One of those great moments in life. To understand the picture, you'll have to try out the level :-) Anyone want to figure out the probability of this happening?

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Sometimes time just flies by. I don't feel like writing a real blog entry, so I'm just going to ramble on about anything that comes to mind. It's been a tough month in real life, and it's good to relax with an old friend like Chip from time to time.

I was going to talk about the ten year anniversary of CCLP2. Wow! That's quite a while ago! How many community members were around back then that are still active? Not too many, which means we've still managed to gain new members, including myself. In the next ten years, it'll be interesting to see how many of the levels still have room for improvement. As for the community, I hope we only grow larger, and I see no real reason not to.

I also had some thoughts about the competition formats here on CC Zone, but I'll see if I can go into more detail next time. Too bad there was no time trial this month. As there were two levels last month, I suspect the staff did have something planned since they didn't save the other one for later. Hopefully there is one next month, or I suspect players will lose interest. Luckily the treasure hunter competition has made up for it this month. Finding the best way to collect as many chips as possible in the time given felt a lot like a time trial level. At least it felt very different from the first one, which is a good thing. I also like how the create competitions seem to have stricter quidelines than in previous years. I didn't have time to participate in that one this time around, though.

Talking about having time to design levels, if I had any, I would try to make some simple ones to submit for CCLP1. I have a few levels, like twenty or so, that I've made for my six-year-old daughter to play, which could be modified for wider release. She also drew some of her own ideas on paper and then we built them together in an editor. That was fun. If only the deadline were two months away, I might have time to work on some new levels as well. I guess many players just create levels really fast. I can't do that at all!

I played through Ida4.dat again, since it had some new levels added. That was enjoyable, though some of the levels were longer and more involved than I remembered. Many nice ideas there though. I have to go and give some feedback on the set as soon as I can. Also been playing through JoshL1, BHLS2, and geodave3. I really hate it when there is even a single really annoying level in a set that is almost impossible to complete. It denies me the feeling of completing a set, or having accomplished something. Luckily all these sets have some nice levels as well. If I ever finish any of them, I'll try to write some sort of review.

Chip till next time,

-Miika

We've all felt like doing this before.

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I designed this level today. Camden_2.dat will soon be updated and will contain this level, and it will also be added to my CCLP1 submission set.

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Everything here works until the end when the teeth monster is supposed to be released so you can defeat him and push the block with the exit under it.

It's obviously C/B glitch but at that point the only monsters left alive are the continuously looping fireballs/gliders in the center left (which all eventually point down) and the continually cloning fireballs in the extreme upper right - these fireballs move down before dieing in the water.

So, what gives? Why doesn't this work?

Note: There is an error in this image. The button for cloning the block is actually connected to (31,1) and NOT (31,2) as shown with my poorly drawn lines.

I have a feeling that this is going to come down to a contest between invisible walls and blue walls, but I'm hoping that some deviant will make a case for getting rid of gravel or recessed walls.



And I just want to add that random force floors and hint tiles are probably the most benign, on the whole. They're rarely annoying or beneficial*...they're just there.



*Notable exception: Scoundrel

File category: Bug Demonstrations

Small level showing the disappearing pink ball glitch.

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  pinkball.dat (Size: 185 bytes / Downloads: 327)

Years ago, I noticed that in FOUR PLEX, if you step exactly so (in MS), you can limit the number of pink balls created to one. I thought that balls were disappearing, but then the community at large convinced me that you could prevent the balls from being created in the first place by stepping at the right time.

Well, community, you were wrong. The pink balls ARE created, and then DO disappear. The proof is in this video:




Prove me wrong!

If you have a very difficult level designed: as you probably know, the player probably has to start over and over again. It would be a good idea to NOT have to go through a boring phase of the level over and over again. Or, It doesn't take too long to get to a difficult area. You don't have a difficult puzzling situation at the very end where the player has to go throught the whole level -just to get to the problem again- especially, if most of the level is boring!, tedious, or one of the kind where the player has to guess at the right path, almost at every turn or junction, etc. Ian Wilson (thinker)

You are forced to eliminate one monster from Chip's Challenge. Which do you get rid of and why?

I'm still thinking about my answer to this question. It's a tough call....