I combined all the previous Survival levels into this one set, with the newest one, #6 - Impending Demise , being used for this competition. It's built by Lessinath, so a big thanks in that direction. It is similar in nature to the very first Survival level with some key differences that I'll let you discover. The objective is to stay alive as long as possible before the monsters get to you! You may play in either MS or Lynx.
The point of these competitions is to have fun and connect with the community. While that's the case here too, this is also your chance to try and see how crazy you are about this game of ours. There is no randomness in the level and there is no way for you to influence the monsters, all you can do is dodge. Then die and try again. I expect most participants to just send in a casual, maybe a decent effort, but maybe someone out there will go overboard with this and plan out an actual method to stay alive for way too long than is healthy. Don't feel pressured to be that guy. If you are that person, please only do it if you find enjoyment in it. The rest of us will then wait for the results. The deadline for your submission is in a month, November 12th
where you live.
Send in your avi or tws attempts to me at valeosote at hotmail dot com
. You may solve the level or die in the attempt, it doesn't matter, though it is easier for me to judge this thing if you send in a tws which does require you so reach an exit. I may choose to combine some submissions into a tie if they are close to each other by a few seconds (up to ten, and this clause is here so you don't feel bad about maybe surviving another second or two). I will strive to reply with a confirmation that I have received your entry and reviewed it. I prefer if you use your username and this competition in the email subject. Keep it short and simple, something like: "October Survival - Santa."
Ask below for any stuff that I didn't cover or is otherwise on your mind! Feel free to vent your frustrations and other feelings, but try not to spoil your actual score on the level.
Enjoy!
-Miika
P.S. Though it is usually implied, I feel specially obligated to point out a technical requirement for this competition: though you may plan out a method of attack and even use tools that help you in this, your actual submission is supposed to be played by you without any gimmicks. Just use your sense of fair judgement and ask in case you are thinking of something that may be borderline.
When the Fireballs take over, how long can you survive?
When the Blocks go crazy, how long can you survive?
When your fortress is overrun, how long can you survive?
This set contains the Survival levels that have been used for competitions.
-Cauldron
, by Lessinath, from September 2012
-Block Madness
, by Lessinath, from April 2013
-Underground Fortress
, by Lessinath, from April 2013
-Dance of Death
, by Lessinath, from April 2013
-Perpetual Motion
, by M11k4, from October 2014
-Impending Demise
, by Lessinath, from October 2017
Warning! This set is not for the light-hearted. The objective in each level is to survive without dying or possibly cooking the level. For the sake of your mental health, it is not actually recommended that you even attempt these levels.
You can find more information on the competitions in their respective threads in the competitions sub-forum. A great big thank you to Lessinath for coming up with so many of these levels!
I would say 'enjoy', but with this set it's more appropriate to wish you well!
-Miika
What's New in Version (17-10)
-combined first five survival levels into one set
-added 'Impending Demise' as sixth level
-added exits to the first level
-levels #2-#5 can still be survived 'indefinitely'
Ready to make some levels? This time let's try a different take on building from a palette.
Your task, should you accept it, is to create a new level using pieces and concepts from previous create competition entries from 2008 to 2011. This is a total of 72 levels to work from plus a few non-trivial 'filler' levels that separate each competition in the collection sets. The idea is that you build from pieces conceived by someone else (or your former self) to create a unique challenge that is still a tribute to the source material. You can either try to use the pieces without modification (as I have done in the Time Trial Mixes) or just borrow a concept to create your own new puzzle with the same general feel.
The easiest place to find the levels that are your starting point is in CCZcreate2008-2011.dat
and CCZcreate2012.dat
, which you can get here:
It would be nice if you took ideas from at least three levels so that it doesn't just become a different version of a single level. Don't feel obligated to fill the whole map and make everything cramped. (I'd be curious to see even some smaller levels that still stick to this requirement). If you do make a longer level, please don't make it very difficult. You can be creative with the structure of the level and give it a fun name. There are some crazy levels in the mix to work from and I'd also gladly hear what your reaction to them is. Can you make it work? I'm sure there are some issues with this idea that I'm not thinking of right now, so be sure to ask below and I'll answer anything that is worries you.
Email and attach your submissions to valeosote at hotmail dot com. I will strive to reply with a confirmation that I have received your entry. I prefer if you use your username and this competition in the subject. Keep it short and simple, something like: "October Create - ChipHome5". If you list the levels you used as inspiration, that would help me when judging.
Enjoy!
-Miika
Additional notes:
-submissions are open through November 12th
where you live.
-The level(s) must be solvable, but do(es) not need to work in both MS and Lynx.
-You may submit more than one entry, but please keep the levels distinct from each other. Your best two entries is recommended.
-Points may be deducted for late entries, but will be accepted until I judge the levels.
-Entrants receive the normal prizes: the "You're Winner!"-award, Chip Cup points, and "Tool Box"-award for first time entrants.
-Please ask about other unclear situations.
This is it, the final showdown with my thoughts. Wait, this is a thinly veiled FFX reference isn't it. HA HA HA HA HA okay this joke is overdone.
46. Synthetic Coral
One thing I find quite interesting to play is a field of blocks and water or bombs, and all you have to do is move around, building islands as you go. In particular, Plastic in the Ocean from UC5 directly inspired this- what if instead of having to bridge to the corners, you just had to pick up chips? Ultimately, it's quite easy- no Pentomino Lake without picking up the flippers, that's for sure. Unfortunately, splash delay does seriously hurt the level in Lynx... and I still need to finish CCLP4 in Lynx, right.
47. Blast from the Past
Finally, the first level I designed for this set! The only goal I had was to throw back about a decade, with pointless rooms, diagonal walls, and pointless boosting! Unfortunately, the level still ends up being fairly modern in its design, but hey- it's a fun variety level with 12 completely separate rooms with absolutely no interaction between them, nope. Don't even try sending the fireballs and gliders into the bomb room, I definitely didn't plan that to be a useful strategy and it most certainly wasn't forced on an older version of the level.
48. Happy as a Clam
I think few levels show my usual design style more than this level. I built the central room first (symmetry, level branching off of one core interesting room) and then the fireball room to the right. The gliders followed (single block+monsters in varied forms, simple collision telegraphed) and the rest of the level followed in the order it gets played. I'm especially happy with the fireball stream trick to get the blue key, and the final tank shuffling puzzle. Unfortunately SOMEONE (Tyler) busted this level and didn't get the full experience... but Shane did because I fixed the level.
49. Confusion Cave
My designer note for this level simply reads "Creative One Ways, Part 3?". I'm not sure how accurate that is, but when I tried resolving it well after I'd designed it I was quite confused, so I guess it does what I wanted it to. The highlight here is the fireball room and how it's completely impassible without a block.
50. Opal Shrine
For this level, I used the walls of Wall Jumping Up Waterfalls to craft a non-linearly ordered variety level. The very first thing I tried to build in was a very lengthy final block path that would reuse most of the level, but this kept having to be scaled back and nerfed as there were ways around most of it. The initial release didn't require the block path it currently does as I had liked the shortcut, but after Tyler didn't even entertain the possibility of the intended path I took another look at the level and managed to require the oversized loop. In the final form, it's a fun level- I only wish the fireball manipulation was a little more clearly telegraphed in advance, as it's possible to fail right at the end.
51. Despotism
Walls from Communism. There are some weird hallway block loops to manipulate a single fireball through most of the level. It's not too interesting to play, but I'm still proud of the fact that I fit a completely different level inside Communism.
52. Outlast
Say hello to probably the only original concept in the entire set, because truly original concepts are hard to come by. Original executions, sure those are easy. But concepts? Have you ever seen a room where you had to keep a teeth from leaving a certain range, while also having to leave that range? The left room came first while experimenting with the concept of extending where you could step, and is rigid as a result. The right room followed as a "alright, now you understand it, now apply what you've learned" kind of room. It is possible to extract all 10 blocks, albeit not easily and it's not required in any case.
53. Immersion Circulator
Walls from Miika's Hexominoes. While I was skimming through custom sets for interesting arrangements of walls, that level jumped out at me. Sure, it was originally used for a collectathon, but there was some serious potential for reinvention there. Once I stripped the level bare... I had nothing. So I built the outside aesthetic, laid down a few objects to partition the level (most notably the tank guarding two red keys) and just built upwards from there. This is probably the longest level in the set despite only having a 496 time limit. Why 496? Because it's the third perfect number, after 6 and... 28. Naturally, I ensured that's how many chips there were. That sounds like something Miika would do.
54. Navigating Neptune
Obligatory blue wall maze with some shortcuts and I made the fireball puzzle first and kept that theming for rooms to open shortcuts.
Okay bye.
55. Lebanon
So, funny story about skimming through custom sets for interesting walls- Cyprus was a given. I immediately hit on the idea of limiting cloning to make a sardine can and then blockslide multiple blocks off of the same slide... but then actually executing the area took hours and was still broken for quite a while. Eventually though, I had a first puzzle and the tanks always changing (everything up to the fireball+tank room) and had no ideas for the remainder of the level, and it'd been sitting there for a while. Well, I had clone machines in place as partitions, but still.
A month or so later Josh and I collabed and I sent him the half finished level.
I got back the dodging sections and outer block part a day or so later- not what I would have gone with, but hey- it worked and was pretty fun! Though I noticed a few ways to squeeze out extra blocks from the end and made it required (touching the border is also required!) and telegraphed the gimmick of all blocks having gravel under them early, as it could be seen as unfair without that first block. Then I added my own block manipulation section to reach a hidden hint and called it a level.
Time limit is 961 because apparently that's the area code of Lebanon.
56. Monotone
I hope you don't dislike invisible walls.
57. Mystery Caves
Mission statement: difficult linear campaign level. The first section was meant to have a bit of tangential story to it of a prison, and also set the tone with an "In a Nutshell" style area. In hindsight, it's a little mean to start there and force redoing it every time the teeth+ball room goes awry. I went back and forth on whether that dodging and manipulation was fair, but ultimately decided that it was since you can see what needs doing in advance. That said, the tank button to start the manipulation was the last thing I added to make it a little easier. Then you have a fantastic blockslide puzzle before a really cool ball room and a few assorted puzzles before a fake-out exit. I wonder if anyone will ever die to that walker. Probably not, but the room is lol.
58. Flight of the Prince
Entered in the Movie Madness Create, which it won. Inspired entirely by chasing Snape down in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and the gameplay suits this. You see a green flash and something go off the tower, immobile, and then get to move when it dies, just like the story. Then you have around 20 seconds that demand perfection in Lynx and near perfection in MS, with some pinpoint dodging checkpoints and minor itemswapping. I love how carefully tuned this level is to work in both rulesets, something I couldn't manage with Extreme Hold Right Adventure. I do wonder if the design is too mean, though, as you do need to get a decent amount of boosts to even solve the level in MS.
Regrettably, I couldn't keep a section in which the glider would merge into a 3 tile gap of pink balls and clone another, blocking the path for Chip. Why? Slide delay- waiting at the upper force floors would allow the glider to delay, bounce off a ball instead of merging in resulting in its death, and Chip could just walk into the fake exit. I tinkered with a few potential fixes, but ultimately settled on just making the slide delay not matter.
59. The Party We Have Never Seen
Soundtrack for this commentary.
Fire and water have such a lovely aesthetic that I underuse.
Open-ended cloning puzzles are such an interesting design that, again, are underused.
Sooooo I made one with a semi-open order. Gotta get to the bug on the right first to open the block cloner, then do the three chip challenges before the two socket challenges that subvert the normal flow. Shane picked up on the main trick pretty quickly, likely because I telegraphed it in advance. He also spotted a solution I didn't catch to the upper area, which I'm not unhappy with. Originally I wanted to force bridging around the bomb, but he found a clever way to use the existing blocks to guide a fireball over- nicely done!
I'm not sorry for the random force floors on the exit path- good luck J.B., and at least it's untimed
60. A Chip Down Memory Lane
And finally, the walls from Archie's RUN OUT OF GAS in a spiritual sibling to Mental Marvel Monastery.
Fully intended alternate solution follows, with the description copied below:
Everything seen here is intended- I designed the level to have two solutions, and this one to feel busted. But nope- every little detail that juuuust works out is completely intended!
That being said, I did not tune any of the monster order or timings for this route. I'm pleasantly surprised by how little waiting around there is here. The overall design goal was to make a level like Josh's Mental Marvel Monastery- a throwback medley, of sorts. Strengthening the connection, I used the walls from Archie's "RUN OUT OF GAS" as my starting point, as Josh used Andrew R.'s "Producing". I also took care to make each part try to feel like something out of CC1- I'm not sure I succeeded, but that's why there are the (few) random pointless bits and certain other design choices.
Levels referenced in some way:
Nuts and Bolts, Elementary, Tossed Salad, Oorto Geld, Scavenger Hunt, On the Rocks, Lemmings, Seeing Stars, Chipmine, Bounce City (skipped), Reverse Alley, Block Buster, Now You See It, Short Circuit, Torturechamber, Miss Direction, and Alphabet Soup.
The theme for this competition, Piecing it Together, has a double meaning.
First, the levels themselves are pieced together from other levels. The first level, Bargain Brinks
, is a take on a level called Brinks
by lookatthis; instead of nine rooms I picked my favorite four and combined them. I also added a few chips to the rooms and a mechanism that discourages flooding the rooms. The second level, Time Trial Mix III
, is a mix of time trial levels from 2010, creating a whole new challenge. I think it also comes together feeling a bit like those levels from back then, much like the previous two levels in this series.
Secondly, when you set out to plan a solution to either of these levels but particularly the first one, you need to stitch together separate parts of the solution. I considered offering smaller practice levels for each room of the first level but as there was toggles involved and other complexities, I felt it was best to leave that up to you. I do want to stress though that you should create such versions of the level yourself to practice on. I didn't even make it possible for you to practice the rooms out of order, so to maximize your enjoyment with this level, don't force yourself to play the same rooms over and over again in linear order, but rather practice and plan them out separately first. The second level may be attacked similarly with couple of the sections, but it's not quite as necessary if you aren't going for the absolute best time. The point is that any good optimizer should learn to make use of their editor to practice different parts of a level, and if you haven't done that before you should try it with these levels.
The main competition will be in MS, but I think this time we can safely throw in any Lynx solutions to the same pool. (This means the levels are probably solved quicker in MS, but if you submit a Lynx solution, I won't rank them separately.) The deadline for this competition is the end of October. I might award some extra Chip Cup points if you get your solutions in early. You can send them to me at valeosote at hotmail dot com. See below for more technical details.
That's mainly what I had in mind. I'm excited that CCLP4 has been out for some months now and we can start something like this without needing to fear everyone still being busy on that. Don't get me wrong, I certainly am not yet done with CCLP4, but feel like something like this complements working on that nicely. Will love to hear any and all feedback and thoughts you have on these levels. Keep your eye out for more competitions starting soon!
Enjoy!
-Miika
More technical details:
[Click to Show Content]
1) The person with the highest combined remaining time on the first two levels wins! There may be a tie in overall score.
<div style="margin:0px;color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;font-size:13.6364px;">2) You may enter in either MS or Lynx. The players will be ranked by their MS times if they have one, and if not their Lynx time will count as their MS time, with the caveat that if it exceeds the best reported MS time, then it is considered equal to that time. 3) Please send your solutions (either the tws file or avis) to my own email valeosote at hotmail dot com.It would be good to include at least your username from here, perhaps even in the subject line, like 'October - Laureline'. I will strive to respond to your message by a confirmation that your score has been recorded. 4)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. 5) The levels aren't overly complicated 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 both will obviously place higher.
6) This is part of the 2017 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. I may award an Early Bird bonus of 1 Chip Cup point if you submit your first solution within the first two weeks of this competition being open.
7) Submission deadline is October 31st, 2017 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. 8) The designer of the levels and any others who have seen the levels in advance, may enter the competition. Please be fair and do not abuse this rule; it is meant to maximize fun, not provide an advantage.
9) The levels may receive an update within the first week of their release.This will only be done if there is some significant problem with the first versions of the levels. Please contact me if you suspect something is off.
10) <span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">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.
I remember I was just toying around with bridging levels and hit on the teleport arrangement in the southern room, and how just those teleports would allow access to an entire room of water. From there, I decided to make a symmetric minimalist bridging level, because it's a rarely done genre. Bridging levels are really hard to keep from being tedious, and I figured that 4 distinct approaches/minor deviations from full water would work perfectly for making an enjoyable bridging level. With those two thoughts in mind, I built the force floor room, then the ice room and the glider room. In the first version of the level, the glider room had 2 gliders and it was manageable, but ultimately I decided it didn't really mesh with the rest of the level so I removed one of them.
32. Autumnal Forest
This was the last level I made for UC6, and stemmed from realizing I hadn't built the obligatory "variety/puzzle level where all the walls are actually blocks". While trying to come up with some new ideas of what to do with that design trope late at night, I had the following thought. "heheheh, what if instead of blocks I used LOCKS lol".
Naturally, this turned out to be a legitimately great idea. The individual challenges aren't too complicated in this level, but to me it's one of those fun levels that just flows. I also love revisiting older areas, and passing back through the fireball room was something that I felt just needed to be included as one of the final steps. Keeping the current key count in memory while designing was pretty tricky, and keeping it bust-proof was trickier.
33. Betwixt and Between
Walls from Fossilized Snow, before it became a CCLP4 level but after it was pretty clear it was going to make the cut. Around halfway through the sets' construction I looked through a bunch of custom sets for interesting walls to use as launching points, and figured that this could be used for... something. Quite some time later, I built a one block glider manipulation puzzle, using gravel and water to set two sets of boundaries. Finally, the means of exiting was something I hadn't really seen done too much, being a blind partial post off of the glider. Unfortunately, this wasn't very fun/fair, so I added the tank buttons to give an auditory cue. I play with sound on basically always, which seems to be a minority stance- but it makes sections like this so much easier! Oh, and the level is named after an area in Kingdom Hearts 2.
34. Hyperspace Runway
Walls from The Last Starfighter and level originally made for the Walls of CCLP1 create. TLS was selected not because the walls looked interesting, but because it was level 28 and I asked Jessi what level I should use. Naturally, 28 was selected because a while back, I got a 28 cycle Specter in an any% no infinite jump run that still turned out to be the record (linked below). From there, I realized that TLS was actually quite an interesting layout, so I ruined it with a bunch of force floor slides and blocksliding. At least the glider room is legit.
35. Snow Worries
Hey, another level named after a level in a game I used to speedrun, this time the 6th level in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger! In hindsight, this and the previous level probably shouldn't be next to each other, as Snow Worries is a blocksliding puzzle where the puzzle is figuring out how to set up a blockslide. Honestly, this is a level because I noticed the socket puzzle was possible (making a block bounce off a bouncing block) and wanted to make a level around it. The ending can be a little mean, but it's not too bad I don't think.
36. Center of Attention
Nothing too special here, just a four quadrants variety level with a sokoban, a monster manipulation, and some dodging. Sorry about the ending, I realllllly shouldn't have left it like that but since I found a way to do it without precise timing or the monster partial post, I left it >_<
37. Unlicensed Archaeology
Level originally designed for "The Five Rooms" create, where it placed second. I really didn't have any ideas for how restrictive the guidelines were for quite a while, and then I decided to just theme a level around blocks. Not just use blocks, but actually have that as the core theme. From there, the first room became an explosive romp, the third room a simple tank bypass, and the final room a simple symmetric bridging puzzle. That still left the second and fourth rooms, and the fourth seemed to fit a partial posting puzzle and socket clearing fun part easily. I can't think of a better description for the blue key search than "fun part" lol. Anyway, the second room was actually the first one I built and sent me down the rest of that path. I'm not sure exactly why I decided to use single blocks as walls with dirt as the enforcer, but I'm glad I did because it creates a natural series of small puzzles to figure out how to progress, and as the designer I had to make sure to leave a way back!
Level named while streaming Tetris Plus and just discussing random things with Jessi. The phrase came up, and I knew it fit this level perfectly.
38. It's a Small World
The very... second level I made for this set! Nothing too complicated here, just a teleport puzzle. I still had a lot of fun working out how to build 7x7 rooms in each corner, and I very much like the starting FF spiral. I guess being able to touch the border is unusual, too.
39. Christmas Armament
This is easily one of my favorite levels in the set, less due to how it plays and more due to the combination of concept and execution. Basically, I had the idea of farming red keys to get to the next room from the center, but wasn't sure how to fill each sub-room. Cue me (blob) pestering my brother (tank), my sister (walker), and my mom (teeth) to each build a 7x7 and 8x8 room. The tank maze room and block/bomb room are probably the best two, but the teeth puzzle is interesting as well. The force floor room underwent a lot of iterations before I settled on the more complex variation- originally it was a lot simpler.
40. Obligatory Block Shuffling Level
I needed to make a block shuffling level. I made a block shuffling level. The upper room came first and set the shape of the level and honestly isn't too hard, but the lower room took me a solid hour of tweaking to come up with. This is probably my best sokoban design to date with a couple tricky steps involved in the solution. What more is there to say about it?
41. Just Another Regular Thursday
Walls from Dave's A Puzzle. Other than the invisible wall with the tank (not required to make the level possible, but made it more fun) and the throwaway joke of blue walls + deadly obstacles in one of MY levels... there's not much here. It's kind of generic in a charming sort of way. Hey Dave, if you ever read this does this level look/feel like something you'd have built?
42. Choice Tools
Walls from Nitroglycerin, and entered in the Walls of CCLP1 create. This ended up being Miika's preferred level of my three submissions, but it couldn't go too far due to only being a maze. Which is a shame, because I put a solid 3-4 hours into making sure every combination was possible to beat the level with! Not even building sections, just tweaking the "final" level until I had a version that didn't care what you picked. The inspirations here are quite obvious I think- choices, choices and Tool Shed. This level is the reason I ran the mazes only create, which my brother ended up winning with TOTALLY RANDOM MAZE. I could be accused of nepotism with that judgment... but even Josh (runner-up) agreed that it should win If you're reading this Andrew- make more levels! They're good!
43. Fahrenheit Frenzy
About halfway through construction, I decided I wanted to make a time crunch level. A linear fire themed gauntlet named after another Wrath of Cortex level. So I built the bug dodging area, and then it all went downhill when I couldn't resist from building a puzzle. However, I think the puzzle is actually pretty good despite relying on stuff under blocks (I may or may not have been trying to make a statement) even if Tyler busted it with spam cloning somehow. Another of my favorite designs.
44. Celsius Scramble
Another of my favorite designs- Doublemaze already overlaid 2 mazes on top of each other, and Archie's Double Puzzle overlaid 2 sokobans on top of each other. What if we took this further with larger tiles (3x3) and took full advantage of the fact that there was ice? The result was this semi-maze, semi block moving, semi dodging/timing variety experience. The two best moments to me are using the tank to deflect a sliding bug into the teleport, and pushing a block into a teleport and then walking around to push it as it pops back out where it started.
45. Blue Narciss
After designing time trial levels, I felt like making a level with the aesthetic of Eddy's Melody Rain. A single block monster manipulation puzzle followed. Those are kind of a theme in this set, aren't they.
I've noticed there are a lot of horizontally designed levels compared to the amount of vertically structured levels, which is interesting. Specifically, mazes often seem to have more horizontal paths with vertical connectors compared to vertical hallways with horizontal doors- not counting curvy paths. It's a strange observation to make, and this level was designed in response to that observation. It's "only" a maze with a blue wall/blue lock aesthetic and long vertical ice slides, but some of the blue walls are fake and there are a few extra chips. Just a couple more of those bonuses for the attentive, though of those who've streamed the set (Tyler and Shane), I don't think either of them caught the fake blue walls. Named after the first level of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.
17. Retroactive Invocation
Most keyswapping levels have you pick up keys, go somewhere with that key, and pick up more keys behind a lock. More advanced keyswapping levels will use the locks as the only gates to progress in a denser environment, such as Three Color Problem (me), Thinner (Cyberdog I think?), or even too many keys (pieguy). This level tried to do something a little different- recessed walls to "break into" the keyswapping area and get some early keys, and a way to save extra keys. Of course, some of those keys end up used in the second half of the level, which gives the monsters circling an extra purpose. Dual purpose design is always pretty cool, and something I've been trying to include more often.
18/19. Tanks / Tanks, But No Tanks
Ahhh, yes. One of the few levels where I came up with a title before the contents. I don't make tank levels very often, and J.B.'s Genetic Experimentation seemed like an interesting set of walls for a constrained idea. After I set out to make a tank level, I had the brilliantly terrible idea of copying the level, but removing all of the tanks from it to make a pun. From there, I just built a few distinct challenges for Tanks, and added hidden walls and tweaked areas for No Tanks. There should honestly be more level that build off of/toy with adjacent levels- neither of these are too special on their own, but as a combination I absolutely love how they work.
20. Special Little Snowflake
One of the sillier ways I make levels is to just start toying with interesting tessellations and see how they develop. Fossilized Snow and Three Color Problem are two examples of where I've done this in the past, but there are others. Anyway, this level is just a blocksliding challenge with an interesting twist- in MS, a ram is required. This was somewhat controversial, and Shane though it was unfair, so I'll defend this decision a little bit here- this could easily have been relegated to i^e, for instance. I decided to keep this level for three main reasons, but first, watch the Lynx solution if you haven't already.
1. There was no easy way to change the aesthetic/ice placements to make something else interesting, but non-trivial.
2. The solution plays out nearly the same in both rulesets.
3. After the Rainstorm has already canonized the ram.
Now, point 3 on its own is fairly weak as it can create an inequality, and that's something I try to avoid. But that combined with point 2 was enough for me to give into point 1 and keep the level in its current form. Hope that makes sense!
21. Deflection Field
Another level originally conceived as a time trial that was ran as one- though it turned out to be fairly easy to route. In the first version, the exit was where the suction boots are, but Miika had the idea of adding a runback and I liked it for both optimizing and casual play. Though there are 2 balls on every line, the dirt makes for a lot of safe places and ultimately makes this a very cerebral dodging level, which naturally is the kind I prefer. There's just something fun about alternating bursts of preplanning movements and mad dashes/quick reactions to things that you just don't get with a lot of melee levels. Naturally, Seeing Red is one of my best examples of this design style.
22. The Sound of Silence
More than any other level in the set, this is the one that got me designing heavily again. After releasing the update to UC5, I really didn't have any more ideas for levels. Sure, I built the stray level here and there, but it seemed unlikely I'd have a large CC1 release again. After a couple months of downtime, I tried designing some levels meant for time trials, to varying degrees of success. But even that didn't really get anywhere, and roughly 6 months after the UC5 update, I had maybe a dozen levels. For comparison, I've built more than that in the past few weeks! Anyway, CCLP4 construction was ongoing at the time- I think voting had just opened, and I'd spent a lot of time playtesting the submission pool alongside the rest of the staff. And then, Idle Contrast by Eddy came up as a topic of discussion. Was it better or worse than Suspended Animation, which used the concept of trapped monsters springing to life first? Was it too simple? Was Suspended Animation too complex? Why was there no middle ground? Well, I decided to try my hand at designing that concept with the goal of settling the debate. In favor of my own newly design level, of course
I started with the ball rooms where you start- I figured the best way to immediately communicate that this used the Suspended Animation concept was to have a visible exit blocked by trapped monsters, in a room that would allow passage if they started moving. From there the level built off naturally, with various challenges, connections and revisits. By far the hardest part was getting the controller/boss glitch to cooperate. If you look at the bottom right, when the tanks switch the pink balls can start moving, alternating directions every move. This conveniently matches the 5 moves between traps for the paramecia on the left side. The bugs were even trickier, and required some careful tuning of locations and sliding tiles, controller by the fireballs on the bottom left. The ice makes sure they alternate facing up and right when the bugs try to move. Finally, the teeth was the hardest of all- I needed 2 teeth, as only one would have it be released in the opposite direction. Even still, I couldn't find a way to make the teeth release in any direction, so I settled for just up/down.
I'm really happy with how the flow of this level turned out, and even though it uses an existing concept, I think I changed enough and added my own flavor to it to be an original level. Besides, did the monsters ever... stop moving in the original?
23. What Lies Beneath
And now, another level that was used for a time trial! Unlike the other time trial levels in this set, I didn't intend for this to be one. I just built another maze where the walls could be pushed (and had to be in the outside areas) hid 4 chips under blocks that lined up with the pattern (not required, of course) and noticed that it would probably be quite interesting to optimize. Well, it was, and Miika ended up sniping first by 2 seconds
This is probably my favorite maze level that I've ever designed.
24. A Glide Amongst the Clouds
Late in construction, I realized I didn't have a glider level yet! So I made one. The ending underwent a lot of changes, and I went back and forth on if 2 gliders were fair in that toggle room, but ultimately decided that yes, they were. One was too easy, anyway. Other than the ending, it's just some cloning to disrupt and some simple dodging. Enjoyable enough, but not really standout.
25. To the Dungeons!
Recommended viewing:
Alright, you back? Great. I'm sure you can see the obvious inspirations, with traps, layout, unreachable objects, and a leap of faith for that blue key. By far my favorite part of this level is the bottom right- the force floors spice up some otherwise simple ball dodging, and the single block manipulation of 2 gliders is . Also, that's going to become a recurring theme here...
26. A Wish Upon a Distant Blob
Obligatory blob level but more interesting than the obligatory walker level. The lower left can be a little mean, but with the right strategy it doesn't actually take very much luck to complete. The middle section has a minor bust, but I'm okay with its existence. Overall, this level has some really weird moments and I think it succeeds as a blob level. Time limit is 436, the current bold to Blobnet.
27. Uphill Battle
Hi I like hand-built block shuffling puzzles and you can't adapt them with ice or force floors and there's a gotcha/minor shift in style right at the end and I really really like this level. The force floor puzzle in particular, as it's half sardine can, half "how is this even possible" until you use the force floors to your full advantage. Another of my absolute favorites from the set.
28. Demolitions Expert
Yet another time trial level- we're running out of those
This one was paired with Red, Brown and Red and uses gliders as a counterpoint to the fireball cloner. It can get a little out of hand with routing, but ultimately I think it succeeded as a reasonable optimization challenge. Especially because everybody missed something sizable here. I couldn't figure out a way to clone all the gliders at once, and both Miika and Ruben missed the method of using only 5 red locks instead of all of them! I'm still surprised at this, as I specifically designed that in as a shortcut and I thought it was obvious... anyway, building the layouts was quite difficult to keep them rotationally symmetric and nontrivial, but also hard to cook.
29. Congregate
Just a fun little monster dodging collection level with a blob and teeth that can wreak havoc if released early, but screw up fast routes if released late. Have fun J.B.!
30. Dissonance Amid the Storm
Title taken from Touhou 14's Stage 4 title. Random force floors look quite nice, and using them as a path for hidden walls I thought was a really neat idea. Mostly, those paths just break up some precise running from monster in varied arrangements. Oh, and there's a joke at the players' expense here with the teeth.
Another 15 bits of behind the scenes knowledge tomorrow, probably!
Unless I'm too busy with a tournament. Or practicing for said tournament. Or working on CCLP4. Or working on Ape Escape time attacks. Or job hunting. Or relaxing. Or level designing. Or playing FF9. Or working on my backlog. Or coming up with more "or [activity]" phrases to include here...
. Also, that's going to become a recurring theme here...