I've recently written a program to supplement the outdatedness of MapMaker (which is a 16-bit program) and be more automated than manually taking screenshots of editor windows or copy-and-pasting from Chip's Challenge Level Designer. It's called MapMaker Deluxe and can be downloaded here.
Current features in v0.1
Outputs maps as a PNG file for every level in a level set, or every level for every level set in the directory.
Support for any tile set of any size (which means Tile World's 48 x 48 tiles can be used to make a map). The MSCC and TW tilesets come packaged
Ability to print level info (level number, title, password, chips required, time limit, and hint) below the map.
Support for custom image dimensions (e.g. making thumbnails for levels).
Ability to show blue walls/invisible walls/hidden tiles.
Ability to show clone/trap connections.
Features to come
If supplied a TWS file, the ability to print the player's best time along with the other level info.
A replacement for the bitmap font used to print level info (I do admit it looks pretty awful).
There's currently a bug where the print entire directory feature finds most but not all level sets in a directory, which will be fixed.
Feedback is welcome. Bug reports are welcome. Feature requests are welcome. Enjoy.
Posted by: ajmiam - 17-Feb-2015, 8:23 PM - Forum: Blog Station
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Level 21
"Through the Looking Glass"
[Click to Show Content]
I came up with this level's title, and from there the concept. It does, of course, reference the sequel to Alice in Wonderland, a sequel in which Alice goes through a mirror. Thus, the idea is that the ice (because it's smooth and reflective like a mirror!) splits the level in half, and everything on the right is a mirror image of the left, but with invisible walls. This even goes so far as to put the exit on the right side, opposite the start. I realized it was a bit too much to expect the player to memorize the whole layout, so my goal with designing the maze was to make some distinctive shapes that could be remembered easily. I think this succeeded with the sideways ?-shaped wall formations near the top and the "single wall with 8 chips around it" area. Maybe the wide upside-down "T"s at the bottom, too. The rest of the level, not so much, though at least keeping track of which spiral opens from the top and which from the bottom helps immensely when trying to get those two chips at (26, 20) and (26, 22) on the right side.
Since CCEdit doesn't have a copy-and-paste function that mirrors the copied area, I had to make the right side by hand, trying very hard not to miss anything...and since no one has pointed out a mistake in this level after nearly 3 years since the set's release, I daresay I succeeded.
Level 22
"Assembly Line"
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I think this level may be a bit tough for its slot, but I haven't heard many complaints about it, so maybe not? Anyway, I designed this level for Tiles 200 before I made Laser Sweep in Po100T, so this is the true originator of the "warning click". I figured the players would not appreciate having to dodge sliding blocks with no indication they were coming!
The lake (whose shape and islands were drawn pretty much randomly) and the fireball/bomb puzzle at the top were the first elements made, but I threw in the lower-left bomb puzzle and the trap buttons later for a little variety, and because the multiple avenues of advancement meant that the player could switch between using blocks on things "close to home" (good for clearing out backups) and using them further away (good when there aren't too many blocks left on the slides). The ice slide to the exit lets you see a part of the cloning mechanism (specifically, the bug path) as a sort of "reward" for beating the level.
The hardest part of the design was actually finding a good cloning interval. I started with having only one cloner, but no amount of time could help the level from being kind of dull in that case, so I added two more. I think I shuttled between 15 and 20 seconds before settling on 18. 18 seconds between blocks means that there's a small amount of downtime for the first couple rounds of cloning, but as you build farther away from the start, things pick up, and you need to act fast; sometimes sinking a bunch of blocks in useless water spaces to keep them out of the way is a good idea.
Level 23
"Rat Race"
(CCLP1 Level 98!)
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I've always thought this level was really fun! I came up with the concept in Tiles 200 (it was Level 23 there, too...there was always something I liked about the number 23 and I liked this level, so I put it in that slot). I recreated it here relatively faithfully. It took a mistake or two before I realized that in order to keep each pair of gliders the same distance apart, I have to count two ice spaces' worth of distance between gliders the same as one regular space.
A couple changes from the original version were: I moved the chip socket/exit down a small bit so the player wouldn't have to react so quickly and turn right immediately after exiting the teleport. Also, there was a water space 1 space down-left of the socket, which was unnecessary since the gliders already prevented backtracking there and there was no reason to punish the player for missing chips like that. Thus, I removed the water space, making it possible to loop around again if you miss any chips.
Do notice that the twisty-looking final ice slide leading to the teleport never crosses itself--if it did, you'd need to have lucky timing to avoid the gliders!
Level 24
"Tree"
(CCLP1 Level 71!)
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I'm happy with this level. It's not super-special, mainly a variety level, but I like the path-choosing mechanism that also asks the player to do just a tad of memorization. Also, I thought it was clever that the challenge is not getting TO the chips but getting BACK after taking one. I thought of the tree because I was taking a Data Structures class for Computer Science at the time and binary trees were on my mind....
The thief at the start of the "tree" is unnecessary, since no blocks or boots can be taken out of their respective challenge rooms. However, I left it in because it serves as a signal to the player that they won't be needing to take items between rooms.
Amusingly, the first Po100T version I released had several busts in this level: there were no recessed walls on the left side, so a player could take any key, go through its room, and then just go through that room again and again after taking each of the other keys. It was a simple thing but something I never thought to try myself while testing.... Oh, and the block/water room initially didn't have the column of 2 waters next to the 2 columns of 4, which was a mistake because only 6 of those 8 waters needed to be filled in, thus leaving extra blocks. The current version fixes both of those mistakes.
Level 25
"Maze Maker"
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Well, this one didn't take long to make! It took longer to come up with a decent chip count (not too easy, not too hard) than to actually put down the tiles. The idea behind the name is that you should avoid the walkers by creating a "maze" of twisty passages through the chips since they usually won't take all the turns correctly to keep up with you. This level is timed, unlike every other level with randomness, because I'm guessing the bold route just keeps moving without any danger of getting hit by a walker. (I've never bolded the level, but according to JB, who did, my assumption was correct.)
Level 26
"Monster Sorter"
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This is basically a minigame. Instead of playing CC, we're going to be playing this game where we flip the walls to make sure each monster goes in the correct direction for its type. This level would have been borderline unplayable without tons of memorization, I think, if I hadn't put that "preview" window up top so you can see the incoming monsters. I hope it was clear enough to the player what that upper window meant, since the hint didn't mention it, and it wasn't placed near where the monsters actually enter the room.... I think I got lucky with how far apart I chose to place the monsters--the level seemed reliably beatable on the first try when I tested it, but I did have an advantage since I knew the monster lineup I'd picked out. I'm not sure what others think of its difficulty.
Upon reflection, I think this better fits the "action" category (it's more similar to levels like 10 and 20) than "Froggy!" which is the upcoming Level 30. I guess I put Monster Sorter here because I didn't want the multiple-of-10 levels to feel too similar to each other.
Level 27
"Hornet's Nest"
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A pretty straightforward realization of an idea I came up with based on the phrase "stirring up a hornet's nest". The maze is initially calm until the player picks up an item, which forces them to start a repeated cloning sequence. The biggest change is that in my mind the level would be laid out more horizontally as opposed to vertically and it would have more walls, less gravel.
It took a couple tries to get the time between consecutive clones to be long enough for reasonable dodging. When I initially built this level in Po100T, it just had the chips where the keys are now and no locked doors, but I added the keys/doors because otherwise it was too easy--I was able to finish too quickly for the swarming to really become noticeable. The weird ring of force floors around the cloners is to ensure that no matter which way their controller points, they'll always successfully clone in MS and the cloned monsters will be funneled towards the exit.
I was worried that the monsters might somehow clone in a pattern that constantly blocks the path to the chip socket, but in many test runs I've never had that happen. I have had times where each paramecium hits a bug and does a U-turn back towards the force floor before crawling out of the upper area, but there's always an opportunity to get to the exit. I think if I hadn't added the gravel in the upper wall and instead required the player to walk through the (15, 8) choke point, this would have been a problem.
Level 28
"Easier Than It Looks"
(CCLP1 Level 131!)
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Pretty much an easy "joke" level...that somehow got into CCLP1! I'm pretty sure I made this because after playing CCLP3 and some custom sets, I was so sick of levels like Suspended Animation that look easy but actually require you to jump through lots of hoops to get things done--especially when an invisible or hidden wall is what blocks you from getting something the "easy" way. It's not nice to taunt the player too much! (After my first attempt at Suspended Animation, I briefly considered deleting the invisible wall blocking the exit and pretending it was never there *whistles* )
So to counterbalance that annoying trend, I came up with the idea where invisible walls work FOR you--you're surrounded by teeth, but the invisible walls protect you from them! Next was the idea of the fireball cloner that you beat by just running towards it ahd hitting a green button to divert the flow before it reaches you. At that point I made the theme of the level be "just run through without stopping or thinking". Thus, I came up with the tank section that you could pass by just holding right, the key section where you just keep moving right to the wall and then up, and the bug section with irrelevant chips.
The bug section, in particular, was a small homage to Tossed Salad and the (skippable) bug and chip section at the beginning. (Young Me felt like a genius when I initially finished Tossed Salad and discovered there was a yellow door but no chip socket guarding the exit--"Ha! Wonder if anyone else noticed they don't actually need the chips?!") Here I changed things up by actually having a chip socket but making 0 chips required.
The final bit of unexpected easiness consists of a water maze that can be totally stomped on with the flippers from way back at the beginning, and an ice slide that looks like it'll send you into either a bomb or sliding teeth but is set up so that the teeth clears the bomb for you instead!
I'm quite honored that this got the Level 131 slot of CCLP1, with the infamous "Totally unfair!" decade message. I was surprised at the non-triviality of the bold route--it required an easy-to-overlook and slightly-difficult (for a novice optimizer)-to-execute timesaving maneuver, taking me a few dozen tries to get. So I guess the bold was Harder Than It Looked!
Level 29
"Mining for Gold Keys"
(CCLP1 Level 84!)
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Mining for Gold Keys seems to be a favorite among players who have finished my set, and I can see why--the way it looks and plays was quite unusual for its time. Interestingly, I didn't come up with the subterranean/mining aesthetic at first. During a car ride, I was thinking about CC and realized that a block in the middle of a "T" intersection can only be pushed if you came from the left or right, but once it moved, you could travel through the intersection in any of the three directions. My only plan when I started the level was to create a maze using that concept. I think I decided to put an item under the block, and somehow this evolved into the level you all know. (I don't remember the exact thought process.)
I think I added the blocks that can't be pushed (because they are in corners, etc.) because I wanted more visual variety--it wouldn't look natural if blocks only existed where they could be pushed. Originally, every movable block was going to have a key under it, but I decided to add some blocks to be used for filling in water so the level wouldn't be too simple and repetitive. I added the red and blue doors primarily to make it so you couldn't just immediately walk around one of the aforementioned "T" intersections to one of the directions that you could push the block from. I think it also serves as a nice way to reward the player for finding the red/blue keys, giving them more level to explore, instead of giving them access to everything from the start.
Oh, in case you were wondering, I don't really play Minecraft, so that wasn't the inspiration for this level.
Level 30
"Froggy!"
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I guess this level stemmed from how many Chipsters call Teeth "frogs" since they pretty much are mutant frogs in the MS version! At least, this explains why I decided you have to lead some Teeth across the level to the five goals instead of just walking to them yourself, which would more closely parallel the gameplay of Frogger. Anyway, I didn't do that great a job representing the obstacles Frogger faces. I mean, bombs represent traffic? Solid paths through water represent flowing logs? But moving monsters wouldn't kill a Teeth on contact (didn't stop me from adding a pink ball to represent the snake ), and CC doesn't do moving platforms over water, so....
You may notice that when you clone a Teeth, you actually hear two button clicks. That's because the clone button you can reach actually clones a pink ball in a faraway corner of the level, which travels up to clone a Teeth. This ensures there will always be a proper controller so the Teeth don't fail to clone. I had to add the mechanism after I released the first version of Po100T, which had problems with this level, and the second version failed to completely fix them. The "controller cloning" mechanism is quite useful; I used it in a later level in Po100T.
I joined this site around 18 months ago with the hope of getting some of my levels entered into CCLP1. Of course, it was waaaaay past the submissions date by this stage, but nonetheless I began work on my first level pack, Cybersmack I.
After a long hiatus, I decided to return to designing levels a few months ago. The pack hasn't exactly went in the same direction as it was originally intended, but I've managed to create a set of almost 100 levels (arranged in a difficulty curve of sorts) which I am happy with. I am currently working to finish the last few levels of the set.
I'm not entirely sure when it will be released, but I decided to let the community know about it with a couple of screenshots that will hopefully gather interest.
Posted by: ajmiam - 12-Feb-2015, 8:40 PM - Forum: Blog Station
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Level 11
"Four Corners"
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This is a bit of a bump up in difficulty, I think, though it's still very easy for experienced players. The hardest part is probably the second room in the bug corner, where it takes a bit of timing to get rid of the bug inside the blocks and the one outside. One tiny issue I have with the level is that the player will cook the level if they teleport to the right after clearing the bug area once, since they will lose their fire boots when they leave the first time. I realized this when I made it, but only realized way later that the thief could have been a gravel tile, preventing this issue, since there are no fire tiles outside of that corner. Oops...maybe I'll update it with a change someday.
The ice/toggle wall area ended up inspiring a somewhat contentious level mechanic of mine. When I playtested this, I enjoyed the challenge of timing a step onto the ice so Chip would slide onto a flipping toggle wall while it was open (necessary to get the chip in the upper-left corner). I ended up using this concept later in more difficult ways (longer slides, moving from one toggle wall to another) in later levels, which annoyed some of the players, and I can see where their complaints are coming from. So, proof that not all ideas are as good as they seem, or at least don't need to be taken to the extreme.
Level 12
"Repair the Maze"
(CCLP1 Level 22!)
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I can't remember what inspired this concept, but I do know that I originally made it in Levelset 1. Maybe I was just thinking about how I like that in speedruns you generally have a limited number of tools at your disposal to make things easier or take shortcuts, and you have to make the most of it. Or maybe I was just annoyed at having to retrace my steps through a long non-branching passage after getting a chip in some other maze. Or maybe I was thinking about Strange Maze from CC1 and how I liked breaking through the socket maze at the end. I definitely had creating a challenge for optimizers in mind when I put in the 2 extra keys.
The "Levelset 1" version of this level was named "Cheat" and had yellow doors instead of red. I didn't really plan out "Cheat", just kinda threw doors and chips down all over the place and gave out three keys, hoping some of them were necessary (and I'm pretty sure at least one was, though I wasn't the greatest playtester back then). By contrast, I planned this version a lot more, placing the required doors to unlock in obvious places like the middle of a 4-way intersection. True, that made it very easy, but I wanted a gentle introduction to the concept, both for the sake of first-time players and because I planned to bring it back as a harder version later. (This was back when Po100T was still Tiles 200, and part of my plan was that there would be some pairs of Level x and Level 100+x with the latter level being a harder version of the former. Repair the Maze was a level I had planned to do this with, and I do have a harder version in my sequel levelset "The Other 100 Tiles".)
As with level 7, this one doesn't take up the entire map. It was when taking a look back at this level that I realized how much of a difference moving the borders in towards the center of the map makes. Moving each border in by 5 tiles on every side reduces the perimeter of the level by 1/3...but it reduces the area by over half! (30*30 = 900 tiles, and 20*20 = only 400.) With this level, as with many others, I decided before building it that the concept would probably become a bit tiresome if the level was too long, so I drew the borders 5 tiles in and constructed the maze inside.
One final point of interest is what I did with the exit. Instead of having walls all around it, it's just kind of sitting there right outside the border; I wanted the feel to be that Chip had exited by breaking out of the level instead of just entering an arbitrary dead-end. The aesthetic is certainly not like most CC1 exits.
Level 13
"Dig and Dig"
(CCLP1 Level 39!)
[Click to Show Content]
Yay, Dig Dug reference! Right down to the upside-down-T-shaped tunnel in the dirt that each level starts with. Only I didn't use the name exactly, because, well, it's not really Dig Dug, it just looks and plays somewhat like it. I think most players got the reference anyway. I used bombs in place of falling rocks because both can kill enemies. The blue walls at the top are meant to represent the flowers in Dig Dug's garden, but they don't really look like much of anything because drawing flowers with only 3 "pixels" of vertical space to work with is a bit difficult
Random fact: I haven't played more than about 5 minutes total of Dig Dug in my entire life. Second random fact: This was the first CC level I ever scored bold on.
Level 14
"Pinball"
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I've always liked pinball, but haven't played it very much in recent years, sadly. Anyway, everything here represents a part of a table; the regularly spaced single walls that the pink balls bounce off of are supposed to represent bumpers; the ice slides leading to the green button and exit are meant to represent short ramps leading to those "locks" that the ball falls into to get shot back out of after awarding some bonus; the left side is meant to represent one of those twisty wireframe ramps that I like so much; and the pair of force floors in the bottom-right is meant to represent the flippers.
The logic behind the hint is that in a real pinball game, whenever the ball drains, it goes back to the plunger lane to be launched again for the next ball (or credit). Hence the teleport leading there. I guess it could be interpreted, however, as saying "If you missed any chips, then you cooked the level, so better restart/commit suicide to try again" since draining a ball in pinball is somewhat analogous to losing a life in other video games. Oh well, if the player explores they'll find the teleport, so I never considered it a problem worthy of fixing.
Level 15
"Nitroglycerin"
(CCLP1 Level 32!)
[Click to Show Content]
This level was an idea that I thought was clever: Press a brown button, and look for what changed! Of course, you can see the whole mechanism, so it's just a matter of progressing down that central column, but I still like the idea of discovering what all's in the new area opened up by the removal of a bomb.
When I first made this level, the maze was pretty much all bombs and no walls, except for one wall to make the 5th and 6th fireballs turn. I added the walls because back then I was still kind of nervous wandering around in mazes of death tiles, so I set up the walls as "guardrails", preventing Chip from dying due to turning too soon or late at various spots. I'm quite happy with the current look of the level (walls + bombs) because it adds a bit of visual variety over just bombs. I'm especially happy that this level got into CCLP1.
Level 16
"The Forever Belt"
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This one's been around since Levelset 1, and it's one of the few levels that I'm slightly disappointed missed out on a CCLP1 slot. It was just designed to be a fun zip-around-the-slide-and-step-off-to-do-stuff level, possibly inspired by Go With the Flow from CC1. (Note: the word "itemswapper" wasn't in my vocabulary back then). It was at level 16 in all 3 sets because, well I don't really know, it just seemed to belong with that number. One thing that stayed constant in all 3 sets was the "don't enter the block/water room from the wrong recessed wall" puzzle because I thought it was really clever back then. Most of the rest was added in Tiles 200, but I added the giant spiral (or, as JB called it in his Let's Play, the "Spinning Vortex of Terror" ) in Po100T because I had much more room left over than I'd planned for when I remade the level.
The title's kind of odd...it was inspired by a book in the Pendragon series called "The Never War". I just thought that the usage of an adverb as an adjective gave the title of that book a unique and mysterious quality...I've always been a sucker for that kind of thing, and chose to replicate that wording style here.
Level 17
"Laser Sweep"
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This level was actually inspired by an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Called "Starship Mine", it features Captain Picard trying to avoid a team of intruders on the starship Enterpise and find a way off the ship before a baryon sweep, which acts as a deadly advancing ship-wide wall, reaches him. I decided to emulate that with a deadly hallway-wide wall of fireballs, but with cubbyholes to hide in so you could actually make progress. This level introduced a couple of concepts--the theme of using fireballs to represent lasers, and the idea of a "warning click". I use the warning click for whenever a button's about to be automatically pressed by a monster and such a press could cause an unpleasant surprise, such as a fireball cloning onto Chip's head. Here, the click sound is caused by a tank button that doesn't affect anything because there are no tanks in the level. (A trap button without any connections would have worked equally well, but I didn't think of that back then... :)
Level 18
"Cross-Eyed"
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Here, my idea was to teach beginners very specifically how teleports work while presenting at least a slight challenge for experts. Okay, there's a little puzzle here in that you need to take at least 2 trips going up-down-up-down-up-down... through the grid to get everything, and what chips you end up getting depends on which teleport you go up into each time you appear on the right side. But the level didn't have to be so large...and even with the hint, I'm not sure new players will be able to figure out that pattern, or how partial posts work (and one is required to reach the exit). So, honestly, I think this level was a bit of a failure (though I personally liked the concept). The puzzle could have been shrunk and put into another level, and the hint could have been paired with a smaller level that's more explicit in the lessons it's teaching.
The level is untimed because it's relatively complex and I didn't want anyone to die by time out because they were having trouble reaching a few chips. It's one of only 2 levels in Po100T to be untimed without
There's actually a funny story behind this level, though...In Levelset 1, I made a level that was like a checkerboard alternating between teleports and chips, kinda like in the image below this paragraph. Unfortunately, I didn't know how exactly teleports worked back then, and so when I playtested I only ever managed to get half the chips; the other half were between teleports that I could figure out how to enter but never pop out of. (After some testing I'm now almost entirely sure all the chips were obtainable, but not with Younger Me's strategy of "left left left left left ad nauseum".) Not quite understanding the problem, Younger Me was just like, "Whelp, that's the way it is, then" and lowered the chip requirement to whatever the highest amount was that I managed to collect. I tried remaking that level in Tiles 200 and figured out how to fix the "issue", replacing the teleports on every other row with a South-East thin wall. I then copied this fixed design into Po100T. At least now I know if I ever want to revisit that original tele-chip-checkerboard structure, I should probably make it a tiny bit smaller...
The highly elaborate design in Levelset 1 that would go on to inspire Cross-Eyed.
Level 19
"Descending Ceiling"
(CCLP1 Level 41!)
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This one's inspired by Mario games, particularly sections like the second room in the first fortress of Super Mario Bros 3, which features a rising and falling spiked ceiling with small cut-out safe areas. The way you exit is similar to a part in Super Paper Mario where you have to let the ceiling fall, then get on top of it and ride it back up. I'm happy with how the entire concept translated to CC. Admittedly, I'm not sure why I put flippers and water on the right side instead of just another chip in place of the flippers...I guess for variety's sake? Or maybe to prevent MS players from taking that chip and escaping to the exit there instead of going back to the "correct" place to escape from, though I don't specifically recall thinking that.
Level 20
"Chip Kart 64"
(CCLP1 Level 64! How appropriate!)
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This is quite clearly inspired by Mario Kart 64, a game I always enjoyed during the few opportunities I had to play it (Never did own an N64 myself). Chip has to run over booster pads (force floors) and collect items (chips, keys, boots) to take shortcuts while avoiding hazards (bombs). This appeared in Tiles 200, where it was just one lap, but I thought it would be more interesting and true to the series to have multiple laps, so I made you get a green key and go around again. The focus was racing the clock, so I didn't add any monsters, though on second thought a couple balls bouncing back and forth could have been interesting, as well as true to Mario Kart's penchant for horizontally-moving obstacles the player must drive past....
There's quite a bit of spare time on the clock. I wanted the level to be solvable in time even if the user didn't take any shortcuts (because they're shortcuts, not required paths), so it kinda turned out to be just a fun gimme level. However, apparently it's no gimme to optimize, something I'm happy to hear!
NOTE: I recommend that when you decide to use one, you should recreate the template from the original CCLP2 set, in case i made errors. The general appearance should be the same, but please let me know if you find out otherwise.
Ah, level design. Pretty much any time I play a game, I think of all the possibilities the developers left unexplored, and think, "Wouldn't it be clever if they had done that?" Ever since I was about 8 years old, I would draw out my own Mario and Zelda levels on paper, and I also made a few paper levels for Chip's Challenge (though not much because I wasn't all that good at the game early on). Unfortunately, I didn't know about level editors for any of the games I played, so my ideas were forced to remain still pencil drawings on the page...and it didn't help that my family got a new computer a few years later, one that didn't have Chip's Challenge on it.
Luckily, one day I was feeling really bored and curious about old games, so I searched up Chip's Challenge, and to my great surprise, I found a clone of the engine (Tile World), a level designer (CC Level Designer) and even a whole new pack of custom levels (CCLP2)?!?! (I can't remember where I found these things, but I sure am glad I did!) Well, I played CCLP2 for a bit, but got kind of weirded out by all the tiles-under-other-tiles-that-didn't-make-logical-sense and stopped at level 19. But with the editor, I was finally able to build my very own levels! I made about 60 of them, and lacking a name for the set, I just went with the default of "levelset 1.ccl".
Unfortunately, this first set did not last, as our computer I was using at the time was dying. I meant to back up all of my files on this computer, but evidently missed levelset 1, since it was nowhere to be found on our external hard drive when I went searching later.
That kind of put me off of level designing for a while. But interests tend to come and go with me, so a few years later in early 2011 I looked up CC again and--surprise!--there was CCLP3! CCLP2 had been a bit off-putting with its unusual tile combinations, but I read that CCLP3 was compatible with both MS and Lynx (meaning I wouldn't have to worry about such shenanigans), so I gave it a try. CCLP3 being CCLP3, the going was slow, and around level 61 I stopped playing it on my own and started watching Trevor Hedges' Let's Play of it. I noticed that many things I didn't care for gave him problems too, especially guesswork, lucky timing, and needlessly difficult dodging right at the end of a level. "I can do better", I thought, and began designing levels again, taking inspiration from CC1, the good parts of CCLP3, and my own ideas. Being somewhat ambitious, I titled this set "Tiles 200" because it was supposed to have 200 levels (to distinguish it from all the 149-level sets, I guess...?) Once again I got through a bit more than 50 levels, but disaster struck again in the summer of 2011 and my laptop's operating system crashed, requiring a reformat! Shame on me for not backing up my set....
Well, not to be deterred, when my laptop was repaired, I got right back to work, remaking and improving on some of the designs from Tiles 200 and adding a few new ones. I also played a few custom sets from CCZone, such as BigOto Returns and JoshL2. Before long, though, the community began talking about creating CCLP1--a set for beginners designed as a copyright-free substitute for CC1. I realized that since my set's levels were all rather player-friendly (partly because of my design philosophy that emerged from the Trevor LP of CCLP3, and partly because I wasn't very good at making hard puzzles), my levels would be good candidates! As CCLP1 plans solidified, I realized I would never finish 200 levels before submissions closed, so I cut the set's planned size into half. Unable to resist a punny name, I renamed the set "Pit of 100 Tiles", after the Pit of 100 Trials from the Paper Mario games. I quickly finished the set, submitting it here on CCZone in 2012, and to my delight over a quarter of its levels became part of CCLP1!
Background information (VERY SHORT VERSION):
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"Levelset 1" refers to my first (incomplete) levelset I created in an editor, I forget when but around junior high/early high school. It was between the releases of CCLP2 and 3.
"Tiles 200" refers to my second (incomplete) levelset, created after CCLP3's release. It was much more similar to Pit of 100 Tiles than "Levelset 1" was to it or Po100T.
"Pit of 100 Tiles", or Po100T for short, is my first finished levelset--the one released in 2012 and that provided 27 of CCLP1's 149 levels.
Levels 1-10:
[Click to Show Content]
Level 1
"A Simple Maze"
One question I had to ask myself as I made Po100T was who the audience was to be for the game. Over time I decided that it would be for someone who at least played a little bit of CC1 and CCLP3 (kind of like myself), but wanted to leave the possibility that a complete beginner could pick up the set and play it. As such, I didn't make full-blown lesson levels. However, when I made this level, I deliberately put in multiple solutions, each using different items, with the hope that a beginner could experiment with the items and discover how they work.
Level 1 is quite trivial for any moderately experienced player to solve, and I liked it that way. I wanted it to serve as a gentle "welcome to the set", setting the tone for what was to come and serving as an extremely low difficulty level that I could curve up from. I felt as though "Entrance Examination" from CCLP3 was a poor choice for a Level 1--the hot block at the beginning made me expect unfair CCLP2-like shenanigans throughout the set, and the partial post (without explanation) would have likely stumped me if I weren't an avid Chip Wiki reader by that point. I found it strange that the next 6 or so levels after Entrance Examination were, in my opinion, far easier than it.
I wanted to be sure my Level 1 didn't have the same problems CCLP3's did, but still served some purpose. I ditched my previous idea from Tiles 200, which was a smaller, more open maze with a few monsters and no non-chip items.
Level 2
"Welcome to Dinner!"
This level's goal was very simple--introduce monsters! The name stuck through all three iterations of the levelset--Levelset 1, Tiles 200, and Po100T--but the idea of a house-shaped upper area (where a has invited Chip to have be dinner), wasn't added until Tiles 200. The wall formations outside the house aren't meant to represent anything, even though some say the upper-left one looks kinda like a fork.
Level 3
"Returning the Favor"
The title and basic concept of helpful monsters lasted through all three iterations of my levelset, and it was Level 3 in each of them, but each time I remade this level I added something new to it while recreating the previous parts nearly tile for tile. It started off with just the glider and tank/fireball in Levelset 1. In Tiles 200, I added the area (inspired by one of my favorite early CCLP3 levels--My Friend) and the fireball area at the exit. In Pit of 100 Tiles, I added the ball/toggle wall area between the Teeth and fireball areas because I figured it was a good idea to show that monsters can push other buttons too.
I realize that the fact that the tank needs to be flipped before it's released (else it drowns, cooking the level) may trick new players, and it's a minor violation of my friendly design philosophy, but I decided to let it slide because it's less than 10 seconds into the level and should only be a problem at most once.
Level 4
"Chip's Checkers"
(CCLP1 Level 24!)
This level is wholeheartedly and unabashedly inspired by Doublemaze from CC1--but it's even more complex in concept, as there are toggle wall states to swap, too! Thankfully, from the very beginning I chose to keep it small (imagine how hard it would be if it took up the whole map!) The level was originally made in Tiles 200, then reproduced (in concept, though certainly not in exact layout) in Po100T. The original version in Tiles 200 had 29 chips, and realizing that Doubledoublemaze was quite hard for Level 4 of any set, from the start I decided to make only 25 of them required. The Po100T version has 25 chips and requires Chip to collect only 20 of them.
Level 5
"Leave No Stone Unturned"
(CCLP1 Level 12!)
I'm not sure why the "stuff can be hidden under blocks" lessons of the time always seemed to have the side-effect of teaching the player "Be nervous about pushing blocks, since you never know when will happen." It wasn't just Lesson 4 of CC1 that did this; several custom sets I started playing as I was making this set had a "things can be hidden under blocks" lesson level where at least one of the blocks had a water, fire, or bomb tile underneath. Obviously that would not fly under my minimal-guesswork philosophy, plus I didn't want to make the player shy away from blocks in the future, so I came up with a safe way to teach the lesson. I force the player to acquire fire boots under a block before they have any chances to push hot blocks!
This level first appeared in Tiles 200 and didn't change much between then and Po100T. It has a few references to Lesson 4: the first sentence of the hint here is the same as the last sentence of the hint in Lesson 4; and the contents of the X block formation (chip in middle, fire outside) is the inverse of the same shaped formation in Lesson 4 (fire in middle, chips outside). Later I decided to use this difference as a very subtle hint for part of a future level....
A few last things: I think the "push all blocks" puzzle in the room before the fire boots might be a bit too tricky for an absolute beginner to get on the first try, but oh well, the set needs to start being a challenge sometime. Fun to optimize, that was. For some reason, the CCLP1 staff removed the hint's second sentence ("But don't worry about being killed by fire in this level") in the CCLP1 version--maybe because it sort of referenced CC1? Also, the level title is apparently a common phrase, but I first saw it in a Super Mario Bros. 3 strategy guide, of all places
Level 6
"25 Cell"
Trinity had always been one of my favorite CC1 levels. I liked mazes of one-way passages for some reason, and the dodging was simple enough for me to handle back then, so I made this level full of one-way passages and 3x3 room monster dodging as a sort of tribute. I first made it in Tiles 200. After playing it a few times, I decided I liked it so much I made a few sequels....
Level 7
"Two Mazes for the Price of One"
I seem to get a lot of my level ideas by thinking of clever-sounding titles, and this is one of them. It appeared in all three iterations of my set (with the same concept but completely different layouts each time, naturally). I realize that this "the walls switch places with the floor" maze concept is rather well-known and common by now, but to me at the time of Levelset 1 it was an original idea. I think the closest thing CC1 had was Steam, which offers a lot more chances to "change mazes" and thus plays differently. Ah, well. I purposely made this level's borders in a bit from the outside of the map on all sides since I didn't want the player to get tired of the level. This level, and another one, helped me realize just how much of a difference moving the borders in made....
Level 8
"The Monster Cages"
(CCLP1 Level 13!)
This level appeared in both Tiles 200 and Po100T, virtually unchanged. I always liked "Hunt" from CC1, in particular the use of chips to contain monsters, so I used that concept here. I also decided to include water around the edges so the escaped monsters wouldn't be a problem, and so that the player wouldn't have to ever take an isolated chip as it was being circled by a bug or paramecium (like in Chchchips). I then added a hint to make it clear that water kills monsters. (I found the hint especially necessary for MS players, where the lack of a splash animation/sound can make it a bit confusing what happens to the monsters. For instance, back in my early CC1-playing days, when I used a block to deflect a paramecium into the water in Arcticflow, I thought I had actually crushed the paramecium under the block.... )
One notable thing about this level is that there's no time limit. This is because of the walkers. For the vast majority of CC levels, there's a clearly defined, well known best possible time, and I don't think it's fair if the player has to restart the level 512 times or so to score it because they were playing perfectly but got unlucky. Therefore, I decided to make all* of my levels with random elements untimed. *There's a minor exception coming up in a bit, but there the randomness shouldn't really be a problem for optimizers.
Level 9
"Cloud or Circle?"
(CCLP1 Level 29!)
Religious references? In my CC game? It's more likely than you think. Well, I had a bunch of level ideas as I was making Po100T, but none of them seemed a good fit for the 9th slot, so I went with the ol' clever title method and came up with this, which references two phrases including the number 9: "Cloud 9" and "9th circle". Naturally, I made the upper part a wide-open sky with a couple gliders flying around and a few small blue-wall clouds containing chips, and the lower part a perilous, Fireflies-inspired fire-and- brimstone gravel region with fireballs patrolling in circles rectangles, just difficult enough to trip up anyone who's not sufficiently cautious. Oh, and since the imagery or references or whatever you want to call it couldn't stop there, I put 7 chips in the "Cloud 9" and 13 in the "9th circle" and stole digits from the numbers 13, 7, and 666 to make the time limit. 376 is also the number of an interstate near my house.
Interesting fact: I made all the fake blue walls be non-adjacent to glider paths so the player could find them all without having to take too many risks.
This level was renamed "Sky High or Deep Down" in CCLP1 because the title didn't work very well without the level being in the 9th slot.
Level 10
"Three Strikes You're Out!"
Obvious baseball reference is obvious. This level appeared in all 3 iterations of my set, and the only major change between versions was the very long detour to the 12th chip in the Po100T version to make it both easy to pick up that chip if the player needed it and easy to skip past it if they didn't. I'd say that this level was inspired by Joyride II from CCLP2, but I actually don't think it was, since I never made it that far before I built this in Levelset 1....
This is the level that gave me the idea to make every 10th level (except 50) an "action" level, since I liked how fast-paced and short this one was. Admittedly, some of the "action" levels like 30, 40, and 51 had much slower pacing than what I was going for with this category of levels, but 20, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 are closer to my idea of "action".
Oh, and the block/water room initially didn't have the column of 2 waters next to the 2 columns of 4, which was a mistake because only 6 of those 8 waters needed to be filled in, thus leaving extra blocks. The current version fixes both of those mistakes.
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At least, this explains why I decided you have to lead some Teeth across the level to the five goals instead of just walking to them yourself, which would more closely parallel the gameplay of Frogger. Anyway, I didn't do that great a job representing the obstacles Frogger faces. I mean, bombs represent traffic? Solid paths through water represent flowing logs? But moving monsters wouldn't kill a Teeth on contact (didn't stop me from adding a pink ball to represent the snake 
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