Proto:LittleBigPlanet Karting/Milestone 4/Create Mode Differences

This is a sub-page of Proto:LittleBigPlanet Karting/Milestone 4.

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.

General Differences

• The Theme Select when creating a new track is different.
  • Avalonia has an entry, but no environment files exist for it in this build; attempting to load it just brings up the Grey Box theme instead.
  • Hoard, Sweet Hoard is not present in this list, and no data for it exists in the files.
  • Oddly enough, the Pod theme is accessible by default.
• The 3D Rotate feature is present, but there is no gimbal when rotating an object, and the camera angle does not affect the axis along which the Left Stick rotates an object. Practically speaking this means that, irrespective of the camera angle, up/down on the Left Stick always changes the object's pitch, with left/right changing its roll.
  • The final game fleshed out this feature, with the axis of rotation being affected by the camera angle and a gimbal UI being added to
• Weapons can be collected and used in Test Drive, however, the graphics for them are not loaded. This often results in invisible weapons with broken particle effects; in some cases, depending on the weapon, the game can even crash.
• Most of the logic gadgets do not exist yet. A few basic gadgets are present, but they do not appear to function properly.
• The Start Button brings up the Popit menu, rather than a dedicated pause menu like in the final.

Mod Track Differences

• Tunnel road styles can be selected, behaving the same way it did in ModNation Racers. Multiple variants exist for the different themes, although most of them have strange lighting and other bugs.
  • A Gardens tunnel is listed, but has no icon or geometry. It can be used the same way as other tunnels, but karts will end up out of bounds if they try to drive into it.
• Loops and corkscrews can be added to a stretch of straight track using the Advanced Edit tool. Press Left/Right on the D-Pad to cycle through the six different options, Up/Down to resize the loop or corkscrew, and Square to place the loop.
  • A coloured outline appears in front of the cursor when placing a loop or corkscrew to show what it will look like; red indicates an invalid position, while yellow means the track ahead is suitable for the chosen option.
  • Loops and corkscrews can only use the bridge road surfaces; any stretch of road covered by a loop will be converted to the default bridge surface upon creation, though it can still be changed to one of the other bridge surfaces.
  • Interestingly, a dedicated page exists for Loops, although the actual loop creation feature is also available when Advanced Edit under the Quick Edit page.
• The Auto-Populate tool from ModNation Racers is present and is still partially functional; the player is even prompted to use Auto-Populate after laying out the track, though only a small pool of decorative props are placed when using it.

Terrain Edit Differences

• The selection of Advanced Sculpting brushes is smaller at only six, and they cannot be raised or lowered with the triggers like in the final game.
• There are seven Material Surface brushes selectable, as opposed to the final game's eight. Only the Gardens and Eve's Asylum have all seven brushes set up correctly; the remaining themes either share a pool of three materials (the other four using their respective default terrain texture), or in the case of Sky and Grey Box (and by proxy Avalonia), have none of the surfaces defined.
• Ground Cover brushes are present, and function as they did in ModNation Racers. Only the Gardens theme has them set up properly, and they consist of large grass patches with varying heights and densities.

Audio Differences

• The music behaves strangely in Create Mode, in that the Pod music plays upon loading in but does not loop. If the player completes a Test Race, the results music will loop indefinitely until they quit to the Pod.
• Most of the tool-specific sounds are absent, but the ones that do play properly are unchanged from ModNation Racers, e.g. the "Drive to Create" steamroller sounds.

Dynamic Props

• Like ModNation Racers, there are three different Boost Pads in the Tools Bag, all of which are applied as 2D decals:
• an omnidirectional pad that boosts karts in their current direction
• a variant that changes a kart's direction to match the arrows on the pad
• a pad that simply adds 500 points to the player's boost gauge.

All three of these were removed in favour of a 3D Jetpack pedestal which behaves like the omnidirectional pad.