Move a gun platform left or right and shoot aliens as they descend, destroying your cities and attempting to end your sharply pixellated life. It's the ultimate old-school shooter, and PSW shows you how to recreate the classic in LittleBigPlanet.
Game: Space Invaders Year: 1978 Format: Arcade
1. Do the Flintstone Our first problem is that we need to make a gun move left and right, smoothly. Feel free to try using an Artillery tank. Notice how the wheels skid when you ask them to move quickly? We're not going to use wheels, then. Make a wooden floor and then create two rectangles of glass whose length goes into the screen. Glue it to a small backing board made of polystyrene. Add a small roof of polystyrene, and beneath it stick a proximity switch. Place an Emitter on the top of it and you're ready to glide that gun beautifully.
2. Take cover Connect the Proximity Switch to the Emitter and launch small electrified cubes. Tweak it so when you jump, they fire high into the air. Add a piece of sponge inside what is, in effect, your gun chassis. When you hold it with R2 you will be able to move the platform left and right, and when you press 'Action' you will fire some death. Build a fascia for your gun out of polystyrene in Space Invader colours and stick it in front of your chassis. You now have a gun, but no Invaders to shoot.
3. The Invaders We don't want to get too Blue Peter on you, but it's handy if you have an enlarged print-out of a little critter-like Space Invader to copy. So now with one nearby turn on the Grid, make a large cube of Dissolving Material. Cut cubes from it so that it looks like a classic pixel-based Invader, and everyone will know you are old-school hero - whatever that means. You like tripe, probably - just like stinky old Gran. Moving swiftly on, stick a switch below your handiwork, and link the switch to the Dissolving Material. Place some score globes in the Invader's eyes, then try dropping it on the floor. When the switch makes impact with the ground the Invader should dissolve leaving nothing but points. Shoot the switch with your new gun and the same should happen. f**king sweet! You are a creative genius, with a little bit of our help.
4. The invaders Glue another length of Dissolving Material onto the top of your Invader's head. Cover it in black stickers and link it to the switch on the Invader's bottom. Now copy the Invader as an object, and make a vertical line of them with each one being stuck to the one above by the black dissolving material. Repeat copy this line of Invaders horizontally and you'll have an array of the buggers. Shoot one on its switch and it will disappear, rain points to the ground and make it possible to shoot the one above it! Brilliant isn't it?
5. Red Threat Glue your array of Invaders to a black cross beam and place a piece of Dark Matter above your level. Connect the Dark Matter with the cross beam with a winch, and set the winch so that it falls slowly. Build green bases between your gun and your Invaders and hold them in space on bits of Dark Matter.
6. Disarming aliens You'll now have a gun to shoot and targets that can be shot individually, for points. By expanding on what we've shown you, you can make the Invaders emit bombs! And why shouldn't you improvise? Because now we've shown you how to make Space Invaders, you may wonder why you'd want to when LittleBigPlanet allows so much more.
In theory, there is a copyright issue. Standard copyright lasts 70 years in the UK (75 in the US) and I can't imagine that IPs are any different.
However, there is a growing whitelist of companies which don't mind their stuff appearing in LBP so it might be okay. I just wish MM would tell us who they are.
Of course, you're allowed to create and use whatever you like for your own personal use. You just can't publish copyrighted stuff.
Im not sure about the whole copyright issue here. I understand using copyrighted images is against the law (so you cant take a picture of super mario on your Playstation camera and paste that into LPB).
But when you actually recreate things yourself I think this is different. The only thing I can think of compairing it to would be is like when a singer or band do a cover of someone elces song, there is no copyright problem there as it has been re-sung and so long as you say that the song was written by someone elce there is no problem. I think that should also be the case of digital creations.
That's how I feel about it too. As long as you're not making any profit from it or using the actual content, there shouldn't be any legal issue.
However, the flipside is that you're basically giving away someone else's ideas. In a song, that's the music and the lyrics. I wouldn't be happy if someone covered a song I wrote and got more famous from it than I did :) To a slightly lesser extent I can see the point in this too - someone thought up Mario level 1-1. They deserve credit for it.
It's a total legal puzzle, with so many variables that it's nearly impossible to cover all angles, so it's easier just to stick a flat out "no" on it to prevent any problems.
I just wish they'd release the whitelist of developers who said they don't mind.
