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Voting for the ninth Contraption Challenge is now open on the Official PlayStation Community forums. The finalists have been decided and it’s now down to you to choose the final winner.

The brief for this challenge was to build a vehicle capable of bridging or crossing a gap and following a mention on the Official PlayStation Blog, this was by far the biggest Contraption Challenge yet with more than 60 entries. These 60 were painstakingly narrowed-down to five by MVPs and the Community Team.

Take a gander at the finalists in the video below, then head over to this poll on the Official Forums to cast your vote.

Sam_Protagonist wrote an excellent post at the LittlebigWorkshop here explaining how the moderation of levels on LBP works:

“As many of you have already noticed there have been some unusual levels of moderation activity lately, and subsequent to the recent change in moderation policy there are some additional issues with the moderation system at present that we’re working to resolve.

Improvements are coming.”

To begin this overview of how moderation works and what you can do to avoid your level being blocked here’s how the system is designed to operate :

When a “Good Grief” report is filed through the game the level in question, its comments and associated screenshots are placed into a queue to be checked over by the moderation teams at SCE. These teams are located around the world and the moderation queue is checked around the clock to ensure that levels which should be removed from visibility are dealt with as quickly as possible. It is a common misconception that issuing a Good Grief report automatically blocks a level from being viewed, and this is not the case. The only time a level becomes unavailable is when it has been blocked by a moderator.

The tool used to check levels provides moderators with an exploded view of the level and all the parts used to make it up, including screenshots that were sent with the moderation report. This tool is designed to differentiate between how the level was when it was loaded and what happened during play – so if an antisocial user were to play an inappropriate sticker in your level before reporting it the sticker would show up, but would be associated with the player who placed it, not the level creator.

The same is true of comments and screenshots posted at the beginning of the level – these are associated with whoever placed them, not the original creator.

In the event that a level is moderated the creator will receive a message stating that the level has been blocked, preventing it from being seen by other users – at no point is a level removed from the servers, even if it has been moderated. In the event that the moderated level gives away prizes that can be reused by other creators, or the level itself is copiable, all of the levels using the original content are automatically moderated. This is the area that catches most unsuspecting creators out, and the message received following automatic moderation states that it is due to an item used in the level design rather than the level itself.

It’s a straightforward system, and in almost all cases works exactly as intended catching only the levels that should be removed from the game, however as with everything else human error does occur and there have been a couple of incidents in the past of this having happened which have since been cleaned up.

At present, however, some outstanding levels which have been moderated are being investigated again as there are inconsistencies that have shown up in the past couple of weeks. This doesn’t mean that if your level has been moderated lately it’ll definitely return, neither does it means that there was definitely an issue of some kind, this is purely part of the ongoing process to ensure that the system is working as intended.

We’re working on making the moderation system more transparent so that the concerns that have been raised lately can be addressed, and in the coming weeks there will be more on this subject, starting with some guidelines on what “grey area” content would warrant a level being moderated; as the game has to be suitable for users aged 7 and above there are limits on how scarey or violent the level can be, and it may be that some acts of moderation have occurred out of levels straying over this line.

Patch 1.20 has been released for LBP today so named “Celtic Promise”, no details have been announced only that it is 23mb and is a DLC patch, no hidden features that have been sneaked in this time around, rumours of the search functionalities engine being fixed are not true, or at least haven’t been announced.
But there is some exiting news about Patch 1.21 and the Leerdammer patch from mnimmo1986 over at The Official PS Boards he had this to say in his LBP patch details thread about the patch:

“The 1.20 update to the game is indeed more content, rather anything too massive, however I can reveal that 1.21 is the fabled and oft heard of Leerdammer update.
I can’t say when it’s coming just yet, but the fact that it’s next in the queue should give you some indication.”

So it looks like the Leerdammer patch is in the front of the que and the next patch to be released on LBP. And if you don’t know what this means well the Leerdammer patch includes:

• * Profile space has been increased by 250 times.
• * Create levels online with your friends.
• Net-code tweaks and fixes (No official word on these fixes fixing the lag issues with LBP)
• Other features may be included in the future.
• Note: The Water kit is not inside the Leerdammer patch, no info on water has been released (only Media Molecule know of it’s released date), also there hasn’t been an announcement or official word of a LBP Home space being released simultaneously on “Playstation Home”, any rumours should be taken as untrue until they are announced officially by Media Molecule. The patch has nether been announced to increase the 20/20 levels limit on-line.

(From mnimmo1998’s The Patch details Thread)

We’ll update you on this patch future patches and other info on the Leerdammer patch here on the blog.

Also a little reminder, today is the last day you can get your hands on the Pumpkin Head costume, other PSN Stores have dropped the costumes except for UK and US.

A news post over at LittleBigPlanet’s official community site, the LittleBigWorkshop, hints that some “really big changes” are on the way. Sony’s “Sack it to me” (or SITM) stories are usually cross-posted to the Official PlayStation Blog and the LittleBigWorkshop however users noticed that this wasn’t done with the latest post. SackBoy103 had this to say:

As you noticed yesterday with the new post (outside of Sack-it-to-me), we’re trying something new to balance out the posts between the LBP Workshop and the PlayStation Blog. So expect more goodness from the News site like community spotlights, more workshop highlights, LBP stories, and other things you want to hear (feel free to tell us what you want). And stay tuned for some really big changes too.

Could the LittleBigWorkshop be tranforming into the community hub that Alex Evans (co-founder of Media Molecule) has been working on, which he discussed back in May? In an interview with GameReactor, Alex talked about a system whereby users would be given a webpage for every level they publish which they could use to share and advertise their levels. The site would be integrally linked with LittleBigPlanet and would allow users to mark a level they like the look of and this would then allow them to instantly find and play the levels the next time they were in the game. He also hinted that the hub could be linked into existing social networking sites and would help users find new, fresh levels and keep them coming back to LittleBigPlanet.

This is pure speculation at this point, but we’ll be sure to update you if we hear any more about the developments on the LittleBigWorkshop. Check out GameReacor’s full interview with Alex Evans below.

In the above interview Alex also mentioned an ice feature that was removed a long time ago, watch this video at 1:35 and 3:24 to watch Ice in action and see what this fetature was/will be like if there is a possibility of it coming back!

Nuclearfish over on the Official PlayStation Boards is running yet another ‘Contraption Challenge’. This time around the challenge requires you to build a Amusement Ride.

From ‘Nuclearfish’ at the Official Playstation Forums…

For this challenge you need to make…. an amusement ride! However, not just any ride. It has to be a ‘flat ride’, which means no roller coasters, ghost trains or anything that uses a track. Flat rides include things like ferris wheels, pirate ships, drop towers, zippers, carousels and much more.

Find my “Contraption Challenge 08″ level, where I’ve made an example (which can be seen below). It’s a ferris wheel, but I’ve made it more interesting by giving it a spooky theme (ready for Hallowe’en) with a giant moving spider in the middle. Whilst it’s a good idea to keep your ride realistic, you will also need to think outside to box to make something more original.

Unlike the previous challenges where there was a specific task to complete, all you need to do with this one is make something that looks awesome and is fun to ride (yes, Sackboy does need to ride it. No standing at the side watching). However, if you want to make something a bit more complicated with logic, then give your ride a sequence of events. So instead of my ferris wheel continuously spinning, I could have it stop when you walk up to it, then move once you get in, then stop once it’s done a full rotation to allow you to get out. Or, you could make something with a full sequence of swinging and spinning, complete with timed emitted water jets.*

So, all you need to do to take part is create a new level and build your ride. There’s no size limit, but these rides don’t usually take up much space (although they can be very high). Concentrate on making the ride look the best it can, and maybe give it a theme. Use plenty of sounds too. And if you’re going to enter more than one ride, put them in seperate levels.

Once you’re done, give it a title with ‘CC08′ at the beginning, publish it, and then leave a comment on my example level so that others can find it. You’ve got until Sunday 1st November to get it published. Have fun, and good luck!

Here is a list of previous CC winners:

(CC01) Sackapult winner: TOM_TOM1993
(CC02) Off-road Vehicle winner: Munrock
(CC03) Siege Weapon winner: haddington-bear
(CC04) Flying Machine winner: gm9218
(CC05) Transporter winner: TeeBaG
(CC06) Rube Goldberg Machine winner: marc225
(CC07) Wall Climber winner: rtm223

Watch them all and subscribe to LBPContraptions on YouTube! Take a look at the finalists from the previous Contraption Challenge…

Sorry for the late post, more Contraption Challenge alerts here on the Blog!