Josh Lee

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.

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

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

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 been making custom level sets since as early as 2004. His first goal in level design was to create a set of 210 levels. He made up to 124 levels until the computer being used at the time crashed and eventually the motherboard wiped everything clean, thus deleting the set entirely before ever being publicly released. Because of this incident, Josh refused to redesign every level, since he did not remember any of the ones he made. This ultimately led to a long hiatus from the game.

After hearing of CCLP3 submissions, he once again started the goal in 2009 and released his first level set, JoshL, which consisted of 202 levels, most of which contained invalid tiles and sequels to numerous CC1 levels. Because of this, none of his levels made it into CCLP3; however, one level, Ruined World, came close to being included in the set, which eventually made its way into CCLP1. In 2012, Josh went back to this set and heavily modified it to be Lynx compatible by removing 82 levels and editing some to remove invalid tiles, and renamed it to JoshL1. Josh, however, says the set is still tedious and not recommended to play. He did not officially join the Chip's Challenge community until sometime in 2012, where he would eventually be noticed.

Throughout 2010, he took a break from CC and focused on various other games. After seeing its release and playing CCLP3, Josh returned to the world of CC in 2011 and began to work on another level set, being entirely Lynx compatible from the start, under the title JoshL2. Consisting of 150 levels, this set showed a lot of improvement since his first set. After numerous level arranging and replacing updates, the set was officially done in 2012. Trevor Hedges made a Let's Play of this set throughout 2011 and 2012, with 55 episodes in total and the last 13 featuring Josh as a co-host via Skype chat.

After finishing JoshL2, Josh felt motivated enough to work on another set of levels, which would be called JoshL3. This set's goal was to hold levels of higher difficulty which JoshL2 lacked; however, Josh could not seem to accomplish this goal. Originally JoshL3 was set at 80 levels, however, because of the failed construction of another level set, it was then merged to a 149 level set. This became an issue to some community members and to Josh himself, so 49 levels were removed; thus, JoshL3 was officially complete at 100 levels.

At the time CCLP1 was announced and level submissions were opened, Josh began work on another set of levels with CCLP1 in mind. First releasing in April 2012, though not finalized until May 2013, he titled this new pack JCCLP (Josh's Chip's Challenge Level Pack), which contained the best levels of Josh's creation throughout his previous 3 sets. 19 levels were taken from JoshL1, 35 from JoshL2, and 30 from JoshL3. Josh also created 65 brand new levels to keep the set original, which would make JCCLP a 149 level set. While only 125 levels from this set were eligible for consideration, 12 levels from this set got into CCLP1.

Following JCCLP's release, Josh decided to release his rejects set, appropriately titled "JCCLPRejects". This set consists of levels that were rejected from JCCLP or any of the JoshL sets, including the 49 levels that were rejected from JoshL3, as well as levels that showcase a potential level concept or an attempt at making a level that Josh did not consider good enough to be featured in one of his main sets. It also holds some modifications to existing levels or levels based around a running or inside joke. This set currently holds 220 levels and can be found on David Stolp's site.

Because of the confusion with JoshL3 and how JCCLP became a huge success in his level designing career, Josh began to work on his "remake" of what JoshL3 was supposed to fulfill, being levels of higher difficulty. This then became JoshL4, which holds 80 levels; 25 of said levels are also from the 65 new levels in JCCLP, due to high demand. Unlike his other sets, JoshL4 is the most difficult of any set of Josh's creations, although it fortunately doesn't nearly match up to the hardest levels in CCLP3. This set only went through 32 updates, 3 of which were level replacements. J.B. Lewis made a Let's Play of this level set in via YouTube, giving review of some levels and criticizing others for how difficult they are.

Because of this criticism, Josh felt it was right to work on a new level set with the same mindset he had back in JoshL2's creation. Consisting of levels of moderate difficulty and a few hard levels, JoshL5 began development Christmas 2013 and was completed in July 2014. The goal of this set was 100 levels and was reached successfully, however, 10 levels exclusively from JCCLP that weren't placed in JoshL4 were placed here, and 2 levels were not created by Josh at all. Because Josh made the goal of 100 levels successfully, he decided to push his limits even further and added 49 more levels. The set ultimately took roughly a year to create, being released at 149 levels on December 23rd, 2014. It was let's played by J.B. Lewis once again via YouTube throughout the creation process.

As soon as JoshL5 was completed at 100 levels, JCCLP2 became official and was released in August 2014, with 149 levels, most of which were from all of the JoshL sets, and some from JCCLPRejects. Only 2 levels were created fresh for this set; however, they later reappeared in JoshL5. Josh claimed that this time, JCCLP2 was not a best-of compilation of his designs and instead just a new collection of 149 of his levels.

After JoshL5's completion, Josh began work on JoshL6, and was initially released with 40 brand new levels of arranged difficulty on May 23rd, 2015 - five days before CC2's release. However, because of a loss of interest in designing levels for CC2 and with CCLP4 being officially announced, he decided to expand JoshL6, bringing the total up to 90. However, due to yet another spike of level ideas following CCLP4's level submission testing and voting process as well as the failure of a set that was being worked on, Josh decided to extend JoshL6 by creating 59 additional brand new levels and ultimately make the set have a total of 149. The 90 level version of this set still exists online, though will never be updated.

Later in May 2016, Josh overhauled and rebuilt JCCLP2, scrapping the old version entirely due to the fact the older version was rushed. The new and final version of this set still holds 149 levels but now consists of levels only found in Josh's latter three sets - JoshL4, 5, and 6. 25 levels were from JoshL4, 73 from JoshL5, and 47 from JoshL6 (the pre-149 level release version). Two JCCLPRejects levels were also included in this set due to getting positive criticism by various community members, as well as two new levels specifically designed for this set.

Following completion of CC2, Josh decided to work on his first CC2 level set, calling it Flareon1 to show no connection with his JoshL sets. In June 2016, he began an extended hiatus from CC2 level design, and took Flareon1 offline as a means to overhaul it before releasing it again. On February 2, 2019, he finally re-released Flareon1 with 40 levels after nearly 3 years, and on May 10 of the same year, he released a 6-level demo of Flareon2 to release his new levels before submissions close for the upcoming Chip's Challenge 2 community pack.

During the year of 2017, Josh worked on JoshL7, a new CC1 set entry in the JoshL series which held 70 brand-new levels. He first released it on February 20th, 2018. These levels were made after playing through CCLP4 and other new custom sets. Like JoshL4 and 5 before it, this set was once again LPed by J.B. Lewis, in which it was praised for showing originality and being very fun.Following this in the months of March to November 2018, Josh worked on Walls of CCLP3, a set ultimately inspired by Jeffrey Bardon's Walls of CCLP4. This set contained 149 entirely new levels built out of the wall patterns or other prominent tiles of CCLP3.

On April 29, 2019, Josh released JCCLP3, yet another 149-level best-of set for Josh's designs featuring 23 new levels from the 149-level release of JoshL6, 43 levels from JoshL7, 66 levels from Walls of CCLP3, 2 levels from JCCLPRejects, and the remaining 15 levels from a secret design project Josh has been working on. The release date of this new project is currently not set, but these 15 levels were included as a sort-of teaser for the set in the future.

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. 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.

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:

JoshL1-3/JCCLP version

JoshL4/JoshL5 version

JoshL6 version

JoshL7 version

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 is currently playing through Walls of CCLP4 by Jeffrey Bardon. In the future, he plans to Let's Play sets such as Walls of CCLP1 by J.B. Lewis, and possibly other CC2 sets.

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

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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Josh Lee

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