April 2013 Time Trial - Item Fetchers

[jblewis]

Can't wait to see the results! Though I just realized down at the office that I may have missed something potentially huge on the second level. Will test out my theory when I get home, though.

[M11k4]

Ok, the results. Usually by this time I have shared some thoughts on the making of the levels, but last month was a bit busier than normal so I never got around to that. That means you'll get a bit of a longer explanation of the levels as well as the results.



So the March time trial levels were a bit tougher to solve than I had planned. As a reaction to this, my thought was to make easier levels to solve for April, but ones that still were hard to optimize. Upon releasing the levels, the immediate feedback was that they were too complex to optimize, which was a fair thing to say considering that much simpler levels can also be tough to work on. So I reworked the two tougher levels (as I'm sure everyone reading this thread already knows). The other thing I realized from looking at the March levels (and other older ones) that the levels were very disconnected from each other. So this time I wanted to keep a small theme running through the levels. To emphasize that there was a theme like this, I expanded the number of levels from two to three.



Though I was hoping all these things might attract more entrants to the competition, I received fewer submissions than for any other competition so far this year. Perhaps having levels that look hard to optimize scare away more players than I thought. Of course April is also often a busy month for most, so it's always understandable that real life stuff can push things like this to the sidelines. I did hear from at least Michael, Jupey95 and Hornlitz, that they solved some of the levels, but never received any submissions, which is a pity since this month I stated that you can place in the competition even by solving a single levels, and you can always send in improvements if you work on them more later. Perhaps releasing the CCLP1 white/black-lists was a ploy from JB to distract everyone else and he might be the only entrant and win by default. Unfortunately, that plan did not work quite so simply, as pieguy also found the time to crunch out some routes!



So the first level was meant as a simple introduction to the concept of a fetching puzzle. There is footwear in the middle of the level that are surrounded by rooms, each with a chip guarded by elements. Before entering a room, Chip must pick up the right combination of footwear which he will then lose as he exits the room. Other factors in the level include pop-ups that are in the way after you have used them, and toggle walls that lose you time each time you toggle them. My own time for this level upon release was 79, while Hornlitz claimed to have reached 80 when I say him in the chat, and our two golden boys both submitted times of 83. So congratulations to both of you for not getting beaten by the other on this warm-up level! (And that's the only time I can say that for this month's levels, as the scores for the other two levels are not equal.)



For the second level I wanted to expand the fetching theme in a way that didn't use pop-up walls, and instead used keys to simulate the effect of not being able to gather all the items in one go. The result is a level where the 'reward area' to gather chips is large and you can get more than one at a time, but once you go back to get more keys in the 'fetching area', you lose your footwear, as opposed to always losing your footwear when picking up a single chip. As a side result of using force floors to deny re-entry into a room, this level has more boosting possibilities than any other that I have made for a time trial. I allowed for a single press of the toggle button in the reward area, as well as an exchange of a key to another (down by the teleport), as I found that without these tricks the level felt more compartmentalized than I wanted. My own efforts at optimizing this level were concentrated on lowering the number of trips needed between the two large areas, and I scored 188 by only using three trips, while pieguy used four trips to score 191 and JB used four trips to score 192. Wait, what?! Did I write that correctly? Yes, pieguy lost out to JB by one second on this level. That means JB is in good shape to win overall this time. Let's look at the last level and see if pieguy can pull off a miracle victory, shall we?



I have a confession to make. I actually built this third level before creating the second one. I'm sorry for having switched the order in the set. Oh wait, I'm just receiving word that this doesn't matter and I had every right to use them in any order I wanted. Never mind then, forget I said anything.



The third level feels somewhat like just a more complicated version of the first one, but there are some qualitative differences. Each of the eight rooms actually has two ways of passing through, meaning there are two combinations of items that allow Chip to reach the chip. The toggle and tank buttons are used in the level in a way that is similar to the logic of using the footwear, except that you can "hold on to a button press" while traversing a room without that button. As the original version of this level required three types of items to be fetched between each room, and the simplified version only one or two, I removed some of the available footwear and added the need to have all four to reach the exit. Since now the logic of going through the rooms was slightly less complicated, a new and quite large aspect of optimizing the level was how to get all the boots at the end. My own effort had Chip visiting three corner stashes and scored 187. Of course pieguy found a quicker way by taking a shortcut through the center at the end, scoring an incredible 189! Very well done! I hope I'm not forgetting anything. Oh yes, JB also managed to solve the level. His solution also went through the center at the end, but it did not score the same as pieguy. He scored more! An astounding five seconds more! Yes, by only visiting two corners at the end, JB found a route that scored 194, awarding him the best time on each of the three levels, and the uncontested win for this time trial! Congratulations! You also take control of the Chip Cup leader board with this wonderful effort. Well done, well earned, and well played. You the man!



...or at least you are until the end of the next competition, which I will announce soon, and we can all live through all of this again! I'll also post some of these routes to Youtube as soon as I am able. Have a good day everyone, and don't let the gliders get you!



-Miika

[James]

<pieguy getting 2nd place in a TT>

April Fools was last month...

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Congrats J.B.!

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Let's see if I can bump PG down to 3rd place this month B)

[M11k4]

James, your optimism is admirable. Not that you couldn't beat pieguy given the right circumstances, but that you would actually manage to enter one of these competitions

I uploaded the winning routes. Here's the first and you can find the other two posted as video responses:

[pieguy]

I...lost? I suppose it had to happen eventually, and there's no one better to lose to. Kudos, J.B!