15-Jun-2017, 8:43 PM
OFFICIAL DISPATCH to All BIT BUSTERS Concerning REMODELED Levels
Having made challenges for many years, the Bit Busters have designed hundreds and hundreds of distinct floor plans for the levels of the clubhouse. With so many existing layouts at their disposal, however, some designers have experimented with reusing them. Now I know that to some of you, recycling a plan might seem like cheating. However, let me assure you, producing a new challenge from an old one is both difficult and very fun! As such, the Bit Buster leadership has agreed to encourage this behavior, and has even held a few design contests around the concept.
For those of you who haven't tried yet, the process of reusing a floor plan is simple. First, pick a level with an interesting configuration of walls. Take out all the other objects jumbled up between them, leaving just bare floor. Then fill it up however you like! Squeezing your ideas into the space allotted by the walls is tough without tearing them apart. Mental marvels like me find it difficult at times, even! But in the end, you'll often find that a shiny new set of mazes, electronic gizmos, and puzzles is much more fun to play with than a smelly, decrepit lab infested with dangerous monsters.
Remodeled floors often play so differently from the original that visitors mistake them for brand-new ones. For example, a cavernous level decorated in sapphire might look completely different after introducing the ruby of fire. You'd swear the chambers themselves had been twisted, but no; each and every wall was left in place. Usually, that is. Occasionally a designer will make adjustments to a wall here or there while leaving the essence of the floor plan the same. The upcoming rendition of the clubhouse's official challenge (known as "CCLP4") reuses some older floor plans exactly, and a few others with minor alterations.
Additionally, you should be aware of the financial benefit of remodeling. Leaving some of the walls in place, as opposed to knocking them all down and building them elsewhere, saved us quite a bit of time and money on this iteration of the official challenge! The only issue is that sometimes the remodeled floors of the clubhouse become too hard or too easy compared to their neighbors. Fortunately, Bram, a brilliant transfer student who joined us last year, saw this issue and invented an easy way to shift the levels around.
Using a powerful anti-gravity beam emitter, he slides out the floors that need to be swapped, like drawers from a dresser. He carefully raises each to its proper height, then inserts it into the clubhouse from the side. (You may have seen him demonstrate a prototype of this beam on his pet hamster. Damage to the clubhouse is minimized due to the modular nature of the floors which were built with easy swapping in mind.) It's admittedly disconcerting for passerby in the nearby plaza to see slabs of concrete floating hundreds of feet in the air, but the Bit Busters are careful to keep the floors suspended above fenced-off clubhouse property where people aren't allowed to walk. This sort of transfer turned out to be necessary all but twice in the latest official clubhouse iteration.
You might be wondering, which old levels were remodeled for CCLP4? If you read this briefing very carefully, and know your Bit Buster history back to front, you should already know all but one of them upon reading to this point. (And no, "Clubhouse" isn't one of them.) In any case, the CCLP4 staff and I are full of wishes that you'd do well on this search. Let us know what you manage to find!
Reminiscently,
Melinda
Having made challenges for many years, the Bit Busters have designed hundreds and hundreds of distinct floor plans for the levels of the clubhouse. With so many existing layouts at their disposal, however, some designers have experimented with reusing them. Now I know that to some of you, recycling a plan might seem like cheating. However, let me assure you, producing a new challenge from an old one is both difficult and very fun! As such, the Bit Buster leadership has agreed to encourage this behavior, and has even held a few design contests around the concept.
For those of you who haven't tried yet, the process of reusing a floor plan is simple. First, pick a level with an interesting configuration of walls. Take out all the other objects jumbled up between them, leaving just bare floor. Then fill it up however you like! Squeezing your ideas into the space allotted by the walls is tough without tearing them apart. Mental marvels like me find it difficult at times, even! But in the end, you'll often find that a shiny new set of mazes, electronic gizmos, and puzzles is much more fun to play with than a smelly, decrepit lab infested with dangerous monsters.
Remodeled floors often play so differently from the original that visitors mistake them for brand-new ones. For example, a cavernous level decorated in sapphire might look completely different after introducing the ruby of fire. You'd swear the chambers themselves had been twisted, but no; each and every wall was left in place. Usually, that is. Occasionally a designer will make adjustments to a wall here or there while leaving the essence of the floor plan the same. The upcoming rendition of the clubhouse's official challenge (known as "CCLP4") reuses some older floor plans exactly, and a few others with minor alterations.
Additionally, you should be aware of the financial benefit of remodeling. Leaving some of the walls in place, as opposed to knocking them all down and building them elsewhere, saved us quite a bit of time and money on this iteration of the official challenge! The only issue is that sometimes the remodeled floors of the clubhouse become too hard or too easy compared to their neighbors. Fortunately, Bram, a brilliant transfer student who joined us last year, saw this issue and invented an easy way to shift the levels around.
Using a powerful anti-gravity beam emitter, he slides out the floors that need to be swapped, like drawers from a dresser. He carefully raises each to its proper height, then inserts it into the clubhouse from the side. (You may have seen him demonstrate a prototype of this beam on his pet hamster. Damage to the clubhouse is minimized due to the modular nature of the floors which were built with easy swapping in mind.) It's admittedly disconcerting for passerby in the nearby plaza to see slabs of concrete floating hundreds of feet in the air, but the Bit Busters are careful to keep the floors suspended above fenced-off clubhouse property where people aren't allowed to walk. This sort of transfer turned out to be necessary all but twice in the latest official clubhouse iteration.
You might be wondering, which old levels were remodeled for CCLP4? If you read this briefing very carefully, and know your Bit Buster history back to front, you should already know all but one of them upon reading to this point. (And no, "Clubhouse" isn't one of them.) In any case, the CCLP4 staff and I are full of wishes that you'd do well on this search. Let us know what you manage to find!
Reminiscently,
Melinda