The 2020 Cacowards

[leodoom85]

You all fucking deserve it. Congratulations and a round of applause.

 

I'm actually surprised that a music award is out. Still a cool addition.

[Firedust]

Congrats to all the winners!

 

Very sad that Akeldama didn't even get runner-up though :( It's probably one of my favourite vanilla megawads at this point.

[Milkman]

HBD DOOM!

 

 

 

Congrats to all the 2020 Cacoward winners! Missed a few of these, will be download and playing in celebration
 

 

 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Milkman

[DownloadTheseSweetViruses]

Congrats to everybody who won! Y'all deserve it, for your talent and hard work!

 

 

 

[D4NUK1]

Happy Birthday to the game that's always on ours PC's.

Gonna make my morning coffe and read all the articles!

[Roofi]

Wow , I didn't expect to see "180 Minutes pour Vivre" as a runner up! It's the first time my maps figure in a winning project. :o

 

Congrats to all winners !

 

 

[ENEMY!!!]

27 is my favourite number and the Doom series is my favourite video game franchise, so happy 27th birthday to Doom!  It wasn't surprising to see Ar Luminae or Faithless Trilogy among the Cacowards this year, but there are also a few other entries that passed me by and that look very interesting.  Also I think Bridgeburner's "mapper of the year" award is very well deserved (Mapwich 2, Bastion of Chaos and the upcoming The Age of Hell).

[dmslr]

1 hour ago, Firedust said:

Very sad that Akeldama didn't even get runner-up though :( It's probably one of my favourite vanilla megawads at this point.

I had to check the pages twice if I was missing something. Sad.

[tourniquet]

I guess we all can agree that it's been an awful year. But it's a delight to see that the Doom community still thrives, despite all restraints and troubles we face these days. The amount of fantastic content released this year is sheer staggering.

 

I'm my worst critic and regardless of how much time and effort i put into my works, i'd rather grant my place in the spotlight to some of the stuff that just ended up as runners up, like @cannonball's 'Return to Hadron E3' or @Scotty's 'Criticality' or '180 Minutes Pour Vivre'. Well but it's not up to me to decide this and of course it's been a delight to read this wonderful and eloquent write up @Demon of the Well

 

Congrats to all the winners

[NuMetalManiak]

9 hours ago, dmslr said:

 

Took me the whole night to notice it.

[Walter confetti]

Congratulations to everybody! I've expected to see Akeldama as a main winner from all the votes it got, but as a special fetaure is still a good thing.

[Egg Boy]

Really happy to see Mutabor and Syringe in the top ten, though, was there ever any doubt? Either way, those were my 2 favorite WADs this year. Congrats to everyone else who won this year!

[Tartlman]

So many wads, so little time... well, looks like my backlog just got another year's worth of maps added to it.

[Chainie]

Glad to see SWWM GZ as one of the best gameplay mods of the year.
Congrats to everyone else who won this year!

[Snikle]

As usual, great collection of maps this year. Happy to see Ar Luminae and Three is a Crowd take cacos, and 25 Years on Earth for its HM. Apparently those are the only ones I've played (And I haven't finished TiaC yet...). Akeldama is probably the year's biggest snub, but it still got a mention in there. I'm kinda happy most of the WADs are things I haven't played yet, gives me a lot of stuff to do. Congrats to all the winners!

[Vorpal]

8 hours 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?

 

Don't sweat it,

a) 2020 was maybe the most competitive year ever

b) cacowards are not comprehensive, but more "contributor [x]'s favorite wad of the year, and maybe they only played 6 wads"

c) I won a cacoward for one of my least-effort maps ever, and it's actually a bad feeling!

 

For self gratification I would look more to youtube to see if people are actually playing it and showing it off, and Abysm 2 already achieves this bar of success.

[Chopkinsca]

Amazing work to everyone who put this together and those that grabbed an award. It is great to see how alive the Doom scene is even after this many years.

[HLRaven]

It's really cool for how old DOOM is, it still gets new content that is surprising

Edited December 10, 2020 by HLRaven

[dew]

42 minutes ago, Vorpal said:

a) 2020 was maybe the most competitive year ever

Preach.

42 minutes ago, Vorpal said:

b) cacowards are not comprehensive, but more "contributor [x]'s favorite wad of the year, and maybe they only played 6 wads" 

A low blow, but honestly sort of on the money - this is a major factor in the ever expanding writer roster. The 2020 committee is the largest ever, because the multitude of opinions helps us avoid the most subjective picks.

edit: Just to clarify a point here. I was the committee person who played the least number of SP wads this year and even I played more than 6. The other guys are machines who crunched through a disgusting amount of Doom. I'm addressing redundancy by design and always having at least a second opinion.

42 minutes ago, Vorpal said:

c) I won a cacoward for one of my least-effort maps ever, and it's actually a bad feeling!

Hellcore wasn't that bad!

Edited December 10, 2020 by dew

[ketmar]

thanks to Cacoward writing team, and congrats to all winners!

Edited December 10, 2020 by ketmar
typos

[Vorpal]

28 minutes ago, dew said:

A low blow

 

I didn't mean it as such, it takes one to know one (actually I've played maybe 5 this year, so not even the generous 6 that I gave to the cacoward staff haha). And I dont think it is humanly possible to have fairly played and judged ALL the great works this year

Edited December 10, 2020 by Vorpal

[Percy T]

very wholesome. Those screenshots of the award-winners blew my mind, some of the most highly detailed and technical levels I've ever seen! ggs to the winners

[SuperCupcakeTactics]

Very nice! Really reminds me of how much cool Doom stuff I miss out on so yeah congrats y'all! A wonderful collection of a lot of best stuff from this year indeed!

Edited December 10, 2020 by SuperCupcakeTactics

[Zolgia108]

thanks a lot for the mentioning guys, most appreciated :)

I can't wait to start a new project in the next future, maybe next time i will be in the top!

good job there, and a special GG  to @Bridgeburner56, which is truly one of the best out there and not only for its mapping capabilities, but for its contribution in general, i loved his streams when i had the time to follow them ( i learned a lot thanks to him), i loved how humble he is and how he gave me constructive criticism for the first part of Happy. Very deserved.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Zolgia108

[Fonze]

Congrats to all the winners! What an impressive body of work produced this year!

[Kokoro Hane]

I almost thought there was an ad on top of the forum for a second lol. Probably didn't help I just woke up, but then when I read it, I was like 'OH, THE CACOWARDS!!!" and clicked it in excitement. Time to find some new DOOM wads to play I might've missed, hehehe.

[Midnight_00]

Wow, I haven't played a single one of the top ten yet. Got some catching up to do. Congratulations to the winners also.

[Scuba Steve]

1 hour ago, Vorpal said:

b) cacowards are not comprehensive, but more "contributor [x]'s favorite wad of the year, and maybe they only played 6 wads" of success.

 

From all my experience, I'd say they are comprehensive; between the mentionation thread and the expanding roster of panel members, very few projects slip by the committee without having been played. In the old days, it was one or two people trying to keep track of every project and playing all of them (and many things DID slip by), but now, with a diverse group of writers each representing a different aspect of the community, I can't think of a mentioned release that wasn't at least discussed.

 

The other thing that has evolved over the years is the awards becoming less about a contributor's favorite project and more about critical discussion. Take 3iaC; Jabba was largely the only person pulling for the project in the beginning and, when he realized he was alone, was willing to drop it from the list... but after making impassioned arguments about why he felt it was deserving, he managed to convince several others about the merits of the project (myself included). Previous Cacowards were much more "contributor's favorites" than they are now (Hello there, Foreverhood!). Granted any awards will always be subjective, but I'd argue that the current makeup of the Cacoward committee has led to a more even-handed approach than in the past.

[AtticTelephone]

Having Doom -1 be mentioned in the Cacowards is pretty nice, thanks... uh, was it rd? Anyways, I have to assume everyone else who worked on Doom -1 probably felt a bit like me. I mean, this is the closest thing to getting a Cacoward, as of now.

[Ar_e_en]

"DID YOU KNOW... Mordeth was still not released in 2020 despite over twenty-two years of development?"

 

Ahh yes... The Duke Nukem Forever of DOOM wads :)

Honestly, what's the likelihood of that wad coming out?

Spoiler

And on a somewhat related note - what's the likelihood of Square Episode 3 coming out?