Alright, I'm going to be honest. I hate the level editing tools. Not the worst I've ever used, but far from being the super intuitive, it's a snap, build anything you can dream of editor as touted.
It's incredibly simple and easy to use....as long as you're building little block platforms and swingy sponges. Trying to make something elaborate is like hitting yourself in the mouth with a hammer. Just as a for instance, I've been working on a level all weekend. I've made a couple of experimental rather crappy stages, now I wanted to make an awesome one. So far all intents and purposes it's quite large and elaborate. Now one scene in it has you in an apartment building, and you have to climb to the top. So there are all sorts of rotating wheels, moving platforms, ect ect ect. But there are also a couple of enemies walking around.
Everything was going fine until I did a play test and noticed that a simple block that was to be a platform that was attached to the flat background wall had somehow fallen making the section impassable. So I go back to the editor to put the platform back. I get there and realize that somehow the block has become attached to the floor, so I hit triangle to detach it. Big mistake. It considers the block to be part of the building meaning it detached the entire building from the ground. Easy to fix, just fasten it back to the ground and go about my business. Later I notice my enemies aren't walking around the building. I realize now all of the enemies are attached to the building (when I fastenend the building to the ground the enemies were touching the building securing them in place as well), so I go to unfasten the enemy but since he is now part of the building it thinks I'm trying to pick up the entire building. Now all the wheels, platforms and whatnot have fallen off the walls and ceilings because for some reason they didn't stay attached to the building even though all of the enemies did. I spend an hour or more just trying to fix the stupid building this morning. And Just as I think I've gotten it all taken care of, I see that I large elaborate boss type monster on the outside of the building had part of his body touching it and now HE'S attached to the building and I have to take a chunk of him apart to leave the building in tact, and then rebuild him.
Oh, I know about rewind. But unless you catch the mistake as soon as you make it you're screwed. Which is very difficult if it's in pause mode, and it's something as subtle as the enemies legs are now glued to the building.
Now it gets worse. After an hour and a half of fixing something that should've already been complete, I do a play test. And half the level is now glitched up in some unfathomable way. When I get to the first apartment building (you go through a few of them all connected to each other) it acts like everything is on fire. Now everything is not on fire, it doesn't hurt you. What I mean is everything is melting into smoke. It's hard to explain, but it makes it unplayable. You know the effect of when you have something large on fire, and there is a sort of blur that extends upwards and the flames stretch up really high all blurry? Imagine that every object, floor, wall, enemy, check point and item was doing that, but instead of fire it's just a blurred image of the object that extends infinitely upwards. I have no idea what the hell is wrong with it, but in the editor it does the same thing and the only thing that fixes it is to destroy everything affected. Which is an insane amount of stuff. I've put at least ten painful, frustrating hours into this level and now it's completely shot.
I have no desire to play little big planet for a good while out of the pure hatred I'm feeling for the editor right now. I'll get over it eventually, but I think I'm just going to go back and beat dead space until Resistance 2 comes out.
You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.
