Motekopasznyaku's CC2 Set Feedback Thread

[Motekopasznyaku]

http://cczone.invisionzone.com/index.php?/files/file/490-motekopasznyaku/

Hi, this is my first real compilation of Chips Challenge levels. It's meant to hold a variety of different types of levels, and I do hope that they can make for a fun experience to play. In any case, please feel free to post any comments/questions/criticisms about the set here.

A note, initially the download included a slightly incomplete version of stage 10. It should be fixed now, sorry about that.

[quiznos00]

I haven't solved all the levels, but I've taken a look at all of them, and I am very impressed with this set's ambition. Keep up the good work!

[Joshua Bone]

I've beat about half of these levels. This set is insanely difficult, but very well constructed and obviously took many hours of creative effort. I agree with quiznos00 about the admirable ambition of the set. Levels 11-16 are simply beyond my reach for the time being. They remind me of a couple of 40x40 levels by Bill Darrah (author of PAIN, CAKEWALK, DOUBLEMAZE among others) that were submitted for inclusion in the official CC2 set. They were clearly the work of a genius, but would outwear the patience of any but the most dedicated players. (Some of the very last CCLP3 levels fall into this category as well). So, my single biggest bit of feedback is to find a way to scale back the difficulty while retaining the ingenuity of concepts. Definitely thanks for uploading, I had fun with this set.

(The levels I beat are rated in four categories on a scale of 1 to 5. C = how much I like the concept, D = how difficult it was to figure out the puzzle element, E = how difficult it was to execute the solution (action), F = how much fun I had in the process. Levels I did not beat remain unrated.)


01 MAGMA BOX
Awesome monster dodger. I thought it was really tough when I was focused on the fireballs individually, but much easier when I thought of it as a moving box to dodge. Great job with the buttons & swivel doors. CDEF 5234

02 BLOB BLOCK
Such a clever idea!! Once I figured out what was required it was pretty easy. CDEF 5324

03 KEY DRAWER
I always get nervous when I see a map full of keys. This was easier than I was afraid it would be. I was a little upset when I got to the chip socket the first time and had too many keys, but if I’d been paying attention I would have noticed earlier. Definitely a decent level although I can’t say I really had a strategy. CDEF 3323

04 FRIENDS
Not bad for an UNDERGROUND type level. Aesthetics are nice, and having to plan a route for Melinda is pretty cool too. CDEF 3243

05 FILLER
Interesting idea for sure. I got frustrated and didn’t beat it. I won’t rate it but I’d be interested to know if there’s a strategy to it.

06 TRIPLE LOCKED

Didn't beat, but it seems very accessible and fair. I love the idea and plan to come back to it with pencil and paper to figure out a working plan.

07 COMPACT
It certainly is! And a really great yellow teleport puzzle in its own right. Really enjoyed figuring this out. (SPOILER) I’d like to come back to this one and find a way to press the blue button with the glider; as it is I used the block to bridge to the button. CDEF 4425

08 BLINDNESS
What a great, creative work of engineering! This must have taken a while to design. It was such a cool moment when I realized what was going on. Only downside: after looking in the editor I really don’t think the blue keys or the red button are good ideas. The concept stands on its own in my opinion, no reason to add confusing sound effects. CDEF 5325

09 STICKY KEYS
Oh man, I’m gonna have to pass on this one for now. Key mazes stress me out

10 ARTS, CHARTS, CHARTS
Really fun with lots of variety. I love the choose-your-own-adventure theme where you can skip rooms that are too difficult or that take too long. CDEF 4234

11 BLOB BLOCK II
Ahh! Rage quit on this one. It’s a little too much for me.

12 LINEAR ACCESS
I couldn’t even start this level. I can get the blue key every 10th try or so but I can’t get past the flamethrower/toggle wall on the left.

13 PORCUPINE
Again, can’t even get a start on this. Reminds me of Flip Flop but 10x as difficult. Might be fun to play with armor but just painfully frustrating as is.

14 MEMORY MACHINE
So, clearly a colossal feat of engineering. The concept is incredible, but I think the level is far, far too difficult in its current state. Problem #1 is that it’s not always clear in advance which tools you need to bring past each thief. Problem #2 is that many of the item puzzles require split second timing, which is a tough sell on a level this long. Problem #3 is that the first room is too big in my opinion. It's frustrating to have to restart the level umpteen times and do all that running around/dropping tools on every play.

15 LAYERED DISPLACEMENT
Another bit of engineering artwork that seems phenomenally difficult to figure out. I suppose if you drew a full-size map. I think this would be an excellent, difficult level to play if you could see the whole map. With the narrow viewing window of CC2 I don't think it's very playable though.

16 TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH
Completely cryptic. Not even an idea on where to begin. Even with the editor open and reading all the hints I don’t know how to decode this.

[Motekopasznyaku]

Thank you very much Joshua, I really appreciate all of your feedback here! And while I'm very glad to see that several of the levels were quite enjoyable to you, I find your criticisms very important as well. I'll try to respond to each of those for now --


05 FILLER
Sorry to hear that you found this frustrating, I thought it was pretty fun myself to be honest. Admittedly I don't exactly have too much of a strategy for this other than hanging around the bottom-right exit and just kind of moving randomly at first to fill the place up, and then when it starts getting crowded I'd start to be a bit more careful about my steps, while always moving down any time there are any open spaces directly below the cloner. Though I'll also admit that I haven't managed to get both bonuses in it yet, but I figure it ought to be somewhat possible, just rather tricky.

07 COMPACT
Bridging to the button was actually my original intended solution, but using the glider to hit it instead is indeed a possible alternate solution!

08 BLINDNESS
Fair enough! I really liked the idea of keeping the players on their toes outside of what was visible, especially with the Red button psyche out, but perhaps I've been watching too many I Wanna Be The Guy fangames lately. Still, I will consider either moving the red button to a place that's easier for "checking" if a player's still alive, or simply removing it completely along with the rest of those extra distractions.

11 BLOB BLOCK II
Oh no! Yeah, the perfection bonus here is definitely very difficult to snag, but I hoped it wouldn't be too difficult to multitask between the two activities enough to be left with a reasonable amount of blobs in the end area. Perhaps it would help if I were to add some gravel down there & make it a Chip level

12 LINEAR ACCESS
Oh dear, I'm very sorry to hear that just the starting area gave you so much trouble here! I had actually figured out a strategy that worked consistently well for me, keeping the teeth 2 tiles from the buttons before making a run for the goal when the ball was around 2-3 spaces from it's button, but I guess that wasn't as obvious or usable as I had thought. Hmm, I definitely want to try to figure out a way to make this level more easily playable, though I'm not terribly sure what to do with making just the beginning seem easier or so.

13 PORCUPINE
Hm...Again I did have a bit of fun in my testing of this level when originally playing around trying to figure out how to get it to work, but I think that may have involved a huge creator-bias in playing my own level. I definitely see how this can be frustrating.
Maybe if I were to deal with the length a bit it could help seem less intimidating at least, as I did like the kind of trick involved with finishing the first third or so of the level, which I think could probably work well enough as a stand alone idea without the rest of the level.

14 MEMORY MACHINE
Regarding your three points...
#1) That's what that space in the canopy-filled bottom center of the Chip-collecting area was for, to show you which item you need to grab next! If you mean actually finding the proper path for each item after you have it though, I could maybe try placing the items on the walls next to the doors, but that might not exactly work as well on the corners that are next to two doors at a time.
#2) Fair point, I'm guessing you're mostly referring to the Force-Floor & Ice areas. I tried making them seem a bit more doable than I originally had them actually, as well as slightly skewing the RNG to have those appear earlier, but now that I have a better idea of what kind of difficulty I should go for, I'll look into making them better to play, and maybe looking more into the Dirt, Ghost, and Speed-Boots areas as well with that in mind.
#3) Also a good point - Originally the idea for the level involved the paths to each canopy to be long so as to serve as a punishment for any time you remember incorrectly, but that's probably an idea more worth scrapping. I'll definitely try figuring out a smaller layout for easier navigating when dropping tools. (Believe it or not, it used to be even worse with thin walls all around! I'm glad I got rid of those at least, but just that probably wasn't enough)

15 LAYERED DISPLACEMENT
Now here's where I think I'm going to have to disagree -- I don't particularly think that the small view would be what hurts this level, but rather perhaps the concept is too difficult to figure out.
The idea behind this level is that all four rooms essentially have identical layouts, with the only real difference is that Chip is replaced with Mirror Chips in the two adjacent rooms, and no one in the room diagonally away. I like to think of the rooms more like layers as the title might imply, as each of the buttons are wired so that when any one of them is pushed, it powers a circuit linked to each of the other buttons at that position in the other 3 rooms. To open the doors to the exit, you need to have the 8 main button circuits powered, which requires each of the blocks from each layer. However, the 9th button circuit (the button in the lower right corner of each room/layer), powers the doors to the other rooms/layers. I could try figuring out how to explain that better in a hint for the level, as I really love the concept here and wouldn't want to need to change things too much.

16 TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH
...Yeah, this is meant to be a very puzzle focused level for the big puzzle fans, but I might've gone a bit overboard with all the cryptic puzzles here. Perhaps things could seem more reasonable if I were to explain how the first one works to get things started - The first room on the left is solved with the clue centered in front of the entrance to the hint room on the right -- The hint shows the same letters from the room on the right, except the trapped tiles you don't want to touch are replaced with an X (An X will always represent death here). Meanwhile the letters you do want to step on are shown at the bottom, with the arrow showing the order to step on those three tiles. Many of the other puzzles were set up similarly in mind, where the idea is figuring out which tiles are trapped in which rooms, and also figuring out if there's also a series of tiles you need to step in order. I was kind of meaning for the first puzzle to serve as a kind of introduction on what's to be expected in the level anyway, so I could try finding a way to explicitly explain the point of it without diverging too far from the concept I had in mind, assuming that would be enough to give players a push in the right direction.


...Phew! This post wound up being quite a bit longer than I had planned, sorry about that! Thanks again for all the feedback Joshua, you've given me a lot to think about here; I'll try working on improving these levels to fix the issues you've pointed out soon!

[mobius]

Very nice set; a lot of inspiring ideas here!

MAGMA BOX: very nice, it's a dodging level with a lot of interest, quite unique. Great design too.

Blob Block: Amazing level! awesome concept and design and I love the bonus challenge. So far, I've found making bonus challenges in my own levels difficult to think up, this is a perfect example of a good one.

Blindess: An amazing concept! However; I must agree with Joshua Bone ; that red button is mean, because it tricks the player in thinking the mimic died and they might restart immediately, and the blue keys seem useless imo. Also I think the level could be reduced in size quite a bit and still be difficult but fun. I like these type of levels a lot.

Until now, I never thought of a use for the "hide logic" option!


Sticky Keys: Although I like the concept it's visually very hard on the eyes imo. This is a pretty biased opinion. It almost reminds me of an old custom level by someone called "Bad for the eyes" which was walkers on top of theifs in Microsoft graphics; not a very good level [sorry to whoever made that one] Perhaps a similar concept could be made but with a different set of items or somehow so the contrast between the walls is easier to see/nicer to look at.

Arts, Charts
This was a good one. I particularly liked the red teleporter room. The time limit adds a challenge to it; otherwise it wouldn't be as interesting.

blob Block 2 is a neat idea but the level of mental multitasking required here is I think insane! But that just might be me; I don't have any suggestions to offer I'm sorry.

LINEAR ACCESS seems like a very fun level but I didn't get time to play this one yet.

in Memory machine: while I have not really attempted this level at all yet; a minor thing about appearances;

are all of those no-eyeball signs really necessary? couldn't you just have them around the borders of the rooms they are needed so you can't enter with them? I'm only saying that because with so many it's imo sort of an eye-sore [no pun intended]

Now I see that [well I'm guessing] the purpose of all the no signs are to prevent you from dropping items there.