File category: CC1 Levelsets

I'll be updating this with more levels as I learn how to make levels that are actually fun. Constructive criticism is very appreciated.

• Removed most busts and fixed Lynx compatibility issues.

Attached Files

  MikeSL1.dat (Size: 18.61 KB / Downloads: 477)

Shortly after I finished playing CCLP3, I started calling for CCLP4. Larry, in his infinite wisdom, said (and I'm paraphrasing) "Slow down there, young Newly! You don't wanna go off half-cocked."

In the intervening years we got a very nice set put together (CCLP1), and it resolved the "we must do SOMETHING" feeling inside me. However....

Now we are at a bit of a crossroads. It takes at least a year to make a set. We went four years between CCLP3 and CCLP1. That is the outside limit in my mind.

If we don't make a plan now, THIS YEAR, then CCLP4 will languish like CCLP3 did, and it'll take new "annoying boys" to get it going again.

So, let's "DO SOMETHING!!!"

Chuck's Challenge 3D is a spiritual successor to Chip's Challenge http://store.steampowered.com/app/262590/

After a long break, I started working on CC1 bold-scoring again.

Corridor: Ended up taking a few tries from minor input mistakes, even though I remembered the route completely after watching it once.

Reverse Alley: I expected to have a lot of difficulty remembering where the waits were and which column to run down, so I noted a number from 1-4 for how close to the outer edge of the spiral I needed to run, and a paired number for how long of a wait was required. I lost my place in the list a few times, but 5-10 minutes after starting, I had scored the 961.

Morton: Another level I expected to have serious difficulties scoring, but ended up getting quite quickly. I messed up the teeth section the first time I got there, and immediately after getting it I ran into a wall. Still, I pressed on and scored bold.

Playtime: My first couple tries all came up as a 358.0, and I couldn't figure out why until I looked at the AVI again. I was riding the force floor path too far, and also moving the 2nd block up instead of down first. After correcting these mistakes, I got 359 in 1 try.

Steam: There hasn't been one this easy in ages.

Four Plex: This was an interesting one. First, let me drop my notes for it here:

*Right, red key, blue key, RLR, yellow key, LRL, out of first part.

*No wait on first chip, 1 wait on second, use multi-push. No ball waits, 2 bug waits.

*Toggles closed, clone, trap, clone, trap, LLUURU, lowest chip, clone, trap, clone, trap, LLUURUR, top chip, 2nd lowest, climb up.

*Recessed walls, wedges, left for fire (no wait), swap, no wait for bug, exit!

Compared to the AVI on the wiki, I gained 2 moves in the ice section which had to be dropped before cloning the first ball or it WOULD result in death later on. The block pushing section gave me no trouble to get down beyond that, other than sometimes gaining a further [1] on the bug (which again, would be equalized at the large wait). The cloning room was very easy to remember, being the same logical path twice in a row. I did die the first time I got there in an attempt, though, from taking the wrong path to the 2nd lowest chip! The itemswapping area was as easy as I expected, and I walked away with the 416 fairly easily-though I would have liked to have had the gained moves /not/ be equalized somewhere

Invincible Champion: First try, no references. Alright, second try, because my first try forgot to wait before grabbing a chip XD

Force Square: I practiced a bit on an edited section of the center with walls blocking the incorrect passages to get the moves into muscle memory, then spent 6 minutes playing the level. In that time, I got the boosting perfect at least a half dozen times...but messed up the teleports. I did score a 480, though it was with a move lost in the opening. I kept going and improved the tenth because it was fun- and only took me one additional try.

At this point, after scoring Time Suspension 849, I saw James' upload of Mixed Nuts on the side. I thought one of the rooms looked poorly optimized, rerouted it and found 2 extra moves. The first of these was equalized by the pink balls, so I reordered that room too to still have 0 waits. I scored 830 on my 2nd attempt, accidentally running into a bomb on the first try. It would be a really fun level if that block staircase didn't exist... A couple weeks later, I discovered another 2 moves that I have not made public since it only raises the route to a .8, and though I don't believe any other moves are possible, I may go back someday and find something, and I'd rather not be sniped. If you find anything else, let me know and if it's /not/ what I found, we can joint on this . Still, +4 moves on public in CC1 MS...

Also before continuing with scoring bolds, I finished up solving CCLP3 in what seems to be a record pace: 28 hours, 30 minutes, give or take a bit. No external help or solutions were referenced during the playthrough, and the entirety was streamed and later archived


. I'll probably write up a similar post for CCLP3 as I did for CCLP1, since I had a lot of fun with this. For now, I'll just say that the puzzles were as difficult as I expected but took nowhere near as long as I was led to believe...especially Avalanche

Then there was the CC1 race on the first day of 2015, and that was a blast. I'm surprised I not only kept pace with J.B., but was way ahead until losing 10 minutes to a mistake on Writer's Block...and even after that I kept pace and finished 10 minutes behind (final time 6:21:47 to his 6:11:58). I don't believe I picked up any new bolds during the race, but did finally solve the entire original set in the MS ruleset for the first time in my life. I found the route to Four Square during, though, and scored 335 within a few minutes the following day with minimal difficulty, along with scoring 968 on Pentagram in the time following the race.

Drawn and Quartered: Forgot to release, forgot to wait, scored the bold.

Vanishing Act: Once I realized I had to take the bottom fork on returning to the center, I scored 733 first try.

Writers Block: Skipped for now...maybe someday I'll try copying the public TWS.

Socialist Action: Watched the AVI, copied it after a few attempts.

Up the Block: Second attempt, because the first pushed the block too soon and died by a glider.

Wars: It took me a while to remember to push the block left...whoops!

Telenet: I knew this one would be interesting to face, and indeed it was. My initial set of notes had the direction to teleport and the direction to move after teleporting, but this was missing the next direction to go as well. My final notes looked like this:

R(UR) L(UU) L(UU) D(RR)

U(LU) D(RR) L(UL) U(LU)

R(UR) L(UL) R(UU) R(UR)

L(DD) UD(LL) RLRLRLRLRLRLRLR (15, U)

This immediately got me into the RLRLRLRLRLRLRLR run, which I failed the first time but survived to score 235. Undeterred by how close this was, I pressed on and repeatedly moved too quickly in the teleport rooms. On the 3rd time reaching the alternating run, I counted out 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 on right key presses, and boosted perfectly, scoring the 236.2.

Suicide: Cloned too many gliders once!

Cityblock: Also skipped for now, and probably forever unless I feel like looking for the pieguy insane block pushing route...yeah right

Spirals: I kept turning the wrong direction upon reaching the top half of the level...once I added a couple chip checkpoints to the directions I scored 317 easily.

In the CC1 race, Block Buster gave me a rough time, mostly at the 3rd section. I knew it would be much more difficult to score 402, but I wanted revenge. I was going to pull this off...but not for a while. I needed easier boosting levels on my new laptop to get used to the different feel of the keyboard, and so I skipped Block Buster as well for now, and also put H2O Below 273K 273+ on hold.

Playhouse: Took one attempt after watching the route. I was a little worried about remembering how to deal with the GOOD JOB part, but after JaBoL stuff like that feels a lot easier.

Jumping Swarm: I spent a couple tries getting the route down, and kept having to wait 2 moves for walkers. Finally, I didn't have to wait at all...and ended up having 4 walkers converge on the exit at the same time, dying right next to the socket >.<. 10 minutes later, all the random factors finally went right and I scored 367. "However, with a route as quick as this, Chip rarely gets hit." -Andrew Bennett, ChipWiki annotation. THIS IS A BLATANT LIE...when going for bold. With all waits allowed, it'd be the most likely route to succeed, but in the context the claim is made...

Vortex: After a half dozen attempts where I ran into blue walls left and right, I opened the level in an editor on the side and played off that. The walker blocked my path 3 times in a row, then I forgot how to deal with the teleport and scored 443. The walker blocked me once more, and I scored 444 on the next attempt.

Roadsign: When I said 'easier boosting level' this isn't what I had in mind! To make matters worse, my new laptop has a slightly different input to screen refresh rate than my old laptop, and as I found out with Guitar Hero 3, a difference of as little as 15 milliseconds can make precise timing much more difficult for me. Despite everything stacked against me, I went for the 650 directly...and scored 634 on the first attempt after watching the AVI. Well, that didn't go as planned. I watched the portions I forgot again, and spent a few minutes practicing the sequence 40 seconds in. Before long, I gave it another try...and scored 638. A few tries later, I had 641 with the main mistake having been forgetting to move the 2nd/3rd block over while navigating the 3rd/1st block through the 'maze'. At this point I wrote everything after "Roadsign:" because interesting stuff happened, and maybe writing down to move that block would help me remember.

It did. I remembered to move the block over, but forgot the fastest way to move after pushing the next block in. Combined with forgetting the force floor to ice combo near the end, I ended up with a 646. However, my first half was perfect, so I knew it was just a matter of time. That time was taking way too long, in no small part due to the additional latency I was experiencing. A half hour later, and the best run I had would have only been 648 if I hadn't overcompensated and failed the boost in the northwest.

And then this happened. I had overstepped once after the ice tile in the southwest, but as an annotation on the ChipWiki AVI said, that was acceptable. The choppiness of the recording made the wait hard to see, and since I knew I was matching the AVI (a .0, IIRC) I pressed on. Being that close, even once, made it clear that 650 was an inevitability.

Next good attempt: low 647, overboosted at the end by 1 space costing 2 moves, but the real killer was forgetting to move the block off (5, 25). Then finally, I broke through (while recording with input display, because why not)...though partway through I realized "wait, what am I doing?" because I collected the chip behind the bombs before I was supposed to! Rather than restart, I kept going, remembering that 2 moves had to be lost at some point, and that mistake cost me 2. Video


.

Current MS official overall scores and bolds:

http://imgur.com/lUXHm2m

Current Lynx official overall scores and bolds:

http://imgur.com/X0oqCpU

As far as CC1 goes, there's very few routes left that could be considered 'easy'. We'll see how frequent further progress is.

File category: CC1 Levelsets

This is my 4th large CC set released, and in my opinion the best one yet. It contains 149 levels verified to be solvable in both the MS and Lynx rulesets, made throughout the last 5 months. The difficulty starts out fairly low and steadily rises throughout, ultimately peaking around the 130s in CCLP3.

Thanks to Michael, Ryan, Andrew M. and J.B. Lewis for beta testing this. I know I caught a lot of busts before sending this out to you guys for beta-ing, but so many more were discovered.

I hope you have as much fun playing this set as I did designing it.

- IHNN

Confirmed solvable? Yes

• Reverted the previous change since it broke the level worse and made a small edit to key/lock locations. Solutions are unaffected by this, and the bust is now officially an easter egg.

Attached Files

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  UC4.zip (Size: 61.16 KB / Downloads: 678)

It is time for another Mini Create Challenge! This time you don't even need to build a level to participate, instead you must create something else that is closely related to CC levels. What could that be?

To participate in this competition, follow these steps:

1) Pick a level from either CCLP2 or a custom set you did not design.

2) Come up with a story surrounding that level. Why is Chip here? What is the point of the level? Is there are larger story in the set, and how does this one level fit into that?

3) Write either a prologue or epilogue or both for this level that could appear in the ccx file for the set. (These are the pages that appear either before or after playing a level that can tell the story.)

4) Post your work here in this thread. Be sure to state which level it is for.

5) Read and comment on other players' creations.

Chip Cup points may be awarded up to 5 points per participant as follows:

- 1, 2, or 3 points depending on the quality, excitement level, inspiredness, originality, poetry, story, and other (random?) qualities of the work.

- 1 point if the level in question is from CCLP2 and your work may be used in the ccx file for CCLXP2.

- 1 point if your first submission is submitted in January.

The Chip Cup points will be awarded at the beginning of April, so expect none if you submit stuff after March.

Don't hesitate to ask about anything! There probably are many details I am not covering here. One that comes to mind, is that you may enter more than once, but will receive Chip Cup points for your best one. Anything else?

-Miika

New Year, New Chip Cup! J.B. has won the last two (congratulations!). Will anyone rise this year to challenge him?

This time this time trial is as simple as it gets: just download the competition levels from here and send in your submissions!

Ask about any clarifications, though here are a few details on what's going on:

1) The person with the highest combined remaining time on the three levels wins!
2) You may enter in either MS or Lynx, with the former being the primary rules. This means that any Lynx solution times that exceed the best MS solution time will be considered equal to that MS time, but otherwise all the times will be compared together in one category. There may be a tie in the overall score.
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 shouldn't be 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. The levels have time limits of 110, 60, and 999.
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. If your name is Michael, I'll allow you to name one level in the next time trial.
6) Submission deadline is February 1st where you live. I will judge the submissions without warning the following week 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 (myself and random 8 (thank you!)), may enter the competition, as we have not optimized them, nor have we had significantly more time to work on them compared to the rest of you.


Enjoy!


-Miika

File category: CC1 Levelsets


These are the levels for the January 2015 Time Trial.

Take Note - by Miika Toukola and random 8

Sunday Jog - by Miika Toukola

Flower Garden - by random 8

You should be able to enjoy these levels even without a competitive mindset, and if you do play them, we always love to see your solutions!

See details for the competition in the thread in the competitions forum.

Attached Files

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  CCZ-TT-1501.ccl (Size: 1.96 KB / Downloads: 344)

File category: CC1 Levelsets

An MS rules version of my E_trilogy set. This is probably the final version of this set, but slight modifications might be made for playability issues if they arise.

• Now contains 237 levels (including the Decade Messages)

Attached Files

  E_Trilogy_MS.ccl (Size: 213.33 KB / Downloads: 478)
  E_Trilogy_MS.ccl (Size: 213.33 KB / Downloads: 481)
  E_Trilogy_MS.ccl (Size: 212.46 KB / Downloads: 491)

Newbie here~ I loved Chip's Challenge as a kid (although I was awful at it) and I was informed of this place from watching JB's Let's Plays of CC. I look forward to chatting with you all and enjoying the level sets that everyone has created.

Happy New Year!

-Mike