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Josh Lee

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A mosaic level of Josh's favorite Pokémon, Flareon, in Tile World graphics

Josh Lee, also known by his CC alias Flareon350, is a well known Chipster who is often noted for his consistent level design and strong liking of the Pokémon franchise, as his main avatar is his favorite Pokémon, Flareon, which Josh created himself using CCEdit.

Josh was one of two co-leaders of the CCLP4 staff and is currently the head of the CCLP5 staff.

Levels in official packs

CCLP1

# Name
38 Heat Conductor
44 Frozen Labyrinth
46 Sapphire Cavern
50 The Grass Is Greener on the Other Side
62 Design Swap
65 Squared in a Circle
68 Flames and Ashes
83 Ruined World
88 Chip Block Galaxy
89 Chip Grove City
96 Going Underground
115 California

CCLP4

# Name
8 The Fourth Dimension
10 Stuck in Emerald
11 Keyboard Malfunction
19 Conservation of Keys
20 It's No Skin Off My Teeth
23 Western Standards of Living
24 It's Easy Being Green
26 Shrub
28 Zephyr Heights
29 Flipper Departments
37 Tropical Hibiscus
38 Detonation Station
39 In the Walls of Gravel Castle
41 Ghetto Piranha
56 Fireworks Factory
58 Ruinous Plaza
65 Duplex
69 Ball in an Awkward Place
73 Sealed Doors in the Spacecraft
77 Brick Block Facility
83 Frozen Over
85 Nectar Meadow
92 Fire Is My Enemy
93 Bombs Are a Beautiful Thing
95 Ravaged
98 Clay Tunnel
101 Condo Management
103 Malachite
105 Living Things
112 Triple Mint Slurpee
117 Greenian Motion
119 Strandquist
123 Life Is Not a Puzzle
125 Beautiful Struggle
141 World of a Thousand Flames
145 Hacked Save File
149 Mental Marvel Monastery

CC2LP1

# Name
8 Brigand Land
26 My Antisocial Friend
30 The Electric Company
47 Lowlife
57 Poison Backyard
72 Rage Rooms
73 Foiled Again
75 Excavation Alley
79 Marine Science Museum
80 Forest Hub
88 Highlighter
92 Cosmic Dump
98 Gentlemen's Club
101 Ectoplasm
113 Casper
122 Pushing Pull Doors
130 Northlands
133 Boiled in Blood
136 Eastbound
145 Lady in the Water
151 No Swap Zone
163 Boot Warehouse
164 Deadline Extension
178 Tank of Justice
189 Liquid Defense

History

Josh discovered Chip's Challenge on a Windows 95 computer around mid-2000 at the age of 8. He played the original game, but didn't complete every level. Levels he skipped included the majority of the harder ones, such as Totally Unfair, Blobdance, Doublemaze, and Force Field. He eventually went back to complete these levels in time.

After playing the game, Josh created some 700+ levels on pieces of paper, since at the time that computer couldn't be used for internet access. Eventually sometime in the early 2000s, Josh found out about the existence of ChipEdit using a different computer and he began to design many different types of levels. Unfortunately, he could not test them because Chip's Challenge couldn't be played on that computer.

He later heard about Chip's Challenge Level Pack 2; however, like with the original game and the lack of being able to download it, he could not play it at the time. He instead watched many of the AVI solutions available for its levels, which served as inspirations for his first level designs.

Level sets

Josh has created a vast variety of CC1 level sets, ranging in all areas of difficulty. His most notable sets are:

  • JoshL1 - designed around 2009, consists of 120 levels
  • JoshL2 - designed between 2011-2012
  • JoshL3 - designed between 2012-2013
  • JoshL4 - designed in 2013
  • JoshL5 - designed between 2014-2015
  • JoshL6 - designed between 2015-2016
  • JoshL7 - designed within 2017
  • Walls of CCLP3 - designed in 2018
  • Trading Places (collaborated with Jeffrey Bardon) - designed from 2019-2021

He has also created three "best of" sets titled Josh's Chip's Challenge Level Pack (JCCLP), which features his best levels across his sets based off the era they were made. A rejects set going along with it titled JCCLPRejects also exists which showcases levels that were either rejected from a working set at any given point or made in a non-serious manner.

In addition, Josh has also compiled a best of best of set, titled JoshL0, that consists of 200 levels with levels across the three JCCLP sets.

  • JCCLP1 - uses levels from JoshL1, JoshL2, and JoshL3
  • JCCLP2 - uses levels from JoshL4, JoshL5, and an older version of JoshL6
  • JCCLP3 - uses levels from a newer version of JoshL6, JoshL7, Walls of CCLP3, and Trading Places

Currently, he has at least two new level sets in slow progress; Walls of CC1 (collaborated with J.B. Lewis and VT) and JoshL8.


For CC2, he has created three level sets under a different name to remain distinct from his JoshL sets; Flareon1, Flareon2, and FlareonRejects


He also created a few "meme" level sets, including:

  • CC1 Blobs Edition with replacing every monster in the original game with a blob
  • Micro Chips and Micro CCLP2, shrinking down the size of the original levels from each set to be as small and faithful as possible
  • A Few Key Themed Levels, which consists of levels specifically focused on or around keys that he has created

Level design and inspiration

Josh admits his early levels seen in JoshL1 were mostly ripoffs of existing levels in CC1 and were very lackluster. While he states he is embarrassed of his levels showcased in those sets, he is not ashamed of it, as it was just a step in his career of level design. While constructing JoshL2, despite showing improvements and actual originally in that set, there are still some lackluster levels. This is because he had no real goal with the set, other than to be Lynx-compatible. Josh considers JoshL3 to be a mistake, due to the major updates with level amount and inconsistencies it holds. He originally wanted to focus on more difficult levels but because of the vast amount of updates it has had in the past, he feels he failed to meet this goal. He states that JoshL3 is suppose to be "that lame sequel", though it does hold a few gem levels, including some that made it into CCLP1.

Josh didn't get his real inspiration until JoshL4, where he showed a real consistency in level design. Most of his inspiration stemmed from playing Tyler Sontag's levels in the custom set, TS0. He decided to focus more on level difficulty in JoshL4, since he failed to do so with JoshL3. This ultimately makes this set fall under some of the traps CCLP3 had unfortunately. Because this set was let's played by J.B. Lewis, he received feedback on majority of the levels, as well as the set itself.

While the feedback was positive, it made him realize his strive to make more friendly levels, which lead to JoshL5. The goal of this set was to show originality, as well as some interesting concepts and have fun to play levels that aren't nearly as hard as the ones from the previous set. It was once again let's played by J.B. Lewis, receiving great feedback.

JoshL6 started out as more of a test to see if Josh had more ideas or not. He decided to work on a set that focused more on aesthetics - something that JoshL5 had but didn't entirely focus on. This set also took a different take in design, showcasing monsters on top of various different tiles, something Josh has always admired. This set features levels containing more mazes and even more unseen concepts. It also has very little amounts of sokoban puzzles, something he admits JoshL5 had too much of. JoshL6 is also notable to using wall patterns from other levels, particularly from CCLP1 levels. This is due to a project attempt that never saw the light of day and because he didn't want to reject the levels built for said project, he placed them into JoshL6 in a later update.

Between Flareon1 and JoshL7, Josh attempted a project titled Walls of CCLP1, a set that would have had new levels built within the wall configurations of CCLP1. This choice was inspired by Joshua Bone's CC2 set Walls of CC1. Unfortunately, this set was abandoned about 20 levels in most for reasons such as lack of ideas and the motivation to do such a project just wasn't had at the time. The levels that were made here were later placed in JoshL6.

Following this failed project, Josh made some levels for a CCZone create competition, as well as a few other levels, which unintentionally started JoshL7. It was decided to pursue with the project and continue to build for it, despite the interest in CC2 designing at the time. With this set, Josh focused less on aesthetics and more on the levels themselves, making them more involved or showcase a concept that was underrepresented.

Walls of CCLP3, in some spirits, can be portrayed as JoshL7 part 2, since its construction started only a month after JoshL7 was complete. However, this set was more a test to see if Josh was able to pull the idea off, as he had attempted it with CCLP1 two years prior. This set of levels features further level concepts as well as experiments with tile combinations, particularly with blobs and other monsters. This set also features original sokobans and block puzzles, albeit some are inspired by other levels. This, JoshL7, and the new JoshL6 are Josh's personal favorite sets of his.

Later on, him and another avid level designer Jeffrey Bardon collaborated on a level set called TradingPlaces in which each designer built entirely new levels out of each other's wall templates from their respective sets, Ultimate Chip 6 and JoshL7. Some additional levels from past sets of one another were included as well for the sake of balancing out the level count total at 150.

Shortly after, interest was expressed to do another collaborative set alongside J.B. Lewis and VT to build Walls of CC1 with CC1 content. Currently this set is in progress and has over 100 levels in total.

Flareon level

This particular level was created at the end of the JoshL3 era, and thus has become a signature level to Josh, as it is his favorite Pokémon. Flareon is the only level to be recurring throughout Josh's level sets. It is usually the last level of every JoshL set, however, there are a few exceptions; JoshL, JCCLP, JCCLP2, and Walls of CCLP3 are the only sets to not have this level, as it doesn't fit into the context of Walls of CCLP3 and JoshL, and JCCLP2 is meant to focus on the levels themselves. This level was also reformatted in JoshL4, having more gameplay involved than the one's in JoshL1, 2 ,3 and JCCLP. It was again remastered for JoshL6, removing a few busts and adding more chips compared to the JoshL4 version, however, there are still extra items. For JoshL7, this level was once again updated to remove all extra content, and the blue wall mazes were also changed to be made less trivial compared to previous versions. Its time limit was also increased to 350 to match with Josh's CC username.

All four versions of this level can be found here:

Let's Plays

On August 28th, 2011, Josh started his first CC let's play, being CCLP2 due to its unpopularity and for the sole fact he had never played the set, but watched many of the AVI solutions for a great number the levels. His final score for CCLP2 after completion was 5,941,970, though he has since improved greatly on this score. After finally finishing the set, Josh expanded his Let's Play style by putting more effort into the editing process of his videos, as well creating Let's Plays for a larger number of custom level sets and also acquiring a registered version of HyperCam 3.

Custom sets he has successfully let's played include BHLS1 and BigOto Returns. He attempted to let's play Rock-Beta, TS0, and CCLP3, however, it all ended midway due to the computer being used dying out on him because of a fault in the battery. While the one of TS0 was just underway, the let's plays of Rock-Beta and CCLP3 were nearly completed, being at level 38/50 of Rock-Beta and at level 130 of CCLP3. Since then, Josh has gone through CCLP3 once again, this time in the Lynx ruleset. He has hidden his older run through the set permanently.

He later came back and began let's plays on another custom set titled lookatthis.dat, which would later be renamed to 60 Minutes, as well as CCLP1 in Lynx. Ultimately, Josh lost interest in playing lookatthis.dat due to its incredibly difficult levels toward the end of that set. His CCLP1 LP abruptly ended 137 levels in due to recording errors, as well as a loss of interest in let's playing in general.

Despite this, Josh came back to finish his CCLP1 Lynx LP over a year later and successfully completed it, making him the second to LP CCLP1 in the Lynx ruleset, but the first one to have an LP that featured commentary. His final score was 5,945,920 [1] and he does not plan on improving it.

Shortly after completing the CCLP1 Lynx let's play, Josh started LPing Ultimate Chip 5 by Jeffrey Bardon. This LP went on a steady pace and finished at 36 episodes total. Alongside this let's play was Chip's Challenge 2 custom set TSAlpha by Tyler Sontag. This was the first custom CC2 set to be let's played by any one person; however, due to this set being under construction for an extended period of time, it was not a complete LP at the time. Josh would not finish the LP until 2019, when the set was fully released at 40 levels; instead of permanently hiding his old run like he did with his CCLP3 MS videos, however, he deleted the old LP permanently in place of the new one.

After Ultimate Chip 5, Josh went on to LP a set known as Not_CCLP4, an April Fool's joke created by the CCLP4 staff claiming to be CCLP4. This set contains some of the most frustrating, obnoxious levels created by the members of the CCLP4 staff over the course of their perspective level designing careers, thereby making the set intentionally bad. Despite this, it was still LP'ed and was close to fully completed, with 146 out of the 149 levels solved. The 3 unsolved ones consisted of levels that would have taken too long to solve and were not LP friendly at all.

Over the course of the next year, he played through ZK-Adventure, a 350-level set created by Zane Kuecks specifically for Josh to LP that combines Zane's levels from his ZK sets. He also played through Walls of CCLP4 by Jeffrey Bardon and Walls of CCLP1 by J.B Lewis. There was an attempt to let's play CC2LP1 but was abruptly ended and has shown no sign of continuing or restarting.

Scores

While Josh doesn't particularly optimize, he does hold a few records to his name. He was the first to score the official MS bold times for Generic Ice Level [2] and Rhombus,[3] as well as confirming the bold time on Blockade.[4] He has also set and confirmed several bolds in CCLP4.

Despite not being much of an optimizer, his scores are relatively good, placing him at 5th place on the overall scoreboards.[5]

Set Score Place
CC1 5,925,160 85th
CCLP1 6,000,050 8th
CCLP2 6,045,000 14th
CCLP3 6,053,080 11th
CCLP4 6,075,890 6th

Trivia

  • Josh served as the co-leader of the CCLP4 staff alongside Jeffrey Bardon.
  • In his recent level sets, he usually names his levels after specific locations in other video games of his liking or they are generated off a website.
  • Most of Josh's inspiration in level design is from the music he listens to, which is normally OSTs from video games, such as ones from various Pokémon titles.

External links

CC1 sets

CC2 sets

JCCLP series

Let's Plays of Josh's sets

References

  1. ↑ The final episode of Josh's CCLP1 Lynx LP
  2. ↑ The scoreboard for Generic Ice Level in the MS ruleset
  3. ↑ The scoreboard for Rhombus in the MS ruleset
  4. ↑ The scoreboard for Blockade in the MS ruleset
  5. ↑ The overall scoreboards for all official sets
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