For anyone who is on the CCLP4 staff

[rockdet]

I'm the last one to suggest that the CC community turn into a CCLP-producing factory rolling out a new set every several months. But I think we need to pay attention to just how fast levels are being made. More than that, I'd hate to see more people walk away disappointed after not getting something they made in an official set and then submitting the same material next time just to see it get overshadowed by newer levels and the "contemporary" design tactics of the day after so much time has passed.

I think that would inappropriately suggests people to play only official sets and would pretty much discard any possible view on custom sets, because hey, we got the official sets...

Also, the motivation isn't that we don't want difficulty, we just don't want homogenous difficulty.

[jblewis]

I'd also love to see some Chuck's Challenge integration. Since it'll likely be 3 years or more before we see anything of a new official set, there would be plenty of time to convince Chuck to add the last few CC1 tiles to the game. Then the staff could take liberty to port the levels to the game, or outsource that job to the original level designers if they want to do so.

I like the idea of porting CC levels to Chuck's Challenge (which I'll refer to as CC3D), but there's one non-game logic issue I've had: aesthetics. The design of the game elements of CC3D is completely different and would make much of what worked for CC look really strange. Could you imagine playing a location-referencing level like "Launch" in CC3D since the gravel would be replaced by the light spongy material? Or all of the levels involving color-based aesthetics that made sense in CC but would be visually broken in CC3D? I think porting levels is great, but I don't think it's something that needs to feel obligatory - or something that should affect our judgment calls for future official sets.

I think that would inappropriately suggests people to play only official sets and would pretty much discard any possible view on custom sets, because hey, we got the official sets...

I agree, but don't forget that much of the audience for CCLPs consists of people outside the active vocal group in this community. There are plenty of people who still subscribe to the Yahoo! group who don't care at all to play the custom sets and just want to consume the cream of the crop. This is part of the reason I think late CCLP3-difficulty levels should be in their own set outside the CCLP continuity, targeted at a more specific audience.

Also, the motivation isn't that we don't want difficulty, we just don't want homogenous difficulty.

Yeah, that's more or less what I was trying to get at.

[Ihavenoname248]

The method used for CCLP1 sounds like it should work fine again, since a lot of the initial trimming could be done at a glance. I've skimmed through levelsets before on pieguy's site and Jacques.dat took me a couple hours to skim through-and that's the worst case scenario, and I was looking at the content, not trying to rule out trivial levels or ones that simply aren't Lynx compatible, which would speed up the process immensely.

Another interesting option that seems relatively unexplored: Upgrade Tile World Lynx to work with invalid tiles in the same way that they work in MS. Obviously this wouldn't really be Lynx anymore so it might be worthwhile to make a new name for it, but keep the spirit of animated graphics and all the usual Lynx features.

I don't dislike this idea, though I think with CCLXP2 in its current form it's not really worth the trouble to implement. At that point you might as well throw in advanced coding and the other obscure glitches not currently emulated (disclaimer: I do think that these other obscure glitches should be added, but notsomuch insane level functionality).

I'd also love to see some Chuck's Challenge integration. Since it'll likely be 3 years or more before we see anything of a new official set, there would be plenty of time to convince Chuck to add the last few CC1 tiles to the game. Then the staff could take liberty to port the levels to the game, or outsource that job to the original level designers if they want to do so.

I'd say if the original designer has CC3D, then the default should be they port-the outsourcing to the staff would likely be a better option (if I'm on the staff I'd gladly do it). At least with my own levels that I've ported, I've made a few changes to the CC3D version to better capture the aesthetic I was going for-see In the Pipeline, where in Chip's Challenge I had to pull shenanigans with thin walls to make work and as a result couldn't add water, but in Chuck's Challenge, the aesthetic could be a lot less jagged and my original vision with water could be implemented. You never know, there might be something the designer wanted to add (minor, of course) or change the look of that couldn't be done with regular CC. To use another of my own levels, when I ported Frosty Retreat I ran into 3 issues: no thief tile (fixed by gravel acting like thief), no recessed wall (fixed by toggle) and no blue wall for aesthetic (used blue locks). I also used blue pressure plates in one room that in the original, had a gravel floor.

Though, it would end up flooding CC3D and the current level search system is horribly awkward, and there's no way (yet) to set up a 'campaign' of sorts.

Difficulty? I like the idea of not having any restrictions for now, because the community doesn't seem to have much motivation left for extremely difficult levels but wants levels more challenging than those seen in CCLP1. But we can see how this changes as the level submissions change and discuss accordingly.

Me for CCLP4 staff? Only if you pay me for all my video game needs for my time on the staff.

I think that since CCLP4 isn't an introductory set, no real difficulty cap needs to be set. Levels that are punishing rather than challenging will be weeded out in voting, a variety is appreciated and will be assembled, leaving levels that are too easy/simple to get removed in voting-which will create a lower-end difficult from what people want.

Oh and throw me on the staff instead, I'll do it for free :V

[BigOto2]

So... convince Chuck to add custom tileset support too? Probably asking a bit much though.

Advanced MS game mechanics and/or data resetting? Hell no. I'd just be interested to see CCLP2-like stuff make a return in an official set and see what today's community would make of it for something different.

[quiznos00]

So... convince Chuck to add custom tileset support too? Probably asking a bit much though.

Advanced MS game mechanics and/or data resetting? Hell no. I'd just be interested to see CCLP2-like stuff make a return in an official set and see what today's community would make of it for something different.

The line between what's an advanced mechanic and what isn't would need to be defined though. A lot of people were opposed to the ram that was in After the Rainstorm in CCLP2.

But CCLP4 will probably be Lynx compatible so we won't have to worry

[Ihavenoname248]

Advanced MS game mechanics and/or data resetting? Hell no. I'd just be interested to see CCLP2-like stuff make a return in an official set and see what today's community would make of it for something different.

I wasn't saying to include those in an official set, but the rest of the glitches (barring transparency crash) would be interesting to see implemented into Tile World. Less so for anything defined as insane, though I would still argue that it would be nice to see just so that those levels can still be played as intended when, inevitably, no one has a computer capable of running MSCC any more.

Invalid Lynx though...actually, has anyone ever hex edited in "invalid" tiles into the original Lynx version? A basis from that could be the way forward, though again it hinges on someone adding functionality to Tile World.

[jblewis]

The line between what's an advanced mechanic and what isn't would need to be defined though. A lot of people were opposed to the ram that was in After the Rainstorm in CCLP2.

But CCLP4 will probably be Lynx compatible so we won't have to worry

I think a good rule of thumb is for CCLPs to be fairly open-ended: inclusive of a variety of difficulty levels but not ridiculously hard, as well as compatible in both rulesets (which CCLP2 has pretty much now achieved). Anything specific to one ruleset can be in its own special level pack outside the CCLP continuity. It would just depend on what the community would like to do outside creating the "best of" CCLP sets.

[chipster1059]

The idea of not having a staff for now and waiting for that is really great, JB.

As for the submission cap, I don't know. 1500 doesn't seem like a lot, as 10% of all the levels submitted would be in the final set. 2000 seems more reasonable to me.

Ruleset compatiblity: I think it should be solvable in Lynx and MS. Pedantic Lynx mode seems to add aditional restrictions, and I don't know anyone that uses it on a regular basis. A set with invalid tiles would be interesting, but if it had 149 levels, I would find it quite long. And I guess implementing invalid tiles in TW Lynx would be a lot of work with little benefit. I think it would be better to implement the teleport skip glitch so people can get all the bolds without MSCC.

Borders: Many levels have them, but I don't think they should be required.

Difficulty: I think there shouldn't be any lesson levels. The first levels should be about as hard as Graduation. By the end of the set, we would have some hard, late-CCLP3-style levels that are not painful.

[KeyboardWielder]

> All the difficult Madhav and pieguy levels that are decent are in CCLP3

Umm... I think I'll take that as a compliment.



> and no other designers design at their difficulty level anymore.

There's still me; but yes, maybe even I don't design at my difficulty level anymore.



- Madhav.

[rockdet]

This is part of the reason I think late CCLP3-difficulty levels should be in their own set outside the CCLP continuity, targeted at a more specific audience.

Really, that's too bad you didn't think that back in the CCLP3 days!

Also, I think some of my levels match late-CCLP3 difficulty, but I design so many different kinds of levels with so variable difficulty that I can't consider myself as "designing hard levels".