Caverns of the Lost, part 1 in the making UPDATE: part 2

[LittleBigDes]

With my first ever level almost complete I thought I’d give others and friends a sneak peek of what I have been up to for the past few months. It’s my first level and I have tried very hard to make it a decent standard, visually and playability wise. Alas, shortly after taking these pictures my level overheated. So these images may not fully reflect the end level, as I am having to go over it and remove stickers, decorations and clean up edges (thank goodness I have a few copies & back-ups).

Without giving too much away here are a few pics:

Intro section


The cave exploration begins


Timing and grappling skills are a must in some sections


With a bit of puzzle solving on the way


This is part of a two part level series and I have a few questions before publishing. I will put my questions in the help section of the forums and look forward to the feedback.

It's my first real attempt and I will be asking a few certain people on my list to test it out soon. Level keys on its way.

[CloaknBlagger]

Looking good!, can't wait to give it a go, shame it overheated, see you later.

[LittleBigDes]

Looking good!, can't wait to give it a go, shame it overheated, see you later.

It was my opening title movie. So I have had to delete the title sequence, plus I couldn't really find any suitable music to go with the title screen. So I've just gone with the normal sackbot intro you had a look over for me the other night. Once I deleted all the letters the thermo went down quite a lot. So I'm working on getting it down more. Catch you next time.

[Bluephantom575]

Looking good Will be sure to check it out!

[LittleBigDes]

Looking good Will be sure to check it out!

Thanks.

Sneaks in another shot that doesn't actually show much (just me in a small tunnel section)

[Ostler5000•]

As I've said to you several types already, this blows pretty much all other 'my first level's out of the water. Looking forward to when you finish this.

Also, a suggestion for your thermo - if your planning on having alot of point bubbles glued to each other, or any other small objects, such as baddies or whatever, scattered throughout the level, try the thing I did in my Crate City level with the emitter on hologram. I used about 20-odd baddies in that level, but because of the way I used an emitter, there's only actually 4 or 5 of them, spawning as Sackpeople approach.
I know it's a bit more work, but the little extra thermo could let you have some stickers and whatnot back.

[LittleBigDes]

As I've said to you several types already, this blows pretty much all other 'my first level's out of the water. Looking forward to when you finish this.

Also, a suggestion for your thermo - if your planning on having alot of point bubbles glued to each other, or any other small objects, such as baddies or whatever, scattered throughout the level, try the thing I did in my Crate City level with the emitter on hologram. I used about 20-odd baddies in that level, but because of the way I used an emitter, there's only actually 4 or 5 of them, spawning as Sackpeople approach.
I know it's a bit more work, but the little extra thermo could let you have some stickers and whatnot back.

LOL, I swear you only told me that once.

I don't actually have any baddies in my level. Well there was one green bug eyed fella I tried to put in but it just didn't fit in with the design and was very basic so I took it out. Since you're on my list of 'testers' you can play it and see if it needs it. More exploring then fighting baddies. Expect a key next week. I could give you the key tomorrow but I have to be strict with myself as to how much time I spend on it. You have to have a balance between work, rest and play.

If I'm really having problems with the thermo I'll do as you suggested with the emitters. Never crossed my mind to do that with score bubbles though. I've redone my custom stickers, as I had to stick them several times to get the pattern I wanted. So I've put them all into one sticker as this probably pushed my thermo up as well. You can see parts of my custom sticker on the checkpoint circle and thin jagged bits of material between layers, 1st and 2nd picture.

I played your RemboBots level and had nobody else to play it with.

[LittleBigDes]

My level is complete. So testers, you know who you are, we'll meet up in my pod and give it a go. Then I'll publish it and hand out keys to test it further and try things you're not suppose to do in the level, back track or wonder off. But hopefully this shouldn't be a problem as I've tested section numerous times and from start to end. But you never know something may pop up hence why we're testing.

[Sean88]

Hi Little Big Des, your level is looking mega cool. I cant wait to try it out

[LittleBigDes]

Hi Little Big Des, your level is looking mega cool. I cant wait to try it out

There's still some tweaking to do as I just did a play test with another player and one of my obstacles fell over. Don't have a clue how that happened as it was fine before. I have to tweak camera zooms and angles in areas due to other players being left behind. I have to tweak a platform to make it wider.

It' all down to good old testing.

[pickled-punk]

Hi Des. Your level is looking very good and was fun to play through. I'm looking forward to seeing it published.
Did you manage to implement the sackbot in the cutscene? Let me know if you need a hand.

[LittleBigDes]

Hi Des. Your level is looking very good and was fun to play through. I'm looking forward to seeing it published.
Did you manage to implement the sackbot in the cutscene? Let me know if you need a hand.

Thanks, I've tried very hard at making it visually pleasing as well as playable. Thanks to testing with a few others I have made tweaks to areas that could be frustarting with more than one player. This has helped the playability of it. I could see you liked my use of decorations and custom made stickers from all the poking around you were doing in my level. Made me laugh.

Alas it was getting late and I had to get some sleep so I never managed to get round to implimenting your sackbot idea. I was going to leave it and do something similar in part 2. But you suggesting that I do it near the end of part 1 makes for a better ending and cliff hanger for the player/players.

I will definitely be putting this level up for F4F once it's done. But I'm a perfectionist and want to publish it as polished as I can.
If there's enough interest I'm thinking about doing a tutorial to help new-comers and beginers on how to create thier first level. But there's probably a guide on this here anyway that I haven't seen yet. So I'm not sure or I could put this in a lbpc blog.

[Sean88]

Hi Des,
I'll try to be on tonight, if you need another play tester, and if you need any ideas or help, be glad to

[LittleBigDes]

Hi Des,
I'll try to be on tonight, if you need another play tester, and if you need any ideas or help, be glad to

Thanks. You beat me to it, I was going to ask as I never seem to have more then two friends on at the same time. I won't be home until late tonite so I may not be on. So send me a friend request on PSN to LittleBigDes. If I do get to go on it won't be until after 10pm GMT UK time tonight.

UPDATE: I have a feeling PSN may be down for maintance today.

[LittleBigDes]

Just to let eveyone know that I should be publishing this level, this Fri/Sat and it will be going up on F4F. I've only mananged to get up to 3 players on it at one time, so I'm hoping to get 4 players on by the time I publish or soon after.

Here's the scoreboard area:

UPDATE removed the image of the scoreboard since this changed

It's taken longer then I wanted it too but one of my sackbots was misbehaving. Bad sackbot, bad, stop acting and stand still like you've been told.