An Old Friend

All of my early computing revolved around the Windows OS: initially, I had a Windows 3.1 machine at work and then Win95 machines both at work and home. One of the most enjoyable features of those early incantations was an arcade style game called Chip's Challenge that, sadly, seems to have fallen from favour as pc games have become more sophisticated.

The good news is that there is an alternative: Tile World is an emulation of the game that, unlike the original, is freely available to download and play. Rebuilding my desktop has presented me with the perfect opportunity to give this old favourite a trial run and I've finally installed Tile World with the Chip's Challenge Level Pack 2 (CCLP2). If you enjoyed Chip's as much as I did, this game is definitely worth installing as one of those amusing coffee-break diversions. You can install Tile World from the Ubuntu Software Center but this version only has the basic level set and fans will almost certainly want the more difficult CCLP2 level set created by enthusiasts.

Install Tile World with CCLP2

First, make sure that you have the libsdl1.2-dev package installed. The easiest way to install the package is to use the Synaptic Package Manager: type libsdl1.2-dev into the search dialog box and mark the package for installation.

Installing the libsdl1.2-dev package using Synaptic

Alternatively, you can install the package using a terminal:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev

or, a third option is to download it directly from the SDL website.

1. Download the Tile World package (complete with the CCLP2 level set) to your Downloads directory.
2. Once the download is complete, navigate to your Downloads directory and right-click the tworld-1.3.0-CCLP2.tar.
3. Click the Extract Here option.
4. Open a terminal and change directory to the Downloads folder.
   
   cd /home/user_name/Downloads/tworld-1.3.0
   
   (Change the user_name and location to suit)
5. Configure the package for installation with:
   
   ./configure
   
   
6. Make the package with:
   
   make
   
   
7. Finally, install the package with:
   
   sudo make install

You can add Tile World to the Games Menu (Preferences > Main Menu > Games > Add Item) using the command, tworld and the resourceful can even find a copy of the original icon on the Internet!

An Old Friend

Those lucky enough to own either a copy of the Windows Entertainment Pack or Best of Windows Entertainment Pack (sadly, my Win95 install disk had neither!) can use the original level set that shipped with Windows (the chips.dat file): copy the file to Tile World's data directory.

Sources & References:
Tile World Home
Muppetlabs About Chips Challenge
Tile World Downloads Page
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) Downloads