CCEdit
CCEdit is the third Chip's Challenge level editor, created by Michael Hansen. It is contained in a package called CCTools, which also includes CCLM and CCHack.
CC2Edit is the third level editor for Chip's Challenge 2, created by Hansen in 2020. It includes most features from the original CCEdit and a nearly-identical interface.
Features
Present in both CCEdit and CC2Edit
- Both editors feature several tile "drawing" modes: "pencil", "line", "box", "rectangle" and "flood fill", similar to features found in image editors.
- Both editors have a "pathmaker" feature, that allows the editor to draw out paths of directional objects, namely monsters, ice, force floors, railroad tracks, Chip himself, and even clone blocks, automatically; when the cursor takes a turn in a different direction, the last tile created will turn in the new direction. This will avoid the user having to manually return to the corners and change their direction.
- A green square follows the mouse cursor, allowing the designer to see the in-game playing area if Chip were standing where the mouse is. This feature can be disabled. In CC2Edit, both 9x9 and 10x10 view ports are supported.
- In both editors, ambiguous monster directions are indicated with small arrows. Some images on this wiki are cut out of level editors, rather than out of maps, and have this arrow included.
- Both editors feature two tile pickers. One has all tiles in the same window, similar to ChipEdit. In the other tiles are divided into folders to make navigating easier: Standard, Obstacles, Doors, Items, Monsters, Miscellaneous, and Special (Advanced). CC2Edit features two additional folders: Logic and Glyph Tiles.
- The level name, password, time limit, hint text, computer chip counter, map size, view port, CC1 boots rules, and RNG seed can be edited and viewed easily, without diving into the menus.
- Both editors are available as pre-compiled binaries for Windows and macOS. Linux is also supported, but the user is required to compile the software from source.
- Both editors, like Chip's Workshop, are free and open source.
- Both editors feature several tilesets, including the MSCC tileset, CC2's tileset and Lexy's Labyrinth's tileset. CCEdit also includes the Tile World tileset by Anders Kaseorg.
- Both editors feature a "tile inspector" tool, which makes it easy to edit a tile's specific layer without altering the others, and to place unused/voodoo tiles.
Present in CCEdit only
- CCEdit is the only level editor that supports playtesting in both Microsoft's version of Chip's Challenge, and in Tile World. It is also the only level editor to allow MSCC playtesting on Linux and on 64-bit versions of Windows. Like CC2Edit, it also supports Lexy's Labyrinth.
- Any connections of clone machines and traps are now recorded on a list, and their complement is indicated when the cursor moves onto their button(s) or their target(s) by a red (clone) or purple (trap) border around the target square. Links between teleports are displayed with a teal border around the next teleport in reading order (even if that move would be illegal in live play).
- CCEdit makes it easier to see tiles placed on the bottom later of the map. In ChipEdit, blocks, dirt, clone machines, and thin walls under the floor are impossible to see without actually putting the cursor on the square, and traps and recessed walls under floor are indistinguishable. The graphics in CCEdit are in much greater relief, which makes all these visible, and other hidden combinations much clearer.
- CCEdit features a Count feature, which automatically sets the chips left counter to the number of chips existing (note that this includes all chips, including ones that can't be picked up). An "available" counter was added later into ChipEdit, although there was no automatic setting feature.
- CCEdit allows players to create custom button connections and monster list entries by manually specifying map coordinates, even if such connections would not work in-game. This can be especially useful for data resetting clone machine connections, commonly found in insane levels.
- CCEdit natively supports PGChip.
- As of version 2.95.0, CCEdit supports the 00Floor tile.
Present in CC2Edit only
- CC2Edit supports playtesting in Chip's Challenge 2 itself. Like CCEdit, it also supports Lexy's Labyrinth.
- CC2Edit makes it possible to rotate tiles using the , and . keys on the keyboard, similar to the official editor and CCCreator.
- CC2Edit has extensive support for C2G scripting.
- In levels that feature mutliple hint tiles, CC2Edit makes it easy to specify custom hints for each tile.
Reception
The 1.x versions of CCEdit were notoriously buggy, and often corrupted levelsets edited using it. Chip's Challenge Level Designer was forked from CCEdit 1.x, and fixed many of its bugs.
The 2.0 version of CCEdit was in development for almost a year before its stable release in May 2011. It is a near-complete rewrite of the 1.x branch, fixing nearly all of the original version's bugs and including several new features, eventually dethroning ChipEdit as the most popular level editor.
The 3.0 version is currently in beta, and based on the 2.x series. It was also positively received, with level designers notably praising CC2Edit's playtesting ability, a feature absent from rival editor CCCreator until the most recent version, and even then missing Lexy's Labyrinth and MSCC support.