I just beat Chip's Challenge 1 in the MS ruleset. I uploaded the tws in the downloads section.

My current score is 5922740. I'll update the tws as my score and level times improve.

File category: TWS Files

This tws is proof that I beat all the levels of CC1 in the MS ruleset. My score is 5922740. I'll update the tws as my score and level times improve.

Attached Files

  CHIPS.tws (Size: 78.43 KB / Downloads: 228)

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.
  

• 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.
  

Level 21

"Through the Looking Glass"

[Click to Show Content]

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!

[Click to Show Content]

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.

[Click to Show Content]

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!

[Click to Show Content]

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.

Following are some of my latest scores on CCLP1.

MS

11 - 226 +2,b
13 - 263 +3,b
22 - 330 +17,b
25 - 139 +4,b
30 - 219 +7,b
39 - 237 +17,b
50 - 167 +1,b
55 - 322 +7,b
56 - 963 +3,b
62 - 346 +17,b
70 - 426 +90,b
81 - 894 +26,b-6
83 - 966 +19,b-5
84 - 469 +43,b-5
85 - 971 +6,b
90 - 319 +58,b-18
92 - 806 +146,b-28
100 - 332 +11,b
125 - 210 +2,b
133 - 433 +53,b-39
140 - 809 +34,b-16
Total score now at 5,994,720 (more unreported times coming soon)

LYNX

3 - 183 +1,b
5 - 232 +2,b
6 - 186 +1,b
7 - 184 +1,b
8 - 229 +2,b
13 - 263 +3,b
15 - 306 +2,b
18 - 263 +19,b
22 - 330 +24,b
25 - 138 +3,b
30 - 217 +3,b
31 - 114 +8,b
39 - 237 +3,b (odd-step)
44 - 360 +58,b
48 - 180 +2,b
50 - 166 +6,b
53 - 400 +1,b
56 - 963 +4,b
57 - 285 +1,b
58 - 316 +20,b-11
61 - 412 +1,b
62 - 340 +5,b-1
63 - 169 +1,b
67 - 386 +10,b
68 - 915 +58,b-31
70 - 426 +91,b
78 - 532 +11,b-1
83 - 968 +14,b-3
85 - 969 +45,b
93 - 321 +58,b
100 - 334 +8,b
105 - 235 +1,b
125 - 207 +10,b
Total score at 5,988,670 (more unreported times coming soon)

James said this in a previous post: "Score reports via CCZone, email, etc. will be accepted in the future after the initial rush dies down."

Where may we post scores for CCLP1 on CCZone?

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.

Watch this space guys

Level 11

"Four Corners"

[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.

[Click to Show Content]

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.

[Click to Show Content]

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.

File category: CC1 Levelsets


See the competition thread (and this post in that thread) for details.

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.

Attached Files

  CCLP2 walls.DAT (Size: 59.56 KB / Downloads: 350)

Just a bit of the new level.

Attached Files

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