The 2020 Cacowards

[Diabolución]

I just read the entire thing. Whilst my writing skills in the language of the “Perfidious Albion” are severely limited and I am always very afraid of committing some embarrassing mistake (phrasal verbs are my “black beast”), I can appreciate well written texts in English.

 

 

 

 

[OniriA]

With all the stuff that has been going on in the world throughout the year the Cacowards couldn't have come at a better time.

 

I think they serve well to keep the creative light and passion of the community ignited every year (as it has been doing throughout the past),  but in times of darkness that light shines even brighter. And as unfortunate as it is, now is that time.

 

All the people that converted their feelings and their experiences into something creative that other people can enjoy while at the same time dealing and coping with the isolated reality of imposed lockdowns and navigating in the new masked society, is praiseworthy and deserves much love.

 

It takes courage and perseverence to create something worthwhile, something of value. So this is a good time to give lots of love and special attention to all of you who do so.

 

And as a creator I relate to the fact that this is how we cope with it, its our creative outlet, a voice for our inner being.

 

Thank you, everyone..

 

[Snark]

Cool cool cool, one of the few good days I've had since March. Really happy to see Rudy up there, probably because of the "good old days" feeling so appropriate for this crappy year. Happy birthday Doom.

[PetalousPanoply]

I played the original Doom for the first time in 2015 and ever since then the Cacowards have become something I really look forward to every year. Just an incredible way to celebrate the artistic achievements of what I consider to be the most daring and talented community in gaming. Among the sea of bullshit corporate celebrations like the VGAs it really stands out as a genuine community endeavour.

 

I still haven't played most of the maps mentioned this year (I guess I  now know what I'm doing this month!), but I was really glad to see Shrine 2, Technicolor Antichrist Box, Mutabor and Akeldama in there. Can't wait to play everything else.

 

Congratulations to everyone who got mentioned and to the writers for the excellent reviews as usual!

[Xeriphas1994]

3 hours ago, Diabolución said:

I can appreciate well written texts in English.

 

Dude, I'm a native speaker with an expensive diploma, and I'm always impressed too.  :>  Especially on a deadline!

 

As in most years, the only flaw is that so many megawads sound amazing, I have no idea where to begin. I predict I'll spin around going "aaaaaaaa" and end up watching max ILs on youtube.

[Diabolución]

Indeed, I have spotted so far only three minor erratas...

 

That map of Syringe is actually named Acheron’s Needle, not Archeron’s Needle.

 

In that mod named SWWM GZ:

"last decade of so": I think this ought to be "last decade or so."

"except instead of matter its vaguely-documented": that possessive should be replaced with either it is or it's.

[Not Jabba]

37 minutes ago, Diabolución said:

Indeed, I have spotted so far only three minor erratas...

Thank you! Fixed.

[Xaser]

45 minutes ago, Diabolución said:

Archeron’s Needle

Dammit, I didn't even notice the typo, and that's my own totally-not-made-up surname. Sneaky. :P

On a serious note, it's a pleasant surprise to see Syringe on the board -- super-thanks! And congrats to Tarns n' Pavs n' Marc for basically doing all the real work. :P

I was always sorta worried it would be seen more like a series of outtakes ('cause, well, it sorta is) than a cohesive project, but the responses have been positive, and here we are, so maybe I just need to learn to stop worrying and love the chaos. Not like I don't already or anything...

[Steve D]

It's always a great pleasure to read the Cacowards, and this year is no exception thanks to extraordinary work by our wonderful Doom writers. Many a memorable phrase was crafted to describe the brilliant work of our modding community, a community I feel honored to be a part of. So congratulations to all the winners for making an otherwise dismal year so full of joy. And by all means, don't slow down! :)  

[Zakken]

Congratulations to all of the winners and runner-ups! Very impressed by this year's picks.

 

On the multiplayer side of things, I'd like to make a personal shout-out to Jumpmaze X as arguably one of the overall highest-quality releases of this year. Jumpmaze is a platforming-centred mapset for Doom originally released 11 years ago, and often served as one of the most played WADs online during that era (alongside Ghouls vs Humans and All Out War 2). To this day, it still sees activity with a fairly strong speedrunning community supporting it, and many Jumpmaze fan projects were made by other mappers since then (such as Jumpix and Advanced Jumpmaze), but for JM's original creator to come back and organise a brand-new mapset that, in my opinion, succeeded in becoming the most polished and fully-realised compilation seen thus far, as well as breathing new life into the scene cannot be understated -- it's a big milestone for a long-running mod that's fondly remembered even by those who don't actively play it anymore.

 

Very excited for what 2021 will bring!

[Doomkid]

Wow, what an awesome surprise. After almost 20 years of mapping, it feels nice to share a Cacoward with the RR2 team! All I had to do was get the vast majority of the work to be done by other people keep at it, I suppose! A really nice feeling after a bad run of luck in my personal life, hopefully this is a sign of changes to come. It's certainly an inspiration to keep on modding!

 

There's a bunch of winners I haven't even had the chance to play yet, but holy CRAP they all look so amazing. Reading through this year's Cacowards was a fantastic treat as usual, the amount of love and dedication the team puts into it is frankly baffling.. and so glad @Endless and the Wadazine got the recognition they deserve. This has to be one of the best video game-centric communities on the entire web. Such a pleasure to be a part of.

 

EDIT: I was the 101st like of the op!

[Jaska]

Congratulations to winners.

 

I was a bit surprised my "Lost civilization 2" didn't win as it had so many new gameplay elements as dynamically destructible walls, puzzles, movement, humor, interaction with the world like stoves, cars etc. And if you didn't like puzzles you could turn them off. If you didn't like custom monsters you could play with Doom 2 monsters. It also had the best looking realistic environments what has been done to my knowledge.

 

It was a huge work to get even all the resources gathered. A lot of experimenting on many things. Learning all the decorate, zscript, modeling etc. Mapping for 110 000 linedefs on many maps which then condensed into 30k playable area on one map. Many months mapping was not included as I wanted to tighten the experience. Original design was just too open, I had to narrow it down.

 

 

[Gez]

5 minutes ago, Jaska said:

I was a bit surprised my "Lost civilization 2" didn't win

The Cacowards try to avoid being given to works in progress, so I suppose "part 1: the introduction" disqualified it until further completion.

[Scotty]

Congratulations to all winners.

 

It is cool when someone else appreciates something that you poured countless hours of blood sweat and tears into. Thanks to DotW and Arlene for the writeups for Abandon and Criticality, not to mention the rest of the cacoward team for what must be a massive undertaking when you consider the huge mountains of content that the community creates year on year.

 

---

 

Also big thanks to Benjo and Bemused for inviting me to work with them on Abandon in the first place, some 3 years ago now.

 

When i first played Sunder some maps left me with this intangible, profound feeling that i cannot really portray... that somehow i had experienced a window into a surreal, overwhelming, yet wonderous alien world. When i joined the guys there were only 6-7 maps done, but two of these became maps 11 and 17 in Abandon, and these maps left me with this same aforementioned feeling. I therefore knew i had to step it up and made a point of trying to impart that same feeling onto others with my own mapping, especially in maps 9 and 15 (two maps i am really proud of). Hopefully i achieved that.

 

At the time we seriously started this project, like everyone else, we thought Gazebo was probably long gone and we were basically trying to fill that void, so imagine the surprise and excitement when one of us tuned into some random Sunder stream around 2 years ago to find him in the chat there. The story since then is history - i guess this situation is having your cake and eating it.

 

Of course now we need to go and deal with the somewhat imposing task of dealing with skill settings and co op for all these humungous maps. Eek.

 

---

 

One evening back in February i was walking down the street and it had been raining. There was this stream of rusty water running down an embankment nearby and i liked the idea of 'the flow of corrosion'... thus, the murky flooded tech theme of Criticality was born, just like that. It was initially just supposed to be a speedmap, perhaps evidenced by the boxy areas around the start point, but for whatever reason it felt appropriate to keep on building and expanding - basically this map has kind of a warped inception and development which i feel probably ultimately led to (what i would perceive as) numerous issues in the final result. With that in mind i was pleasantly surprised to receive a runner up spot.

 

---

 

This year hasn't been great - amongst everything else i started the year off by being admitted to hospital - it is nice to experience some positivity to help temper that. I feel very thankful. Playing Doom and mapping has been a great source of escapism for me, so i can only hope i can give something back to the community in that regard.

 

I saw Cipher on the list of "what are we waiting for". I haven't touched that in over a year to focus on these other projects, but i think i will go back to that for the next big project. I am also sitting on a load of Plutonia maps - i want to release a wad of some sort to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Final Doom, in June next year.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Scotty

[Not Jabba]

2 hours ago, Gez said:

The Cacowards try to avoid being given to works in progress, so I suppose "part 1: the introduction" disqualified it until further completion.

Yes. There's some precedent for awarding demo releases, but recent years are way too competitive to use an award slot that way.

[dew]

11 hours ago, Zakken said:

shout-out to Jumpmaze X

I'll be honest, I completely missed that one and probably wouldn't be able to appraise it anyway, because I don't play Jumpmaze myself. Apologies to the Jumpmaze community, I know it's a talented and skilled crowd.

[Andromeda]

As usual, congrats to all the people who got a mention and thanks to the Cacowards team for their delicious writeups!

 

Want to give a quick shoutout to this achievement as well:

 

Eagerly awaiting to see what the next year will bring in terms of Doom content :)

[Bob9001]

Congratulations to anyone who won or contributed this year to a project that won!

 

Just like to say I'm grateful to get a mention for an IWAD record, cheers to the community and hopefully 2021 brings more impressive feats for Doom speedrunning!

 

[A2Rob]

Grats to all the winners and runner-ups! 

 

This was honestly a huge surprise for me. Thanks to everyone who have played my stuff and provided feedback over the past four years that I've been mapping, be it my early "single map" threads, community project contributions, or serious projects like RL1 and 2. Means a lot :)

[Master O]

 

Question about Artaresian Reliquary, what does the Korean text say on the UAC signs?

[antares031]

26 minutes ago, Master O said:

what does the Korean text say on the UAC signs?

 

연합우주항공회사는 최근 지구와 화성을 비롯한 태양계 권역에서 발생하고 있는 정체불명의 괴생명체 침공사건들과 아무런 연관이 없습니다.

-> UAC has no relation to the recent mysterious alien invasions throughout the solar system, including Earth and Mars.

 

연합우주항공회사는 당사에서 발생한 천재지변으로 인한 귀하의 재산상 손해와 물리적 또는 정신적 피해, 사망에 대하여 책임을 지지 않습니다.

-> UAC is not responsible for your property loss, or physical & mental damage, or death caused by natural disasters, occurred within the corporate facilities.

[bfredric]

Me on December 8th: **Reads news about Halo Infinite and Cyberpunk 2077**

Me 20 minutes later: **Reading the Cacowards and playing Abandon and Rowdy Rudy**

[NuMetalManiak]

The download link for Wormwood: Expanded Universe (on Special Features) is not working (same for the thread page).

[BassSlapper89]

Congratulations to all the winners! 🤘😁

[baja blast rd.]

Throwing in a small FAQ, since extra transparency is cool and I've seen these things trip people up before:

 

Are the awards (and runners-up) ordered from "best" to "worst"? 

 

There is no implied order. The ordering scheme might be random, based on what was decided first, or chosen according to any number of other schemes. Main awards and runners-up might be shuffled so that the main pages are better balanced with the sidebars.

 

Did the writer for a wad's blurb "choose" it to win by themselves, independent of others' input?

 

For the main awards (the top 10s), that is basically impossible these days. For runners-up, it's not impossible, but generally not the norm either. The various sidebar features can be more personal, but the writer usually keeps an ear open for others' input (and even more popular opinion). 

Contributors only write about releases they like enough, but a release can have many strong advocates. In that case, the person who is highest on something might not write about it (e.g. Lost Civilization was my favorite thing from last year). The writing phase is not exactly trivial, so there has to be some decoupling from that phase and all of the decisions.

 

What do the contributors feel about how the selections should be used? 

 

Just speaking for myself, but it would be unfortunate if people only ever played or paid serious attention to the "official" top 10. I'm not sure if any contributor feels the purpose of the awards is to impose the hierarchy on playing choices. (The perception sadly will exist to some degree just because there is a top 10 at all.)

 

But I mostly wish the "I just use the awards as a summary" approach wasn't always phrased as an act of minor rebellion.  Since enjoyment of games is highly subjective, any individual reader's personal top 10 (or whatever #) among what's included will generally mix from the main awards, from the runners-up, and from the other mentions  -- sometimes quite evenly. That variation would remain even if a perfect judging bot existed. So it's 100% non-controversially a valid approach. 

Edited December 14, 2020 by rd.

[Lord_Z]

I was very surprised but pleased and honoured to see a mod I worked on get a HM. Thanks to everyone that played it! Also, thanks to everyone who worked on the Cacowards this year, reviewers and mappers both! There's some great looking stuff there.

 

Spoiler

There was a small typo I noticed in the text blurb for Intergalactic Xenology. Map 2's name is not actually "The Yawning World", haha. But no big deal.

 

[WH-Wilou84]

Congrats to the winners, and thank you to all the wad authors, content creators, musicians and writers we have in this community - you've helped a great deal in making this year a much better one. 
 

I'll have to catch up on a lot of stuff, there's a ton of top-tier releases that I haven't played yet but the write-ups definitely give me the incentive to do so. A pleasure to read, as always :)
2020 has been a monumental year in terms of releases. My "must play right now" wad backlog keeps on growing, and it's not a bad thing !
 

As others have said already, it's a bit sad to see Big Ol' Billy not being recognized as Creator of the year, he's outdone himself lately (and not only in the DBPs) !
Yet, BridgeBurner is definitely deserving it too ! :)
Well done. Congratulations and good luck for The Age of Hell, this one should be on everyone's radar :)
 

Glad to see PRIMEVAL finally being honored. Ever since the Plutonia Revisited and Unholy Realms days, he's demonstrated his talent and he's become one of my favorite MIDI authors. Keep going John !
 

Also, thanks Major Arlene and the writing crew for honoring our megawad. Much appreciated :)
We'll definitely try and continue to make cool stuff in the near future.
Since Lord_Z brought in the topic of typos, there's a small one in the 180mpv paragraph, too.
Map 30's name is actually "Celui-Qui-Voit-Les-Mondes" ("He-That-Sees-The-Worlds"). No worries though :p
 

Happy birthday to Doom. Here's to 27 more years !

[dmplayer5]

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to all who put the Cacowards together. The DOOM community is amazing.

[Big Ol Billy]

A bit of a necro-bump at this point, but congrats to all the 2020 winners, runners-up, and mentionees! As always, the choices show what a vibrant lil community we've got here—the "new age of slaughter" style standing proudly alongside classical limit-removing megawads (25YoE), retro-flavored cheese (Rowdy Rudy 2), and magnum opus megamaps like Ar Luminae and the extremely enticing-looking Mutabor. I was particularly intrigued by the write-ups for Three is a Crowd and Running Late 2, which sound right up my alley. I confess that the relentless pace of the DBPs alongside other projects I did this year meant that I barely had time to play anything new (or anything in a non-development/testing context, really). Even helping with the finishing up of DBP31 and prepping the long-discussed DBP32 have left me little brainspace to process the Cacos this year, hence the late post! But there's certainly a lot of awesome looking stuff to catch up on... someday...

 

Of course, it's humbling to have been in the running for creator of the year, especially when it involved facing off against the Martin Luther of Slaughter himself! Things just lined up in my personal, professional, and creative life this past year such that I was just somehow constantly super motivated and inspired (I say "somehow"--but all the people I interact with in the community have been a big part of that, naturally). I don't know if I'll ever be able to have another Doom year like this past one. Just for the purposes of the historical record, it's a little disappointing that the DBP series didn't get a mention in passing at least, but overall I'm thankful that the series has gotten such a warm and fair reception here over the years, all things considering. And with Rowdy Rudy 2 in the winner's circle, I feel that tradition of 90s-ish creative, lo-fi fun that I dig so much is well represented regardless.

[Cinnamon]

On 12/14/2020 at 7:41 PM, rd. said:

[...]

 

What do the contributors feel about how the selections should be used? 

 

Just speaking for myself, but it would be unfortunate if people only ever played or paid serious attention to the "official" top 10. I'm not sure if any contributor feels the purpose of the awards is to impose the hierarchy on playing choices. (The perception sadly will exist to some degree just because there is a top 10 at all.)

 

But I mostly wish the "I just use the awards as a summary" approach wasn't always phrased as an act of minor rebellion.  Since enjoyment of games is highly subjective, any individual reader's personal top 10 (or whatever #) among what's included will generally mix from the main awards, from the runners-up, and from the other mentions  -- sometimes quite evenly. That variation would remain even if a perfect judging bot existed. So it's 100% non-controversially a valid approach. 

[...]

Speaking mostly from personal experience, but also a tad from forum browsing, here:

I don't think most people pay too close attention to the ordering of the top 10 ones. Most people realize that ordering 10 things you really like is hard as shit, and when you get more people chipping in than only one individual, it's bound to be sort of a "best estimate."

I think, however, that way too few (I am very guilty of this myself, mostly due to limited time to play DOOM - there are other games, and oh yeah, my personal life) look beyond the listing of ten. I genuinely hope that I am wrong, and that most look at runner-ups, because one of my favorite WADs was that this year. :) But I know how I work, and don't exactly regard myself as especially unique.

This is not a criticism or anything of the process with which the Cacowards are determined, far from it. I just hope that people do like me, eventually, and don't see them as a guide to what is good and not*.

*Because God knows, I hate some popular stuff and love some unpopular stuff...