Golden Cybers

[Schneelocke]

With regard to my choices, I just wanted to say that obviously, I'm not a pro player in any way, so I just voted for what I personally liked best. It may or may not make sense to people like Anders who actually *have* compet-n experience themselves - I don't know what to look for, but I didn't just randomly pick demos without thinking about my votes, either.

:)

[Andy Johnsen]

Schneelocke said:

With regard to my choices, I just wanted to say that obviously, I'm not a pro player in any way, so I just voted for what I personally liked best. It may or may not make sense to people like Anders who actually *have* compet-n experience themselves - I don't know what to look for, but I didn't just randomly pick demos without thinking about my votes, either.

:)

yeah, my post was not intended as criticism of your votes by the way. I just tried to explain why there will be some difference in picks between players and viewers. The more people voting the better, and voting for anything but your favourite runs would hardly make sense. :)

[Schneelocke]

Andy: No problem. All of the demos nominated are great, BTW, and would deserve to win. :)

Vile: if you look at the last two years' awards, you'll notice that the "technical merit" award went to a UV speedrun on *both* occasions. Besides, who says a speed demo can't be of technical excellence? This one certainly is - if it wasn't, it wouldn't have been nominated, anyway. :)

[Grazza]

Those two speedruns both involved difficult and spectacular tricks - ones where if they were executed less than perfectly, the player would simply die (and not exit). In other words, a big part of the challenge was to exit at all by that method.

I think AdamH did a good job this year of defining the difference between the technical merit and artistic impression categories. Ah, but if you didn't participate in the nomination stage, then you wouldn't have seen that. I see.

* Best technical merit: in this category the emphasis is on the difficulty of the elements in the run. These can range from various tricks to difficult movement through monster slaloming or heavy fights.
* Best artistic impression: ... Nominate the runs which impressed you the most with their pure beauty. Perfect execution, stylish straferunning, smooth cornering with no walls touched, pixel-perfect shooting are what you should look for.

BTW, one of my nominations for technical merit was a UV Speed, but it was a "blast through hundreds of monsters and somehow survive" type of run.

[Vile]

Schneelocke said:

Vile: if you look at the last two years' awards, you'll notice that the "technical merit" award went to a UV speedrun on *both* occasions. Besides, who says a speed demo can't be of technical excellence? This one certainly is - if it wasn't, it wouldn't have been nominated, anyway. :)

Which is why it's becoming an ugly trend. Take the 2002 awards, for example: somehow 3 short speedruns were mixed in with a run that had not been done EVER before then (pn08) and another run that requires a lot of effort, stamina, and practice to finish (30nm). Are people just more biased towards UV speedruns, is that why these very short runs with replicable tricks, which are finished hundreds of times by the players who made them before getting a satisfying time, have to be given more credit than runs that people worked very hard on just to get one exit?

Well now that I've made a big stink over this, I hope you understand my sentiments about this aspect. I don't take these awards seriously unless I can't even comprehend some of the decisions people make. It's frustrating, since recording demos was something I did to make something enjoyable for everyone, but now I feel as though I don't understand what people want to see. :)

Oh well, now I feel like a jerk for this banter. :)

[Fredrik]

I'm with you, Vile. More difficult runs!

[Grazza]

Vile: I certainly regard some of your "never before dones" on Final Doom to be among the absolute demo highlights of 2003.

In general I rank "miracle it was done at all" over "miracle it was done so fast". Though both are good. :)

[Vile]

Hopefully a lot of people will be able to attend the ceremony thingie. Unfortunately, it seems Radek won't be able to be there since it's on the weekend, which would cater to most people, but not for him. :(

[Schneelocke]

Vile said:

Well now that I've made a big stink over this, I hope you understand my sentiments about this aspect. I don't take these awards seriously unless I can't even comprehend some of the decisions people make. It's frustrating, since recording demos was something I did to make something enjoyable for everyone, but now I feel as though I don't understand what people want to see. :)

Oh well, now I feel like a jerk for this banter. :)

Naw, don't. No reason for that. :)

As far as the question what people want to see is concerned... personally, I enjoy more or less all kinds of demos, as long as they're well carried out (which is always the case on compet-n); the one possible exception are Tyson demos, which sometimes can get a bit boring, especially if they're taking very long.

What I like most (right now, at least) are demos of blastfest levels like pl32, av26 and the like. ^_^ But again, almost all demos I've watched were lots of fun. :)

[Vile]

Cool. The slaughterfest maps are consistent favorites, it seems. :)

BTW, I wanted to correct myself about an earlier claim. I said pn08 had only been done once "EVER" before, but I forgot when Henning submitted a pn08. The time was over 5 minutes, if I remember right, but he admitted to using iddtiddt to spy on the enemies after the blue key room. It was respectful of him to admit to it, but unfortunately, the demo had to be disqualified. Still, his demo laid the groundwork for possible tactics there.

[Grazza]

Less than two days left to vote!

"The voting lasts till May 7th, Friday, 23:59 CET." That's Central European Time, I presume.

[myk]

Hah, I voted. I Couldn't vote during the nominations phase, though, since it would have taken too much time. But naturally said phase should best be handled by experienced viewers with enough time to filter the options and guarantee good choices for the second phase.

Making choices isn't all that easy in my opinion, since a lot of factors come into play when judging the demos; I don't think one could easily decide votes following simple premises, and in the end there'll be obvious differences even between very observant voters.

[Altima]

Well, I voted on the second round... I woulda voted on the first like I promised, but I got called into work 2 hours early as I was typing up my votes for it (damn you Pizza Hut!!)

Now, I've got two little problems with these selections...

e2m9-049 didn't make it in the max category? Wtf dudes =P

And.... I'm not nominated for most improved again? Aw, come ON people, I STILL suck ass, it's an improvement that I still play ;)


...you know I'm kidding about the last thing.... I think the people nominated for Most Improved definately deserve it.

As for who I'm pulling for in the votings.... let's say, certainly not Vono ^_^

[Vile]

Altima: for the fifth spot, Adam told me it was a tie between e1m4 and e2m9, so I had to make a choice which one would stay in. If it was between e1m4 and e2m1, though, I would have chosen the latter.

[VinceDSS]

Considering the wierdness of some nominations, the votes might be strange too, so it might be a close call for the winner :)

[Swedish Fish]

You guys keep talking about strange nominations. Which demos do you
think are strange to be in the top5? I may have voted for them...heh

[VinceDSS]

maybe later dude, I don't want to influence voting...

some of the strange nominations r very obvious tho.

[Grazza]

I think the voting should have closed by now (unless I've got my timezones screwed up or misunderstood "CET").

[Opulent]

I believe CET is Caucasian Entertainment Television. Shows things like Monster Truck pulls, Evangelists, WWE, and Kid Rock; in some areas this is called MTV2.

[Schneelocke]

CET also stands for Central European Time, so voting *should* be over now.

[AdamW]

it's EASY to nominate according to simple rules. heck, I didn't even watch any demos when I nominated :P. do it like this:

Rule 1: anything by vile, ocelot or sedlo gets automatically nominated

Rule 2: fill up the remaining spots with demos from the original IWADs, ranked by popularity of level

easy peasy :D

as for voting, well, that's where you actually watch the demos...heheh.

[Schneelocke]

AdamW said:

it's EASY to nominate according to simple rules. heck, I didn't even watch any demos when I nominated :P. do it like this:

Rule 1: anything by vile, ocelot or sedlo gets automatically nominated

Rule 2: fill up the remaining spots with demos from the original IWADs, ranked by popularity of level

easy peasy :D

as for voting, well, that's where you actually watch the demos...heheh.

Hmmmm. That really sounds like a great way to make sure that the nominations are well-deserved...

[Grazza]

Heh, Rule 1 does sound like a useful time-saver. :p

[Adam Hegyi]

Quakenet, #cyber-awards + #cyber-chat, Sunday, May 9th, 21:00 CET (15:00 EST, 12:00 PST).

[Ryback]

Damn, I'm going to miss it.

[Swedish Fish]

ok, so now that the cybers were over...which do you think were strange nominations? And any strange winners?

[Vile]

Probably speaking for everyone about the best demo not winning best movie. Whatev. ;)

[myk]

That's my fault! I voted exactly as it came out in that respect.

[Swedish Fish]

What's the logic behind that one myk? Personally, I couldn't understand for the first cybers how Cameron's pp31 could be nominated in 3 cats ... best pacifist, best technical, best demo of the year and not win the best pacifist cat. So nowadays I'm not too suprised, although Oce should have sweeped it with best movie.

I thought hr02 was a sketcky nom for speed. Technically a med-hard run to do quick but that was a bit sloppy for my taste. I voted for e2m1-125 among my ten max demos but I guess others wanted to see Andy's demos in there.

Good year, can't wait for next years.

[AdamW]

if lv17-159 deserved to be in there, so did hr02. it's an extremely good run - very much like running episode 1 nightmare or pacifist, lots of instant hit enemies and nowhere near enough health. very hard. i have to admit i was surprised lv17 got in there though, it's a fairly knock-off run that i was never really happy with...