (which is not much, but enough to be irritating), so if that's not something you can fix, then I'd suggest trying to avoid penalizing player when it does occur, in terms of not having a fatal section below, nor forcing then to replay too much of the level to get back to where they were.

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Not sure why he's not grabbing. It's a 1 x 1 small grid block of grabby. Again, the success of climb is helped if you press the stick in the direction you want to climb. I think I came up with a better system, but that's a hell of a lot of ledges to swap out (if I even had the desire to do it now!)[/spoiler]

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Yeah. I s'pose LBP is unlike most other platformers in the sense that a Sackperson doesn't have a 'static direction', i.e. it doesn't face left or right when standing still.

Would it be possible to take the left/right output from left stick of the main controlinator, feed that into a direction splitter, then feed those outputs into a two-port selector, which could then be used to infer which direction the Sackbot is 'facing', which in turn could be used to determine whether or not the Sackbot should attempt to grab the edge of a platform or not?

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That's actually the method I used for which direction his head points (which carries through respawns even), but didn't think about doing it for grabs. Interesting.

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Fair enough. Good luck getting the "Employee of Media Molecule" pin. :p

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One day... :P (Not if my fiancee has any say!)

Spoiler - And finally...

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The biggest difference is that in Limbo, in sections where you invert the gravity for objects only, you can't grab onto a box, and use it to get you to the ceiling, so it was nice to see you exploited that mechanic in-game.

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Yeah, there are a few earlier puzzles that can be more simply solved by this. Also, at least one secret depends on it! :P

I finally bought Limbo a couple of days ago after this (how wonderful is that game!), can't give you a bigger compliment than that really. I've played another Limbo level that was great too, that one was more about ambience, this is much more about the mechanics. That corner grab is probably the only sackbot ability I've played that really feels like it should have been there in the basic move set all along, so much that I missed it when I went back into create, so great job on that.

Thankes, Jules. Well, if you want the ledge-grab for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqxL7YDO4R4

Now that's what I called an epic silhouette level.

VISUALS:
The silhouette level design looks fantastic. Also, the slow motion cinematic at the beginning is well made.

SOUND:
The sound effects are well put in this level.

GAMEPLAY:
The controls of a sackboy are excellent thanks to the jump off the corner command and the L1 button that changes certain obstacles depending on the machine you're standing next to. The puzzles are outstanding and quite challenging. One problem I encountered is that after I turned the area upside down and I solved the magnet part, I tried to climb the ladder after it went up, but I couldn't climb it. However, when I respawned near that ladder, I'm able to climb it. Just like your insanely difficult level, Roller inc. 2, this one took me an hour to finish.

OVERALL:
It's an challenging level with clever puzzles and outstanding visuals. A yay, heart, and positive review.

Looks so awesome! I love your challenging levels.

Looks freakin' sexy ;)

I'm queueing. Why? Because this looks BOSS.

Incredible work! Felt as though I was playing an add on for Limbo!