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

[chipster1059]

I'm going to bump this.

I don't think CCLP4 should be the last official CC1 set. Several people are still designing new CC1 levels, so CCLP5 will probably become a reality at some point. But I think we should wait a few more years, since CCLP4 has been released less than a year ago.

I think the next step should be an official CC2 set. But I don't know if now is the best time to do this, or if we should wait.

There aren't that many custom CC2 levels around, only about 1000 if H2O's post earlier in this thread is still accurate. Hopefully this will grow now that the Architect's editor is in public beta.

As for the length of a CC2 set, I would say 100 levels. 200 is too long. And I think we would need a better title than CC2LP2 or something like that.

[mmoraleta]

In my opinion if there is in another CC1 set or CC2 set, I hope we see a CCLP5. In other words I am leaning toward another CC1 set vs a CC2 set. Don't get me wrong CC2 is a great long-awaited sequel.

[Ihavenoname248]

At the moment, I would lean very slightly towards another CC1 set, but as nothing really needs to be started for another year or so, that could easily change with CC2 content in that time. There just aren't enough new levels for another CC1 set without it being CCLP4Rejects+a few unsubmitted levels, or enough CC2 levels yet.

As for level count, I think 150 is good for CC2 sets. 100 feels small to me with the wealth of mechanics in CC2, 200 would get very heavy with more complex designs than the original game had. 150 strikes a nice balance- that it's close to the CC1 standard of 149 just speaks to the standard itself being good.

[Flareon350]

I'm also in favor of a CCLP5 happening in the future, though not necessarily before a CC2 set. I've said this many times and I'm sticking to it that CC1 shouldn't be ditched or forgotten about just because CC2 exists. I think that's a pretty stupid mindset to have honestly.

That being said, I also agree it should wait for at least another year or two. I don't think there being not enough newer CC1 levels is much of an issue - it might actually make a lot of members happy to see certain levels make it into CCLP5 that didn't make it to LP4! But maybe that's just me.

150 levels for a CC2 set would be good but I'm not against 200 being the total either. 100 is definitely not enough for the amount of content that can be done in CC2.

[James]

I see no reason why we can't keep producing CC1 sets, however I do think that CCLP4 should be the end of the line for the traditional 149-level CCLPx format. Going forward, I feel like we would be better off producing smaller CC1 packs (maybe 75 levels?), more focused packs (like a "veteran pack" or another MS-only pack) or other kinds of new formats that would still allow us to publish official packs of CC1 levels without taking the focus off CC2 official packs, which should probably be the new standard going forward.

My big thought in saying that is that a bunch of modern CC1 levels can be ported to CC2 (either directly or with minor modifications, and even with the contrasting boot drop rules) and I would rather put the best we have to offer into CC2 packs if we can, as CC2 is the future of Chip's Challenge; a high quality CC2 pack could do a lot to lure people into the community who would otherwise simply play the main pack, say "ehhh, it was okay I guess", and leave to play other games.

[The Architect]

I would tend to agree with James: I would like to see a focus on CC2 packs going forward, with all the great, as-yet unused CC1 levels being ported* to CC2, and combined with great new ideas, some of which wouldn't even be possible in CC1.

(*One of the goals of my editor is to make such porting as quick and painless as possible.)

[Flareon350]

I don't know how I feel about CC2 being the "new standard" for the community. CC1 is still and always will be a part of Chip's Challenge, just as much as CC2 will be. And while porting CC1 levels to CC2 is a nice option to have, I don't think it should be necessary or expected of designers to do, just because CC2 is the focus. I'm sure there are some of us (like me) who wish not to port anything new to CC2, as a means to start over a new leaf in design.

A veteran CC1 pack would be nice, though not many people design truly difficult levels these days due to the somewhat expected factor of solving on the first try... (I know I'm not alone on this either.) Ending the traditional 149 level CC1 sets seems kind of harsh and honestly unnecessary in my opinion, so I can't say I'm on board with that. I also think official MS-only sets aren't needed either as Lynx has become more mainstream since CCLP3, and I feel like a MS-only set would only be targeted to a very specific audience anyway.

[chipster1059]

You all make some valid points that 100 is probably too short for an official CC2 set. I guess 150 or 200 could work, since 149 is a meaningless number in CC2

I have mixed feelings about James' ideas. I don't think it would be really a good idea to make CCLP4 the last 149 official set; CCLP5 might be a good idea in the future. Making a shorter MS-only set could work, since there are several good levels with invalid tiles. However, most of these levels were made years ago, between CCLP2 and CCLP3, and the designers may not be around to submit them. And there are some good Lynx-only levels too.

As for a veteran pack, personally I wouldn't really care for this, but I suppose some players would be interested.

18 hours ago, Ihavenoname248 said:

There just aren't enough new levels for another CC1 set without it being CCLP4Rejects+a few unsubmitted levels

This is a really valid point, I think, which is why I think we shouldn't really work on CCLP5 for now.

As for a CC2 set, I did some calculations. For CCLP4, 3940 levels were submitted. After removing levels that were unsolvable, incompatible, or already in other official sets, there were around 3000 left (just over 75% of the total). Out of these, 1370 made it into voting (35% of the total). And out of these, as wel all know, 149 made it into the final set. That's only 3% of the total submission pool, or 11% of the voting pool. The current number of levels that would be eligible for an official CC2 set is smaller than that of the CCLP4 voting pool, and even then, there is no guarantee that everyone would submit their levels; some of the designers have probably gone inactive

We would need more levels before moving forward with another official set, I think, regardless of whether the next set is for CC1 or CC2.

[H2O]

It's really about quality not quantity

Especially if some minor busts are fixed, there are imo currently a lot more than 200 levels which are good enough to be in a community set, and several people have unreleased cc2 levels, and working on more, so I really don't see any problem regarding this aspect

[jblewis]

I'm inclined to lean toward CC2 on the basis of potential. While it's worth discussing, I don't think it's going to do a lot of good at this point to debate how many "eligible" levels are available for a community pack for either game right now. I can remember back in the late '90s, we barely had any custom levels but proceeded to create CCLP2 anyway around 2000-2001. The pack turned out quite well and inspired so many budding designers to create levels of their own that CCLP3's voting pool dwarfed CCLP2's by quite a few magnitudes. That's what community packs are great for - exploring new ideas and design styles just enough that someone who may have been skittish about their own creativity takes that first step.

Right now, CC2 doesn't have a set like that. The original game was created back in the late '90s, and the editor was limited enough that most of the levels were built with the 10x10 map size. Some of the elements were barely used in the stock game's main campaign, which is a shame. I'd wait a year or two to begin working toward voting for a set, but just from playing some of the levels that have been made, the quality far exceeds what was available for CC1 when CCLP2 was assembled. For anyone who's hesitant to let go of the familiarity of CC1, I'd recommend playing through a set like Joshua Bone's Walls of CC1 and see just how much potential there is to be uncovered in CC2. The sky's the limit if we're willing to invest in it.