David Stolp
David Stolp, often known by his nickname pieguy, is widely regarded as the best player in Chip's Challenge and one of the most influential and revolutionary Chipsters that has existed. He announced his retirement from competitive play on April 2nd, 2014, but has made some occasional reappearances since then.
Levels in official packs
CCLP3
CC scores
His score in CC1, an astounding 5,977,610, was for a time embroiled in a struggle for first place. Andrew Bennett tied him once, but J.B. Lewis, with Andrew's assistance on Blobnet play, gained 2 seconds over David. Then in 2012 after gaining four extra seconds in Lemmings, Spooks, and Amsterdam, he reclaimed the top position. In reply, J.B. Lewis came back over him and gained 1 second over David. Then David gained 5 seconds on Cake Walk to reclaim the top position. For now it seems his top spot is secure. He also has bold on most of the untimed levels.
In CCLP2, David's score of 6,051,140 is the highest total for any player. He holds +9 against anyone else on Checkerboard II, +4 on Cloner's Maze, and +5 on Key Color.
He is also first place on the CCLP3 MS leaderboard with a score of 6,093,980. Here he holds several exclusive records: +2 on Complex, +47 on Grand Prix, and +1 on Bug Arranging.
He has not submitted any scores for CCLP1 or CCLP4 as he announced his retirement just as CCLP1 was released.
Community contributions
- Discovery of several glitches, such as the Twice Step Glitch, Tank Top Glitch and Frankenstein Glitch.
- Many new records, even from levels that seem to be almost impossible to improve on. A score report from David has become a heralded event in the CC community, as there are very few scores he has not yet reached.
- The adaptation of the ice block from CC2 into a patch, called pgchip.
- The technical explanation of slide delay.
- An automated score board to keep track of scores on custom level sets. He also hosts the public tws library on his site.
- Six level sets: pi, pi^2, pi-rejects, computer, minusone, and minustwo. Using levels from these sets, he compiled two others, pieguy.dat and pieguy1.dat, as submissions for CCLP3 and CCLP1. Pieguy and pieguy1 each included a single new level as well.
- Understanding, along with ccexplore, the use of data resetting in Chip's Challenge. The first introduction to such anomalies is the most insane level ever! from pi, and is still regarded as the definitive insane level.
- Staff member for CCLP3, for which nine of his levels were voted: Road Block, Possible, Triple Maze, Mice Are Good for Something, Investment, Color Wheel, Waterslide, and the notoriously more difficult Same Game and Avalanche.
Level design style
- Befitting his nickname, almost every level of his creation contains a connection to the number pi somewhere. The character is often drawn in the level, but also the digits themselves can manifest in several ways, like a required sequence of steps to complete it (as in lesson 3.141592653589793238 and organized chaos).
- Some of the more famous levels utilize advanced coding (including the most insane level ever!), glitches in Chip's Challenge which are often exclusive to one version of the game only, weird anomalies, and other crazily hard challenges. The result of this is often that specific and exact movements are required in specific directions (including the digits of pi, as described earlier) and in a specific order, even if this is not apparent or simply illogical.
- It seems apparent that David not only designed levels with a specific type of solution in mind, but also with records that were difficult to attain. A simple level such as Road Block turns out to be a study in interesting ways to gain time using nails. Many times, correct understanding and use of the glitches present in a level will gain an extra second on the clock.
- David has made several levels exploring the concept of creating a solvable level which takes ages to actually complete. The last level of pi.dat contains 13 rooms of fireballs and varying amounts of ice in them which cause the red buttons to be hit at different times, creating a very long cloning polyrhythm. This sequence will produce fruit only when all 13 glider and fireball clone machines in the southeast area activate in a rhythm where each succeeding monster knocks the next safely east in a domino pattern until the last glider detonates one bomb. On the 53rd occurrence of this cycle, the button in the corner will remove the bomb at the start, allowing Chip to exit. The total time required to beat this level, appropriately named the end of all time, is more than 314 septillion years (another pi nugget). In his following set, pi^2.dat, the almost identically named last level, end of all time, uses ice blocks for an even longer solution time.
- In addition to the two levels mentioned above (which in practical terms are unsolvable), there still are a few levels of his that have not been reportedly solved by anybody else. The most obvious ones are impossible, #37 from pi, and back to the drawing board, #11 from computer.dat, both of which really are unsolvable. Then there are bugs from #8 in pi-rejects.dat (which should not be confused with its later version found at #9 of pi.dat), and the five final levels of minustwo.dat, called E, F, G, H, I, which all share the same layout but with a decreasing number of blocks to help solve the level.
- In addition to getting into the enviable habit of rarely reporting inoptimal scores on levels, from the start of his level making career, David had an aversion to updating any of his released levels. This can be seen from never having updated the first releases of his major sets even though some levels contain minor mistakes. For example, the tank area in Color Wheel from #35 of pi.dat was not quite as he intended it to be, but instead of updating the set, he included the intended version as a new level in pi^2, which was then later updated to the version now found in CCLP3.