Doom's Octodecennial

[John Smith]

Enjay said:

Personally, the lack of mock and worst awards was huge improvement IMO.

Thanks. Both were originally meant to be amusing entries into the awards but both were increasingly not amusing. Call of Dooty could have gotten a mockaward I guess but I figure if I don't put my foot down sometime it'll never end. And like I've said before a jokewad that's good enough for a real cacoward won't get excluded for being a jokewad.

Also, you said in an earlier post that these awards are different, and I think a lot of it is because Scuba is a naturally funny guy who can easily inject lots of humor into the awards, whereas I am chronically unfunny and didn't even try. So the cacowards from me are probably always going to be missing that special something.

[unidenti7ied]

Oh, I love the Cacowards!
Thanks so much.
Happy Birthday DooM!
Congratulations to all the winners! Congratulations to skillsaw for being mapper of the year! I really love vanguard.wad and lunatic.wad

I like the new award for Best Gameplay Mod. Was about time^^

[Tarnsman]

I like Gez's Awards.

[fiend-o-hell]

Congrats to Doom and all the awardees this year. Jenesis, Lunatic, and Icebound were definitively my top favorites. To another year of map making awesomeness in whatever flavor it comes in eh. I say, as long as it fun to play, nothing else matters.

[trooper077]

Nice job Hobbs. I kinda welcomed the removal of the mockaward and worse WAD. I think another category should be added though.

[hex11]

I'm confused about Icebound. The text file says:

What you really need to run this level is a BOOM/MBF-compatable, limit-removing source port. I did 98% of my testing with ZDoom, so that is what I recommend, but have verified it also runs with PrBoom 2.4.8.1.

But when I look at the prboom+ changelog, there's no mention of Heretic support. Does this actually work?

[kristus]

No. But the map is made with Boom/MBF principles and features, and demand that the port that you play it with support those. In the case of the txt it's probably a simple case of cut and paste remnant.

[hex11]

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I'll have to wait until someone makes a portable Boom-Heretic port, as right now I've only got Chocolate Heretic (can be compiled as "limit removing") and Hacked Heretic (which isn't as stable as the Chocolate version).

[printz]

kristus said:

No. But the map is made with Boom/MBF principles

I'm coming out of the blue into the dark blue (Doomworld forums) and asking this: does a cacoward winning WAD use MBF features? Which one?

Hoping to see more award-deserving GZDoom megawads next year.

[Gez]

hex11 said:

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I'll have to wait until someone makes a portable Boom-Heretic port

If you can't use ZDoom, you'll have to wait for Eternity to finally support Heretic weapons and inventory items.

By the way, if you can't use ZDoom because of portability issues with the FMOD Ex-based sound code, you might try compiling the OpenAL branch.

[Enjay]

John Smith said:

Also, you said in an earlier post that these awards are different, and I think a lot of it is because Scuba is a naturally funny guy who can easily inject lots of humor into the awards, whereas I am chronically unfunny and didn't even try. So the cacowards from me are probably always going to be missing that special something.

I also said that different didn't mean better or worse, merely different and I meant it. Scuba certainly presented the awards very well and, sure, he injected his sense of humour into the proceedings but your style is different. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Scuba set the bar pretty high IMO. So when I say "not better or worse, merely different" I'm actually saying that the awards have been very well presented this year too and your efforts are much appreciated.


I agree with your standpoint on the mock and worst awards. They had outlived their "usefulness". I very much agree that a good joke wad should also be a good wad and therefore just as eligible for the main awards as any other good wad. In fact, in some ways, removing the joke category validates any joke wad that wins a caco because it will have done it not as a big fish in a small pond but as a same sized fish as all the others in a much bigger pond.

[printz]

How about expanding the multiplayer awards? Surely there are more than one deserving, and I think the deathmatch scene is still important...

[kristus]

IMO it would be better if the multiplayer community dealt with that themselves. Possibly a collaboration effort could be done. But the people making the Cacowards has always said they aren't big MP players.

[dew]

hobbs already brought this up and i think it can be done.

[Ralphis]

dew said:

hobbs already brought this up and i think it can be done.

One big problem is that most of the notable net players on Doomworld also contribute to almost every single one of the relevant multiplayer projects. I am singling myself out in particular. Conflict of interest?

[purist]

My suggestions for additional award categories are:

Promising Newcomer

Tarnsman made the sidebar this year and it seemed a popular enough nod. Maybe next year this could be scooted across the page to underneath the mapper of the year spot and a rookie tryhard can get a warm glow every year.

Best Map

That's map, not WAD. It doesn't have to be a standalone map, it doesn't have to be part of a cacoward winning mapset. Simply the best map released in the year. A good example from a previous year would be Thunderpeak from ZPack.

[John Smith]

Ralphis said:

One big problem is that most of the notable net players on Doomworld also contribute to almost every single one of the relevant multiplayer projects. I am singling myself out in particular. Conflict of interest?

I don't make wads at all, and I was pretty comfortable doing the multiplayer awards this year. Also, fwiw, when I looked for best multi I actually took the time to look at other forums but dw.

[Xaser]

purist said:

Best Map

That's map, not WAD. It doesn't have to be a standalone map, it doesn't have to be part of a cacoward winning mapset. Simply the best map released in the year. A good example from a previous year would be Thunderpeak from ZPack.

I actually really like this idea for some reason. Great megawads tend to be shoe-ins for Cacowards (rightfully so), and picking a notable map from 'em all is probably a bit challenging but would definitely be fun to see.

[DeathevokatioN]

Yeah, having a "best map" as a special nomination will be very awesome!

[esselfortium]

Best map would be a great category, as a way to highlight a standout map in a larger set within which it could easily be kind of buried and relatively unknown.

[purist]

Xaser said:

I actually really like this idea for some reason. Great megawads tend to be shoe-ins for Cacowards (rightfully so), and picking a notable map from 'em all is probably a bit challenging but would definitely be fun to see.

It would be a challenge and would be more reliant on nominations than the regular Cacowards.

There's not such a huge plethora of top-tier WADs that there are many suprises or overlooked works in the Cacowards. Most Doomworlders would have guessed 6 or 7 of the winners this year.

However, use this year as an example, break down the winning projects into individual maps and the competition becomes more dense. Add to those great maps that may have been lost in mediocre mapsets and it becomes perhaps unworkable for one person to be responsible for. The way I envisage it working is the Cacoward author taking a more reactive role in playing the levels suggested in the nomination thread.

[Tarnsman]

I agree that a "Best Map" should be added. I also think that "Worst WAD"'s replacement should be something like "Most Hit and Miss" or something else that could call attention to the better parts of a project that has a lot of good but equally enough bad to cancel out the good.

[esselfortium]

Tarnsman said:

I agree that a "Best Map" should be added. I also think that "Worst WAD"'s replacement should be something like "Most Hit and Miss" or something else that could call attention to the better parts of a project that has a lot of good but equally enough bad to cancel out the good.

The "Keep On Truckin'" award?

[TimeOfDeath]

I don't really see the point in having a "Best Map" category if the map is in a project that already received an award.

[DuckReconMajor]

I do. If the judges consider one map to be the best map that year it shouldn't lose out just because it belongs to an already awarded wad.

[Snakes]

Yeah, or they could just single the map out when writing about the awarded wad as being exceptional. People will catch on.

I do think the other categories should be "living" awards - that is to say, they pop up whenever something that deserves it is released. The "WHAT THE HELL!?" Award is one to consider, maybe.

I'm just sort of tossing ideas out there. I'd like to see the return of those comical little entries in the sidebar more than anything else.

[John Smith]

Get used to none of what's in the above post happening. None of it. The only thing that could even possibly happen is maybe one extra fixed award and/or multiple multiplayer awards. That's it.

The best map thing would be a controversial and tricky to manage award that just sounds like a mess. So no. And you aren't getting any old awards back. This is not a democracy folks.

[Snakes]

I figured that was the case. My post, in reality, was mere spit-balling in response to what others had been discussing. I'm trying to overstep my bounds or anything. If I gave that impression, I don't know how, but whatever.

[Doomguy 2000]

John Smith said:

And you aren't getting any old awards back. This is not a democracy folks.

So what other category ideas do you have in mind? It would be something to have an comical entry presented in the cacowards. It would make them that much more entertaining.

[DeathevokatioN]

John Smith said:

The best map thing would be a controversial and tricky to manage award that just sounds like a mess. So no. And you aren't getting any old awards back. This is not a democracy folks.

As a mapper / player myself, I see no harm in honoring a map that has had an especially high amount of love, thought and effort put into making it a well rounded masterpiece that combines strong gameplay, a solid layout with awesome archetecture... and actually think that it'd make for an exciting read.

There will always be people who nitpick and complain, but ofcourse these people (myself probably included haha) probably would have found something to complain about anyway. :P