Vinesauce Mapping Contest

Missed the stream, just started watching the VOD. The "Oh Jesus Christ Archvile OH FUCK" moment during the first map was pure gold.

EDIT: Oh god, now I'm at the illusio-pit tribute in the third map. What is quality assurance.

EDITx2: And then the mapper fucked up his exit lines.

I've watched up until the start of the GZDoom map with the lost souls at the start. I certainly feel like I have a chance at this point. It's nice to see the already apparent mix of quality - Completely new mappers to experiences ones. Hopefully we'll get some new regular members to the community thanks to the interest this contest has generated.

The Cap'n Joel one was legitimately cool. I wouldn't mind if it ends up as the winner (depending on what else gets played of course).

I dunno, it felt like there was too much vinesauce asskissing.

Jimmy said:

I can see this taking a while. 2 hours to get through 12 WADs. Of ~150.

And he doesn't even need to write a playtester report after every map! More like... Weaksauce ha ha ha! *breathes into a paper bag*

I like that he's very positive and encouraging even during the obvious first timer maps, he's doing some good promotional work for our cause, heh. Although it's harder to get a feel for his winning criteria that way.

If the Cap'n Joel map was made by a bona fide newbie, then sure, very impressive. I get the feeling that is not the case though, so I'd be a bit more critical. I thought that Joel was meant to press all the switches while weaving around the trapped cyberdemon, so I assume that part fizzled out. The invul shouldn't have been there at all (except for HNTR), plus somewhat miscalculated ammo supply. I should stop now, I'm reverting to habit, heh. Memeing can't be helped I guess, but hopefully it won't be the deciding factor.

I think a mistake some of these map authors are making is not having constraint in regards to map size. You can easily tell that Joel was getting bored on some of the longer maps, even if he was denying it. Making a map drag out for too long can harm it's overall quality even if it's otherwise good by making it boring.

^ I agree, but only in this contest-review scenario. Long maps usually do not detract from a map at all, but with the daunting task of playing though over 150 maps, yeah, you'd want them to be shorter.

I also think it is pretty telling about the experience of the contest members that only something like 3-4 of the maps submitted were any good at all, while the rest were beginner maps full of noob mistakes. Something like 90% of the maps did not have the "lower unpegged" tag on when making doors. To be honest I think that just makes this more fun. I would be boring if all the maps were just your typical well made but generic Doom map we have already seen a million times.

Thought things:

1. myfirst.wad. Bad monster placement.
2. CRINGE. (not the Mark Klem wad, like the involuntary response)
3. Nice 2edgy weapon recolors. Just, like, learn what graphic offsets are, maybe.
4. Some really neat traps. Ammo is nice to have though.
5. Well that was short.
6. Very nice design-wise, cool atmos and puzzle elements. Minus marks for stanky memes.
7. Looks super cool and seems to play like a really well-thought-out epic adventure map. Plus all that flowing liquid makes me tingly. Top marks!
8. Okay, FUCK the memes. THIS IS HOW YOU USE REVENANTS. FOR REAL.
9. Really scenic and pretty to look at. Joel was critical of the scale of it, but no problems in my view. Sweet! Great job Pinch ';,,;'
10. Love the concept here, looks great too, combat looks really challenging too. Wanna play this myself. :>
11. As Joel said, super oldschool. Schizophrenic theming, doesn't look too interesting to play. Ick stealth monsters. D:
12. Oh my god. Oh my god.

For the most part, the maps got better and better as we progressed. That won't happen every time I'm sure, especially since he's playing them totally randomly, but I hope we see some really cool shit in the streams to come.

Also, I really hope all the submitted WADs get released publicly at some point. Preferably before he gets through them all. So folks can check on things for him and such like why the Path Over The Abyss map broke, or Skeleton++ had no player 1 start in MAP03.

Now that I watched the entire VOD, here's my ranking of the maps:

1. RottKing's steeptown: Was there ever really any doubt? RottKing is a great mapper and this is a very good example of a simple theme map that works really well thanks to the skill behind it. The initial massive verticality is mostly for show, but once the real challenge starts going, it never lets up.

2. Pinchy's Vine Source: A great looking adventure, a bit too sprawling and more suited for careful exploration than the quick runthroughs Joel does.

3. stormcatcher77's Cursed Realms - Path Over The Abyss: Would have been number two if not for the bug. Good looking, competently executed, shows off the capabilities of GZDoom without drowning the player in advanced features or changing the core gameplay.

4. nullscarab's skeleton++: Very good execution of a single-concept mapset. Shame about the missing player start in map 3. The Revenants aren't meant to overwhelm the player with numbers, but are satill challenging due to the tightness of ammo and unfavorability of the arenas. The first map is a bit bland aesthetically, the second is much better.

5. sgtnailer's The Temple: It was a very close call between this and the next map, but The Temple ranks slightly higher for not having newbie mistakes. A competently executed, simple, vanilla-ish map with some tough monster placement.

6. shadowmolasses' Crypt of Beelzebub: Also a very simple map with some tough challenges, but very obviously an early mapping attempt with some silly mistakes like the too-tall water sector that made the imp fireballs disappear. Still, it looked fun.

7. gigglythump's CapnJoel: I'm not as meme-averse as some, at least when the memes serve some purpose, and I actually think they were justified here, with the whole Vinesauce moonbase theme. They also weren't too in-your-face, being limited to some in-joke images.

8. mynameiszz's Pizza Quest: A short little map based around a single joke that doesn't overstay its welcome. If the actual Dooming part was longer the transition back to the jokey bit would have been jarring, and the joke would have quickly become grating if it wasn't over so quickly.

9. aplayer12345's Map One: We're at the genuinely bad maps now. This one is very obviously baby's first map, but there are signs that aplayer12345 might actually become a pretty great mapper if he keeps at it.

10. duckyquackington's Temple Of DOOM: This was such a short map that I couldn't even really get a feel for it, but from what I saw, it looked horribly boring.

200. Tie between blue_bomber_man's Vinesauce and Kingwormo's Hellsworst: Absolute trash tier. I can say with all confidence that there won't be a map in the entire contest that I will rank lower than these. Awful memes, awful sprite modifications, what is bugfixing, what is quality control.

I have this unnerving feeling that we'll be waiting a couple of months for the competition winners to be decided. Also kinda disheartening to see the Vinesauce forums are still down after a few days now.

That said, I don't mean to be negative! Hopefully another stream happens soon, I'm eager to see more entries. :)

Dragonfly said:

I have this unnerving feeling that we'll be waiting a couple of months for the competition winners to be decided. Also kinda disheartening to see the Vinesauce forums are still down after a few days now.

That said, I don't mean to be negative! Hopefully another stream happens soon, I'm eager to see more entries. :)

Probably another will happen this weekend. It would be pretty lame if we had to wait 2 weeks for each 20-30 wads played.

I'm worried that my map is too large D: It's not ultra hard though so maybe that will help.

I know for sure he'll have to cheat in my map because of the difficulty. There's HMP in case he needs it, but well, it's still hard :)

Still see nothing on his twitter about any incoming Doom stream. Yesterday he had one for DK64 and Mario maker, but so far no news about Doom :(

Have some patience. Joel's probably busy with stuff ATM.

Well at least this means he will take his time with each wad instead of blazing through them. Do look forward to seeing him play more of them. I would say that pizza quest is the strongest contender right now.

I like the sense of responsibility going on with this guy. No info for a while now and streams other stuff. Cool.

IvanDobrovski said:

I like the sense of responsibility going on with this guy. No info for a while now and streams other stuff. Cool.

Well, he does have a youtube channel to run. Doesn't really make sense for him to only stream doom.

On
https://www.twitch.tv/vargskelethor/v/91796646

there now is part 2

@saint - thanks for the link, but I'm not sure you have watched it yet! :P It's only 2 minutes long, because twitch kept disconnecting. Shame because I missed the stream (started 2am in my time zone, no chance I'm going to catch that on a worknight.)

He did state in that 2 min video he'll upload the footage to YouTube after recording more and stitching it together.

Actually no, I didn't watch it. Only one level? If this is the rate, it will take forever to finish all levels.

https://twitter.com/joel_vinesauce/status/780972179932479488

He played my Lighthouse.
He really plays in a casual and I-don't-pay-attention-ish way so he wasted all the ammo... but I think he enjoyed the level, more or less.

Wow! It's over 5 hours! I watched the first 50 or so min of the actual stream before going to bed, and was expecting the full thing to be like 2 or so hours, but damn 5 hours? I hope he did not cheese through the wads.

Well I better start watching then.

EDIT: Wow, the youtube version is over 6 hours!!!! And consider the fact that he is only done with 30 or so wads OUT OF 130!!!!!

EDIT: It's odd nobody has commented on the stream here yet. Though I guess most haven't even been able to watch it all lol.

Joel is actually pretty good at playing Doom, but he suffers from Modern Gaming Syndrome: he doesn't pay attention to where he's going or what's around him, expecting to be led down a single linear corridor by every game. Also, he has no fucking idea how to deal with Archviles.

^
this is exactly what I noticed when he played my map.
He was without ammo and the run three or four times near a box of ammo without noticing it and blaming the author of the level (that is, me) that there weren't enough ammo to kill all the monsters. I had a huge facepalm.

But on the other side it seems he liked the atmosphere of the wad so not everything was bad.

You know what? I hope someone has sent Joel a slaughtermap. Not even a proper, Sunder/Deus Vult-style grand slaughter, just a small scale, Ribbiks-style "closed in with a squad of tough monsters" map. Pitted Hell from this batch was already close, but it was just a partial map with basically one area.

I know I have said this before but I really feel some of the authors have gone overboard with map size. I can't help but feel they did it on purpose so they could hog as much screen time as possible. If Joel has another contest like this next year I think he should impose some rule in regards to how long maps can be to prevent this from happening again.