From Media Molecule on Vimeo.

Hopefully these will be confusing your mum on TV in the near future, but in the meantime you can chuckle along with us online.

All the ads (excluding the intros and outros, natch) were made using the game tools that come in the box. It was an interesting experience, because each level had to played through and acted, rather than animated. It feels like we did a thousand takes. At some point in the next few days we will try to get the actual levels online so you can play them yourselves.

A big thanks to Jae, Jamie and Trudi at TBWA. To Mark and Tom Perrett, Cyriak and Joji at Nexus. To Nick at Sony. THANKS!

At times it has felt like it might never happen, but today we were able to take a couple of Sackpeople out to our local electronic entertainment emporium and show them their starring role on the shop shelf. Exciting times!

As an added bonus we have a new trailer out, bonza!

LittleBigPlanet - UK Launch Trailer from Media Molecule on Vimeo.

…but crooked smiles all around this Hallows eve.

A few of the molecules spent their lunchtime today hacking at fruit with sharp knives. What fun!

If you’re carving your own pumpkin, or turnip*, then please be careful! The first aid box was out in force at Media Molecule towers this afternoon - if you look closely you’ll see that some of the pumpkins have more of a reddish tinge to them than others…

* When I were’t lad we’d carve our lanterns out of turnips or swedes (rutabaga). Not only could pumpkins not be bought for love nor money in the Land of Scots in the early ’80s, but this tradition actually pre-dates the carving of pumpkins. So if you want to be authentically old-skool, grab a turnip. Unfortunately you’ll need to have the dexterity, strength and perseverance of a small mountain goat if you wish to scoop out the hardened innards of a turnip. Good luck with that li’l project…

Sony US bring news of our first Nascar race. Apparently Joey Logano did pretty well though perhaps he would have won if somebody had added rockets to his car, and made the wheels from glass.

And in Canada, weird things are afoot. There appears to be some kind of bug in their website… it seems to be falling apart at the seams… http://www.playstation.ca

The Atlantic may be broad and deep, but it is no barrier to the strange yet beautiful love of our friends in the Americas. HUGS.

Cables have been connected, switches have haven flicked and buttons have been pressed. The servers are on, let the sharing commence!

W00t!

Updates will now be posted to the main page

For those looking to redeem US pre-order codes, click this link to find out how

So, let’s forget all about the game for ten minutes, instead here’s a curious man wiring his face up to an mp3 player:

You probably shouldn’t try this at home but for those who found this as fascinating as we did there is more information on Today and Tomorrow.

Here, in the first of an irregular series of creator interviews we track down Ole-Marius to his Norwegian lair and ask him questions until he tells us to go away.

Media Molecule: So, introduce yourself!

Ole-Marius: PSN, Gamertag, Steam ID etc: geosautus.

My name is Ole-Marius, I’m 21 and from Norway. I don’t think I have a favorite color, I like them all. My favorite sackboy costume so far is the pirate outfit. Especially if colored completely blue and with an underwear-sticker on the hat. But when playing with friends it often ends up with a costume covered in donkey tails. When I’m not busy designing levels in LBP I’m usually at school studying animation.

MM: How did you find out about LBP? How did you get on the beta trial?

OM: GDC. I was blown away instantly. And so was everyone I showed it to. When the beta keys went out on eurogamer.net I sat for about an hour just refreshing the page because their server went down. But it paid off! I got a key, and 10 minutes later it was LBP time!

MM: Where do you start when you’re designing a level, do you begin with a specific idea or just doodle until something happens?

OM: The first thing I do is come up with a concept, color, style - what have you. Then I just build as ideas come to mind, stringing challenges together. I often spend a lot more time tweaking my challenges/puzzles than I spend making the main triggers and geometry. I always playtest each challenge many times. I also try to “fool proof” every part of my level, though this if often easier said than done. When I’m happy with the overall design of a challenge I usually get my girlfriend to playtest it. If she breaks it (and she usually does. She is amazing that way), it’s back to the drawing board.

MM: Have you got much attention for your levels?

OM: Yeah, it’s really weird - people are recording themselves playing my levels and talking about them in forums, arguing wether I’m a dev and/or MM employee. It’s really crazy. My PSN friendslist exploded in a couple of days. The real highpoint was when I got my first friend request from a MM employe. That was unbelievable!

MM: How do you know when you have finished working on a level?

OM: I usually just keep building challenges until I run out of space or the level overheats, though it usually overheats well before I’m satisfied. I often to go back and redesign some elements so that they eat less resources. When all the challenges are complete, I try to add secrets if possible and a last bit of visual polish followed by playtesting. If it all works then it’s done - off to the next level!

MM: Who or what influences your designs? Is there anyone you would like to collaborate with?

OM: I would say that almost all the levels I’ve played influence my own - they let me see what works and what doesn’t. My girlfriend often has an idea for a segment of a level, though sometimes they’re rubbish. The puzzle in Mad Mansion was her idea, so I guess I owe her some chocolate.

MM: Do you have plans in the works for any new levels?

OM: I do, but it’s secret!

MM: What’s your favourite level you’ve seen in LBP so far?

OM: I really like levels that do something I haven’t thought of myself. I played one level that was pitch black and used only the light from magnetic switches to show the way. I thought that was really cool.

MM: Your levels are very varied, we were very impressed by the variety and detail that went into them. How do you find inspiration and keep things fresh and varied?

OM: I like to think of new concepts to avoid making the same thing over and over again. So when I’m finally finished making a level I just want to make something different. I usually come up with a concept pretty fast, then I just base the challenges around it.

MM: The sound design on Mad Mansion is epic! Was that added later, or as part of the process?

OM: Both. I added sounds to my challenges as I went along (creaks, bangs etc) - after completing the world i added another sound layer (like the ambient noice). I tried to tweak the music to fit, but it was too cheery, so I just went with a lot of ambient noices. I think it worked out pretty well. My future levels will definetly benefit from what I learned designing the audio for Mad Mansion.

MM: Have you designed games before? If so, what sort of stuff?

OM: No not really. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a lie. I’ve helped design a small java Smash Bros type of game at school. It was a lot of fun.

MM: If you could ask for one more feature in LBP, what would it be?

OM: I can think of two just from the top of my head:

1. Rumble emitters. Works like the sound speakers, but instead you can make the controller rumble (different types, pulse, heartbeat, weak, strong etc). I think that could result in some interesting stuff.
2. A way to change the lighting in just some parts of the level. Going from daylight to pitch black as you enter a cave etc.

MM: What other games live on your PS3/Xbox/PC?

OM: Right now it’s a lot of R2 beta and WipEout HD. I haven’t really played my 360 in a while, but I’m looking forward to playing Fable II. On my PC it’s either podcasts+TF2, or Crysis Warhead right now. Haven’t touched my Wii in ages (oooh, that sounded naughty!).

MM: What was the last great film you saw?

OM: Wall-E. Pure genius. And The Dark Knight before that.

MM: Any greets or shout outs?

OM: I would like to thank everyone who plays and hearts my levels. It’s great seeing that people are enjoying my creations.

MM: Thanks Ole-Marius!

So, we got our copies of the Brady Games LittleBigPlanet guide and it is a vast and wondrous thing.

There will be no sales pitch here, but the book is huge (300+ pages) and a lot of love and hard work went into it. So props to Martin and Shaun who did our end of the project, and a round of applause for the guys at Brady and Off Base, especially Christian Sumner and Keith Lowe.

You can find more photos here: Brady Guide photo set on Flickr

EDIT: For those wanting an overview of what you can find inside, here’s the content pages:

Click through to the flickr page to see a bigger version.

Hello,

Thanks for all of your comments and support! It’s been a tough time for gamers, LBP fans, and MM alike! but it seems that there’s only about 1 week to wait - so thankyou for your patience. It’ll be worth it!

We were waiting to hear from Sony on the new release dates and so we held off on an update until now. They’ve pulled out all the stops to keep the delay down, so now we can let you all know the details.

In the US LittleBigPlanet will begin shipping the week of October 27th and so depending how close your nearest shop is to the trucks you may have your hands on a copy that very day. We would love to hear where/who manages to get it first! Leave a comment!

In the UK, Europe, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand LittleBigPlanet should start to appear in stores no later than the week commencing Monday 3rd November. The UK has confirmed that it should be available on the 5th and no later.

In Japan we understand from SCEI that our release date has not changed, it remains the 30th October.

Some of you have asked about pre-orders and early copies. Everything should remain as before - you will get your exclusive pre-order content, we’ll go on patching the game, and everything will work as if none of this had ever happened! I think in the end, everyone will be happy.

In the coming weeks until launch, as a way of saying thanks for your patience to our loyal MM readers, we’ll make sure we’ve got some great content on this site for you, so stay tuned!

Lots of people have asked us to switch on the beta again and we looked into it at length, but now that the delay to the game is only a week, it just wasn’t technically possible to get new keys out, bring back the servers, and so on. Besides, we’ve working on some cooler  ways of connecting with you lot directly, that can include those who weren’t able to get beta keys.

Wherever you’re from, thanks so much for your patience on this slightly surreal turn of events! We will keep updating this post as we get any more news. Stay tuned! The game isn’t far away now

Xxxx

As some of you may have noticed, LBP has been slightly delayed in some territories. At MM we were as shocked and dismayed by this as anyone - shellshocked and gutted. We can’t wait for you all to get playing and creating!

We learnt yesterday that there is a lyric in one of the licensed tracks which some people may find offensive, and which slipped through the usual screening processes. Obviously MM and Sony together took this very seriously. LBP should be enjoyable by all. So within 12 hours of hearing about this issue involving a lyric (in Somalian, I believe!), Media Molecule had prepared an automatic day 0 patch and had a new disk image ready; however a decision was made within Sony that the right thing to do for quality and support of people with no on-line was to replace existing disks. They assure us that they are doing everything in their power to get things straightened out as fast as possible, and will announce dates soon.

Apologies to everyone excited to play the game and I can assure you that when it arrives, it will be worth the wait! We want everyone to be able to enjoy the game, and this tweak should help - we’re just gutted it couldn’t be sooner. MM continues to work hard to support the game too.  We know that LBP will be something that you can enjoy for a long time to come, when all of this is forgotten and all that remains are thousands of incredible levels and creations to play, create and share.

[EDIT Sony are going to announce new dates and information re discs for each territory soon. We’ll keep you posted! The patch is ready from our side and I imagine it will go live at the same time as the game. More info when we get it.]

[EDIT #2 Sorry for the downtime, it seems this is as emotional for you as it was for us. However, please try to breath in and out and keep your commenting at least clean if not polite Thanks -jim]