11 Years of Doom?!

Yes, another year has ended (well, like a week ago) and we here at Doomworld are not going to just shrug off the entire year like we do every other day! Thanks to Scuba Steve, Doomworld has its very own 11 year celebration, aptly named The 11th Annual Cacowards! Yes, the entire year of WADs, some good and some bad summed up in four easy pages. So what the hell are you waiting for, go check it out.

And for those of you who clicked (more) here's an excerpt:

With Equinox under his belt from years ago, and the series of semi-joke wads nuts, there was no way we could have prepared for what he delivered in 2004. Starting off with Grove, one of this years top wads and a recipient of a Cacoward, and following it up with an amazing level for the Community Chest megawad B.P.R.D. put out, arguably, two of the best wads this year. All of his maps this year have transcended what traditional maps are for Doom, and even rival modern game add ons for creativity and originality. The music in his maps lends to the surreal nature of them and the levels themselves are top notch. With works like these two, it's no surprise, B.P.R.D. is recipient of this years mapper of the year.

Now go read the whole thing!

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Props to me for writing and putting together this phenomenal piece of work.

Props to Cold as Hell, despite never having finished it because of some bugs.

Cold as Hell was an excellent wad, and It just barely missed the cutoff. The problem it had was the massive slowdowns were a terrible drag on the gameplay. Even after the bugfixes I still have speed issues. Honestly I would have put CaH in place of Deus Vult, but DV had a massive positive feedback from the community and I tried to speak for more than just myself. In fact, if it were just up to me, I wouldn't have put Hell Revealed 2 on the top 10.

Double Post, but whatever.

I would liek to say that 2004 was a very good year for Doom addons. In sorting through the massive ammounts of projects released this year I still ended up with a list about 30 projects long of work that was top notch. Originally the awards were in categorical order, with winners and two runners up for about 10 different categories. It was decided to keep the 10 years of doom's 10 best format with a special page of special awards for fun.

The awards mean squat anyways, and the real winners are we, the community, for being gifted with this many great works this past year. Hopefully 2005 will be as good.

Anyone else having trouble with the "other awards" link? I'm getting the 404 screen every time.

I don't think B.P.R.D should have won mapper of the year. But that's just my opinion.
I think Tormentor did a better job than him.

Awesomely cool. :D

Amazing that the very first WAD Scuba Steve praises happens to be his own!

Whatever, you were going to do it too. :P

i didn't really have much in the way of speed problems with CaH. i would have finished it if it weren't for some serious bugs that nobody bothers to address (the reloading system breaks.)

overall i agree with much of this feature.

Awww. No "Claustrophobia" mentions.

BPRD surely deserves the price. He is daman in creativity and originality. I have no idea what lurks in his mighty mind nor what lets him to such phenomenal idaes, but also their execution calls for applause. Long live Foofoo. _|..| Praise Real Dreams.

Blahaha, very true with Doom Rampage Edition.

Minor error in the doom rampage text "2004 had seen the release of Alien Vendetta, Hell Revealed 2, Action Doom and was eagerly awaiting the release of RTC Hub 1"

AV was 2002

Scuba Steve said:

Cold as Hell was an excellent wad, and It just barely missed the cutoff. The problem it had was the massive slowdowns were a terrible drag on the gameplay. Even after the bugfixes I still have speed issues.

Yeah. :(

11 Years said:
Boasting an actually storyline,

STOP! Grammar time!

Scuba Steve said:
The awards mean squat anyways, and the real winners are we, the community, for being gifted with this many great works this past year. Hopefully 2005 will be as good. [/B]

Very well spoken :)

@Lutrov - Thx for the praise and maybe, if KDiZD would have been released 2004, I would have got the pole positon but I can live with that, because BPRD really did a good job with his maps and I am not jealous about him :)

That was an interesting read, but I really wish there would have been a co-author at least - if one of the winners of the awards also happens to be the sole author, then things just smell a bit fishy, especially if that person's work is the first to be talked about. Not that I want to accuse Scuba Steve of actually giving himself extra points, of course, but the impression this creates is just wrong.

Maybe for the next year, there should be some sort of popular vote? Not to mention that all projects that came out since the last awards should be considered, not only those that actually came out this year (thus excluding those that came out after last year's awards but still before new year's eve [just food for thought for next year, really]).

Oh yeah, and you should get a spellchecker or ask someone to proofread before posting stuff, guys. :)

It doesn't matter whether there's a single person or a group authors if the end product is good, and it is. I'm sure there was plenty of people in the background giving their opinion.

I didn't see any bias, Action Doom was the highest quality release last year what else should he pick?

Schneelocke said:

That was an interesting read, but I really wish there would have been a co-author at least - if one of the winners of the awards also happens to be the sole author, then things just smell a bit fishy, especially if that person's work is the first to be talked about. Not that I want to accuse Scuba Steve of actually giving himself extra points, of course, but the impression this creates is just wrong.

This would be the case if they were to be taken seriously. In actuality there was a panel of about 8 or 9 people that all voted in the various categories. This whole thing was spearheaded by scuba from the get go, and as Szymanski said, Action doom WAS the highest quality release last year (or at least in the top 2) so it was fair anyway.

Just remember this is some dumb internet page with a bunch of gold colored gifs for trophies. The real meat of this article is the chance to read about and play all the various maps/addons released in 2004.

Mancubus II said:

In actuality there was a panel of about 8 or 9 people that all voted in the various categories.

...and how many did not vote for DRE as Worst WAD of the year? :D

Unfortunately, no matter how great a deathmatch levelset is made, be it 8-Bit DM or the also impressive UniDoom DM3 pack, it matters little because nobody ever stops playing Dwago5

You spelled dwango wrong ;)

Also, I haven't played D5 in over a year and I'm damn proud of it. There isn't currently a single dwango server on skulltag. 8-bit DM has been played during ST's Friday Night Fragnight and got a huge response. It IS fun as hell. But I'm going to have to disagree on it being the "best DM wad of the year." It's definitely a bit gimmicky with all the flashing colors, and it tends to be extremely stressful on the eyes.

UDM3, however, while paying a bit more attention to balance, is also strenuous to the eyes, due to that weirdass seafoam blue color. Regardless, I'd say UDM3 takes the cake this year.

Next time around, perhaps, there can be a CTF tier as well? Now that both ZDaemon and Skulltag support it, there should be a decent variety of CTF maps released in the near future.

I was surprised not to see Toke's OMG maps DM megawad on here. Afterall, it is the most popular FFA wad on Zdaemon right now and has been for a long time.

gg

Mancubus II said:

This would be the case if they were to be taken seriously. In actuality there was a panel of about 8 or 9 people that all voted in the various categories. This whole thing was spearheaded by scuba from the get go, and as Szymanski said, Action doom WAS the highest quality release last year (or at least in the top 2) so it was fair anyway.

That's debatable, but the point wasn't so much that Action Doom was in there but rather that it happened to be its author that also wrote this article.

As for the panel of "8 or 9 people", come on. Until you tell us who voted, what they voted for and how they were selected, that's worthless, and for the most part, it sounds like an attempt at retroactive justification.

Schneelocke said:

As for the panel of "8 or 9 people", come on. Until you tell us who voted, what they voted for and how they were selected, that's worthless, and for the most part, it sounds like an attempt at retroactive justification.

Well as the de facto king of Doomworld I had previously decreed Action Doom to be the best WAD of the year, so there.

Linguica said:

Well as the de facto king of Doomworld I had previously decreed Action Doom to be the best WAD of the year, so there.

But after playing dwforums.wad i de-throned you *g*
No... my most favourite WAD is Mock2!

LOL, my peice of shit "Better wad i pulled outta my ass" got a mention in passing, my infamy in the doom community is complete.

Now, if only i could get off my arse and re-install doom, the ports, the editors, and get back to working on Rigdoom. Still it might be better to hunt down my friend and get the semi-started rigdoom alpha off him, heh (if you lend people your backups, make backups of the backups!)

Wooo!! At least my favorite wad of the year, Tremor Part I: Genesis, got a mention. I just hope that Tormentor or Kaiser don't feel slighted cause neither got much of a mention. Your wads rocked, too!!

Shaikoten said:

There isn't currently a single dwango server on skulltag.

Maybe not, but there are currently no skulltag servers running at all. However, there are 21 Zdaemon ones running dwango5 alone, right now. :P



Schneelocke, you seem to be taking this a bit too seriously. Yes it's nice to see the list, yes Doomworld is the leading Doom site so whatever it says has an air of "officialdom" (whatever that means) so perhaps there should be an air of officialness about how the list is compiled but even the best awards ceremonies are flawed. This particular one is primarily for fun and to sum up the achievements of the community over the last year. It could simply have been one person's round-up of the year. Personally, however, I prefer the format of this article. I think the author put it well...

Scuba Steve said:

The awards mean squat anyways, and the real winners are we, the community, for being gifted with this many great works this past year. Hopefully 2005 will be as good.

So there you are - the awards mean squat. Bottom line, it is a fun, entertaining, informative and reasonable way to round off the year. I'm sure those who got a pat on the back got a bit of a warm fuzzy glow out of it and I hope people who were missed off aren't too pissed. They really shouldn't be.

Thumbs up to SS for a good article and thumbs up to us all for a good year of Dooming. Let's hope 2005 is as good, if not better.

And action Doom was bloody good. If nothing else, you have to admire its technical achievment. Pushing the boundaries of what we expect from Doom as far as it did alone means it deserves a mention (and it certainly deserved a mention for other things too).

I was also very pleased to see LilWhiteMouse's "Chosen" getting a mention. That remains a stunning piece of work.

Perhaps if I'd compiled the list it may have been slightly different, but I really do feel that most of the significant releases of the year got an appropriate mention and, in most cases, any changes I could propose would be minor quibbles of personal taste as much as anything.

And I liked the trophy graphics (SS again I assume).

Enjay said:
Maybe not, but there are currently no skulltag servers running at all. However, there are 21 Zdaemon ones running dwango5 alone, right now. :P

There were 12 ST servers running last I checked.