On November 30th, perhaps the biggest and best update to LittleBigPlanet will be made available for free. The "Leerdammer" patch will, amongst other fixes, allow players to create levels online co-operatively. It's been a long time coming, but at least it's finally seeing the light of day.

In addition to the ability to construct a level with a few friends, a ton of small fixes are also being implemented. There's going to be better networking to help alleviate lag issues, and you'll also have more space for costumes and pics in the Pop-It. Now when you play a level and don't complete it, a silver trophy will appear so you'll be able to differentiate complete/partial plays. You will even be able to back up your game data in new ways.

I haven't touched the game in months, but this is the one feature that might get me back into playing more regularly. Instead of creating levels, I always wanted to just play other people's creations, but now that I can create a level with friends, I just might be motivated to start scheming up some absurd platforming puzzles. Of course, that's if anyone can drag me away from Left 4 Dead 2.

You can check out the biggest new features in detail below.

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Online Create

Now you can create with up to three other players online across the internet, across the world!

Networking fixes & location-based matchmaking

We’ve rewritten both the way the game handles networking code and the way it finds people for you to play with when you hit ‘Play Online’. Now, it searches for people who are closer to you and more likely to have a lower ping. This should bring significant improvements to lag and other networking problems.

The POD Computer will first try to match based on location, if this fails it will fall back to matching with any location.
Save game rewrite

We’ve changed the way your saved games work to make it faster, more flexible and more robust. It also means you’ll be able to save way more stuff.

On a PS3, there are two places games store data – the Game Data folder and the Save Data folder. Previously your automatic save would be stored in the Save Data folder. We’ve changed it so that your save is now stored in the Game Data folder.

Of course this won’t affect most people, but if you do find yourself rummaging in these folders then beware! If you want to back up your data, or move it to another PS3, you will need to use the following new tools:

Profile Backup

The save game backup options can be found in the Profile Settings page of the Start Menu:

    * Backup Profile – This will create a back-up copy of your profile, progress, and your levels into a folder in the Save Data Utility. It is also handy if you want to copy your profile to another PS3.
    * Import Profile – Lets you import / restore a previous back-up from the Save Data Utility.

Level Backup

You can now backup individual levels! On your moon, select a level and press the Square Button to bring up the options. There will be a new option under the publish menu:

    * Backup – This will create a back-up copy of your level, which will appear as an individual file in the Save Data Utility. It is also handy if you want to copy your level to another PS3.

Doing the same thing to an empty level will give you another new option:

    * Import – This lets you import any level you have copied to the Save Data Utility to the selected crater on your moon.

Increased profile space

On top of the extra space you get from the save game re-write, we’ve also doubled the number of photos and costumes that you can save to Popit.