December 2015 Create Competition - First Impressions

[Ihavenoname248]

I have now sent in 2 levels I made in late November for completely different reasons, that both fit the requirement well but also for different reasons. I already cleared this with Miika and it's acceptable to send these in.

Anyway, advertising time!

The first level is a teleporting itemswapper between identically shaped rooms, where every room has a different type of tile as the boundary. One of these rooms is exits that seem inaccessible, and another has bombs- I wonder how these are connected? This level was also made in the span of 15 minutes as a part of a challenge from my younger brother to see if we could make 3 good levels in a half hour. I'd say it succeeded here, but then again I'm not the judge of the competition

The second level has a much more interesting tale behind it. In September I noticed the lack of create competitions being run, and realized some of the most successful restricted the design in some way beyond designing a level with a given theme. These usually meant building a level within a given set of walls- I believe Walls of CCLP2 had the most unique levels created for it of any create! What I noticed was that none of the creates restricted the allowed tiles, so I wondered how that could work out. The first idea was allotting every tile (or group of tiles, in the case of keys/locks and clone buttons/machines) a point value, and then the level would have to be designed within a given total point value. Unfortunately, this ran into a lot of problems without grouping (monsters trumped everything else, mazes trumped other gameplay types, blocks were either too useful or useless for the cost) and with grouping (itemswappers were basically impossible to create, still herding towards maze types but better). Then I had the breakthrough a few weeks ago.

Palettes.

I divided up the tiles into 4 palettes that I thought had a lot of flexibility in how the levels could be designed, with some duplications (exit is allowed in all 4 of course, but chips are only allowed in 3). My brother, mom and I all designed one level with each palette, all going a completely different direction, which showed that interesting and varied concepts and levels could be crafted from these restrictions. Of these, one of my levels stood out from the rest, as everyone I showed it to had a visible reaction upon seeing its design, even those who had never played CC before.

The design takes cues from a pair of J.B.'s levels: one intentionally, and the other noticed after the fact. I will not be describing the design any farther than this, as it would ruin the first impression of the design, but it will leave an impact, of that I can assure you.

End advertising.

So yeah this is also an announcement of sorts that I'll be running a create with the above theme in January (possibly as another super comp, remains to be seen). Should be a fun time