The 2020 Cacowards

[jazzmaster9]

I will be honest. I really thought I had it this year. 1 and a half years of Work was put on Abysm 2 and Took a lot out of me mentally and creatively. It's sad to say, but I can Never make another project as big or as good that without completely draining any remaining mental stamina I have left, so I reached my absolute peak It seems. Congrats to the winners But i am slightly disappointed at myself NGL but what can I do?

Edited December 10, 2020 by jazzmaster9

[Philnemba]

2020 was such a hot garbage year that this year's cacowards really helps shine a good positive mood within the whole Doom community :)

 

Congratulations to all of the Winners, HMs & ect.

[Aurelius]

Congratulations to all the winners! Another amazing collection of write ups, will have to dive deeper into them after work. And there's definitely some HMs I have missed in the course of the year I just have to tackle.

 

A personal highlight is definitely Rowdy Rudy 2. Not just because Doomkid is the man, but how well everyone on the team worked in sync to create this tongue-in-cheek action adventure that drips nostalgia and pure unadulterated fun. So many good maps, so many good DKC tracks, I was so happy to be a part of it. And I couldn't go by without highlighting a fellow countryman Looper for his amazing speedrun prowess, it was so much fun to follow his grind for the sub 18 minutes, glad it got a mention. Not to take away from the inhuman accomplishment by Daerik that is Sunlust D2All...

 

Onward to new set of amazing maps content coming in 2021!

Edited December 10, 2020 by Aurelius

[The_SloVinator]

Congrats to all the winners!

[Kristian Nebula]

Happy Birthday DOOM! Always there for all of us :) 27 is no kid anymore, where did all the time go? :D

[ZeMystic]

Conagratulations ...

..Congarulation...

....congrats....

 

CONGRATS TO THE WINNERS!

Absolutely stunning work this year from everyone.

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

1 hour ago, jazzmaster9 said:

I will be honest. I really thought I had it this year. 1 and a half years of Work was put on Abysm 2 and Took a lot out of me mentally and creatively. It's sad to say, but I can Never make another project as big or as good that without completely draining any remaining mental stamina I have left, so I reached my absolute peak It seems. Congrats to the winners But i am slightly disappointed at myself NGL but what can I do?

 

If you tie your self esteem to something outside yourself like a cacoward, you're going to find yourself undergoing a lot of undue suffering because at the end of the day you can't control peoples' subjective taste.

 

The fact that you didn't win a cacoward doesn't say anything bad about you. However, the fact that you were willing to work as hard as you did only says good things. 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Marn

[xvertigox]

Woo! One of my most look forward to events each year! Grats to everyone and thanks for all the writeups!

[DOEL]

Happy to see Akeldama and Nova III mentioned. Also happy to read about some awesome maps I haven't heard of that I need to try

[Nine Inch Heels]

According to this year's cacowards flag, this is how it's meant to be played:

 

[Doom-X-Machina]

Congratulations to all the winners, runners up and honourable mentions!!

[antares031]

Happy 27th anniversary of Doom, and congratulations to the winners and runner-ups! Kudos to cacoward judges on publishing the articles as well, another year with lots of amazing creations from the community.

 

I'm personally happy to see the introduction of the "Dootaward: Best Original Soundtrack Award". Having great soundtrack for your levels is definitely important, giving better, more enjoyable gameplay experience to audiences. In fact, selecting soundtrack is one of main things that I always do, whenever I decide to design levels for Doom; Establishing concepts (both gameplay and environmental) first, then looking for a soundtrack, before I start drawing lines on Doom Builder. It'd be really cool, if the category gets multiple winners, like multiplayer award and gameplay award nowadays, but I'm happy with the introduction this year.

[kaleb.]

i see that Gods & Guardians made runner up in page 3, i click it and turns out the only link to the wad is broken now..

dang it looked interesting lol

[Vladguy]

Mmmm.. Windows 3.1... a e s t h e t i c s...

 

Also grats Bridge Boi!

[pcorf]

Some pretty amazing stuff I can only ever imagine creating. Congrats to all. Hope we continue to get joy creating maps and modding this fantastic iD tech 1 engine for many years to come. I think the world would be very different without iD tech 1. Thanks John Carmack, Romero and (the) Dave D. Taylor (blues).

 

I have two new classic megawads in progress due to be released in 2021 and 2022 but I will not be complaining if they do not receive a Cacoward, it's not about that because to me it is not a competition where I'm going to go out there and try to create something so amazing that it ends up been overdone and terrible. It's all about enjoying the pleasure of creating maps and music for (Ultimate) Doom, Doom 2 and other iD tech 1 games in your own manner which you are most comfortable with. Jimmy's Heretic megawad was great for sure.

Edited December 10, 2020 by pcorf

[Mordeth]

I'm always looking forward to the Cacowards. Great job as usual, so thanks to all who made this possible. And congratulations to all the winners and runner-ups!

[Terminus]

Congrats to all the winners and happy birthday Doom!

 

I'm personally extremely happy to see Bridgeburner winning CoTY, extremely well deserved for all of his wonderful creations and he is just such a great influence in general.

Getting a HM for Mapwich 2 makes me feel so happy. It really is such a passion project for everyone who was involved and the result for such an immense megawad that was made together in roughly a month is mind-blowing.

It's always worth remembering that the Cacowards is not a race and you don't have to make wads for the sole purpose of winning an award, the most important thing is to have fun and hope that people enjoy your creation as much as you enjoyed making it.

 

Here's to a wonderful 2021!

[Deadwing]

So cool to see that 25 years on Earth made it to Runner's Up :D

[Omniarch]

Man, I love the cacowards. Since my entrance into Doom-dom in April of this year, I've read the entire back catalog of this illustrious event and this one may be the best yet!

 

It's so nice to see such a bizarre, creative and original creation like Three is a Crowd get the recognition it deserves. Congratulations, @Scypek2!

 

Also, congratulations to @antares031 for the cacoward (much deserved, in my opinion) and @cannonball for the HM (RtH is a literally bloody masterpiece, fight me).

 

And of course congrats to all the other cacoward winners and honourably mentioned! Now my list of wads-to-play has bloated to even more gargantuan proportions. I swear I'll be playing Doom PWADs on my deathbed at this rate!

 

Shout out to @Demon of the Well for the magnificent prose. My inner thesaurus-abuser squealed with glee over every flagrantly, shamelessly, purple-y prosaic paragraph!

 

Special thanks to all the writers and organizers of the Cacowards, the whole event is both uplifting and informative! Long may Doom and its wonderful community live!

[Vermil]

Another great year of Doom  excellently wrapped up.

[lakersforce]

I noticed this part under the "Most noteworthy programming effort of the year" - "we mentioned the Unity port in less than glowing terms, with the caveat that the port was hamstrung by its legal inability to benefit from the decades of source port development, as Free software may not flow upstream back into a commercial product." This is a unfortunate expression, as it can give the impression that Free software may not be used commercially, which is not the case. The developers could have used the GPL'ed version as a base for the port, but they chose not to, because they either a) did not want to abide by the license, or b) want to sell it places being incompatible with the GPL (like a walled of garden like the Microsoft Store.)

Edited December 10, 2020 by lakersforce

[Catpho]

On 12/10/2020 at 3:02 PM, kaleb. said:

i see that Gods & Guardians made runner up in page 3, i click it and turns out the only link to the wad is broken now..

dang it looked interesting lol

No idea why it was deleted, but i do have an older version while waiting for @Wraith777 to reupload (Congrats btw Wraith!) EDIT: Reuploaded

 

Hope all you Doom peeps are having a swell day and of course happy birthday Doom! I hope to write some sort of screed later but just throwing out the wishes just in case ;D

Edited January 7, 2021 by Catpho

[Bridgeburner56]

Man, my pick for creator of the year was definitely @PRIMEVAL. He has contributed to SO many projects this year and 3 of them got a write up in the Cacowards (Bastion of Chaos, Abysm 2 and Technibitch Anticunt box). None of these projects would be the same without his immense contributions. The man is a fucking machine in terms of productivity, and absolute pleasure to work with and to be quite honest, the next Andrew Hulshult. He's that fucking good.
And if he wasn't going to get COTY then getting the inaugural Dootaward was the next best thing. So very deserved my friend.

Go listen to his incredible work
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7MBIOShuKghOdIqPLEvzg6?si=2jNlsg4mRzGTzdAAt8ltLw

https://johnsweekley.bandcamp.com/

Edited December 10, 2020 by Bridgeburner56

[Tristan]

Congratulations to all the winners! Definitely glad to see the addition of a soundtrack award and a worthy inaugural winner in PRIMEVAL I feel. People always talk about quality vs quantity, but there are some artists that can deliver on both; the comparison to Hulshult is apt, they both seem to be working on everything and can just fart out professional-grade work like it's nothing. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't envious of that level of output.

 

Right, now where's the annual Cacoward controversyfest?

[Dimon12321]

Doom TAS speedrunning wasn't mentioned this year despite all the contributions of ClumsyDoomer, almostmatt1, ZeroMaster010 and me, but I expected to see myself somewhere in the text. Oh, dreams! I confess I didn't work hard enough this year =)

Edited December 10, 2020 by Dimon12321

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, lakersforce said:

The developers could have used the GPL'ed version as a base for the port, but they chose not to, because they either a) did not want to abide by the license, or b) want to sell it places being incompatible with the GPL (like a walled of garden like the Microsoft Store.)

No, they couldn't use a GPL port as a base, this has been explained many times. The consoles they wish to distribute the ports on are incompatible with the GPL license terms, and the entire point of the port is to release it on these platforms making it a non-option to skip said platforms, which would cause the port to cease to exist due to the logic paradox that just generated.

 

There is litteraly no available option outside of seeking exemptions (which is how the dehacked code came to be) for the ports existence to make any sense at all. 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Edward850

[seed]

Congrats to the winners and runner ups, 2020 was without a doubt a challenging year for each of us for many reasons, so it's good to see all is still going forward and strong here.

 

I must admit that the results are slightly surprising for me this year, but that's alright, we all have our preferences.

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

Congrats everyone. Rowdy Rudy II was this year's favorite for me.

[snapshot]

Nice work to all writers and everyone involved in the Cacowards, and congrats to all winners and runners up! Happy 27th Birthday to Doom

[Marisa the Magician]

It's an honor to receive my very first award. I didn't think I'd ever get this far.