Project Lighthouse November Dev Log 2022

LBP Union and Project Lighthouse are not affiliated with Sony Computer Entertainment or their subsidiaries. Project Lighthouse is a clean room reverse engineering project of now defunct PlayStation 3 and Vita LittleBigPlanet online features. No proprietary code is distributed. Under no circumstances will we endorse or support piracy. You must have your own copy of the game in order to use the custom features once they become available. When using these features, you release Sony Computer Entertainment (Sony) as well as any employees or agents of Sony, from any and all liability, corporate, or personal loss caused to you or others by the use of Lighthouse custom servers for LittleBigPlanet.

Dev Log Contributors:

m88youngling

PorkchopGMX

Kairos (Er_BiyanoXD)

SamuraiEzoiar

Hello again, everyone! It’s been a long time since our last dev log. A lot has happened since we last shared our work in July. Development on Project Lighthouse has come a long way, and we’re excited to share what we’ve done over these past several months. Let’s talk about the biggest highlights of our work on creating our LittleBigPlanet custom server for PlayStation 3 and Vita.

Administrative Changes

Although not directly related to Project Lighthouse and its code base, there have been a number of administrative changes that have impacted the way that we work on Lighthouse. The most notable of these is the resignation of LBP Union R&D Lead Developer jvyden on August 21st. Jvyden is responsible for a large majority of the project. Without him, Project Lighthouse simply would not exist as it does today. We are incredibly thankful for his help, and we will continue to work while acknowledging and building upon his tremendous effort.

Another point to mention are a few administrative changes to the Union Space Corps, an organization chartered by the LBP Union dedicated to administrating and executing official beta testing for Project Lighthouse. Something we forgot to mention in our last dev log was that Turecross321 had been appointed as Star Commander over the USC. Not too long ago, PorkchopGMX was also appointed as Chief Star Commander over the USC. The role of star commanders is to administrate the USC, execute enrollment, and lead the way for plans and strategies to accomplish goals for beta testing.

Chief Star Commander PorkchopGMX

We are also happy to announce that Vilijur has become a Star Commander as well alongside Turecross321!

Star Commander Vilijur

Another change of note is that the Research and Development team for the LBP Union now has a new logo! This new logo was created by m88youngling with assistance from LoganTGT for awesome additional mastering. The research and development team also has a new member, named Dagg, who has been instrumental in bringing us closer to feature parity.

LittleBigPlanet 3: It Just Works Now

Speaking of feature parity, we’ve taken massive steps towards LittleBigPlanet 3 being fully compatible with Lighthouse.

• For a long time, LittleBigPlanet 3 would crash very, and I mean VERY, often while connected to Lighthouse, rendering it virtually unplayable. We were able to fix this by implementing more endpoints that were on the original servers.

• Adventures, quests, and playlists have all been implemented!

• Groundwork for LBP3 Dive In and other features have been under development.

A lot remains to be done with LBP3, including challenges and other optimizations that will allow the game to run better. However, the game itself can be challenging to work with, as it runs fairly slowly in general on PS3 hardware.

Website Improvements

The Project Lighthouse website out of the box has received a number of improvements, including an all new look, profile and level settings, a moderation panel, and email support. The moderation panel and moderation features are all a major work in progress. However, there is now basic support for the moderation user role, where moderators can delete and hide levels as well as ban users.

Localization

The translation effort for Project Lighthouse’s website continues. However, our CrowdIn project has changed! If you’d like to contribute, the new project is located here. If you’re interested in providing translations there and also for our website and other projects, consider joining our team as an LBP Union Scribe!

General Improvements

A recent feature that was introduced was LBP1 tag support. This makes the Share trophy obtainable. With several LBP3 fixes, this means that users on PSN can now once again earn the platinum trophy for LBP1 and LBP3!

Scores and photos now work in story levels. This means that you can compete with your friends and share your favorite moments on the server in story levels.

Recent Activity

Dagg has been hard at work with Recent Activity for LittleBigPlanet titles. The above image shows recent activity mostly working for LBP Vita. However, there have been some bumps in the road in review. Based on Dagg’s incredible progress, we should have Recent Activity working down the road here very soon!

What We’re Doing Now

Our team plans to introduce Recent Activity, more accessible search sorting and filters, and missing pins. However, our focus is turned to a number of critical issues that must be resolved before we hit public beta. These are mainly security and scalability issues with Project Lighthouse that prevent us from feeling comfortable opening an instance up to the public.

You can get a better sense of what we have left to do for public beta by checking out our Public Beta Milestone, shown below.

For example, it’s currently possible for users to pretend to be someone else via various means. It’s important to us that we prevent this from happening. We’re working on more robust authentication processes that will allow users to verify that they own their PSN or RPCN account. The details aren’t fully worked out yet, but progress is being made.

Bad News for LBP PSP, But We Are Still Hopeful

Unfortunately, according to Dagg, LBP PSP’s PSN support is far more limited than before. It’s possible to login, but endpoints that would allow for LittleBigPlanet online play for PSP are no longer in service. This makes it impossible for Lighthouse to function with LBP PSP with PSN at the moment.

However, it’s possible that in the future, those PSN endpoints could be custom hosted. The main barrier to entry is that data on LBP PSP like packet captures is very hard to come by. LBP PSP is also not on the highest of our priorities, being a less popular title with very limited functionality. Despite that, if you happen to have any packet captures for the game, please hit us up in the comments below or on Github.

Enlist in Beta Testing!

Although Project Lighthouse is in private beta, you can play LittleBigPlanet online right now! Your options are,

1. Host your own Project Lighthouse instance privately by yourself or with your friends.

2. Enlist in the waitlist for our secure private beta server called Beacon.

SamuraiEzoiar, LittleBicOrigin, and Penguinskillcaps enjoying LBP2 online again in 2022!

Enlisting is easy, and we pull new beta testers from the waitlist every weekend. To get started, join our Discord server, verify yourself in the welcome channel, and then enlist in the waitlist in the settings channel. Check on weekends to see if you have been selected. Once you’re picked, check your notifications for further instructions.

What are you most excited about with Project Lighthouse? Let us know in the comments below!