The 2021 Cacowards

[cannonball]

Great new editions to this years awards. Glad that more wads/mods have been given the attention they deserve. The 21 extras section along with the silver cacowards really broaden the awards beyond the traditional ten or so. It truly has been a fantastic year of content for this 28 year old game. Without wanting to make the Cacowards team's job even harder, I really hope for more of the same over the coming year.

Congratulations to everyone who has received a nod this year. Xaser is a great choice as someone who has contributed some very memorable maps over the years, as well as a significant contributor behind the scenes of some of the biggest releases on this forum.

Edited December 10, 2021 by cannonball

[CrocMagnum]

This year has been nuts. Quality wads and gameplay mod are dropping left and right.

 

So much that they have taken their toll on my spare time. ^^

 

And Kudos for the Cacowards Team too, your accounts are outstanding, full of insight, and above all I had a real kick reading them. I will remember The Cacowards 2021, for sure.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by CrocMagnum

[ludicrous_peridot]

40 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Heading MIDTWID, Bourgeois Megawad AND Ray Mohawk 2 this year simply wasn’t enough. I’m gonna have to head twice as many projects, make twice as many MIDIs, make twice as many maps, AND run a contest celebrating 21 years of Doom mapping.

 

And actually publish those "retail copies" of BVWP if I may?.. ;)

[Master O]

43 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Alright fellas. I get how it is.
 

I hear you loud and clear.

 

Heading MIDTWID, Bourgeois Megawad AND Ray Mohawk 2 this year simply wasn’t enough. I’m gonna have to head twice as many projects, make twice as many MIDIs, make twice as many maps, AND run a contest celebrating 21 years of Doom mapping.

You run a hard bargain, Cacowards Team.. a damn hard bargain.

 

..but, ah hell, what can I say. I’M IN.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

this is 100% a joke please don’t think I map for clout!!

also these write ups were SO well done this year!
 

I’m actually stunned that you managed to whittle it town to “this few” wads, even when you combine ALL the awards, runner-ups and 21 honorable mentions, there was still a bunch of unfortunate content that went unmentioned. Absolutely no fault of the Caco team, there was just a simply unprecedented amount of content this year.. So much hell for some, so much heaven for others!!

 

I wonder if this insane rate of content is going to continue in perpetuity? There’s so many EASY AS PIE tools these days, I see newcomers becoming gods right before my eyes over the years. These damn kids don’t know the struggle we went through, back in my day we used to climb 21 miles uphill just to get a halfway usable map editor!!... (continues ranting at cloud as everyone walks away)
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Seriously, all jokes aside - what an incredible year for Doom and Doomers....

 

so.. much.. content..!!

 

Ray Mohawk vs Capcom

Ray Mohawk 4: No Regerts

H-Ray Mohawk

Ray Mohawk: The Search for More Duke Nukem

[JharedPH]

Congrats, everyone!

[Chainie]

Sadly,  anticipated project list(aka "what we are still waiting for") missing some titles, like 2022 a doom odyssey, TNT Forever or Hell Frontier.

 

BTW, i'm happy to see improvements in cacowards. For the last few years you making them looking better and better, adding new features. 
Good job, writers, artists, who worked on this. 
Congrats to mappers and community project leaders.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Chainie

[Soulless]

My list-to-play for 2021 releases just got a little bit bigger, added a few that I surely didnt give the attention it deserved when they dropped.

Glad to see some of my favourite works winning the award, congrats to the winners and thanks to the doom community for all the good content.

Lets hope next year is as good as this one!

[Novaseer]

shit, now I'm feeling like taking up mapping again before inevitably abandoning whatever I'm working on in a month's time

[Agent_Ash]

An award for Painslayer was unexpected and awesome. Thanks for the kind words and the wonderful review! I'm quite proud of this project, and it makes me very happy to see the recognition of my favorite community.

 

Expect more fun mods in the future! ;)

 

P.S. I finally updated my nickname from Jekyll Grim Payne to Agent_Ash here. Sorry if this causes any confusion :)

Edited December 10, 2021 by Agent_Ash

[Pirx]

12 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

The 2021 Cacowards are live! Once again, it's time to celebrate or grumble, whichever works best for you, and hope you enjoy the awards!

 

 

congratulations! may doom live forever!

[obake]

A wonderful year of both wads and wad authors. Congrats to everyone involved!

[Mr Masker]

A great read as always, It's nice to see honourable mentions alongside the awards in the main section, I've ussually considered being mentioned on the page as getting some sort of award so this is a nice way of making them feel just as noticable.

 

Very nice to see the 21 for 2021 list aswell, there's been so many mapsets this year that even 24 mentions wouldn't be enough so 21 more definitly help, I don't even know if I'll be able to play all of these mapsets and maps but I'll try.

[NoahRules]

Wake up babe Cacowards 2021 is here

[ViolentBeetle]

Yay, I have made it into the awards this year, sort of. My community project did into honorable mentions anyway.

Congratulations to all participants and @LordEntr0py specifically for making it as Most Promising Newcomer.

[GoneAway]

Thanks for the award 🙂

 

As source port development is a community effort, I'd like to shout out some people that were essential to the past year's work.

 

I'd like to thank @Graf Zahl and @fabian for their work forking and maintaining prboom+um in the past years. Without that effort I don't think I would have gotten into source port work or ultimately forked my own port out of it. I'd like to thank @rfomin for joining in with that maintenance ultimately and for his work alongside fabian with woof, as this port has had a lot of positive cross-pollination with dsda-doom and new specifications. There have been many issues that they fixed that were inherited into dsda-doom, and I wouldn't have been able to focus on as many bells and whistles if they weren't keeping the boat afloat to begin with.

 

Some people that have been essential to dsda-doom's development but haven't gotten enough recognition for it: @Keyboard_Doomer is the reason releases have been as stable as they have for both demo recording and general issues, as he does extensive regression testing for major releases. @ZeroMaster010 also contributes a lot of energy to testing things out and ensuring stability, including using dsda-doom in his 24/7 demo stream, which means we are constantly testing demos out. Much of the code for mbf21 was contributed by @Xaser (I hope that was a half-lifetime achievement award, because we have more to do in 2022 😉). Lots of improvements have come with the help of @eLim, including graphical updates and lots of discussions about software development in general. There are too many people to name that have tested out new features, debugged weird issues, etc, but things wouldn't be where they are without you, so thanks to you all as well.

 

Here are some people that have made builds for other environments to make sure everyone is able to play: @PBeGood4, @Ramon_Demestre, and @Gibbon. If you've used one of their builds, consider sending them a thank you as well :^)

 

There are a lot of discussions about the port that go on behind the scenes, which are often more related to speedrunning standards, but this is as much an essential element of dsda-doom as anything else, so I'd like to thank these folks as well: @ZeroMaster010, @4shockblast, @Bdubzzz, @Daerik, @Looper, @Meowgi, @dew, and @depr4vity. (Also a ton of other people, sorry I can't list everyone.)

 

Additional people that helped out with mbf21's specification and also in general discussions about new things in doom code: @AlexMax, @Altazimuth, @dew, @MTrop, and @skillsaw. Ideas and discussions were very valuable even for anyone that didn't contribute directly to the text or code. And of course the whole community's contributions to the initial discussion about the idea of having a new standard itself can't be overstated.

 

Let's see what 2022 brings 🔭

[LordEntr0py]

Really made up to see my name there as a promising Newcomer. Also, two screenshots of my maps in there (for RAMP and Skulltiverse)!

[DuckReconMajor]

If you haven't played Heartland yet you're just being mean to yourself. Get to it!

 

dsda-doom is a gift from the heavens and I struggle to put into words how much I love it without sounding too much like a kiss-ass lol. Infinity thanks to kraf and everyone mentioned in his post above.

 

I feel like this years' awards will be a to-play list for many of us for multiple years. Congrats everyone and thanks to all involved!

[MFG38]

Words cannot describe how fuzzy it makes me feel inside to see a project I spearheaded mentioned in some form. :3 Thank you for the honor, and congrats to all the other (not-quite-)winners!

[DMPhobos]

Congratulations to all the winners!

 

I also want to thank the judges for including Arceon as one the runner ups, given how crazy this year was with all the release i'm honestly suprised it was considered as such and didn't expected to see it at all on the cacos. So thank you, it means a lot to me to see my mapset get a small spot on the awards

 

Here's to another great year of doom hoping 2022 brings more good stuff from the community

[Azure_Horror]

Man, what a year!

And what a great list of write-ups!

 

The 21-notable-wads-for-21 collection is a great addition. Like it, or not, but some more casual Doom fans tend to see <Year> Cacoward list as "all relevant WADs from <Year>". Adding more notable WADs beyond Cacoward finalists and runner ups is very relevant for more casual Doomers.

 

hours ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

Some technical feedback on the page layout. I like that the "lesser" awards were mixed in with the main ones. But they're not listed on the side bar other than on the front page. That's going to hide them from the casual browser in months to come. Definitely needs rectifying (just match the front page sidebar for each of the 4 following pages).

Quoted for visibility. Without runner up list on sidebar, the pages 1-4 of awards become a bit hard to follow. When quickly skimming through award list, you can easily forget about runner ups.

[Mordeth]

Happy birthday, Doom!  Congrats to all the winners and runner-ups of this year's Cacowards! And of course major kudos to the Cacowards team, for pulling this off yet again.

[SkeletronMK666]

i feel so accomplished and happy to have contributed to one of the muliplayer cacoawards: insanity deathmatch! congratulations to @Kaapeli47 for winning muliplayer award. i was in vc with him alot of the times as he was devoping IDM in real time. the guy is a real pleasure too be around. IDM is extremley fun, and will be enjoyed for many, many, years to come, and is now hopefully, sets a standard for how muliplayer can be played!

 

on another note: i am excited to dig through the reast of the maps and mods choosen by the cacoawards this year, like every year. i return on a annual bases. It is one of my favorite parts of december because it highlights cool maps i can play with my terminator mods lol. 

[Astronomical]

My only complaint is the sidebar.  Not the sidebar's content, the sidebar itself is an awful idea because of how many good things get shoved off to that sidebar.  Maybe we should't have a sidebar and just put all of the sidebar content on it's own page.

[BetelgeuseSupergiant]

My congralutations for every winner! :D

[ginc]

Awesome, Cacoward season means lots of Doom WADs to play over the holidays! Its been a busy year for me IRL so this is just what the doctor ordered. Loving the expanded format this year. Congrats to all winners and runners-up!

 

I'm very humbled that you guys included Infested - I started mapping again at the start of 2021 (after a 26 year break!) as a creative outlet during these COVID times, and it makes me very happy when people enjoy what I made. There is so much good stuff to play in the Classic Doom community (and lots of support from other creators), I was inspired by a lot of it and I just made what I thought would be fun, cool and maybe a bit novel.

 

Quote

Sort of the demented lovechild of mouldy's Going Down and Jaska's Lost Civilization

And I do have to say that this line in the article is pretty much EXACTLY what I was going for, those 2 WADs were probably my biggest inspiration.

Edited December 10, 2021 by ginc

[skillsaw]

I started writing this last night but realized I had too many things I wanted to say.

 

First, congrats to everyone who was featured! It's already been restated a million times but somehow every yeah this community accomplishes more and more. It's so great to be a part of that and to celebrate it.

 

Next, I've already tried to express my thanks to the community a million times for the reception to Heartland, and I've already expressed that it wouldn't have happened without @Altazimuth, @stewboy, @Xaser, and @dew, but now I want to thank the Cacowards team as well for recognizing Heartland. Recognition isn't really a good reason to get into mapping as a hobby, IMO, but still... I'm not going to deny that receiving validation feels good. Thanks for making my day!

 

I'm struggling to cogently respond to @rd.'s writeup specifically, because it's just so effusively positive, and it covers so much ground, but it's so clear that (just like my playtesting bff dew) she just gets what I'm trying to accomplish, what things I value, and what I'm willing to experiment with. The article integrates that neatly, so it reads as much a retrospective on my """"""career""""" (I want to make those airquotes bigger) as it does a commentary on Heartland itself. I really enjoyed reading it, and just really want to express my gratitude.

 

One last thing is that I really like the direction that the Cacowards are going in, particularly in such a productive year. These things that I noticed:

• Including runners up in the the body of the page rather than in the side bar
• Expanding to 12 Cacoward winners
• Doing the "21 More for 21" section to acknowledge and remember important, high quality projects that didn't make the cut for whatever reason
• Calling out a large number of newcomers

...all seem consciously intended to make the Cacowards more inclusive and pushed to be a celebration rather than a contest, and IMO that is right direction. Especially in 2021.

[magicsofa]

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I know you apologised, and I doubt this was your intention anyway - but damn, reading this made me feel bad for packing (practically) all my mapsets / community projects with built-in gameplay mods. It never occurred to me that people might think I’m trying to say “screw your mod, no fun allowed in my mapset!!” (definitely not what I want, mod it to your hearts content!)

 

The problem for me is that when I modify the gameplay, I will then mapping with those specific modifications in mind. So while I would never try to police anyone else's usage of mods, I don't feel the need to cater to them either. People need to understand that smashing mods together is always proceed-at-your-own-risk. The only exception is if a developer explicitly states that their project is intended to be compatible with XYZ.

To put things in perspective, flip it around. How absurd would it be if someone complained to the creator of a gameplay mod, that some part of a mapset was broken? The modder can't be held responsible for how their mod works in every single map. The expectation should be that they only need to test it on the IWADs or whatever other wads they are targetting. Similarly, if I create a map without any modification to gameplay, I should only be testing it with unmodded gameplay. However, if I made a map that includes gameplay mods, it would be silly for me to test the map without those mods. In some cases that isn't even possible - like when you are using dehacked to replace non-monster things with new monsters, which would obviously totally break any map made without those specific replacements in mind.

[Kaapeli47]

7 hours ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

@Kaapeli47 getting his just deserts for the insane (HA!) amount of effort put into Insanity Deathmatch. We've been playing it almost nonstop for the last 6+ months and it's a testament to his efforts that this ridiculous weapons pack is actually balanced. It shouldn't be, but it is. It's also ridiculously fun for both experienced players and new comers alike.

Thank you very much, Bridge!! Achieving a Cacoward with Insanity Deathmatch is a great honor, and I'm very grateful for all the people at Hellforge who actively tested it and gave a tremendous amount of constructive feedback on it! Seeing how much people had enjoyed it - from the very first online test in August 2020 all the way to our multiplayer shenanigans over the past 6 months in the Hellforge - it gave me a big hint that I'm onto something really exciting with this mod.

 

I never expected it to be so successful to have people telling me by the end of this year that it could be a strong candidate for Cacowards, and they sure were right! Thank you to all those people for the big cheers and support!

 

It's also incredible to think that Insanity Deathmatch is my first ever publicly released Doom project. I've developed the mod for 2.5 years in total, even if the very first unreleased versions from 2019 to 2020 were way different and much more experimental than what the full release is now, but I'm still only a fresh face to most of the community and forums in Doom, and achieving this as a "half-newcomer", if you will, is phenomenal to me.

 

Thank you all so much!

[Redneckerz]

New contributors? Where can i sign up for next year's ousting?

Spoiler

I am half-joking and half-serious.

 

So, a few way overdue thoughts now that some dust was settled. Not covering everything, but some notes.

 

Espi Award:

I was surprised that modder excellence Xaser had yet to recieve one! But it is a duly rightful one - A veteran in the craft of ZDoom and beyond, Xaser to me atleast carries a shroud of mystery: Their posts randomly, unannounced, and always leaving you guessing for more. Xaser is that brilliant nugget that does not want any shine applied to it - Its a natural glow that captivates all. Deserved.

Top Twelve: Page 1:

Heartland getting an award was an instant settlement - Seldomly you see a WAD set promote a source port as well as Skillsaw's latest brethren. I'd go as far as saying that in terms of Eternity mapsets, there is now a before Heartland, and a post-Heartland ERA.

 

IX2 is a surprise to me, but at the same time, not so much. Targetting Boom, it is great to see a mapset push 1998 source port tech to new heights.

 

Lullaby is just a slam dunk Cacoward because it redefines how important a lead artistic motif is in designing a Doom map. In Lullaby, that motif is carried to perfection: The screenshot shows this perfectly: A standalone castle that has a story to tell. That story is then on display through its grand establishments in architecture. Lullaby brings a new level of detail to the Doom table, a staple map that should inspire new generations of mappers.

 

Ashes: Afterglow. What else can be said? Vostyok has carved a world unique to Doom, but also unique in and out of itself. an 80's sci-fi scape, it beats out commercial oustings with its unique core look and gameplay approach. It is almost criminal this isn't put up for money, but even so - The Ashes series deserves to go ever bigger.

 

Doom 2 In Spain Only is the perfect mixture of Spanish tunes and Doomguy. Even the concept of approaching this - Through a silly sounding Software firm, boasting about levels from Romero and co - is danglish and frivolic. If happiness is around the bend, then Doom 2 In Spain Only is leading the wave, paving the path. Pure joy.

 

Auger:Zenith is just about killing it on visual alone. And then underneath lies a mapset of magnificent qualities.

 

@Doomkid and Rowdy getting recognized is another standout. Through the end of time i swear you will come up with something fun to play with!

 

Codeaward:

@kraflab winning this is a fantastic result and a worthy honoring of his achievements - And boy are there achievements! In a world where pretty much every player can choose a specific source port to their niche, Kraflab has carved a nice of his own - One that is a speedrunners dream and also a modder's paradise. From MBF21 to DSDHacked, Kraflab (And his team of compatriots!) have carved up a new scroll of exemplary might, a definition that takes Doom modding into the next decade. Its still early days, but what has been laid out this year, will come to fruition (Hopefully!) in the years to come.

 

If there ever was a Magnum Opus, this would be it.

 

Conclusion:

It goes too far to cover everything, not because i couldn't play everything - But because even with such a (heavily!) curated list, there is still enough epicness left off the table to fill another Cacowards alone.

 

So those who didn't make the cut in an Cacoward or even Runner Up: Don't feel bad! This year triumphed pretty much every year before it in terms of output and quality, so much helped by the state of the world today.

 

In these times of being called back to home, through epidemics and other mayhem, the desire to express becomes ever greater. Clearly through its output, the Doom Community by-Large felt the desire to express in these trying times.

 

A big appreciation to @Major Arleneto covering the increasing number of standalone games - Who would have thought that Doom technology would go on to power this many games, so long after its original commercial lifespan? In a time of hyperrealism, we love returning back to chunky pixels - and thats where Doom is.

 

It is to them that these efforts of self-expression has led to an abundance of joy to this fine community.

 

Here's to you, mappers, musicians, Wikidians, programmers, posters, staff members and everyone else. A round of applause for yourself and for this community, the finest community i have ever known.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Redneckerz

[jazzmaster9]

Congrats to all the winners :D

Especially happy that Corruption Cards and Atmospheric Extinction made it in.

 

Hopefully I can finally break the "Sidebar Award" curse in 2022.

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by jazzmaster9