Proto:LittleBigPlanet Karting/Milestone 4

This is a sub-page of Proto:LittleBigPlanet Karting.

  This prototype is documented on Hidden Palace.

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

To do: This build has support for Stereoscopic 3D, but the game crashes in the loading screen when switching levels on RPCS3. Can someone with a 3D TV confirm if this happens on official hardware?

The August 15th, 2011 prototype of LittleBigPlanet Karting, dubbed Milestone 4, was dumped and released to the public on December 25, 2023 as part of the Imagisphere 2023 Mega Release event. It is a very early version of the game which contains many visible remnants from United Front's previous game ModNation Racers, ranging from leftover models and UI elements to entire game mechanics, systems, and even a handful of remnants from its unrealised sequel.

While the disc's label claims a date of August 30th, 2011, the build's DATESTAMP.DAT file — as well as the disc's primary volume descriptor — suggests the data is actually from August 15th. Unsurprisingly, the game is very incomplete at this point of development, with broken customisation options and numerous graphical oddities. A Story Mode is available, and though a lot of the levels are either unfinished or blatant placeholders, the basic layouts for a handful of tracks and arenas are complete.

Sub-Pages

Content Differences

Create Mode Differences "What is this? Mario Kart 8 for ants?"

Story Mode Differences Firebug Circuit has how many alternate routes?!

Cut Content

Unused Levels Someone forgot what genre this game is supposed to be.

XMB Metadata Differences

The game's metadata on the XMB is completely different, with an early logo and background, and the game's title has an additional colon between "LittleBigPlanet" and "Karting".

XMB Logo

Milestone 4	Public Beta Onward

• The logo displayed on the XMB is very different from the final version, with the word "Karting" using a different font & colour, and the LittleBigPlanet logo lacking a border.

XMB Background

Milestone 4	Public Beta Onward

• The early XMB background is completely different, with both Sackthings driving vehicles that go unused in the final game. Peculiarly, neither of the karts shown here exist in this build, suggesting this is from an even earlier build.
• Aside from ICON0.PNG, the trophies and their associated metadata are completely unchanged from ModNation Racers.

General Differences

• Every event begins with an auto-generated flyover of the track/arena. Depending on the level, it can often pan into something that covers up the track.
• The method of triggering a boost at the start of a race is unchanged from ModNation Racers, requiring the player to hold Accelerate and tap the Boost button as soon as the race starts. In the final game, it was changed to holding Accelerate and Drift for the duration of the countdown, letting go of the latter as soon as the race starts.
• When a driver gets hit by a weapon, they will drop some of their Score Bubbles (if they've collected any).
• The option to switch between the X Button Gas or R2 Button Gas control schemes is present, with the former being the default. This setting is not remembered between sessions.
• Unlike the final game, the Grapple Hook is always available by default (as opposed to being a pickup), and is mapped to the drift button (R1 or X depending on your control scheme) rather than being mapped to L1 universally.
  • The Grappliser object tweaker has not been implemented yet, so its only use is to swing from Grapple Sponges in levels that have them.
  • The Grabinators have not been implemented yet.

Controller Mappings

The controller mappings saw various tweaks between this prototype and the final game.

Racing

Action	X Button Gas		R2 Button Gas
	Milestone 4	Final	Milestone 4	Final
Accelerate	X		R2
Brake / Reverse	Circle	Circle	L2	L2
Hop / Drift	R1		X
Boost	Square	N/A	L1	N/A
Fire Primary Weapon	L1	Square	Square	Square
Drop Secondary Weapon	L1 (hold)	N/A	Square (hold)	N/A
Grab / Grapple	X	L1	R2	L1
Rear View	D-Pad Up	Triangle	R1	Triangle
Spin (mid-air)	L2 / R2		Right Stick
Show Story Objectives	D-Pad Down	N/A	D-Pad Down	N/A

Gameplay Differences

Weapons

The weapon system is completely different. The ability to create custom weapons has not been implemented yet; instead a Weapon Ladder system - similar to that of ModNation Racers - is present, where Weapon Bubbles (an early form of the final's Weaponators) give out one of four random weapons that can be upgraded twice. Pressing and holding the item button (L1 or Square, depending on your control scheme) for one second will drop a secondary weapon behind your kart.

Listed below is a table of all the weapons that can be found, as well as descriptions for each.

Weapon Level	Cake		Fire		Electric		Plant
	Name	Description	Name	Description	Name	Description	Name	Description
Level 1	Jam Ball	Three single fire jam projectiles	Firebomb	Three lobbed fireball with area effect damage	EMP	Area effect attack surrounding the kart	Caterpillar	Three rebounding single fire straight missiles
Level 2	Jelly Beam	Three ammunition based beam that causes opponents to lose traction	Seeker	Three single fire homing missiles	Bee 2.0	Rapid fire ammo based machine gun	Plant Chain	Homing missile that can chain to hit opponents around target
Level 3	Cake Maze	A maze of large cakes fall in front of the leader	Rolling ball	Player transforms into a giant ball and rolls down the track	EMP Wave	A wave of electricity that travels down the track hitting all opponents in its path	Hydra	Homing missiles that attack every player
Secondary	Reverse Jelly Beam*	Functionally identical to the Jelly Beam, except it fires behind the kart. Its visuals are broken, appearing invisible when used.	Mine*	Drop a landmine behind the kart, exploding after a couple of seconds.	Idle Bee 2.0*	Drops a Bee 2.0 behind the kart, which hovers around where it was dropped and zaps the first kart that gets near it.	Reverse Caterpillar*	Shoots up to three rebounding caterpillars behind the kart, depending on the primary weapon's level.

* Weapon name is conjectural; official name has not been found.

Weapons behave slightly differently depending on whether the level is a race track or a battle arena.

• Cake Maze: In a race, the cakes drop in front of the racer in first place. In a battle, they drop in front of whoever used it.
• EMP Wave: In a race, the EMP Wave travels down the track, knocking over dynamic objects and zapping any karts on the ground. In a battle, it travels in a straight line.

UI Differences

The Pod

• Nearly all of the assets for the Pod were ripped from LittleBigPlanet 2, including the music and background. Later versions replaced this with a more unique background, with this one going unused in the final game.
• The Popit Menu is unfinished.
  • The "Favourites" and "Chat" options are mislabelled, and instead act as a screenshot gallery and a Photo Mode shortcut respectively.
  • The Pod option simply reloads the Pod.
  • Pressing Circle always closes the menu, even if you're in a sub-menu.
• A tutorials menu is present, with the UI being recycled from ModNation Racers. All of the text has been wiped, and attempting to load a tutorial does nothing.

Photo Mode

• Photo Mode is accessed from the Start Menu, functioning similarly to how it does in the final game. It can also be accessed in the Pod by selecting "Chat" in the Popit, but it does not work properly here; the Zoom and Pan functions are broken, and Orbiting the camera with the Right Stick causes it to get stuck underneath the Pod.
  • While the proper Photo Mode is not accessible in Create Mode, it is still possible to take photos whilst in Preview Mode. L1 generates a preview photo for the level, whilst R1 takes a photo proper.
• Screenshots are saved at a higher resolution in this version: 1280x720 compared to the final's photo resolution of 640x360.
• Photos do not contain the logo watermark seen in the final, but UI elements like the spinning earth in the bottom left can still appear in them.
• Photos captured in Photo Mode (or by pressing R1 whilst in Track Studio's Preview Mode) can be accessed in the Pod, under the "Favourites" option of the Popit. This functions as a rudimentary photo manager; the player cannot use photos as stickers, only view information, delete or export them.
• Pressing X on a photo brings up information about it, which includes the photo's ID, the ID of the track it was taken on, a list of all players in the photo, including their X/Y coordinates in the photo, and their position in the race.
• Pressing Square exports the photo to the XMB, as expected. Since it is not possible to rename photos in-game in this version, exported photos will be saved with the filename "Little Big Planet™ Racers.JPG", which appears to be an early working title for the game.

Audio Differences

Music

To do: Identify tracks 01, 18 and 19.

Music objects have not been implemented yet. Instead, the game has the same music system as ModNation Racers, where a music track is randomly selected at the start of a race or battle. In this case, the majority of the soundtrack consists of licensed music that did not carry over to the final game. Below is a table with all identified songs.

Audio File	Identified Song (if known)	Notes
	Listed as "TRACK_01" internally.	Origin unknown. Removed after this build.
	"Romeo & Juliet Ballet Suite, Op. 64: Overture" (excerpt)	Removed after this build.
	'Ejercicio #16' by Kinky	Removed after this build.
	'Finger On the Knife' by James Pants	Removed after this build
	'Hully Gully' by Tommy Kinsman	Unused in the final game's data; has a different loop point.
	'Paramaribo' by John Schroeder	Removed after this build.
	'Punk' by Ferry Corsten	Features a snippet of 'Indigo' at the start. Removed after this build.
	'Romano Dance' by Mahala Rai Banda	Removed after this build.
	'Square Rave' by Squarepusher	Present in the final game's data, unused.
	'Summer in winter' by Baiyon	Taken from the game PixelJunk Eden. Removed after this build.
	'Toccata and Funk in D Minor' by Walter Murphy	Unused in the final game's data; has a different loop point.
	'African People' by Trentemøller	Unused in the final game's data.
	'Black Panther' by Crystal Castles	Removed after this build.
	'Cave City Sunrise' by One Happy Island	Removed after this build.
	'Me & My Variflex' by Ochre	Removed after this build.
	'Overture Redux (Le Nozze Di Figaro' by East Village Opera Company	Removed after this build.
	'Remind Me - Live' by Röyksopp	Unused in the final game's data.
	Listed as "TRACK_18" internally.	Origin unknown. Removed after this build.
	Listed as "TRACK_19" internally.	Origin unknown. Present in the Public Beta, where it is known internally as "MUS_LINEAR21", suggesting it was intended to be used near the end of Story Mode. Removed from the final game.

Separately, there are four shorter tracks which are randomly chosen to play during the pre-race flyover and post-race results screen.

Audio File	Identified Song (if known)	Notes
	'1901' by Phoenix (excerpt)
	'Eucalyptus' by The Deadly Syndrome (excerpt)
	'Ballet Shoes' by Grand Pocket Orchestra (excerpt)	This was used as the background music for LittleBigPlanet 2's Adventure trailer.

Unused ROM Characters

• 

  MAX0_000004CC

• 

  MAX1_000004CD

• 

  MAX2_000004E0

• 

  MAX3_000004E1

• 

  MAX4_000004E9

DATA/ROM/CHARACTER/MAXCHAR contains five premade characters whose icons depict Mods with strange colouring and different combinations of arms and legs. These may be holdovers from ModNation Racers 2, as limbs like the ones shown in these icons did not exist in the first game. Each character has six preview images, which appear to be resized duplicates of each other; for simplicity, only one of each is shown here.

Unused Graphics

SPLASH.BIN

ModNation Racers	Milestone 4

DATA/SPLASH.BIN is a stylized "VINYL" logo on a black backdrop. In ModNation Racers, an identically named file contains that game's logo, which is shown on boot. SPINNY.BIN, in the same directory, is identical in both games and is not shown here. The boot animation is contained in a pre-rendered video file, so SPLASH.BIN and SPINNY.BIN are rendered unused, and were completely removed by the time of the Public Beta.