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| Pit of 100 Tiles Developer's Commentary, part 6 (Levels 51-60) |
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Posted by: ajmiam - 26-Apr-2015, 12:04 PM - Forum: Blog Station
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Level 51
"Against the Floe"
[Click to Show Content]
Dumb pun title #12354723, but it was inspired by the level instead of the other way around this time! Anyway, this was intended to serve as an "action" level as a substitute for 50, which is a "break" level, and I guess it qualifies in the sense that there ARE monsters to avoid...but it's more about patience vs pressing your luck than anything else. It might seem like lucky timing to cross the ice safely at first, especially if you always try to go, but the three sliding monster groups are always spaced the same distance apart (36 tiles).
Since the types of monsters used were pretty much irrelevant, I wanted to use as many different ones as possible (including walkers). I couldn't use blobs, though, since they could start out going backwards or perpendicular to the monster stream, plus they were too slow in Lynx. Also, Teeth would take different amounts of time to get going in MS depending on the step, ruining the 36 tile intervals, so they're out as well.
Level 52
"Escape the Telenet"
[Click to Show Content]
This was inspired by a toy/puzzle I saw that involved two chambers on a flat plane, each containing a small metal ball and a shallow pocket away from the center. The goal was to get both balls into their pockets at the same time, but tilting the toy wouldn't work since if you did that to get one ball in its pocket, it would cause the other ball to fall out of its pocket at the same time. The solution was to spin the toy, causing both balls to move outward simultaneously.
Anyway, I thought about making a Teeth puzzle based on that concept, but didn't quite know how to go about doing that...so I reversed things; this time, you wanted to bring Teeth to the center from opposite sides, but because they were on opposite sides of the center, separated by a twisty path, luring one towards the center would lure the other one away from it. The solution is pretty elementary, though--just take one Teeth past the center to the other Teeth's side, then lure both Teeth back to the center at once.
I wasn't sure that using one Teeth to partial post the other would work in Lynx, but it does work in both rulesets, thankfully. I don't understand why BOTH Teeth end up getting partial posted into the middle, one after the other, in MS.
Minor notes--The time limit is 99, not 100, to emphasize that this is a really short level. Also, the thin walls aren't symmetrical because the debate about CCLP1 being pedantic-only was still going on at the time, so I favored south, east, and southeast thin walls over north and west thin walls (these latter two didn't appear in CC1 and thus were not considered part of "pedantic" CC). And I know this level is nothing like Telenet, but I couldn't think of a better title 
Level 53
"Hotel Chip"
(CCLP1 Level 104!)
[Click to Show Content]
This title is wholeheartedly inspired by the oft-mocked game "Hotel Mario". The gameplay is inspired by the shine called "Mysterious Hotel Delfino" in Super Mario Sunshine. This mission has Mario go through a hotel where most of the rooms are locked, but he can find secret passages to travel from room to room, eventually reaching the attic and then dropping into the room containing the Shine Sprite. I represented the secret passages using blue walls; in some cases, Chip must pick up items behind the walls, and at other times he passes through them to travel into rooms locked with green doors since Chip doesn't pick up the green key until the end.
Aesthetically, the monsters are meant to represent the hotel guests, the ice slide an elevator, and the force slides either escalators or steps. The hint says that Chip's room is "#501" because the room Chip must visit first is the 1st room on the 5th row from the bottom, i.e. the 5th floor. (Okay, with the hallways as they are, you could make a better argument for it being the 3rd floor, but I didn't know how to specify the top-left rather than bottom-left room for that "floor" in a flavorful way.)
The Teeth room is a bit cramped for dodging. Nothing too tricky for advanced players, but in the CCLP1 version, I widened it and added fire in the center (blocked off with thin walls) to represent a "boiler room".
Itemswappers like Tool Box from CCLP3 always annoyed me with how easy it is to take items in a wrong order, thus cooking them and not finding out until much later, so I made sure to avoid letting that happen here. The only key available at the start is red, and every red door leads to a yellow key (or an item that leads to a yellow key). Every yellow door leads (eventually) to a blue key, and each blue to a red, so the cycle repeats. Every possible order of unlocking the doors is therefore a correct solution.
Level 54
"Just Glide Through This Level"
[Click to Show Content]
After I came up with this punny title, the level pretty much designed itself. Yes, if you move like a glider, going south to start and only turning in the proper direction when you encounter visible walls, you'll pick up every chip and bounce right into the exit, all without oofing into a single invisible or solid blue wall. I added dead ends here and there so that players who didn't get the hint in the level title would be less likely to solve it than if the only open tiles were on the correct path.
Level 55
"Build-a-Bridge Workshop"
[Click to Show Content]
Agh, the puns don't stop! This is a reference to Build-a-Bear Workshop, which I've never actually visited but have seen tons of commercials for. I purposely designed this level to be very lenient with extra blocks, but have some portions (like the southeast) where it's clearly best to build along a particular path. I was happy with coming up with the thief islands as a mechanism to require that the two chips and exit are connected by dry land before you pick up either chip.
Level 56
"Roy G. Biv"
[Click to Show Content]
I have a minor fascination with rainbows, so I decided to work them into a CC concept. I made a Levelset 1 level with this title where there was a ball that you had to get across the top row of the level to a bomb (similar to Progress Ball), looking something like this:
![[Image: Oy3NS5v.png]](http://i.imgur.com/Oy3NS5v.png)
There were minor challenges elsewhere in the level to pick up the keys, and then the hint said "Be sure to open the doors in rainbow order!".
For the Po100T version, I decided "Why stop with keys?" and applied the rainbow concept to everything that I could. I started out by putting a fireball room and a pink ball room on either side of the start, then added the bug room with the two keys (only one of which must be collected at that point) and the blob room, and improvised from there. All I knew when I designed the level was that I'd use locked doors to partial post into the rooms in order, so I had to lay out the teleports pretty much where I did.
Originally, the blob room required you to dodge the blobs, but I didn't want yet ANOTHER random/untimed level in the set, so I changed it. Also, the "chip vault" after the blue door (which is mostly there to serve as a reward and fill up the space) didn't have a looping path, but I figured it would be annoying to have to walk all the way back.
Level 57
"Brickwalled"
[Click to Show Content]
This is a blue wall maze that just...came to me, title and concept, one day. There isn't a lot to say about it, really, other than that I liked how it looked so much that I decided to use it again later in the set, and actually reference it in To100T. I suppose if I'd been feeling extra-nice as I made it, I would have made it consistent as to whether the "open" blue wall is the upper or lower one wherever there's a path, but I didn't. :/
Level 58
"Clog"
[Click to Show Content]
I always really liked Monster Lab in CC1 for both the constant streams of monsters (an unusual concept in that set), tons of buttons, and the different ways Chip had to clog the clone machines to stop the streams. There's also a slight double meaning with the passage below the start that gets "clogged" with pink balls when you pass through it. I basically started with that passage and teh force floor/recessed wall passage above the start, and improvised from there. Anyway, this level has a lot of running around, figuring things out as you go, and revisiting rooms from different directions or for different reasons, something I kind of like about it.
The tank room (where you cause a "clog" by hitting a blue button) was directly inspired by the analogous part of Monster Lab, and the bug circling the chip sockets was inspired by the end of Mix Up.
I tried to build the room left of start so that you'd have to take the block to the bottom row and deflect the fireballs into the bombs one by one, moving the block to the right each time, but oops, I failed and you can just take the block up the left side! Not that it's a major problem or anything.
The "zigzag past fire while chased by fireballs, hiding occasionally to let them by when they get too close" concept didn't originate here; it actually started in "Toll Road", a Tiles 200 level that I eventually put in To100T. The "bugs following a long twisty path around a central structure" idea did originate here, and I used it a few times later.
I discovered the "Clone Desynchronization" glitch (apparently also known as "Release Boosting") while testing this level in Lynx mode, and posted a video showing it to YouTube. That made this level the first publicly visible one of Po100T. I also joined CCZone (awesome decision)so I could post a link to that video in the forums and ask about the glitch. People seemed to like the level from what they saw in the video, which helped encourage me to release the levelset on CCZone!
Level 59
"Roads to Victory"
[Click to Show Content]
I started this level by placing the exit and the paths leading to it, and thought "What if the chip solution wasn't actually the correct one?", a thought that soon became "What if ALL four paths were correct solutions?", which gave the level its name. I wasn't sure how I'd make the solutions diverge, but then I made the starting room (originally with just five blocks for bridging down, two keys under the blocks, and a glider to dodge). I then decided to add water to the sides as an alternative way out and place bombs so that it mattered which way the glider went if you sent it out of the room. The rest was pretty much improvised.
Yes, there are four paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on. At least, the chip solution and the yellow key->toggle door solution require the least specific actions, so they're usually available if you mess up another solution. The suction boot solution is probably most difficult since it requires you to send the glider right at the start (tricky).
The walker sliding around the force floors might seem scary, but there are no force floors pointing at its path from outside the rectangle it goes around.
As with Choose Your Own Adventure, this level is untimed because I didn't want one solution to "dominate" as the fastest one.
Level 60
"Slimy Swarm"
[Click to Show Content]
A Levelset 1 concept that took direct inspiration from CC1's Jumping Swarm. The Levelset 1 version was even more like Jumping Swarm, with only the one cloner at the top. Upon reflection, I realized that the blobs took too long to spread out from the top-right, making the rest of the level less interesting, so I put in 4 cloners, one on each side. It took a bit of adjusting the chips required, chips available, water, and rate of blob cloning before I was comfortable with the level's difficulty. There are 11 extra chips.
The reason that the blobs are cloned by balls instead of cloning more copies of themselves is because unlike with the walkers in Jumping Swarm, there's no way to prevent a blob from stepping on a red button, trying to go back, and immediately getting forced onto the red button again, thus cloning way too many in a short time. Also, there are force paths completely surrounding each cloner because I wasn't sure if blobs could randomly choose to clone into a wall and thus not be created at all. (Does anybody know, can this happen?)
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| Pit of 100 Tiles Developer's Commentary, part 5 (Levels 41-50) |
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Posted by: ajmiam - 26-Apr-2015, 2:10 AM - Forum: Blog Station
- Replies (1)
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Level 41
"Constant Vigilance!"
[Click to Show Content]
This level's based off of Mad-Eye Moody's catchphrase from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Thus, I included plenty of booby traps in this level that'll kill you if you're not careful, but they're all visible. The ball hallway that leads to the exit can be seen from the start, for example. I was quite pleased with the part where you have to push the blocks onto the fire/keys and later collect the keys from the other side...it was a nice way to use hot blocks without making them about lucky guessing.
The area with the bugs and paramecia going around those 3x3 rooms was inspired by the episode of Rock's CCLP2 LP where he plays through Loop Holes and gets killed by one of the monsters that's circling the chip (when all but two of the monsters in the level were circling the outside of their rooms instead). I changed things a bit, staggering the monsters so that the chip that the bugs are circling is completely impossible to pick up in MS. Unfortunately, it's possible to pick it up in Lynx with very good timing. At least none of the other chips in the level are particularly hard to get, so it doesn't skip a major challenge.
Level 42
"Life, the Universe, and Everything"
[Click to Show Content]
With a level number like this, who can pass up a Hitchhiker's Guide reference? Not me! I didn't have too much of a plan for making this level other than that I wanted to use every (valid) tile type at least once (not counting different directions separately), and I did succeed at that plan. I pretty much just started with the pool of water and the Teeth in the beginning room and went from there. The toggle wall maze (where walls and floor swap almost completely) was inspired by similar mazes in levels like A Walk in the Park, Jumble, Every Trick in the Book, and Shattered from CCLP3. Also, making it so you could get suction boots before tackling much of the force floor section was intentional.
I didn't really know what to do with the hint tile in this level, so I decided to use it and the thief to introduce the "boot disposal" concept (where you have to get rid of your boots so they don't slow you down on a sliding path, such as the ice at the exit). I didn't plan to use the concept very much during the rest of the set, but it did help to prepare the player for part of a level very close to the end....
In Po100T's first version, this level had one of the silliest busts I'd ever made. I accidentally put a gravel tile in place of a wall tile at (7, 2), meaning anyone could grab the fire boots without the skates, and by extension, without the chips. What's extra silly is that it took nearly a month for anyone to find it after the set was released!
Level 43
"Checkmate?"
[Click to Show Content]
I've been a chess player since about 2nd grade, so that's the inspiration for this title. The theme was supposed to be situations where it looks like Chip is doomed to get trapped by monsters, but there's an easy-to-overlook way to escape. The beginning section, in particular, is similar to a "back-rank mate" (where the losing king is on the rank closest to where his player is sitting, is checked by a queen or rook from the side, and can't move forward because his own pawns are in the way), only here it's blue walls instead of pawns, and there's a way out.
This level seems to be a bit unpopular, and I can understand why. Many of the ways out of the situations are extremely easy to overlook, especially the safe spot to hide from the stream of cloning fireballs while waiting for the toggle doors to open. It didn't help that the way the doors were placed made it look like they would open in time for the player to avoid the fireballs, when in fact they would not. (I put them there so that they'd open while the player was standing in the safe spot, thus notifying the player that things were happening behind the scenes and they weren't stuck.) The tank blocking the exit is also a nasty trick, though I thought it wouldn't be so bad since the level's short and if you cook the level that way, the reason why (and what to do about it) is visible from right there.
Funnily, it took over a year and 8 updated versions before anyone realized that this level's chip count was set to 0 instead of 2, which I then quickly fixed. Given how easy the chips are to get and how early they are in the level, I don't think it made much of a difference
Level 44
"Secret Passages"
(CCLP1 Level 78!)
[Click to Show Content]
For some reason I always liked secret passages in books and movies, especially the Hardy Boys detective stories. So I decided to translate the idea of a secret passage to CC. Blue walls for the rooms and hidden walls for the passages seemed a natural fit. Note that I don't require you to find every secret passage to complete the level, but you do have to use at least some of them to save keys and others to get chips that are in secret rooms inaccessible from the main hallways. There are a few extra keys; I know it's possible to finish with at least 2 red and 3 blue keys left over.
There's a subtle hint in this level. (I've always been a fan of subtle hints.) The number of chips in each room is equal to the number of ways out of the room (visible and secret hallways combined). I hoped that the hint tile would sort of give this away, given that it uses the word "Chip", but wouldn't be too obvious since it's placed to look like a thief talking to Chip the player. How many people noticed the chip/hallways correlation?
Level 45
"Periodic Lasers"
[Click to Show Content]
There's not a lot to say about this level, except that since there was constant clicking due to all the cloning, I couldn't use a "warning click" to tell the player to switch sides, so I had to use the timer instead--every 20 seconds, the fireballs switch sides. I don't think I've seen more than maybe one or two other levels (if any) using specific times on the clock as a warning, even up till now. This level is a return of the "laser" idea, which I had originally not intended for any particular levels other than Laser Sweep and the upcoming level 70. The word "periodic" appears in the title because I was thinking about periodic functions when I made this, and it refers to the predictable, repeating side-switching of the laser shooting.
Level 46
"Teamwork"
[Click to Show Content]
In the first released version of Po100T, this level didn't have the glider cloner, and was named "Blue Bombers" (because the walkers were blue, and it's a reference to a nickname for Mega Man). However, early players of the set noted that it was annoying that the walkers could waste a lot of time bouncing back and forth even after you'd set up proper paths for them to take, and I agreed. As such, I let you use a limited number of gliders to destroy bombs. Since there are 16 bombs, 6 blocks, and 8 gliders, only 2 bombs need to be destroyed by walkers in the final product.
The level looks a lot like Flames and Ashes from CCLP1, though I didn't play it before making this.
Level 47
"Touch Force Floor, Get Dizzy"
[Click to Show Content]
Yet another video game reference here. This title is a play on the name of World 1-7, called "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy", from the game Yoshi's Island. Anyway, it's a big force floor mesh inspired by Forced Entry and Force Field. (In fact, I put it at slot #47 because Force Field was at slot #147 of CC1.)
The design may look extremely chaotic, but there's actually a bit of order to it. There are 6 "rings" that each consist of 8 force floors circling around a chip--one ring in each corner and 2 in the center. From each ring, there are 2 paths leading out from it to other rings and 2 paths going into it. The chips are placed on the "empty" tiles between the paths, and ice appears wherever two "paths" cross.
I knew that grabbing all of the chips could be frustrating, so from the very start the level had extra chips.
Level 48
"Choose Your Own Adventure"
[Click to Show Content]
I'd only read a couple "choose your own adventure" books in my childhood, but liked the concept and name enough to base a level around it. Here, you can clone either a glider or a fireball at the start, and that determines the path you can take, up until the end where the paths rejoin and you can go through either locked door to exit. I kinda like how both paths walk through the same pink ball room, with only the balls themselves preventing you from crossing over. In case you're wondering why there's a floor tile above the teleport at (15, 9), it's so that if, for whatever reason, you come through that teleport and then try to re-enter it from below in Lynx mode while the toggle wall at (29, 10) is open, you won't get stuck in the teleport. Also, the level is untimed to discourage people from focusing on only playing the "faster" path.
I think my biggest complaint about how this level turned out is that the difficulty of the two sides is unbalanced--the force floor mesh and bug/fire/recessed wall/green lock maze of the fireball path are quite a bit harder, I think, than the simple block pushing and dodging of the glider path. But maybe this isn't such a critical problem, since it fits in with the idea of choice. Also, the ice-and-toggle-walls timing challenge rears its ugly head once again, but I think it's less obnoxious than it was in Difficulty Switch.
Level 49
"49 Cell"
(CCLP1 Level 49!)
[Click to Show Content]
Well, it's another "Cell" level. I hadn't yet decided upon setting the time limit to be the number of cells times 10, so I think it was like 500 or 600 pre-release before I set it to 490. Coincidentally, this level has not 49 chips, but 36--I didn't aim for a specific chip count in any of the 3 "Cell" levels so far.
Anyway, this level continues to ratchet up the complexity, adding boots, buttons, and more keys and monsters. I intentionally added a way to cook this level (taking the force floor into the red key room a second time without getting the fire boots first) in order to encourage the player to pay attention to their surroundings. Also, uniquely for the "Cell" series, this level features a Teeth that guards the second-to-last item to be collected (the flippers). I definitely wouldn't have wanted the player to have to deal with a Teeth throughout a large portion of the level, but I thought having to avoid a Teeth for a short time would be interesting given the "Cell" structure. I kind of wish the Teeth hadn't been replaced with a fireball for CCLP1, but it's probably for the best given the level's placement in the 49 slot of CCLP1, which would be a bit early for a challenge like that.
Level 50
"Enjoy the Show!"
[Click to Show Content]
Here's a returning concept from Levelset 1, though it changed quite a bit. The Levelset 1 version was only a single, very loopy ice slide that led to the exit (with a Teeth entering a force floor portion of the slide behind Chip near the end). It was meant to be a mid-set break. I decided to change things up and add a few different "attractions"--exploding bugs and paramecia; an instant-bridge-just-press-buttons; and another section involving pushing a tank back with a block.
However, the real reason I brought back this idea was because I had heard of the special programming of Tile World 2 that causes it to play back a portion of the solution to CCLP3's "You Can't Teach an Old Frog New Tricks" from the Teeth's view instead of Chip's, and I wanted to see that happen here. That's why you end up cloning a Teeth that has to bounce through a forest of pink balls to release Chip from a trap--I thought it would be fun to watch. Unfortunately, the special programming didn't kick in here (and I'm still not sure what exactly causes it to activate....) so the level lost a bit of its purpose. It's the only level I explicitly removed from CCLP consideration (permanently) because it's simple to solve and the long delay for the Teeth to release Chip from the trap at the end could be seen as annoying (or the player could incorrectly assume Chip's permanently stuck).
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| May 2015 Time Trial - Marvelynxous |
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Posted by: M11k4 - 25-Apr-2015, 9:25 AM - Forum: Competitions
- Replies (11)
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As promised, the new Time Trial is starting with a week of overlap with the old one... well kind of. You can already get the levels here... well kind of. They should be really fun and all tested and ready to go... well kind of at least partially in some sort of way at least if you look at it from a certain perspective. What I'm getting at is that there are three levels but only two of them are ready to go right now. I still need to test the third one a bit and tinker with its details, but I will soon get to updating that. In the mean time, you can already work on these first two levels. Just be sure to play them in Lynx, as this is the second time our Time Trial is not held in MS!
Enjoy and come back for the update!
Technicalities:
1) The person with the highest combined remaining time on the three levels wins! There may be a tie in overall score.
2) You may enter in only in Lynx, not MS. You may send in your MS time on the second level, but this will not have an effect on the scoring.
3) Please send your solutions (either the tws file or avis) to CCZoneNextLevel at gmail dot com, or to my own email valeosote at hotmail dot com. Do not post your solutions or solution times or share them with others before the competition results are announced. All times will be published at the same time, and the quickest solutions will eventually be released. I will strive to respond to your message by a confirmation that your score has been recorded.
4) The levels aren't too hard to solve. Don't be afraid to send in your solutions even if you sense they aren't perfect, and simple casual solutions are also appreciated. You may enter if you solve at least one of the levels, but solving more will obviously place higher.
5) This is part of the 2015 season of the Chip Cup. Winner will be awarded 15 points, second place 12, third 10 points, and so on. If you win a competition here for the first time, you receive the "You're Winner!" award. All participants who haven't participated in a Time Trial earlier receive the "Run, Chip, Run" award.
6) Submission deadline is May 24th where you live. I will judge the submissions without warning the during the following days but will accept submissions until I do. If you need a more specific time, you can always ask. To avoid losing on time (it is a time trial after all), get your solutions in early rather than later! You can send in improvements while the competition is running, so there is no downside to sending in something you know might not be your best effort if you had forever to work on it.
7) The designers of the levels, may enter the competition, as long as they feel to not have gained any significant advantage as a result of having some advanced knowledge of the levels. I personally will probably not take part this month.
8) The levels may receive an update within the first week of their release. (Note that the levels are not being released all at once this time.) This will only be done if there is some significant problem with the first versions of the levels.
9) A participant may 'freeze' their scores at some point after submitting their own solutions. They will not be able to send in any more updates after this, but they may talk about the levels and their times with other people who have frozen their entry. I may update a public list of people who have frozen their score.
This may also be my last time trial for quite some time, so I hope it all works out well. It's been a fun ride.
-Miika
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Will you be up to the challenge?
