Cacowards 2017 discussion (24 years)

[Poncho]

I'm actually surprised Travelling to the Moon wasn't even nominated.

[Dirk]

I must say, I'm genuinely surprised that neither entry in the Wool Ball series has won a Cacoward proper; they're both masterpieces, imvho.

[Scuba Steve]

3 hours ago, Tormentor667 said:

Still, I really don't get it why Blade of Agony Chapter 2 hasn't been mentioned.

Assuming you're going to release a final version complete with all 3 episodes and probably numerous gameplay fixes, one idea was to ghost-edit the award to describe the entire project... kind of how Lord of the Rings didn't receive awards until Return of the King. I seem to recall a sidebar was going to mention all the sequels released this year, but it was not written in time.

[Not Jabba]

3 hours ago, Tormentor667 said:

Still, I really don't get it why Blade of Agony Chapter 2 hasn't been mentioned. It's not that I am angry or pissed, it's just that we discussed a lot in the team before the Cacowards and anyone was really hoping for an award, considering that it is definitely better and expands on Chapter 1. Wasn't it good enough or is it simply not considered as an "new wad" because it's a "Chapter 2" instead of something totally new? Just curious, I am not expecting to get a late Caco :)

The biggest issue with E2 specifically is that whereas E1 is based more on simple, fun gunplay, E2 tends to get bogged down in special mission tropes, all of which are more roughly implemented in the GZDoom engine than they would be in a modern game that's designed to accommodate them. One of the earliest and most frustrating examples was the escort mission where your ally is constantly riding right up behind you and getting in the way, making it very difficult to maneuver and take cover from enemy fire. We also encountered a fair number of odd issues that seemed like glaring oversights, such as swimming shark enemies that could leap onto land and chase you around, or the battle between Nazis and cultists in which neither side can take damage on UV, which iirc is due to some technicality of the way the difficulty settings are implemented.

 

This is just feedback, of course. If you are making the game that you love and that you want to play, then you should do so whether it gets you one award or multiple awards or none at all. I know you're someone who's passionate about what you create, and I respect and admire that even when I'm not a huge fan of the creations themselves -- though for the record, I did completely agree with E1 getting a Cacoward.

 

Also -- not that I would accuse you or anyone else of gaming the system, but just to clear the air a bit and get it on record -- I doubt that splitting a project into multiple releases is likely to have any significant effect on award outcomes. BTSX was a pretty straightforward case, because the two halves of it released so far were not only both full megawads, but were also quite distinct from each other -- not much different from how the last three Community Chests have all gotten awards by virtue of being completely different projects. Something like Return to Hadron E2 necessarily has a higher bar to clear because it's a continuation of a project that's already been awarded for being great in exactly the same way, and we can't help but look at the bigger picture when competition is so fierce that far more than 10 wads "deserve" to be in the top 10. The issue of whether BoA is eligible for more Cacowards or has already received its full due is still kind of nebulous, as I believe this is the first time that this exact issue has come up, but rest assured (as Terminus already pointed out) that E3 will be considered in whatever year it is released, and we'll simply have to re-tackle the issue when it comes up.

[Demon of the Well]

Yep, very well put by Not Jabba, there. Speaking for myself, I'd have had no problem with episode 2 of BoA being eligible for a Cacoward to go along with E1's (nor would I have a problem with E2 of Square receiving the same consideration, nor BoA E3 for that matter), and if the matter had been more immediately contentious (and thus problematic) for us the result might well have been different. The central point is that it didn't end up being particularly contentious this time.

 

Again, I'll only speak for myself here (and would be happy to give my opinions about any other projects that did or didn't end up being featured, FWIW), but I played BoA E2 in its entirety and I felt that it simply wasn't as fun as the first episode, nowhere nearso TBH. It is incredibly ambitious in its venture to put a disparate collection of FPS 'specialty map' tropes one after the other into a very small space--mandatory stealth mission, escort mission, self-guiding turret-shooter sequence, a 'warring factions' segment, etc.--but precisely because the space is relatively small the pacing of the whole really suffers. I often felt I was seeing a collection of proof-of-concept pieces more than levels that really suited the concepts they contained, and not enough of that strange blend of military/arcade shooter action which was the meat and potatoes of E1.

 

A lot of that's down to personal taste, of course, though it may be worth mentioning that the only one of these that really bugs me personally as a concept is escort missions. Leaving that aside, though, I felt like even for someone who was really enthralled by the episode's framing and bold attempt to include a bunch of wildly different scenarios, it would be impossible to ignore the welter of technical problems, issues and oversights which throw an additional layer of interference atop the morass of design functionalities at play, some of the more comedic/outlandish of which NJ mentioned above. I don't mean this to sound untowardly dismissive, and fully appreciate that the game is still in ongoing development and thus that many of these issues may already have been addressed in current builds, but as of the time I played E2 (which was pretty close to when it was first publicly unveiled) it struck me as being really in more of a beta or even an alpha release state in comparison to E1, and it was hard for me to look past this, especially in tandem with taste issues and in light of how stiff competition was elsewhere this year. For what it's worth, though, I thought that the episode ended nicely on a high note, and I still look forward to playing E3 when it comes out.

[dew]

1 hour ago, Scuba Steve said:

I seem to recall a sidebar was going to mention all the sequels released this year, but it was not written in time.

Yeah, not sure how it fell through the cracks. It was supposed to namedrop the incredibly expansive, hard-worked sequels (BoA E2 and Inq 3 in particular) that were impressive and enjoyable for a certain crowd, but their flaws made them fall short of an award for the panelists.

 

In the case of Inquisitor 3 we marvelled at the scope of the project and how you can make a functioning child of Daggerfall and Diablo in Doom now, but there was also a ton of grindy gameplay, horde-herding melee that just doesn't work too well in idtech1, and those annoying back trips for heals. "It starts to get better after the first 3 hours" was too much of a burden for it.

 

edit: I considered BoA E2 worse than the first episode for all the reasons my good colleagues mentioned. If E3 is as good or better than E1, I might find myself in Scuba's camp again, I don't believe bundling the episodes in one file is necessarily a red line we can't cross.

Edited December 11, 2017 by dew

[Demon of the Well]

Yeah, bit of a mea culpa from me vis-a-vis Inquisitor 3, I was multitasking playing a bunch of other stuff during the lead-up at the same time, and I didn't get very far in the 2-3 hours I spent with it, seems fair to say that it's a rather slow starter, all else being equal. This isn't necessarily much of an issue for me in and of itself, mind (and now that the rush is over I'll definitely pick it back up and finish it), but some of the other panelists spent a lot more time with it than I did and still found the going slow and kinda sloggy, so things went how they went.

 

End Point and Travelling to the Moon were both 2016-period WADs, incidentally (the cutoff point for each year is realistically sometime in mid-November for practical reasons). Haven't played the latter yet, but am a big Eternal fan for my part, and supposing they had come out for the 2017 period I guess all I can say is that they'd have had some really tough competition.

[Nevander]

Just now opened this thread. The salt is real in here lol. I mean sure I'm bummed I didn't win anything since I put a lot of effort into Doom 64 Retribution but I don't even know if a) it was eligible for anything or b) released in the right time frame. Congrats to those who did win, I haven't played any of the winning stuff tho so my opinions are very uninformed.

[Crusader No Regret]

"so who is this Marisa person and how is she connected to Randi?"

"...oh."

 

Now I have this mental image of someone flying off on a broom with a carefree smile.

 

Jaw dropping aside, a well earned award.  18 years is a lot of dedication.

 

As for all those interesting releases that didn't get a mention, I'll interpret that to a high overall quality in the release pool.

[savagegrant]

Well, I've put aside some evenings to start playing the Cacoward winners and I've started alphabetically with Brigandine. Holy fuckballs it's good! A nice challenge on UV, still got three secrets I haven't found so I'll have to open that puppy in DB2 tonight me thinks. :)

[Snikle]

I just played Brigandine earlier today. I loved the visuals, must've taken a long time to make. It was fun too, and didn't take too long to play through. But I exited with about 80% kills and no secrets, so I may go back to it someday. I also downloaded the Given, and hope that it won't rape my computer on prboom+. (Already know that it's laggy on GZDoom)

[PasokonDeacon]

This year's list is darn tootin'. I've enjoyed most of lilith.pk3 so far, but the holiday break's a good excuse to finish it. Honestly, I'm a bit more interested in researching the runner-ups and overlooked releases of late 2016 and 2017, knowing I can always return to the Cacowards for reference on most of the Doomworld favorites. The Cacowards are a great institution which helped me out a lot when I got into Doom, so I thank everyone who nominated and judged the 24th event for doing their best to survey the community landscape.

Rise of the Wool Ball deserved an award if you ask me. That mod showcases an enviable level of improvement and optimism, in addition to working as a standalone sequel to Shadow of the Wool Ball. Awards bloat could do some damage if it spirals out of control, but maybe consider adding a slot under Other Awards for total conversions? That's not going to greatly influence how much more often modders will strive to make TCs and little else, which would be the main concern in providing incentive to get this kind of recognition.

Figuring out how to play all the year's nominated releases and then discuss which ones stood out for an award, depending on the judges' different experiences and tastes, makes this a challenging ceremony. So regardless of what I think, I'm glad it's here this year and I hope more people getting into classic Doom will learn how best to use the Cacowards when putting together a play-list.

[scwiba]

Hey all! Late to the thread, but I wanted to congratulate all the Cacoward winners. There were some incredible WADs this year, including two of my all-time favorites: lilith and No End In Sight. I'm sure we can all nitpick the selections, and if I'd written the awards I'd probably have chosen different WADs. Every year, there's a WAD or two that had a profound impact on me that doesn't make the cut -- and you know what? That's okay. If a WAD wins a Cacoward, it means it affected someone in a profound way, and that's really all that matters.

 

It's the same if your WAD didn't win, or someone else's didn't when you thought it should. Did you make a WAD this year? Then you already won! You did it! You dreamed something up and made it a reality! That's incredible. And I guarantee if you've shared it, then someone enjoyed it, was impacted by it, or was even inspired to make something of their own because of your WAD. If you're that player who really loved a WAD but was sad to see it didn't win -- tell the creator how much you loved it. Hearing stuff like that can be just as rewarding as winning a Cacoward.

 

I mean, I opened up this thread and saw this:

 

On 12/10/2017 at 0:32 AM, anotak said:

im sad that ryath's unalign.wad did not make it at least as a runner up! it was quite good. my work this year would not have been what it is without the influence of that, or last year's winner absolutely killed

And it legit almost made me cry... because who needs a Cacoward when you hear from the creator of one of the coolest projects in years that something you made helped to inspire that cool project?

 

Point is, you're all winners. Don't let anybody tell you your WAD isn't worthy, and don't ever think you're not doing good work. We have one of the most creative and awesome communities I've ever seen, and I love y'all.

 

 

[Tormentor667]

Thanks for the info on Chapter 2 of Blade of Agony to anyone. We already have been worked a lot on Chapter 2 in the past months and improved all the things mentioned since then so I consider the problems solved. For Chapter 3 I promise you can expect the best we are capable to pull off.

[Benjogami]

An interesting factoid that I haven't seen mentioned yet: 2 of the winners started out as submissions to Vinesauce Joel's mapping contest (dead.air and Counterattack).

 

Edit: lol nevermind. I forgot that I hadn't read the articles yet.

Edited December 13, 2017 by Benjogami

[valkiriforce]

Congrats to all the winners, and Happy 24th birthday to Doom! The only decision I wasn't fully in agreement with was to award the Mordeth based on an ongoing project history that took forever to get out there, with links to the threads instead of a link to an actual WAD to play like TNT: Revilution. I was confused to see TNT 2 mentioned there when I know for a fact that wasn't even released yet, whereas Revilution was finished this past Summer. I just like it when it stays traditional to linking actual wads and mods as opposed to wondering if TNT 2 actually did get released as I'm sure outsiders or returning members might be misled to believe. In short, I think Revilution would have been a more straightforward Mordeth winner, then I'd replace Revilution's runner-up entry with Super Mayhem 17. I was sad to see it didn't manage to make any kind of mention, but hey...2017 was a really good year for plenty of good projects.

 

Also congrats to dobu gabu maru for Mapper of the Year - definitely felt warranted at this point and I've been enjoying his occasional mapping streams or wad playthroughs as I've managed to catch some of them. Still have yet to challenge The Given but I have a lot of catching up to do anyway...

[Tristan]

On the Doom Wiki article for this year's cacos, I put Revilution as the Mordeth winner as that what the section seemed to be getting at IMO. Get yer own Mordeth award TNT2!!

[Not Jabba]

26 minutes ago, valkiriforce said:

I was confused to see TNT 2 mentioned there when I know for a fact that wasn't even released yet, whereas Revilution was finished this past Summer. I think Revilution would have been a more straightforward Mordeth winner, then I'd replace Revilution's runner-up entry with Super Mayhem 17. I was sad to see it didn't manage to make any kind of mention, but hey...2017 was a really good year for plenty of good projects.

It's for the whole TNT2 saga because it's really one single narrative, and it wouldn't make sense to write about the exact same thing again when Devilution is released -- just think of it as Devilution getting its half of the award in advance. If it had just been for Revilution, then Revilution could still have remained as a runner-up; many past Mordeth winners have been either runner-ups or in the top 10.

 

Our understanding is that Mayhem 17 hasn't had any kind of conclusive release yet, even a public beta. I for one am looking forward to playing it when it's done.

[Linguica]

1 hour ago, valkiriforce said:

I wasn't fully in agreement with was to award the Mordeth based on an ongoing project history that took forever to get out there, with links to the threads instead of a link to an actual WAD to play like TNT: Revilution.

There *is* a link to Revilution, on its Honorable Mention writeup.

[anotak]

i just remembered another wad i think was pretty damn good this year: rebel sky

[Xaser]

Regarding "The TNT2 Saga", there's precedent for abstract recipients in past 'Wards, like when Tormentor667's Detail Guide got "Worst Wad".

 

Also regarding the saga: There's a lot more details to the story than the article mentions. Like, _way_ more details. That's a subject for another time, though. :P

[Batandy]

On 10/12/2017 at 6:38 PM, Scuba Steve said:

The Castlevania project was neat... but it's not particularly fun to play. Looking up at candles on the walls while simultaneously jumping and trying to whip them is really dull. The Doom engine isn't well equipped to handle melee combat. Trust me, I know.

I personally understand this, i was never expecting to win an award for this project, there's so much stuff that i thought deserved it way more than my work, especially this year. Regardless, it fills my heart with joy to know that tons of people "mentioned" it and wanted it to win, afterall it's knowing that people appreciate my work that makes me carry on and always want to improve as a modder.

If i have to say, i don't necessarily agree with this critique, projects like Demonsteele and honestly even your Action Doom 2 have proven that melee is possible in Doom (I think you're referring to that with the "Trust me, i know", and if so, what's wrong with that? I've really enjoyed that wad and it's one of the mods that made me want to become a modder myself).

If i'll ever make a sequel to Castlevania, i'll mess with the formula a bit more to improve the gameplay. I didn't want to change it so much as a first TC, i basically wanted to bring exactly what people expected from a project like that, so if there's gonna be a number two, it's gonna be "What new elements can i bring to the table and what can be improved?".

But for now, back to work on Golden Souls 2.

 

That said, congratulations to all the winners, I remember following Lilith for a while and definitely liked the concept, i'm gonna try it really soon.

I'm currently going through SotNR, encounters are tough but it's really an amazing mod, i'm loving the atmosphere straight out of a Lovecraft story.

[VGamingJunkie]

Come to think of it, could the Cacowards recognize different categories? Like Best Story, Best Visuals, Best Horror, Best Comedy, Best Action, etc?

[Scuba Steve]

You'd run into the same problem that arose this year; there often aren't enough projects from a small community to even have a nomination. Everyone discussed a "best music" award, but there ended up being like two tracks nominated. Most years there is probably a single horror themed map, or a single story-driven experience. The community is too small and there aren't enough releases to warrant expanded categories like that. The first mention of a "gameplay" mod as an award winner was Zen Dynamics in 2006, and it would be another four years before the gameplay award became an actual staple of the Cacowards.

[VGamingJunkie]

Fair point, it's a shame there aren't more people who want to branch out and do something different.

[Major Cooke]

On 12/10/2017 at 1:59 AM, TheZombieKiller said:

As a port developer, it is your responsibility to respect mod authors and not try to rudely shove your own opinions on what makes a "good mod" onto them.

It would be nice if you upheld this responsibility, but posts like these, along with the lilith.pk3 drama in the past, make it impossible to say that you do.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't mean disrespect to anyone, but after seeing countless posts of this...

 

Everyone shouldn't automatically assume he's attacking the mod author even if it seems like it. People often say super shitty things about my mods (AEoD and D4D which I now fully control). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Doesn't mean they hate me! 

 

He was making a statement about the mods/cacowards -- you don't know if he actually does truly respect those behind it. People can like someone and dislike what they do, or vice versa. In my mind, it's far worse to assume such things. But hey, that's just me! Because:

 

 

That's, like... My opinion man.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Major Cooke

[dew]

9 hours ago, Major Cooke said:

He was making a statement about the mods/cacowards -- you don't know if he actually does truly respect those behind it. People can like someone and dislike what they do, or vice versa. In my mind, it's far worse to assume such things. But hey, that's just me!

Nice try, but let's not kid ourselves, shall we? Maybe your attempt at advocating for Graf would've worked better if this didn't make rounds earlier this year. My honest advice: let the sleeping dogs lie, because I swear this disingenuous apologism invokes some kind of the Streissand effect.

Edited December 16, 2017 by dew : how do i link proper

[Major Cooke]

I am a firm believer people can change at any given time, as hard as that can be. As such, I will not associate his past posts with his latest.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Major Cooke

[Jimmy]

Graf's past posts: I hate lilith.pk3

 

Graf's current posts: I hate lilith.pk3

 

🤔

[Major Cooke]

And yet in his statement I see nowhere an attack on the mod author himself, in this thread.