2023 Cacowards

[exl]

Happy (belated) Doomsday, and congrats to the winners! Another chonky well written edition of the Cacowards this year.

[RHhe82]

2 hours ago, bjh13 said:

I'm just shocked at how much I missed this year when I thought I was on top of things. Really appreciate the Cacowards are still going just for this reason.

The same here: astounding number of wads I haven’t even heard of, less considerable number of those I have, slightly smaller amount I have heard and have been meaning to play, and a very small amount of what I’ve actually played. Wish I was a teenager with seemingly infinite time on my hands.

 

Also, congrats to all winners!

[an_mutt]

Having finally gotten around to checking the awards, I have to say a huge thanks to @Demon of the Well for his fantastic write-up of TNT2 and my map for the project. I wasn't expecting anything of the sort this year (I haven't released anything, after all) so it was a lovely surprise to see the golden caco and for Relayer to be cited as one of the mapset's most noteworthy entries. I've received a couple gongs in past Cacowards, but I'm typically riding in on the coattails of other talented mappers and their projects - this time, on a personal level, the golden caco feels earned. I really appreciate it.

 

I also really appreciate the hard work everybody does in putting the written awards together. The level of co-ordination and effort it must take is hugely impressive, and without you lovely folks I don't think this community would be as vibrant and as tight-knitted as it currently is.

[Big Ol Billy]

Just wanted to say I'm over the moon about DBK03 getting a golden Cacoward! It was such a pleasure to read @Terminus's write-up with my wife as we were getting ready for a long-delayed honeymoon. It's been five years since she and I impulsively threw together Doomguy Gets a Puppy, and this is a cool milestone after all these years of hollering "check out this silly Doom thing I made, whaddaya think?"

 

Very happy to share the virtual golden statue with fellow mappers Scrangus McBrickdad, glenzinho, and Hydromecha, who each provided many crucial not-just-mapping things to the project. And also big shout outs to @Phobus, @Catpho, @Biodegradable, @Optimus, and @LadyMistDragon for internal and external playtesting that I found especially helpful and encouraging. This is such a great momentum boost, especially coming as a few other things are starting to have a finish line in sight...

 

Spoiler

 

[Dynamo]

Cheers Billy!! Have a good one :D

[natashanightmare]

Is the cacoward thingie on myhouse slightly distorted as a tribute/hint that the wad is spooky or just a ''misstake''? , when going to the full write up it looks normal, just curious :) 

Edited December 11, 2023 by natashanightmare

[Maribo]

18 hours ago, jmac said:

Black Diamond and Wonder Wheel are two wads I feel deserved at least a mention which, as far as I can tell, they didn't get.

Black Diamond didn't get a dedicated write-up to itself, but it is mentioned in suzerduzer's promising newcomer entry. It also gets a brief mention in the Out of Sunder_2009's Womb special feature on the same page, and one of its maps is part of the feature's screenshot collage.

[jmac]

1 hour ago, Maribo said:

Black Diamond didn't get a dedicated write-up to itself, but it is mentioned in suzerduzer's promising newcomer entry. It also gets a brief mention in the Out of Sunder_2009's Womb special feature on the same page, and one of its maps is part of the feature's screenshot collage.

Ah. I guess I need to learn to read.

[Not Jabba]

2 hours ago, Big Ol Billy said:

It was such a pleasure to read @Terminus's write-up with my wife as we were getting ready for a long-delayed honeymoon. It's been five years since she and I impulsively threw together Doomguy Gets a Puppy, and this is a cool milestone after all these years of hollering "check out this silly Doom thing I made, whaddaya think?"

 

Congrats on both the Cacoward and on having at some point gone from "I made Doomguy Gets a Puppy with my girlfriend" to "I made Doomguy Gets a Puppy with my wife"!

Edited December 12, 2023 by Not Jabba

[Chookum]

An excellent year for excellent wads, a myhouse.wad-ful of great Doom to play, the quality kept on RAMP-ing up, full-stopped by Sigil 2 and Eviternity 2? Nothing else compares! My own year in Wadding has been similarly fruitful, with the final stretch of my big chicken-flavoured project seeing completion too!

 

And "RAMP Superstar" with the likes of Handsome Fridge and Lazlo Panaflex? Thank you all, and thanks @DavidN for being the foundation for us and so many new, fresh and exciting mappers have launched themselves from.

 

Rest assured, there'll be One Bite More and then some from me in the new year of Doom.

[BluePineapple72]

On 12/10/2023 at 3:07 PM, myolden said:

 @BluePineapple72 was, of course, responsible for sparking the idea that led to the project in the first place, but he also created the Pina Colada object that can be seen in game.

 

I'm glad you brought this up cause I was struggling for away to, like, mention how that one cacoward recipient this year was my idea really. So thankfully since you ripped the band aid off I guess I'll, graciously, accept the award on your behalf :D

That would be the case... IF Pina Colada was originally my idea! For those not in my nose Pina Colada sprang about sometime in early/mid 2022 when I played myolden's submission to PUSS 15. Falling in love with the tight compacted layout that loops back into concise combat encounters I told @myolden "Hey! I want more of these." And unto me he delivered. And oh did he deliver.

 

 

Very nice also that @ViolentBeetle's What Lies Beneath and PUSS 28 getting mentioned as well. Beetle always works really hard on his projects and it is always a pleasure to see them unfold the way they do.

[Scorpinax]

Can't believe this amazing game has been out for 30 years already! Its been my alltime favorite game for 20 years and I don't think it'll ever be topped! Cheers everyone!

[Deffers]

Congrats to all the Cacoward winners, especially @Pieruskwurje and @Tango as the two creators that I was lucky enough to be in contact with regarding their maps!

 

I'd also like to point out how much of a labor of love these Cacowards are. When you look at it as a website, you might not have a clear appreciation for just how much content is in these glowing reviews and the limitless shoutouts to as many noteworthy projects as there have been. If you read out all these awards it would take around five and a half hours to go through them all (that is, of course, including the DOOM music retrospective-- if you cut that out I'd ballpark it to be a more reasonable three hours, maybe three and a half hours). I know this because I actually did read them all aloud. A cursory glance at the creators who tried to do the same thing for last year's Cacowards puts them at around two to just shy of three hours each for the full, unabridged experience. That gives you an idea of just how balls-out the team went this year. @Not Jabba @Scuba Steve @Maribo @Jimmy @Cardboard Marty @Demon of the Well @MtPain27 @Terminus @Vile, @rd. (who doesn't show up here, oddly), @dew , @Kinsie, @Dynamo, @Omniarch, @scwiba and anybody else I may have missed all deserve props for how much work went into this. At least fifteen people provided a novella's worth of words and a photo album's worth of pictures to highlight the community's passion and love; I think the Cacowards tradition has materially contributed to how big the DOOM community is, and it would not exist without people to keep it alive. The people keeping that tradition alive definitely deserve props. I don't think the Cacowards will officially be twenty years old until next year but this is kind of a soft-twentieth for the event as a whole, I think, because of the Doomworld articles written in '03. I honestly can't wait to see what's planned for that year.

 

EDIT: OH, and @Mikolah, @esselfortium, @Bank, @Major Arlene, and @stewboy also contributed. That's like twenty people for this event's twentieth year.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Deffers

[Wardriver]

wow!! i was busy with work and was unable to see this until now, but this is really a lot of good wads! i already checked a few good ones from here, but i am going to read more of this later today and start playing some doom :-D

[Agent Strange]

Big congrats to all the winners! BYOC, Austrian Avian Association, TNT2: Devilution. What a great year for Doom mods. Want to give a special shoutout to MyHouse.WAD. Genuinely one of the best mods I've ever played for any game.  

[129thVisplane]

late as fuck but hell yeah cacowards!!!!! congrats to all the winners and thanks to all the writeup writers <3 i probably won't get around to play most of this year's cacoward wads (just started a new job actually so my gamer time has significantly decreased) but im awed at what the community puts out every year for 30 years now, and it gets better every year. wild that it's held up for this long and i hope the creativity doesn't burn out for another couple decades. 30 more years lets fuckin gooooo this post probably sounds performative af but i mean all of it i swear

[Shaviro]

So happy to see RTC-3057 up there. Julian really did an amazing job with the soundtrack :)

[Devalaous]

Somehow I missed the giant Dootaward section in there. Made me real happy to see Revilution's soundtrack in there. While I was already out of the project to work on video games fulltime by the time Jeremy Doyle was brought in, the older version of the soundtrack I helped create always had me thinking 'The doom community is going to LOVE this soundtrack'.

 

At the time I was amazed the composers were even listening to my requests for certain styles for certain episodes, let alone making stuff like TiN Toker for me entirely by request, as I was pretty much an unproven nobody, and we got so much stuff that we had over 35 tracks early on, most of which is in the megawad today. It always made me real proud that Tristan, who was pretty much my best friend on Doomworld at the time, went on to become one of the community staples for midis; I remember him sending me Stewboy midis and telling me he'd never be THIS good, while simultaneously sending me jawdropping stuff like Atmosphere and Frozen Wilderness, music that sent me off into imaginative worlds every time. To this day I get a huge grin on my face when I play a wad and recognise just whos music is playing.

 

I know my role in it was pretty small, but working with those musicians back then was a big help to my confidence (I had a really *terrible* homelife at that point that ive never really recovered from) and that definitely helped me get that job offer. Making the beta soundtrack wad with a *full* 35 tracks and hearing it in my Doom ports for the first time was one of the best memories I have of those times.

[Midnight_00]

It's good to see more Doom related writing from @scwiba. I found the What's Awesome Doom blog to be a really engaging read and these write-ups definitely sold me on Austrian Avian Association and Solve Et Coagula too.

 

Congratulations to the winners too of course, and it's cool to see the first main Doom 64 award (I think).

[AtomicFrog]

Took me a while to read through it all.
Well done to all those winners and all those mentioned. 
With a special well done to Headshot for the win!!!
I thought hell would freeze over before a Doom64 creation won a Caco lol. 
And a very worthy wad indeed. 
Also a big thanks to all those that spent the time putting this all together.

[Peccatum Mihzamiz]

Now that Piña Colada has won I can reveal the true reason why it won! Here's the screenshot that reveals the big conspiracy behind it all!

 

[baja blast rd.]

plz delete 

[OniriA]

Happy 30th Doomversary!

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by OniriA

[Petyan]

I know i'm a bit late to the party (somehow managed to miss this thread entirely and haven't realized there is one), but i'm very happy (and very surprised at the same time) that Sepia managed to win a cacoward. I have never expected that my palette and combat experimentation will ever take me anywhere, but i'm really glad that people actually enjoyed that. It still feels rather surreal that my first work (and MAP01 of Sepia being my third map ever - other 2 being in forever development hell) managed to be that interesting that it was worth highlighting here.

 

Huge thanks to all the playtestesters and guest mappers (@Master Medi @Meowgi @brendondle @Ravendesk) , the WAD wouldn't be even close to what it is without them. Every single guest map contributes something to Sepia that i didn't manage to add myself, would it be pacing, atmosphere, combat or exploration.

 

And of course shoutouts to the cacowards panel, this year is an amazing read overall, and special thanks to @Demon of the Well for such an amazing write-up for Sepia, it was a pleasure to read (even though i had to resolve to a vocabulary in a few cases), i just love how it managed to highlight all of the parts of the WAD better than i could ever do so myself.

 

I'm also really happy that AAA got it's recognition, because such a unique setting is something that should be branched out more in doom, there is an insane amount of theoretical settings that WADs could be based on, and AAA is just a prime example of that, especially being done in Boom.

 

30 years huh?

Edited December 13, 2023 by Petyan

[nicolas monti]

I just got to know I'm in the runner up section this year, I want to thank the community for that and for being part of my life for about 12 years.

[Deadwing]

Oh btw, thanks a lot for also mentioning Exomoon in the Dootaward, @Not Jabba! Really beautiful writing! Didn't believe I missed that until now >.<

 

I'll share @Devalaous feeling as well as the community is so full of amazing composers that tbh I see myself having a lot to learn on and it's rewarding to see you guys enjoying some of the stuff I've made. Thanks a lot, again!

[drop]

On 12/10/2023 at 7:56 AM, Kinsie said:

How so?

 

The desriptions should have something like "click here for a full review". Because in the current version of the text, it feels like it got just a paragraph and it is very easy to skip that there a full page text about it.

 

That should be changed -> easier to discover links to individual articles. I would also add a real table of contents that links to each individual article.

 

Despite suspecting that there was some myhouse.wad description it took me time to find it...

[AbeAwesome]

Top TWELVE!?!!? A move nearly as revolutionary as the release of DOOM itself, if not moreso,

[dmplayer5]

Congrats to all the winners and thanks to everyone who contributed to the Cacowards.

[Xymph]

5 hours ago, AbeAwesome said:

Top TWELVE!?!!? A move nearly as revolutionary as the release of DOOM itself, if not moreso,

Not that revolutionary, the 2021 awards already went up to 12 winners and 12 runners-up.

 

Also, congratulations to all recipients!

Edited December 14, 2023 by Xymph