Good morning y'all, that time's rolled around again!

https://youtu.be/SDhIMdxgfKk

This week we're having a peep at:

Cardboard Cutout LBP3 - temple1997
Little Big Adventure - DeadDollOfficiaI(?)
LBP1 The Islands w.s.b.p - Trackmania12
Toxic Bubble Swamp - wander416
Heck of a Holiday - XxCHLOEBELLExX

It's a pretty fine set of levels this go about, though there is a little weirdness going on with Little Big Adventure. Oh, and also, Toxic Bubble Swamp just got the the LotD nod...well, at least that was roughly concurrent to the episode going up. Anyhoot, hopefully something in there will catch your eye and turn out to be something you have some fun with. Thanks for all the support, and have a great day!

Behind the Curtains Stuffs
Right, so the live episode 026+ is going to be June 2nd 8p JTime, barring disaster. That should mean i can get home from work, have a bit of dinner and decompress before we start. i'd wanted it to be on Thursday or Friday, but stuffs are in the doing so, yeah Saturday was the closest i could get. Hopefully you'll be able to drop in and say hi. Also hopefully, the streaming will go smoothly. Toes crossed.

We've got regular episode 026 halfway done. Ran into some snags getting the hub put together, and i haven't had as much time available to do recordings. i might be able to get the secondary recordings and grading bit done this morning, but we'll see (and my throat is kinda swole up and feeling like garbage, so i might not want to push it too much). Actually got this wrapped up just now, though i went and sat too long and let the screen saver pop-up...i think i'm going to keep it because everything else is a pretty good take, but i do feel kind of silly.

i remember what i was going to ask last week. So...i was bopping around people's moons, i think it was in LBP2, but it might have been LBP3. Got on to one persons moon, and some music started playing, like real world music, not the usual in-Pod bgm. The quality was like recording old mix-tapes by putting the tape player right next to the stereo speaker...an experience i imagine a fair number of you may have been born too late for. Anyways, it was creepy, unsettling, and completely unexpected. Have any of you run into that? Do you know how it was done?

Sorry i've been a little vague about why things have been so kittiwumpus w/r/t production recently. i want to loop people in when the schedule starts getting wonky; on the other hand this is life stuff that hovers in between the TMI and not-want-to-talk-about zones. Thanks for your patience, yeah.

Just to clarify
- Little Big Adventure was originally made by god_of_spam in LBP1 (Little Adventure 2)
- DeadDollOfficiai and DeadDollOfficial are different accs
- I own this one ^

That's why I didn't want you to put it in the video. Sorry everyone ^^'

PS: "DeadDolls2015" from R15F #21 and DeadDollOfficial are the same person

Zero-Pilote, you are a detective par excellence, and awesome. i kind of thought there might be something between DeadDoll2015 and the other DeadDolls...and i think the level we looked at DeadDoll2015 ended up taken down in the end as well...so maybe some copying going on there as well. How crappy, but still, thanks for the heads up.

Ossu! Tuesday Takeaway Time folks!

Cardboard Cutout LBP3 - temple1997
i really liked this level, it swings the simple presentation quite well, especially with the bits of extra depth that we see. The only thing i might have changed was either switching up the order of the set-pieces, or having a softer build up to the extended climbing/velociraptor bit we start with. It's such a long gap between the starting Check Point and the next, to get hit with it right of the bat along with considering that's the most difficult part of the level. i'm also left wondering why they didn't run with the pseudo-story they had going with the LBP2 level. That kind of felt like there was a world that we're existing in, this one just feels like a level. A very good level, mind you, but something that exists in isolation. Where is Toggle, Mom?

Little Big Adventure - who knows?
As a level, it's ok enough, i suppose. It's kludgy, and klunky, and the actual gameplay bits could really have stood to have been expanded upon. As a mini-controversy...sometimes i think the most active, coherent elements of the community are people who are fairly unhappy with each other, who chunk up each other's profiles with a lot of angry sniping. i would love to know who really made this level, so i could give them proper credit, ((Edit to Add)got contacted by zero-pilote, looks like the original creator was God_Of_Spam, so give them the plays and hearts(/EtA)) but DeadDollOffical, who DeadDollOfficiai credits, doesn't seem to be the one. Interesting, but said DeadDollOfficial went and changed their profile so they're no longer using StevenI's avatar, or claim to be him. Man...i have the feeling there's a lot of weird just waiting under the surface here.

LBP1 The Islands w.s.b.p - trackmania12
You know, TrackMania was the free PS+ game this month on the JSide. It's ok, i guess. It'll never be my favourite racer, it's a little too full of itself and its coolness, but i suppose it's solid enough. That has nothing to do with anything here. This one's just a really neat concept that's executed really well. My feelings didn't really shift over much, my quibbles are the same (man, picking up the hoverboard...that was such a pain in the rump). i didn't really push myself, but i managed to take my score from around 40k when i played for PiPs, to about 120k putting me at 3rd place. Probably could've grabbed 1st if it weren't for a couple of dumb deaths towards the end.

Toxic Bubble Swamp - wander416
This one got snagged for the LotD, but of the ones where we've seen cross-over, i think this one i can definitely get behind. Paczek321 got in touch on YouTube and pointed out something that i also really liked about the level, it does a really good job of introducing new gameplay elements, and then building their difficulty throughout. That doesn't seem to be something a lot of creators pull off well (see this week's Cardboard Cutout for a timely example). This is one of the handfuls of levels that feels hard and challenging without being frustrating, and that really adds to the satisfaction when you wrap things up. i also really like the disconnect between the relatively bright and poppy presentation, and the eventual difficulty. Really, this one's solid on all around. i...ahh...did chicken out on the race again, though.

Heck of a Holiday - XxCHLOEBELLExX
i came away from this one a lot more positively that i had when recording the episode (and even then, i was feeling pretty good about it). Sometimes i think i get a little up my own bum about what constitutes a good level, and i drift away from the prime factor of fun. i mean, it's easy to remember when a level is clearly not fun, but when you get a run of good levels (and this was a particularly good set for that), it's hard not to look at them together instead of individually, if that makes sense. At the end of the day, for all the kludginess and klunkiness of the presentation here, this is at the end of the day, a charming, fun level (and it certainly isn't quite fair to compare it to its spiritual twin Four Seasons). Could things be a little more polished? Sure. Still, will you have fun playing it? i think the answer is: yes.

So that's the that for this week, a little bit of weirdness, but still a fun run. Hopefully you found a couple of levels that were fun, and you'll give a look at God_of_Spam's stuff and give them a little love. Thanks for all the support, and have a great day!

Behind the Curtains Stuffs
Production, production, production. Regular episode 026 is done but for the PiPs, but those should get done today or tomorrow. The levels for episode 027 are recorded, and the hub is put together, but we've not gotten any of the dialogue, animation, or camera work in. i think i should be able to get most of that done Wed/Thurs. An issue to ask about: if i want to be bigger in the hub (it's necessary to preserve a sense of scale), do i have to use a sackbot & broadcast chip for control? i tried to just make a bigger sackbot in the costume i wanted and then saved that through the Starting Checkpoint's created character function, but when i tried playing the level, i was still regular size.

i don't know if i'm going to get to an LBsP this week. i was going to just toss together something small as...well...a kind of bookmark, i suppose, but zero-pilote letting me know about God_of_Spam makes me want to do something with their stuff and talk about copying, and that might be a bit beefier than i have time for. So...that kind of sucks. i'm only a couple of days ahead of schedule for Isaac, and that's not so great either. i'll have a lot more time to work on things from next week, but that'll be its own kind of suck, but at least we'll balance things out with making more stuff, so...six of one, half a dozen of the other?

LMAO I just recently powered on LBP3 again and saw frickin StevenI and i could'nt believe it so I checked the comments section which leads me here - it may be a month to late realizing this - but I'm honored lol

Just keep going with your community levels and we'll give you more feedback and reviews.
Thanks for the levels!