CCCreator

Chip's Challenge Creator, commonly known as CCCreator, is a level editor developed by The Architect. It is the only editor that can create both CC1 and CC2 levels, and the only one currently being updated.

History

When Chip's Challenge 2 was released in 2015, a level editor was included. However, this "official" editor faced criticism for being hard to use and lacking several features commonly available for CC1 editors. While Chuck Sommerville released a simple script, dat2c2g, to convert DAT files into CC2 levelsets, several people experienced issues getting it to run. The Architect therefore decided to create his own editor to address these issues; the project was publicly announced on CCZone in November 2016.

In August 2017, private beta testing of CCCreator began, to find bugs before a widespread public beta release; the first public beta release took place on 2 January 2018. In order to make sure people are always using the latest public beta version, previous beta versions are set to expire and become unusable a few months after release, displaying a message instructing the user to update to the latest version. This practice will be discontinued in the future with the first full-feature release, version 1.0.

Version	Release date	Expiration date
0.1.0	2 January 2018	31 December 2018
0.2.0	14 March 2018	31 December 2018
0.3.0	2 April 2018	31 December 2018
0.3.1	18 June 2018	31 December 2018
0.4.0	21 December 2018	1 May 2019

Platform support

CCCreator is written in the Java programming language and distributed in a JAR file. Therefore, it can run on any system that supports Java 8 or later, including Windows, MacOS, Linux and even Haiku.

File formats

CCCreator, by default, saves levelsets in the Chip's Challenge Series (.ccs) file format using the Chip's Challenge Unified Data Model (CCUDM), developed by The Architect to store levelset data in a version-independent way. Such files can store all levelset-related information, including not only the levels, but also CCX and C2G data.

Data can be imported to a CCS file, for example adding CCX data or additional levels from other files. CCS files can then be exported into a variety of other formats, including DAT for Tile World, as well as C2G and C2M for Chip's Challenge 2.

Features

CCCreator includes many features that originated in CCEdit, CCDesign and the CC2 official editor, as well as a few novel features of its own.

CCCreator has several ways to place tiles: draw, pencil (straight line), box (filled rectangle) and path maker (draws a path of ice, force floors, railroad tracks, etc.) Exclusive to CCCreator is a flood fill feature, which fills an entire area with the specified tile.

The tile selection menu separates the tiles by type: basic, obstacles, doors, items, blocks, creatures, miscellaneous, logic, and non-standard. An "all elements" option is also available. A future version will give users the ability to create their own tile palettes.

Placing a tile on the ground or "terrain" layer normally erases everything above it, as in the CC2 official editor. Holding the Ctrl key while clicking will suppress this behavior. To place a tile on the bottom or "buried" layer in the MS ruleset, the Shift key should be used instead.

CCCreator can also display metagraphics, making it easy to see linked teleports and buttons, as well as logic circuits, a time bomb's explosion area, the in-game play area (in both 9x9 and 10x10 sizes), a grey button's control area, and monster paths. These can be disabled individually if the user doesn't want them.

There is an "inspect element" tool, which makes it possible to examine all elements on a single tile, modify each one's properties, and remove some of them without removing the others.

CCCreator also has several menu options to make it easier to add multiple hints in CC2 levels, and perform basic CCX or C2G scripting like adding music or text between levels.

While CCCreator does not yet have the ability to export levels directly to image files, there is a workaround, by selecting the entire level and then copy/pasting it into an image editor.

Missing/upcoming

CCCreator is still under active development, and therefore there are several features not present yet. The Architect is currently working on a way to check a level's ruleset compatibility. Other notably absent features are C2G import (exports work fine) and playtesting capabilities (currently levels must be exported before they can be tested).

External links

• Official website and download
• CCZone thread about CCCreator
• CCDUM documentation on CCZone