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+--- Thread: April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms (/thread-1292.html)
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - M11k4 - 04-Apr-2017
Get out your map editors and turn on your design instincts! This time we are making a collaboration task like none other!
Your job, should you accept it, is to outfit five rooms with something interesting for Chip to adventure through. The rooms are given in a template form in the file below (levels #7-11). Each one has it's own shape and item restrictions. Once I have rooms from all several designers, the idea is that we can combine any of the rooms with each other to make a larger level. In essence you are designing several pieces of a jig-saw puzzle that can be combined with the designs of others! You may enter with just filling in one of the rooms, but of course I would love to see what you do with each room, and how these all combine to make the level with all five rooms.
http://cczone.invisionzone.com/index.php?/files/file/617-%7B?%7D/
Here are some guidelines of what you can do with each room:
Room 1. This is the starting room. Use four chips and a blue key. The time allotted for this room is up to 30 seconds.
Room 2. This is the next room and it is visited twice on our journey. Include five chips, a red key, a yellow key and a yellow lock (which is opened after losing the red key). If possible, make it so that Chip leaves the room on the first visit with a yellow key and that this is obvious to the player. You may include toggle doors in this room, but note that their state will be swapped once Chip returns here. The time limit for this room is about 70 seconds, but as this is the most complex room more might be needed.
Room 3. Include five chips and a red key. You may use tanks and a tank button here. The time estimate for this room is 50 seconds.
Room 4. Include six chips and a blue key. Please include a toggle button that may or must be pressed an odd number of times. You may include toggle walls and teleports. Forty seconds might be enough in here.
Room 5. This is the ending room and it's shape is the simplest. Is it the simplest otherwise? At least it does not require any chips, but the rest is up to you. You may move the exit. Be careful in including items that are parts of mechanisms elsewhere. Is thirty seconds enough to reach the exit?
For each room, be mindful that you include the correct amount of chips. Keep the time limits the same as they are unless you really need to adjust them. You may edit the name and passwords if you like. Only edit the contents of one room at a time, meaning you may move the items in the room, but the mechanisms leading to the exit should still work. You may move the locks that lead to the next room, but be careful not to allow the wrong keys to be taken out. (It's safest not to move these doors.) Don't use some items in other rooms that are reserved for specific rooms, like the teleports, tanks and even toggles. Please don't allow any boots to be taken from one room to the next and be careful with other items as well. Basically, keep in mind that your rooms are supposed to work in conjunction with the rooms from other designers too, so making mechanisms that hinder this is permitted but might not work well in the bigger picture. Comment below on any unclear situations or for any cool ideas you may have that we should all do!
The file you submit to me (by sending it to my email valeosote at hotmail dot com) would ideally have six levels, one for each room and possibly one where they are all combined. I would like it if all these levels were solvable. I will accept up to two versions of each room from a participant, but please take into account that this will increase my workload as well, so have some restraint on which ideas are your best. I think I will accept levels that work in just one of the rule sets, but would prefer that they work in both MS and Lynx. You may send in name suggestions for the combination levels that result once I combine rooms from several sources.
I fear this one will be a hard competition to judge, but I'll figure out some way to evaluate each participants efforts. I hope to combine my favorite versions of each room into a level I like a lot, but it will also be interesting to see how each designer's rooms all join together by themselves. In any case I am sure we will see some cool creations! I hope you aren't scared away by this high concept but rather take it on as a challenge.
Let your creative juices flow! Enjoy!
-Miika
Notes:
-Submissions are open through May 7th where you live!
-I like it when you keep things simple but not simplistic. It's a tightrope act, I know.
-The level(s) must be solvable, but do(es) not need to work in both MS and Lynx.
-The level should preferably be new, and I'd be amazed if it had been released before.
-Please only submit your best ideas. If this is hard for you to judge, then I'll accept at most two versions of each room.
-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.
-Some more clarifications in posts below!
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - Ihavenoname248 - 04-Apr-2017
Alright, questions!
Can we include more chips than allotted to a given room if some can never be obtained? What about if certain chips are mutually exclusive?
How strict are the time limits for each room- does a casual solve have to be within the time limit? Is the passage between rooms counted too? Is a 1 (-.9) bold time acceptable?
Can we use a tank clone machine in the first room or fourth room, either as part of a puzzle or a limited cloning setup, as even though tanks are "called" this method of using them is independent of tank button presses, unless a monster is hitting them elsewhere.
Can we add more keys than the given keys?
Is there a limit to the number of trap or clone connections allowed in a given room, to avoid issues with hitting that limit in a combined level?
In the same vein, how should paramecia/bug/teeth cloners be handled? Trap releases? Are we allowed to build these mechanisms in the walls outside of the rooms?
Are we allowed to add additional walls to the rooms?
Can we include additional sockets to divide up the second room further between visits?
There are a lot of restrictions here, and though they usually breed creativity, I think this one might lean too far on the restricted side. Still a worthy experiment, though... and I do have a create in mind for next month that's much simpler than this
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - Flareon350 - 04-Apr-2017
All the questions I had, were asked above
I agree this create competition has a bit too many restrictions, which may or may not make this a fun one to enter, compared to previous ones.
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - James - 04-Apr-2017
Are you allowed to have multiple exits in the final room?
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - M11k4 - 05-Apr-2017
Alright, answers! I'll try to highlight the important parts so you aren't forced to read everything.
Yes to pretty much everything above.
You can use extra chips, if only the allotted amount is collectible. The point with the chips is to make the rooms feel connected and not completely isolated from each other. In the same way, you may include more keys as long as you get rid of them within that room. Also, I guess you may also not use a key needed in that room to get out of it if you feel that is too restrictive and the recessed wall between rooms is enough to keep the structure of the level intact.
The time limit is more of a guideline than a strict rule. I would like the whole level to be casually solvable. The idea behind pretty short time limits was to discourage very long puzzles like block pushing for three minutes before getting out of the first room.
Using Tanks like asked is fine. However, it is possible that messing around in this area will create mechanisms that break, so it is safer not to do so. What if some other designer's room with the Tanks starts them off as moving back and forth? You can also use the space available outside the rooms themselves for mechanisms, but what happens when several rooms happen to utilize the same space? Break any and all rules at your own risk.
I don't think we need a limit on number of connections. If several designs use too many, I just won't be able to combine them into one level. Adding a rule for this would seem reasonable, but I don't feel it's worth the trouble for everyone to keep track of exactly how many there are. Sometimes it's simpler to go with the simpler rule and deal with the consequences later.
Yes, you may add additional walls and sockets and even exits in your rooms. I didn't say anything about restricting them, but it's good that this is clarified. I also didn't say anything about using twenty blobs, but hopefully you won't.
If you feel that there are too many restrictions on your creation, you can adjust stuff to fit your needs. I'm not sure how this will affect the judging, but for me the main goal is to make fun levels! The basic concept is to have several small rooms that can be fitted together with rooms from other designers. It doesn't matter if you don't follow the specifics as long as your rooms work in this regard. Don't use the keys or chips if that feels bad. Adjust the room shape if necessary. Have a time limit of 500 seconds! What do I care? Ok, just kidding
The point is, I if I added too many logical hoops to jump through with the keys and toggles and everything, which I thought would serve to tie the level together nicely in the end as well as provide variety between the rooms, then consider those things secondary to the main objective. Am I making any sense?Keep the questions coming! And if you ask about something questionable ahead of time, I am more lenient when judging it.
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - M11k4 - 08-Apr-2017
I was asked if you're supposed to leave room 2 carrying a yellow key. Yes, this was the intent but I did not remember to mention it clearly at first. So please include this in your level if possible, but if you do not, it's ok too.
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - M11k4 - 10-May-2017
Results... are postponed! Because the deadline is extended! Let's make it May 28th where you live, which will still be before the deadline on the new (and awesome, or am I obligated to say a-maze-ing!) May create competition. I always intended to extend this deadline because I feared people would have been working on their votes for CCLP4 and I want to have a bunch of different takes on what to do with these rooms
I do have an update on the already submitted stuff. I think I'll award an Early Bird Bonus of one Chip Cup point for all the people who got their levels in before now. They are, in no particular order, except that in which I saw them:
- M11k4
- Ihavenoname248
- geodave
- RB3ProKeys
- rubenspaans
But let's not stop here and aim for 100,000+ So to help in this, for the rest of this competition any participant can also score an extra Chip Cup point by referring a new participant. For this to count, the new participant must name the person who referred them in their submission email. Let's try this out and not make it too complicated.Meanwhile, I have played all the submitted rooms and I wonder if the four of you who already made yours would like to see the others as well? There's also the option of updating your submission after hearing some feedback, you know, just to smooth out some rough patches and iron out some corners.
We also should come up with more names for the levels that will be created by combining rooms from several designers.So that's it for now, but there is clearly more to come in just a couple weeks!
-Miika
P.S. one more guide line that I hadn't touched upon... it's hard to use hint tiles in several rooms, so don't overdo them. They aren't strictly off limits but just be aware that they will complicate combining rooms so don't use them too wildly. Also, I do now see that some of the inter-room instructions with the keys and toggles was not as clear or simple as it could have been, so I'll try not to judge too harshly on those aspects when the time comes.
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - M11k4 - 16-Sep-2017
Results and levels released!
http://cczone.invisionzone.com/index.php?/files/file/639-%7B?%7D/
It took me a bit to release these, but I think it was worth the wait. From the first few levels in the set you'll get a good feel for what types of rooms everyone made. After that, you can even peek in an editor if you want to avoid playing the same rooms in different context. Or you can try the first few levels and then come back to read my comments, and then go back and examine the rest of the set yourself. Though this competition is over, if you feel inspired to make your own new challenges in these rooms, you can still send them to me and some day I may update this set.
This turned out to be a more difficult competition to judge than I had planned. I wanted it to be more of a 'let's create something together feel' than something overly competitive, but of course I had to end up with some sort of ranking of the creations too. Everyone submitted something for every room. Should I rank the resulting level from each participant, or just their best rooms? There was no absolutely even way to do this. I noticed myself that it was easier to come up with maybe one or two decent ideas and ended up filling the rest of the rooms with something a little more mundane. I chose to pick my two favorite rooms from each designer and rank those up against each other.
You can deduce the ranking of the participants in the download or the summary at the end of this post, but if you'd like some reasoning behind the ranking, clicky click below.
There you have it. A few more comments on the competition itself. It turns out that having some restrictions on creating a level is good but this time the concept could have used some simplification. It wasn't way too much but when people are dropping out and the instructions are hard to understand, something has gone wrong a bit. It was a fun concept to try, but we can do better. I was hoping we'd have ten participants for a theoretical 100,000 different levels made from different room combinations, but we didn't quite reach that even with the extended deadline. (A quick calculation only gives me 6,336 possible levels, but it depends a bit on which rooms you consider incompatible and do we use the three additional final rooms or not.) As it was, I even messed up on giving you time limits that were too tight, so I ended up raising the time limits on many of the submissions (usually after contacting the designers, but of course the damage had been done). The logic with the keys and buttons and such was meant to make the rooms connected but the instructions had participants confused. I didn't even mention anything about hints. I think we ended up with a few nice levels to play so hopefully this can still be a net positive.
CCLP4 has been out now for a bit, so expect the return of more competitions next month. Whoo-hoo! Till next time!
-Miika
Summary of results:
April 2017 Create Competition - The Five Rooms - James - 17-Sep-2017
I'm a bit surprised I won against the calibre of competition, but I'll take it
I guess this means I should design more levels. Well done everybody on their creations in this unique format.The combination levels in the total set were nice to play and it's nice to have a detailed thought process regarding the results. Thank you for all the effort you put into these competitions