Facing the Future: What's Next for Official Sets?

[random 8]

Perhaps while making CCLP4 we can release small CC2 packs in the meantime as _H_ suggested?

[The Architect]

First things first though, we should get an actual staff going for this set before anything official gets discussed.

Agreed.

As for when to start, how about right now? I think we've all had sufficient time to breath since the production of CCLP1.

My suggestion: nominate and elect a staff, then let them worry about when to open submissions, what voting system to use, etc. Like we did with CCLP1.

[jblewis]

@random 8: If anyone wants to go through with building a CC2 set during the production of CCLP4, there’s nothing really stopping them. My only concern is that unless the people who wish to be involved with each project are completely different, two set­building projects running simultaneously, even if one is smaller in scale, can divert attention away from each other. Of course, this is all contingent on the nature of CC2 set production in the future. The other variable at play is Chuck’s and the Niffler team’s involvement with CC2’s future. I have to wonder how much say they would like to have in official “DLC” and how the production process would change as a result. If they’d like to lend their involvement to the process, it could remove a lot of the work burden from the community.

@Josh: I agree with wrapping up CCLP4’s submission period sometime in the very near future, especially since the focus of design has shifted to CC2. Some might recall that when we originally began the conversation about CCLP4 at the beginning of this year, there was quite a bit of discussion about how we could potentially make the production process easier on the community and how that would affect how much consideration each entry in the submission pool received now and for future sets. Right now, as CC1 design phases out and the transition to CC2 continues, I think “less is more” would be optimal from an efficiency standpoint. As far as I can tell, we won’t really be worrying about a CCLP5 unless there’s just a lot of demand for it.

The big question is voting. The reason I sounded hesitant to pursue a lot of voting in my previous post was not only because it would be a bit of a hassle for anyone in our midst who isn’t familiar with Tile World, but also because what it accomplishes and what is necessary to achieve representative gameplay and design diversity during the set assembly phase often stand in opposition to each other. Here’s basically what I’m getting at: after spearheading two CCLP staffs, I think voters naturally tend to have a picture of their ideal level type in a given CCLP, and this sort of bias is evident in the raw voting results where “agreeability” tends to inform what performs well. During CCLP3 voting, many voters were either optimizers who wanted a monster optimizing challenge or players who gravitated toward a monster gameplay challenge. The result was a huge chunk of ultra­difficult levels in the top tier of the voting results. So for CCLP1, we tried to avoid the same kind of homogeneity by using the voting results as a guide to determine what was ultimately inducted. Sure enough, there was an “ideal type”: the middle-­of-­the-­road, not-too-­easy-­but-­not-­too-­difficult variety level. It was only through determining that yes, we would have blob levels (for example) and a reasonable amount of easy levels that some degree of variety was achieved. What was sad was that the voters still had to wade through 1,647 submissions (out of many more) during the voting process, and after all was said and done, some deserving entries that contained elements like blobs didn’t even perform that well and wouldn’t have been included had it not been for the staff’s involvement with post­voting segmenting.

I think we have to acknowledge that these sort of biases are going to exist no matter what. There’s no real way to avoid them. But the CCLP4 staff can conduct the community’s involvement with the project in the context of building a set with variety. Perhaps voting itself can reflect this. Instead of dumping a huge bunch of levels on people to award a rating, why not do the segmenting in voting itself? It could make everything much easier: we could have the staff curate the submissions and decide on what will populate the ballots for “best walker levels,” “best mazes,” “best easy levels,” “best variety levels,” “best strange designs,” “best melee levels,” "best levels with bombs as a dominant tile," etc. For super­broad categories like these, voters could check off as many or as few options as they want to see. It’d essentially be “yes / no” voting, but at least we could begin with the idea that these types of levels would be represented in the final product, and how far that representation would extend could depend on how enthusiastic the responses to certain levels are. We could also create polls for very specific level slots where voters could pick only one option: “best level 1,” “best cypher,” “best level 131 / 147,” “best set finale,” etc.

Of course, this approach may not necessarily cover the entire set directly, but I have confidence that the CCLP4 staff would judiciously use general community opinions and their own hunches as a group to make wise decisions. What I think this approach can ultimately help with is making sure that levels that carry their own senses of identity beyond the “ideal type” are considered fairly. It would also help ensure that community involvement can be in the hands of the community, without tons of pressure. What do you think?

If anyone wants to be on the CCLP4 staff, I highly recommend kicking things off, stepping up, teaming up, and taking charge. A bunch of us are here and ready to support you.

[chipster1059]

The idea of categories of levels seems very interesting. I am in favour of such a system.

I also agree with Josh's idea of a submission cap. The 50 levels per designer that have been mentionned in a previous thread seems like a good idea.

I guess the next step is to assemble a staff.

[Bowman]

I am in favor of the first option. In many ways, CC1 can never be replaced for me and I don't think of it as a "dead game." The availability of a tile world emulation keeps it alive, and the unavailability of one for CC2 as of yet is slightly discouraging (especially for those wanting to play offline and any issues that may arise from connectivity problems.) The two options about both sets being basically the same are just inane. Long live boot dropping! The thought of giving up on CCLP4 altogether is sad when you look back on all the topics about it on CCZone and the excitement built up for that set. I don't want to see it not come to fruition.

I had just assumed that all of the official CC1 packs would eventually make their way to being ported for CC2, "officially."

Jeffrey also had a good point about allowing time for CC2 level design to evolve since it is so different from the original. This would prevent CC2LP1 from being too "CCLP2-ish" (rushing to make a collection of the best levels on the internet that turns out later to reveal some lack of good design or gameplay) which is sort of what CC2 is like. In the intervening time, releasing ports of official sets would be good for gaining an audience for CC2 online content and shouldn't take too long to produce.

~Bowman

[Eric119]

While the focus in the future will likely be on CC2, I am not convinced that CC1 is, or will be, dead. The reasons given by Bowman are good. Also, the ability to make arbitrary button connections is significant. Wiring does not always work and can be more cumbersome.

Essentially, we now have three different rulesets to work with (Lynx, MS, CC2). The differences between them seem to be largely a matter of historical accident, but CC is enriched by their existence. There is a place for levels of all rulesets.

Concerning future level packs, it might be a good idea to wait a bit on CC2LP1. Do we have enough levels available? I decided to count the number of custom levels available, and the total came to 567. That's higher than I expected, but perhaps not enough to field a set of (presumably) 200 levels. Over 1 in 3 levels would make it. A significant part of this number (over 200) includes ports of CC1 levels, so a set based on what we have now could be skewed toward CC1 elements. A good way to fill the time between now and making CC2LP1 is, of course, to make CCLP4. The idea of concurrently porting existing CCLPs to CC2 is good.

(I should mention, with respect to future CC1 sets, that I have such a set which I started making before CC2 arrived. It's still very incomplete, though, and it will likely be a long time before it is finished. So these levels will not be CCLP4 candidates.)

[quiznos00]

Concerning future level packs, it might be a good idea to wait a bit on CC2LP1. Do we have enough levels available? I decided to count the number of custom levels available, and the total came to 567. That's higher than I expected, but perhaps not enough to field a set of (presumably) 200 levels. Over 1 in 3 levels would make it. A significant part of this number (over 200) includes ports of CC1 levels, so a set based on what we have now could be skewed toward CC1 elements. A good way to fill the time between now and making CC2LP1 is, of course, to make CCLP4. The idea of concurrently porting existing CCLPs to CC2 is good.

The number of levels avaiable now is actually higher than the number of levels in the original CC2 voting pool for the main game (384) B). But I do agree that a CC2 level pack should wait a while. If we want an "official" CC2 pack soon, we could begin looking at porting CCLP1 to CC2.

[jblewis]

@chipster1059: During CCLP1 production, I was always hesitant about setting limits based on who designed levels, especially if some designers were just much more adept at making fun and well-designed challenges. But I think the submission process would be an appropriate place for it, particularly if the limit was something reasonable like 50. After all, no designer has had more than 33 levels in a CCLP, so would anyone really be able to top 50 anyway? It would also be a helpful exercise for designers who have built hundreds of levels to think with the end in mind and stop to consider just which of their submissions they really want to see in an official set that badly, as well as cull everything down with variety in mind. (It's especially useful if the voting is segmented.) I'll go ahead and admit that one of the reasons why Andrew M. (ajmiam) got so many of his levels included in CCLP1 was that he had a lot of variety on his side. On top of that, there would be no compulsion for designers to submit even 50. I for one am probably going to submit only 20 to 25 levels if the CCLP4 staff instituted such a limitation.

@Bowman: Perhaps I used a poor word choice in the original post. I didn't mean that CC1 was "dead" in the sense that no one would ever play it again. What I meant was that from an "official support" perspective, CC2 is a game that's active and available on Steam, whereas Tile World and the MS / Lynx versions of CC1 don't quite hold that distinction. Of course CC1 will always have a place in our hearts, and many of us will continue to play it. I'm still optimizing my own set and a few others, personally. But I think we have to start thinking with the big picture in mind as well. The more we support CC2 on Steam and give it life, the more the CC community will grow, and the more Chuck and Niffler will be inclined to devote time to efforts like the ones we lead to keep it fresh. It'll take some time for CC2 design to evolve such that levels will fully take advantage of all the new goodies, like many have said, but projects like a CCLP1 port or CCLP4 adaptation can help show the world out there what we can do.

[Ihavenoname248]

Dividing up CC levels into categories is a good idea, but a lot of times CC levels will fall between multiple play types/dominant styles. For level types that may be otherwise underrepresented (walker, blob, even maze) I can see that working, but I worry most of the levels would fall under "variety", which in itself covers a large amount of different feeling levels to play. You'd call Mr. McCallahan Presents and Automatic (Caution) Doors and Utter Clutter all variety levels, but in terms of what's similar between them it's really just the lack of one single gameplay type.

Additionally, having groups of levels like this could result in placing levels in just to check off certain design requirements that may not have levels to fill them:do we have any very good 'abstinence' levels to choose from, for example?

Level submission cap: Admittedly I'm biased as I'd be quite heavily affected by this, but I think 50 is a bit low. Just personally, I have a lot of wildly different levels within the same gameplay type (mazes come to mind here), and wildly different difficulties as well, so that just within one or two gameplay types I could hit a cap of 50. That, and people who were around for CCLP1 submissions have a general idea of what levels of theirs did well in voting and could trim based on that. Again, biased because it directly affects me, but I don't have that frame of reference (playing through all the voting packs helps, but I've seen levels from submitted sets that were better than things in the voting packs and things in the voting packs that really, really shouldn't have been there). I know my submission set has a lot more than 50 and I could definitely trim it down but it would be difficult due to the aforementioned variety to cut down to even 100 I'd say.

It may sound like I'm just disagreeing to disagree, but I figure it's better to try to think through the potential issues with a selection process before beginning work on said selection process.



One idea that could work, however, would be a combination of a submission cap and subdivided voting pools. After defining sub-categories, set limits on how many of each type of level a certain designer can submit. This prevents having to decide between multiple completely different levels to fit within a submission cap while also limiting the total amount of levels available to choose from. It also doesn't really hurt designers who mostly focus on certain types of gameplay, or hurt designers who design anything and everything. The same advantages apply during voting, with players who want to play everything (me) still being able to, and players who don't want to concern themselves with certain level archetypes (say, sokobans) can easily avoid these.

I think by the end of the month we can have a solid effort to categorize in place, and from there setting limits on how many of each type per designer.

[Flareon350]

Level submission cap: Admittedly I'm biased as I'd be quite heavily affected by this, but I think 50 is a bit low. Just personally, I have a lot of wildly different levels within the same gameplay type (mazes come to mind here), and wildly different difficulties as well, so that just within one or two gameplay types I could hit a cap of 50. That, and people who were around for CCLP1 submissions have a general idea of what levels of theirs did well in voting and could trim based on that. Again, biased because it directly affects me, but I don't have that frame of reference (playing through all the voting packs helps, but I've seen levels from submitted sets that were better than things in the voting packs and things in the voting packs that really, really shouldn't have been there). I know my submission set has a lot more than 50 and I could definitely trim it down but it would be difficult due to the aforementioned variety to cut down to even 100 I'd say.

One idea that could work, however, would be a combination of a submission cap and subdivided voting pools. After defining sub-categories, set limits on how many of each type of level a certain designer can submit. This prevents having to decide between multiple completely different levels to fit within a submission cap while also limiting the total amount of levels available to choose from. It also doesn't really hurt designers who mostly focus on certain types of gameplay, or hurt designers who design anything and everything. The same advantages apply during voting, with players who want to play everything (me) still being able to, and players who don't want to concern themselves with certain level archetypes (say, sokobans) can easily avoid these.

There would be a lot of people affected by a 50 level submission cap. I would be heavily affected as well and I'm the one who thinks it should be a thing so you're not alone on that... Honestly, I think a submission cap of between 75-100 levels would be best if we just use a pure level submission cap.

But I like your idea of subdivided voting pools for different categories of level types and having submission caps for said categories as well. I can definitely see that working.