The 2022 Cacowards

[MFG38]

Congratulations to all of this year's winners! Especially well-deserved mentions on parts of boris - UDB is nothing short of a godsend when it comes to Doom mapping, regardless of format - and Xymph for the work he does over at the wiki. Looking forward to seeing what 2023 brings us.

Edited December 10, 2022 by MFG38

[Wyrmwood]

Time for another bout of downloading, I've played a ton of Doom this year but as usual missed loads of good stuff. My favorites of the year Solar Struggle and 2022 ado only got runners up but that only goes to show the overall quality.

[Shepardus]

3 hours ago, Shawny said:

I am incredibly grateful to be given a place in runner-ups, this was quite unexpected, which makes it even more precious to me.
Congratulations to fellow mappers/modders and big thanks to cacoward team.

I was surprised to see Shallow World in the list, not for lack of quality, but rather because I thought that WAD had flown completely under the radar. Good to see it getting recognition!

[Bloodbath Giraffe]

I want to tank everyone who gave me the motivation and knowledge to keep going. Three years is a long time and with out you wonderful people I would never have had the desire to complete the Megawad. To even be mentions in the Cacoawards is something I never would of though possible. It's a surreal experience ill carry with me for the rest of my life.

[Mr Masker]

Ok that's all the stuff from this year downloaded. There was such little size in my Doom folder, I appreciate it being 2.5 GB larger now. :)

 

But really though, congrats to everyone involved. I wasn't actually aware of a lot of the stuff that won this year, so that'll be an interesting journey to go down.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Mr Masker

[boltface]

In the Promising Newcomers section, the part that talks about tei tenga's NEVER.wad links to the old beta1 thread, which has no link to the current release thread anywhere and no working download link anymore.

Edit: it's been fixed.

Edited December 11, 2022 by boltface
issue was fixed

[Shawny]

1 hour ago, Shepardus said:

I was surprised to see Shallow World in the list, not for lack of quality, but rather because I thought that WAD had flown completely under the radar. Good to see it getting recognition! 

Thank you! I would say that is very much how I felt when I have seen it on the list.
I know people who had played it had at least positive experience, but yeah, I have not seen anybody play the wad or even people
talk about it that much.
(Not counting my playtesters, Vile and DavidN, basically all the people I have asked to play it.)

I also see reasons why people would not really care about the wad - like slower pacing, moody/dark-ish atmosphere, use of stock textures
with limited theme (since the wad loosely follows Doom 2 plot)... and probably some other reasons.
That being said I tried to vary the maps (different type of progression, experiment with gimmicks, stuff like that), make pistol starts and continuous playthrough feel a bit different, etc. to make up for the rather generic look.

I will be completely honest and say I was hoping for some small mention, but having the wad to be a runner-up is... incredible.
It has been few hours now and I still feel ecstatic.

Now I know the wad has a good direction and hopefully I will be able to deliver the same quality in the rest of the project.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Shawny

[MemeMind]

Its awesome for Solar Struggle to get a Silver Cacoaward, and Warpspeed to get a mention.

 

Whats also awesome is seeing @myolden get a Silver and a Mention! That man is a machine!

[deathz0r]

Making a high-effort shitpost paid off well enough for POOGERS to get a mention, I couldn't ask for much else in a post-Mockaward era!

 

Also, slight correction - description of POOGERS should mention 36 maps but it lists 35. It does correctly mention 36 maps within the main entry though.

 

Some really interesting things flew under my radar this year, Don't Turn Your Back on the City was completely unknown to me and has shot up high on my to-play list, looking forward to giving that one a spin.

 

Spoiler

2007 Steve should have listened to 2007 me! ;)

 

In hindsight, it's definitely a testament to the Doom community that the sheer amount of high-quality content is difficult to keep track of these days compared to 15-20 years ago. This is a great problem to have, especially when there is a team large enough to cover the increasingly broad spectrum of content that is coming out.

 

[BluePineapple72]

3 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Mapping at Warpseed

This is actually the next PUSS event. We're using the Kama Sutra resources.

[The_SloVinator]

Congrats on the Cacowards, Runner-Ups & other awards! Let's see what good stuff 2023 brings to the table.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Congrats to all the winners!  Always well deserved.

[Noiser]

Congratulations to all the winners! Lot of amazing stuff this year!

 

Spoiler

@Deadwing, parabéns colega! Achei muito merecido seus prêmios - tanto pelo Ozonia quanto pelas músicas!

 

[CherubCorps]

Only 2 cacoward for mods (Rather than 3). I think this is due to Kinse being the only mod judge and there's only so much one person can cover.

 

The main trend this year is accessory mods (Or additive mods as Kinse called them). Projects that were always relegated to the mini mod safari in the past, but have grown in both scale and quality due to the available tools. They're versatile in terms of compatibility, can be combined with most map packs and most gun/enemy mods and do not replace/remove vanilla assists. This is a good thing, the more versatile and compatible a mod, the more it can be played and combined with other maps/mods while not breaking the game. My one issue is that ALL these mods are accessory mods. Not a single one of them replaces any doom assists which makes them favored by mappers and people who want to change doom, but not change it too much.

 

I think part of this trend is that mappers are beginning to use more custom weapons and enemies in their own maps, meaning that alot of the great gun and enemy mod simply don't work in newer maps. That's fine. The doom modding community only exists because there is a proliferation of new maps to play stuff in.

 

So the two winners.

 

Voxel doom is an artistic marvel (And deserves to win), but it's pure visual, it doesn't change gameplay in any way whatsoever. Gun bonzai is cool as it's a gun mod that can be attached to other gun mods (Is designed with specific compatibility with Yholl's Legendoom), but doesn't much custom art. So we have one project that is 100% artistic/visual and one project that's 100% programming. Both near 100% compatible with all map packs. Both Voxel doom and Gun bonzai are still in development and it will be interesting to see future iterations of these mods.

 

On a side note, I'm disappointed that Angelic Aviary wasn't even mentioned. I think because of the art style, it turned off alot of people and they didn't see why this project is a big deal (Especially if you build custom assists for doom). I finished it this year so it can never be nominated again, so it is what it is.

 

Other really good mods that deserve a callout are Vesper (Made entirely in DeHacked which is insane), Warpurgis (Still plugging along and becomes more amazing with each update), Byofried, War Rooster, Doom Shinobi, and Relighting.

 

Anyway, congratulations to all the winners, really glad to see Ozonia and Anomoly report. Also nice to see "A box of a thousand demons" get mentioned, it's a solid megawad that seemingly fell through the cracks. Now I gotta get started on the maps I haven't played.

 

 

[Rudolph]

I want that Mount Rushmore to be made into an actual megawad final boss! It looks incredible! :D

 

But what is this about Major Arlene leaving?

Edited December 10, 2022 by Rudolph

[Anarkzie]

Pretty cool to see a project that I made a map for get a mention. I have not heard of a lot of the winners so it will be fun to try them out. Well done everyone.

[Master O]

12 hours ago, Obsidian said:

 

Currently being taken care of. 👍

 

Er, not by me, I just clean the toilets.

 

Can you also make sure (or pass it along to whoever handles that) that https://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/ has a link to the 2022 Cacowards page as well?

[IRod54]

Much love to all these amazing projects that were honored and those who made them!

[IRod54]

I expected that my megawad would not receive recognition but I had fun creating it nonetheless, again congrats to all who had their projects awarded, there were many great levelsets put out this year that I enjoyed playing 

[Arsinikk]

Congrats to all the winners, runner-ups, and honourable mentions this year!

As usual my eyes are always pointed towards the more obscure runner-ups and honourable mentions. :)

 

Minor correction: 100 Line Massacre has 35 maps, not 32 maps as listed.

It has MAP33-MAP35 as extra Vanilla maps.

[Austinado]

Congrats to winners / runner ups, and all mappers that during the year provided WADs ! The content never ends! Many Thanks :)

[Egregor]

Congratulations everyone! This is a rough guess but you could probably play 2, possibly 3 maps every single day this year and still not make it through this list before next year's Cacowards.

[exl]

Congrats to everyone that got awarded! Another year of insanely high quality output (and really a lot of it too).

[Kyka]

Huge congrats to everyone involved. The quality and calibre of the Doom modding scene continues to grow. 

 

I really think that getting a cacoward mention/runners-up is the equivalent of winning a cacoward back in the day, given how much the standard continues to increase.

 

Amazing stuff.

 

 

[Dwimepon]

Man, the KDiKDiZD article was incredibly well-written - I'm even more excited to give the wad a try now!

 

Congratulations to all the talented winners, you more than deserve it!

[Master O]

https://www.doomworld.com/cacowards/ is currently missing a link to the year 2022 as well.

 

[Gregor]

@Demon of the Well The Magenta Spire is listed as MBF21-compatible when according to the text file it only requires normal MBF to run.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

@thelamp Congratulations man! Magenta Spire deserved recognition and is such a totally unique and creative Doom experience. I loved it from the first version I played and I'm really happy it got a place on the Cacoawards post. Here's to you and your wad.

[Death Bear]

Seeing Warpspeed and Solar Struggle among the list brings me joy. @BluePineapple72 & @ViolentBeetle are two project leaders that continue to motivate and inspire me as a mapper; such amazing work you've brought us together for. Seeing both of @myolden's solo outings here is amazing! Thanks to you all of you out there who've provided your feedback, help, talent, expertise, and encouragement this year! And thanks to all of you who've tubed and streamed our work! Thank you, authors, for your kind words. I can now say for the second full year in a row: this community is just awesome! Mapping is the best, but it's this community that makes it really, really worth doing. Congrats to all the winners, and to everyone putting their creativity and skill into Doom this year. Bring on 2023!!!

[ginc]

Lots of good WADs here, congrats to all the winners! The ones I've already played are well-deserving and I can't wait to give the others a go.

Once again, Christmas came early, and I will be squirrelling away these WADs to get me through the winter.

 

And I appreciate the sidebar shoutout from @Terminus on the Special Features page - Infested E2 is indeed available!

I was determined to follow up on 2021's Cacoward and not just leave it as a one-and-done thing. I wasn't expecting any awards/mentions this year for an Episode 2 update, so I'm super happy that it got noticed!

 

Episode 3 will be escaping to the one place that hasn't been is totally corrupted by demons... SPAAACE.

Edited December 10, 2022 by ginc