Jeffrey Bardon

Jeffrey Bardon first joined the Chip's Challenge community back in 2007, having first played the original levels around 10 years prior. Upon discovering that level editors and custom level sets existed, he quickly began designing his own. At the time, there was no interest in optimization, though this has since changed. Near the end of 2007, Jeffrey took a long hiatus from the game, going back every once a while over the next 6 years, but eventually returning in early 2014, 2 months before the release of CCLP1, unfortunately missing out on submitting levels for the pack.

Jeffrey was one of the CCLP4 staff co-leaders alongside Josh Lee.

Levels in official packs

CCLP3

#	Name
25	Recess

CCLP4

#	Name
1	Molecule
3	Fossilized Snow
4	Oasis
5	Non-Dimensional Layer
21	Glacial Palace
27	Suburban Legend
31	Big Boulder Alley
32	Blended Brussels Sprouts
34	Frozen Waffle
43	Coral Reef
47	Antidisruptive Caves
48	Key Insight
50	Secret Underground Society
51	Ice in a Blender
57	Bisection
59	Blockpick
68	Cold Fusion Reactor
75	Unmitigated Hint Factory Disaster
76	Flow State
78	Aquatic Ruins
89	Diametric Opposition
90	Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
91	How to Retune Your Harp
122	Air Bubble
129	Undefined Fantastic Object
136	Seeing Red
138	Zipper
139	Unravel
144	Paradigm Shift
148	Gravity Well

CCLP5

#	Name
3	Paparazzi
4	Key Free
6	Choice Tools
7	Trading Post
10	Ages Beyond
12	Vault Line
14	High Fidelity Flame
16	Moving Day
21	Slime Sliding
24	Uphill Battle
26	Deephaven
29	Sandshaker
40	Wealth and Corruption
45	Insert Name Here Caverns
49	The Sound of Silence
53	Reproducing
56	Smoke Inhalation
57	Irradiated Radiator
66	Tornado Alley
69	Shady Oasis
74	Dark Hollow
80	Indigo Lagoon
83	Polarity Isle
85	Sokoban Adventure
86	Phantasmal Stalkers
89	Hacking to the Gate
90	Decrepit Crypt
96	Sour Apple Cider
99	Cosmic Express
103	Illicit Logging Facility
108	Brown Note
110	Another Perspective
121	Lockjaw
125	Holiday Spirits
127	Wastelands of Tabora
128	Fahrenheit Frenzy
132	Prism Concerto
136	Molten Crater
141	World Revolution

CC2LP1

#	Name
9	What's a Girl to Do?
12	Spreading Like Wildfire
13	Temporary Housing
14	Getting Off Track
16	A Simple Case of Mistaken Identity
19	Restricted Areas
22	Wire You Doing This
23	Trans-Pachipic Partnership
25	Solitary Alignment
27	Dropping In
31	A Helping Hand
33	Trial by Fire
35	Bowling in the Sewer
37	Haunted Swamp
42	Mellow Yellow, Hello
44	Caught Flatfooted
45	Settlement of Arrakis
56	Asceticism
60	Green Thumb
65	Left Behind Again
71	Hyacinth
76	Three Mile Island
94	Various Hues of Blue
96	Sentinel Beach
99	Delirium
104	Filled Out in Triplicate
111	Ruin Rush
114	Pairing Off
117	Get Your Hands Dirty
127	One Good Turn
168	Aquatos Sewer System
173	Tiny Isle Reshuffled
175	Mobile Cannon Mr. McCallahan
177	The Wrong Direction
179	Oversaturated Contrast
183	Triple Threat
185	Bigger Boulder Alley
196	The Girl Who Was Left Behind

Level designing

Jeffrey's first few sets were small and simple, most notably from this period was 25 levels.dat, which was LP'd by Rockdet. This was one of the factors that re-piqued Jeffrey's interest in Chip's Challenge, alongside James Anderson starting an LP of his next set: Ultimate Chip.dat. This 150 level set is still available on David Stolp's site, though Jeffrey admits many of the levels are lackluster and abuse invalid tiles. Immediately after releasing this set, he began work on what would be "the most epic CC set ever", a 999 level epic Ultimate Chip 2. None of these levels were very good either, and the file was lost to a CCEdit bug.

Around 2010 Jeffrey began work on a true sequel, the real Ultimate Chip 2, and got about halfway to 149 levels before taking a large interest in Touhou and speedrunning: 2 hobbies that had a large impact on both his level design and playstyle. On his return to the community in 2014, he spent the next 2 months finishing the set and released it onto CCZone. In hindsight, it falls into many of the traps of CCLP3 with overly convoluted puzzles and arduous level design.

This was meant to be Jeffrey's final large set, due to a lack of ideas, but the release and subsequent blind race of CCLP1 inspired him, and he began work on what would originally be a 50 level set, Ultimate Chip 3. However, 50 levels were reached much sooner than expected, and as he was not out of ideas, the set expanded into another full 149 level set, slated to be released in October 2014. Jeffrey also has a ruleset-specific set called Ultimate Chip i^e available on pieguy's site, taking the role of the traditional rejects set.

The second half of 2014 saw the creation and release of Ultimate Chip 4. Regarded to be Jeffrey's best set, it focused more on interesting and fun concepts, as well as varied gameplay throughout, resulting in an experience very similar to CCLP1. Many levels in this set drew inspiration from other levels and even other games, mostly from the Playstation 1. In 2015, Jeffrey began work on Ultimate Chip 5, and released the 80 levels it contained when Chip's Challenge 2 was released on Steam. From December 2015 through mid February of 2016, Jeffrey created another 69 levels and merged these into UC5, completely re-ordering the set while doing so.

Throughout the following year, Jeffrey was still chipping away at level designing. These were mostly Create entries, Time Trial levels, and the occasional level based around a single idea that seemed interesting. These levels became Ultimate Chip 6, which released with 60 levels. Then during August 2017 through March 2018, Jeffrey was hard at work overhauling CCLP4 into Walls of CCLP4, his magnum opus and widely regarded as one of the best custom sets to date.

Afterwards, with CCCreator, Jeffrey moved on to creating a CC2 set, called IHNN1 and released at 100 levels.

WoCCLP4 was originally intended as his final CC1 set, but from November 2018 to October 2021 Jeffrey secretly worked with Josh Lee to create a collaborative CC1 set, titled TradingPlaces, where both designers created 75 levels using wall templates from each others sets (Josh using UC6 and 3 each from UC1-5, and Jeffrey using JoshL7 and 1 level each from JoshL1-6, except Flareon Remastered). A trailer for this set can be found here and a download link can be found here.

Jeffrey has said he will continue designing levels as long as he has ideas for them.

Scores

All of the following scores are for the MS ruleset; Jeffrey does not optimize in Lynx nearly as often, though still has on occasion.

Set	Score	Place
CC1	5,977,700	2nd
CCLP1	6,006,070	3rd
CCLP2	6,050,970	3rd
CCLP3	6,072,120	11th
CCLP4	6,111,420	2nd

Jeffrey has relatively few non-CCLP4 records to his name, due to joining optimization so late, but has still managed to find additional seconds on a few levels, such as the first report of 231 Lynx on Mini Pyramid and finding the Lynx-only minor bust in Metal Harbor, extending its record from 775 to 787, and later 790, though the bold currently stands at 792. In MS, he scored the first 236 on Mini Pyramid and 849 on Time Suspension, although the bold time currently stands at 851. He also worked with J.B. Lewis on Mediterranean, extending its record from 489 all the way to 498, further to 504, and then a final time to 506 on his own, as well as improving the Cityblock bold by a single second, from 549 to 550.

Additionally, on returning he set a goal to outscore J.B. Lewis on his first set, Ultimate Chip, and optimized it over the course of a month. He currently stands 367 seconds ahead with 147/150 bolds, and says the experience has helped with block pushing techniques and familiarity with Teeth and Blob monsters.

Through the end of 2018, Jeffrey invested a significant amount of time into cleaning up his CC1, CCLP1 and CCLP4 scores, tying James Anderson for 3rd with Skelzie in early 2019, attaining the All Known Bolds score on CCLP1 alongside a new record on Flame War in November 2018, and attaining the All Known Bolds score on CCLP4 on December 24, 2018 with improvements to Repugnant Nonsense and Duplex, though this mark has since been surpassed.

External links

1. 25 Levels
2. Ultimate Chip
3. Ultimate Chip 2
4. Ultimate Chip 3 Trailer
5. Ultimate Chip 3
6. Ultimate Chip 4 Trailer
7. Ultimate Chip 4
8. Ultimate Chip 5
9. Ultimate Chip 6
10. Walls of CCLP4
11. Ultimate Chip i^e
12. Rockdet's LP of 25 levels.dat
13. Jeffrey's LP of Ultimate Chip.dat