Basic Vehicle

Before you delve into level creation, there are 30 tutorials we highly recommend you complete. At the very least, they familiarize you with the Pop It menus, and hey, you get a ton of items, not to mention a Trophy, for completing them all. Once you are familiar with the tutorials you can now start bringing your levels to life. Here are a few simple projects to get your creative juices flowing:

First, make a body out of wood, and make it off the ground so you can add wheels. It doesn't have to be as ugly as ours. In fact, make sure it isn't, please. Next, you'll have to add wheels, and they'll have to be in a different plane (when we say "plane," we mean foreground, background or in-between) so you can attach them with bolts. These should be round, duh, and of a regular material (wood). You can deck it out fancy-like with stickers later, so use wood for now.

With the wheels in place, it's time to bolt. One bolt must be a Motor Bolt, the other need not be. Just make it a regular bolt, and as loose as possible. The Motor Bolt will do all the work, so crank up the speed if you like.

The Three-Way Switch must be added now. This will control your car's forward and reverse motion—just like the vehicle in the Lowrider level. Place it in a spot you can stand and hold it to glue it in place. Drag that green wire (it's hard to see, but coming out of the lever itself) with your cursor to the Motor Bolt and attach it. Set it to affect "Direction."

Drop out of pause, and now you can pull your lever to drive your car! If it's too slow, adjust the speed. Or add rockets.

Cannon (or Missile Launcher)

Design the body of your weapon of mass destruction—tank, cannon, bunny—and choose the spot that will be firing your projectiles (the tip of the cannon).

You'll now have to choose your projectiles. To make your projectiles ultra deadly, you'll have to design them yourself. Pull out the explosives and rocket packs and make a missile by connecting them together over a piece of material Or, just fire explosives alone. Or burning pellets. Or the heads of your opponents. It's up to you!

If you make a rocket attached to an explosive, adjust the rocket speed to near maximum to give it boost and turn it on before saving it (you should be paused at this point, when you turn on a rocket it zooms off if you press play). Most importantly, save your design—an option in the Goodies Bag.

Now, you'll have to place an Emitter. Once you place it, choose your bullet in the Emitter menu (hit Square while selecting the Emitter with your cursor to access the menu). Choose the projectile you made in My Objects. You'll place where the object will emit from and what direction it faces.

You can adjust the direction (angular velocity), speed etc. and tweak your cannon for maximum kill-ability. Crank up frequency for rapid fire. Drop the speed and aim high for falling bombs. If you unpause the game you can adjust these things in real time. Rocket boosts can really screw up your item path, but the trail of smoke looks great!

Elevator

There are many types of elevators you can make, but a basic design should just get Sackpeople where they need to be fairly efficiently.

First, you'll need a place to elevate people to and a car or platform to hold people. Our gallows here are as simple as it gets, you can do better!

Create your parts, and remember that the platform should be wood and not attached to anything. From your gadgets menu, pull out Piston (they are more stable than Winches). Attach it to both the platform and the top of your structure. Pull out your cursor and hit Square to mess with options.

You should make your elevator slow by adjusting the timing to be much higher. This will steady the design. You'll also have to adjust the length of the Piston, which can be counter-intuitive. The minimum and maximum lengths are the measured from the base to the tip of the piston—the base is a tad thicker, so you can see it. Adjust your lengths to allow people to hop on and off the elevator at both ends. Now, if you want to add a Three-Way lever to the car to allow manual control over its motion, do so and attach the green wire to the Piston. You can now use this to move it up and down freely.

There are many variations on elevators—you can build a shaft for stability, or add a second Piston and sync them up.

You can alter this design slightly and attach a grippy spot ( a dab of sponge material) to a Winch to pull people up and down. Add a Proximity Switch, which activates when you grab an object, attach it to the Winch and voila! You have one of those sponge pulleys used so frequently throughout the story levels!

Draw Bridge

First, glue a base to the ground and make your bridge on a different plane. We must emphasize again that you be more creative than us, as there's no excuse for an ugly draw bridge.

If you don't want your bridge to swing all the way past the base and down the other side, add a bit of material at the top to stop that from occurring.

Make sure the bridge isn't attached to the ground and bolt it to the base with a Motor Bolt. Now, forget tweaking the bolt if you want to add a switch—although it should open nice and slow (unless you want to make a catapult—not that different, eh? Just crank up the speed!).

Add a Three-Way Lever for maximum control, or add a Proximity Switch for an automatic, ghostly drawbridge. Either way, attach the green cord to the bolt and choose "Direction" in the lever/switch menu. You can now open and close your bridge! Add a button on the top and crank up the speed for a catapult!

Enemies

Now, there is a Creature Pieces menu for making your creature come to life. But to make it deadly it may need some additional tweaks.

For instance, if you don't want your foes to be able to simply run past your gruesome gas creature, you'll need to add deathly layers in multiple planes—at least two of them. Stick shapes together in three planes, and make 'em all deadly for a real threat.

Otherwise, leave one you can decorate and hide the rest—like the ghosts in Skate to Victory. Your front layer can hide the deadliness. The point is: making your enemy dangerous is a three-dimensional affair.

Now, you'll need to add all the fun stuff found in the Creature Pieces menu. Wheels or legs help your baddie find trouble. The brain is the interesting part. From here you can have it flee, chase people or just hop around like an idiot. You can even place a proximity circle that spurs activity when a Sackperson enters it It's all pretty straightforward. Your brain can also be the enemy's weak spot if you choose the unprotected option.

Place this weak spot strategically so it's tough to get at, or impossible to get at if you're the masochistic type. Goomba-like drones are just one of the many ways you can evaporate a Sackperson with a clunky automaton.