Tyler Sontag

Tyler Sontag.jpg

Tyler Sontag is a famous Chipster who has made various major contributions to the CC community. In 2004, he began constructing his first level set called TCCLP. Tyler's first known appearance or interaction with the Chip's Challenge community began in 2006 when he appeared on the newsgroup, after creating a Chip's Challenge website. Later in 2006 he created http://www.geochip.webs.com, which housed various files relating to Chip's Challenge, but it is now defunct.

Tyler was on the CCLP1 staff and CCLP4 staff, and is the leader of the CC2LP1 staff.

Levels in official packsEdit

CCLP1Edit

# Name
1 Key Pyramid
4 Block Party
6 When Insects Attack
81 Colors for Extreme
105 Tunnel Clearance
110 Badlands
119 The Sewers
120 Metal Harbor
147 Thief, You've Taken All That Was Me

CCLP3Edit

# Name
1 Entrance Examination
27 Jumble
49 All About Blocks
69 Coal Mine
104 Civilization of Creatures
112 Pushy
129 Everybody Get Dangerous

CCLP4Edit

# Name
46 Exclusive Or
53 Protect Your Fortress
60 Flippant
74 Technopathic
79 Spring
84 Forsythia
86 Cyprus
88 Empty Rooms
114 Repugnant Nonsense
121 Death and Destruction
128 Mindless Self-Indulgence
130 Bam Thwok
132 Monorail
135 Propaganda
147 Gimmick Isle

CCLP5Edit

# Name
61 Snowbound
63 Party Trap
65 The World Has Turned and Left Me Here
112 Melancholia
147 Lounge Act

CC2LP1Edit

# Name
10 Blocksmith
36 Metalhead
39 Slime Minister
41 Teeth on Edge
43 Tulip Garden
54 Green Wrangler
85 Double Agent
89 Chip and Melinda Go Skating
95 Strike!
105 Remote Detonator
116 Snail Simulator 2019
121 Permutation
124 Waterfall
126 Be Optimal or Be Dead
137 Meeting in the Aisle
143 Wallcrawling
147 Fill in the Blanks
152 Flamechanger
154 Autopilot
157 Archival Footage
161 Chaos to Metastable
170 Circuit City
172 Anarchaeology
174 Objectification
178 Tank of Justice
180 Slither
190 Blocko's Modern Life
191 Leaving It All Behind
194 Give Up the Ghost
200 Swivel Castle

CC1 level setsEdit

Work on his first level set, TCCLP, began in May of 2004, and was completed in mid-2007. It contains 350 levels, making it the fourth-largest Chip's Challenge level set.[1] Albeit heavily flawed with many of the levels being unsolvable, this set is still available nearly ten years after its creation and is one of the most well-known custom sets.

Tyler has released several more sets since TCCLP. He began TCCLP2 in early 2009, but ditched it in late 2009 due to constraints from being hosted on pie guy's site. TCCLPRejects began around the same time. The early levels were levels that he felt were too poor to be placed in TCCLP or TCCLP2, but the set soon became a place for Tyler to experiment with various glitches and unorthodox concepts, similar to EvanD1. It is now the only CC1 set he provides updates to, and is quite sizable at 180 levels. TCCLPpgchip started in December 2008 and ended in April 2014, a short set meant to be played with the ice block patch.

When submissions for CCLP3 were being accepted, Tyler submitted TylerSubmissions, which consisted of his 35 favorite levels from TCCLP and TCCLP2, all made Lynx-compatible; seven of these levels appeared in CCLP3. After CCLP3's release, he added eight more levels and removed three, rebranding the set as TS1.

When CCLP1 was announced, Tyler began work on TS0. The levels were intended to have difficulties appropriate for CCLP1, but he felt this limitation was too restrictive and went on to design levels such as Lounge Act. It was completed in late 2012 and contains 40 levels, the same number as TS1. CCLP1 contains six of its levels. For CCLP1, he additionally assembled DanielB-Lynx, which is a collection of level from DanielB1 and DanielB2 modified to be Lynx compatible. He received permission from Daniel Bouwmeester to submit the set for CCLP1 consideration.

Before was CCLP1 released, he also designed a level set called TS_Tutorials, containing 18 candidates for CCLP1 lesson levels. Three of these got in the final set: Key Pyramid, Block Party, and When Insects Attack.

He began TS2 during CCLP1's development to prepare for the next community pack CCLP4. He ceased progress at the end of 2014 with only 22 levels finished and decided to focus on CC2 level designing when it was released the following year. Several levels from TS2 and some of the more difficult levels from TS0 were included in CCLP4 and CCLP5. Lounge Act finally appeared in an official level pack 12 years after it was first released.

CC2 level setsEdit

Tyler quickly released a small level set after CC2 was released in May 2015 named TSAlpha. He built it slowly over the next three years before finalizing it in mid-2018 with 40 levels. The set is notable for its use of unsupported tiles that he co-discovered with random 8 such as the zero directional block, blank no signs, and voodoo tiles. To complement TSAlpha's release, Tyler released TSNull, a smaller set containing reject and experimental levels. In March 2019, Tyler released an initial version of his next CC2 level set, TSBeta. It had only six levels by the time CC2LP1 level set submissions closed, but all six levels were selected to be in the set. Two levels were added to the set in 2020, then Tyler took a hiatus from level designing until April 2024 when he returned with eight new levels.

Design styleEdit

Tyler's design style in his TCCLP days were eclectic, but he eventually found a distinct style in the late stages of TS1 and TS0. All the levels in his TSx series are Lynx-compatible, and tries to conform to pedantic Lynx rules as often as possible. The TSx levels are usually medium to hard difficulty, and often contain a large number of recessed walls and partial posts. He has become infamous for including adapted Sokoban sections in his levels, usually involving three blocks. His TCCLPRejects levels often exploit many glitches, such as data resetting, the multiple tank glitch, and various other oddities. In his CC2 sets, he frequently uses bowling balls, logic gates, and railroad tracks, the last of which he considers the most versatile addition to CC2. His levels commonly explore restricting the player's movement, such as in Snail Simulator 2019, Be Optimal or Be Dead, and Slither.

While designing TS2 and his subsequent CC2 level sets, Tyler has made fewer and fewer levels that require computer chips. In TSAlpha, 22 of its 40 levels contain no chips, and all 16 TSBeta levels currently require no chips. This has led to an inside joke that Tyler wants chips officially banned from appearing in levels.

ScoresEdit

Tyler has a decent interest in optimization, but did not optimize competitively for a while. In MS, Tyler has a CC1 score of 5,975,580, a CCLP1 score of 6,003,500, a CCLP2 score of 6,038,430, a CCLP3 score of 6,058,970, and a CCLP4 score of 6,085,510. His first bold confirm was in CCLP3 on Marooned, often considered the easiest bold to achieve in the set. However, after the release of CCLP1, he became more serious about optimization and achieved a modest number of new records and confirms, placing him near the top of the CCLP1 scoreboard.

During the first few days of CC2's release, he confirmed a few records and picked up some new ones, mostly focusing on the time bolds, but has not optimized often since, only briefly reappearing to perform similarly with CCLP4.

WebsitesEdit

In the fall of 2015, James Anderson recruited Tyler to help him update the code for his Chip's Challenge high score site. James wanted scores to be managed in a more automated manner, rather than using spreadsheets and manually-written HTML as had been the case since scorekeeping began. Tyler completed this within a few months, but revisited the site's codebase in spring of 2017 to update the UI and in fall of 2018 to restructure the database. James transferred the site's ownership to Tyler in December 2018, though James still has the ability to update site scores.

In January 2019, Tyler offered to host a new version of the Chip's Challenge Wiki after the former wiki hosted by Wikia was falling out of the community's favor.

ReferencesEdit