Jeffrey Bardon
Jeffrey Bardon first joined the Chip's Challenge community back in 2007, having first played the original levels around 10 years prior. Upon discovering that level editors and custom level sets existed, he quickly began designing his own. At the time, there was no interest in optimization, though this has since changed. Near the end of 2007, Jeffrey took a long hiatus from the game, going back every once a while over the next 6 years, but eventually returning in early 2014, 2 months before the release of CCLP1, unfortunately missing out on submitting levels for the pack.
Jeffrey was one of the CCLP4 staff co-leaders alongside Josh Lee.
Levels in official packs
CCLP3
| # | Name |
|---|---|
| 25 | Recess |
CCLP4
| # | Name |
|---|---|
| 1 | Molecule |
| 3 | Fossilized Snow |
| 4 | Oasis |
| 5 | Non-Dimensional Layer |
| 21 | Glacial Palace |
| 27 | Suburban Legend |
| 31 | Big Boulder Alley |
| 32 | Blended Brussels Sprouts |
| 34 | Frozen Waffle |
| 43 | Coral Reef |
| 47 | Antidisruptive Caves |
| 48 | Key Insight |
| 50 | Secret Underground Society |
| 51 | Ice in a Blender |
| 57 | Bisection |
| 59 | Blockpick |
| 68 | Cold Fusion Reactor |
| 75 | Unmitigated Hint Factory Disaster |
| 76 | Flow State |
| 78 | Aquatic Ruins |
| 89 | Diametric Opposition |
| 90 | Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy |
| 91 | How to Retune Your Harp |
| 122 | Air Bubble |
| 129 | Undefined Fantastic Object |
| 136 | Seeing Red |
| 138 | Zipper |
| 139 | Unravel |
| 144 | Paradigm Shift |
| 148 | Gravity Well |
Level designing
Jeffrey's first few sets were small and simple, most notably from this period was 25 levels.dat, which was LP'd by Rockdet. This was one of the factors that re-piqued Jeffrey's interest in Chip's Challenge, alongside James Anderson starting an LP of his next set: Ultimate Chip.dat. This 150 level set is still available on David Stolp's site, though Jeffrey admits many of the levels are lackluster and abuse invalid tiles. Immediately after releasing this set, he began work on what would be "the most epic CC set ever", a 999 level epic Ultimate Chip 2. None of these levels were very good either, and the file was lost to a CCEdit bug.
Around 2010 Jeffrey began work on a true sequel, the real Ultimate Chip 2, and got about halfway to 149 levels before taking a large interest in Touhou and speedrunning: 2 hobbies that had a large impact on both his level design and playstyle. On his return to the community in 2014, he spent the next 2 months finishing the set and released it onto CCZone. In hindsight, it falls into many of the traps of CCLP3 with overly convoluted puzzles and arduous level design.
This was meant to be Jeffrey's final large set, due to a lack of ideas, but the release and subsequent blind race of CCLP1 inspired him, and he began work on what would originally be a 50 level set, Ultimate Chip 3. However, 50 levels were reached much sooner than expected, and as he was not out of ideas, the set expanded into another full 149 level set, slated to be released in October 2014. Jeffrey also has a ruleset-specific set called Ultimate Chip i^e available on pieguy's site, taking the role of the traditional rejects set.
The second half of 2014 saw the creation and release of Ultimate Chip 4. Regarded to be Jeffrey's best set, it focused more on interesting and fun concepts, as well as varied gameplay throughout, resulting in an experience very similar to CCLP1. Many levels in this set drew inspiration from other levels and even other games, mostly from the Playstation 1. In 2015, Jeffrey began work on Ultimate Chip 5, and released the 80 levels it contained when Chip's Challenge 2 was released on Steam. From December 2015 through mid February of 2016, Jeffrey created another 69 levels and merged these into UC5, completely re-ordering the set while doing so.
Throughout the following year, Jeffrey was still chipping away at level designing. These were mostly Create entries, Time Trial levels, and the occasional level based around a single idea that seemed interesting. These levels became Ultimate Chip 6, which released with 60 levels. Then during August 2017 through March 2018, Jeffrey was hard at work overhauling CCLP4 into Walls of CCLP4, his magnum opus and widely regarded as one of the best custom sets to date.
Afterwards, with CCCreator, Jeffrey moved on to creating a CC2 set, called IHNN1 and released at 100 levels.
Jeffrey has said he will continue designing levels as long as he has ideas for them.
Scores
All of the following scores are for the MS ruleset; Jeffrey does not optimize in Lynx nearly as often, though still has on occasion.
| Set | Score | Place |
|---|---|---|
| CC1 | 5,977,700 | 2nd |
| CCLP1 | 6,006,070 | 3rd |
| CCLP2 | 6,050,970 | 3rd |
| CCLP3 | 6,072,120 | 11th |
| CCLP4 | 6,111,420 | 2nd |
Jeffrey has relatively few non-CCLP4 records to his name, due to joining optimization so late, but has still managed to find additional seconds on a few levels, such as the first report of 231 Lynx on Mini Pyramid and finding the Lynx-only minor bust in Metal Harbor, extending its record from 775 to 787, and later 790, though the bold currently stands at 792. In MS, he scored the first 236 on Mini Pyramid and 849 on Time Suspension, although the bold time currently stands at 851. He also worked with J.B. Lewis on Mediterranean, extending its record from 489 all the way to 498, further to 504, and then a final time to 506 on his own, as well as improving the Cityblock bold by a single second, from 549 to 550.
Additionally, on returning he set a goal to outscore J.B. Lewis on his first set, Ultimate Chip, and optimized it over the course of a month. He currently stands 367 seconds ahead with 147/150 bolds, and says the experience has helped with block pushing techniques and familiarity with Teeth and Blob monsters.
Through the end of 2018, Jeffrey invested a significant amount of time into cleaning up his CC1, CCLP1 and CCLP4 scores, tying James Anderson for 3rd with Skelzie in early 2019, attaining the All Known Bolds score on CCLP1 alongside a new record on Flame War in November 2018, and attaining the All Known Bolds score on CCLP4 on December 24, 2018 with improvements to Repugnant Nonsense and Duplex, though this mark has since been surpassed.