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VLDCX - New Leaders, the Overworld, & World X.

Ah, okay. I did have a few ideas for some maps and level locations, so I'll wait.
Just so you know, I'm very active on the site anymore like I was before; I'm mainly on Discord now.
Originally posted by ft029
an uninteresting level need not be disqualified. It should just not be in the collab.


I second this, as it allows people who tried to make a level have a chance to participate in the contest and get feedback from the judges, although they might not have fun playing said level, while not filling the collab with bad levels and making it more exhausting to put them in, but I'm not sure what the criteria should be for a level to make it into the collab. I was thinking either at least a 50/100 average score or the upper half of levels in terms of placement, but I don't know if those would be good ideas. I'm just trying to contribute with what I have in my head right now.
Formerly known as nick 139
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Notice that ft029 didn't say low ranking levels, he said uninteresting levels, which is quite different (and I agree with)..

Cause like, what would we do without black ice, short cave, etc
I guess you got me there. If that's what ft meant, as opposed to low-ranking levels, then I would disagree with the "uninteresting" part because "uninteresting" is a matter of opinion. The final scores are something that we can actually base this off of without much disagreement.

Originally posted by GbreezeSunset
Cause like, what would we do without black ice, short cave, etc


Is there something I'm missing here, but what made those levels so interesting?
Formerly known as nick 139
My YouTube channel
How hillariously and memorably bad they were.
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to hear birds and see none.
Yeah exactly!

See the problem is that cutting off the lowest ranking levels does not truly reflect the wide variety of entries to the contest, and we miss out on hilariously memorable levels. Of course, that might be the only option, because what is "boring" is quite subjective. I think a decent idea would be to strongly encourage people to not just submit a level so their name can be in the famous "vldcx" hack, or so that raocow can play their level. The other problem that was mentioned frequently is that a lot of levels were made insanely long, with secret exits, so that you could get more "airtime" and "play time" with a longer level. The irony is that, with 180+ entries, a huge portion of them are unbelievably forgettable. I think getting rid of boring levels from the collab would absolutely produce the best quality compilation hack, but unfortunately it would be super controversial.

e: also short cave is not bad, it is fantastic
You guys sound really elitist if you want to cut "uninteresting" levels.
That is a not an objective quality of a level.
If you really want to cut something, then do it by ranking, but all this shit about "only put interesting levels in" doesn't sound fair to me.
And yeah I know they are not talking about this year, but even if we are going to do something like this in the near future I would strongly oppose it.
You can't stop newbies/people who want to see raocow play their level from submitting levels to this contest, which is good, cause sometimes they make really nice but "uninteresting" levels...

edit: this might also increase the amount of troll entries, because lololol "interesting"
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Originally posted by NGB
You guys sound really elitist if you want to cut "uninteresting" levels.
That is a not an objective quality of a level.
If you really want to cut something, then do it by ranking, but all this shit about "only put interesting levels in" doesn't sound fair to me.
And yeah I know they are not talking about this year, but even if we are going to do something like this in the near future I would strongly oppose it.
You can't stop newbies/people who want to see raocow play their level from submitting levels to this contest, which is good, cause sometimes they make really nice but "uninteresting" levels...

edit: this might also increase the amount of troll entries, because lololol "interesting"


Yeah, like I said, "controversial". Which is why I didn't say we should do it, because obviously we can't just cut out random levels, it's subjective and unfair. The only way to not include every level is to do it by ranking.

But I still stand by what I said. Honestly, it's not elitist, I'm empathizing with the judges who struggled for an extremely long time to play 180+ levels of smw. I think people are forgetting how many levels 180 is. It's insane. I'm just saying that the collab would be more interesting if only interesting levels were in it.

Also I don't mean "nice" levels that aren't interesting. I'm strictly talking about terrible levels that have zero redeeming qualities. Black Ice had one redeeming quality in that it was funny.

But I apologize if I sounded elitist. Like, of course I don't want to discourage newbies, I want people to make levels and get better. But if everyone's first level is im vldc11 we'll have 200 entries next year.

Also NGB I think I worded what I said poorly, so I apologize for that. To clarify, I never wanted to actually just cut out random levels from the contest. If anything, I think we should encourage people to shorten their levels and not put secret exits. You can't stop newbies from submitting levels, but at the same time, the point of a contest is to win.

If anything, there should be some way for newbies to try their hand at LM without making it a contest, but without the pressure of making an actual hack.

It is unfair to just cut out random levels that are deemed boring. But also, I am seriously not looking forward to playing through 100 entries that aren't very interesting.
After VLDC9 comes VLDCA. Learn hex, guys.

VLDCX is a lie and non-canon.
Originally posted by idol
Medic is handling much of the scary asm stuff required for this project, which means we will still be doing the two roms-in-one crazy SA-1 technology amongst many other cool ideas we have planned.


Does this mean that these roms are divided in best and worst levels?
It's a good idea, and you know why?

The SMW rom have 512 levels, KDee mentioned a bug about a level 200, that if you edit the level 200 and save the rom, rom crashes when it tires to load title-screen.
I wonder if there's a way to fix this.

Originally posted by idol
There will not be an Overworld Contest this year

Does this mean that Medic will be designing the Overworld? If not, who will design the Overworld? I mean, in the previous VLDC, it used a lot of custom OW sprites.

Well, this is everthing that i want to say.
I ask to everyone: Anyone agrees that these two smw rom hacks will be divided in best and worst levels?
Originally posted by Roberto zampari
Does this mean that these roms are divided in best and worst levels?
It's a good idea, and you know why?

It's a terrible idea. It would make sorting out the levels by theme and thus submap a lot harder or downright impossible, and on top of that everyone would just play the rom with best levels.

Quote
Does this mean that Medic will be designing the Overworld? If not, who will design the Overworld? I mean, in the previous VLDC, it used a lot of custom OW sprites.

Originally posted by idol
As such, the overworld will be handled in a collaborative manner. Stay tuned for more info on this at a later point!
how about only the very very worst levels are disqualified like ones with no midpoints and a boss at the end, very hard ones with no power ups, or ones with no timer and you can get stuck in part of the level
or blocked off level exits, or hard kaizo all those where in vldc1#w{xD} in vldc9 some thought that weird at the sky was worse than any in the worse world so even with a ranking system some get through#w{xD}
weird at the sky
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
I disagree with anyone saying that uninteresting levels has no right to exist in this collab. I love playing bad levels. It always fascinate me what level creators will overlook in their design. Interesting levels (especially in this contest) tends to be long. Uniteresting levels, which are usually short and easy, are a nice breather between these long levels.

I played all entries and I must say my main problem was exactly interesting levels. Many of you can disagree with me but I think these interesting levels are actually majority of all entries. Most of them is long (30-60 min to beat for normal player). So when I played few of them in a row, then I realized how fast I'm getting tired of them.

And now we are coming to the first problem of VLDCX. The limit of sublevels is just too big (1 main + 7 sublevels). This encouraged good level designers to cover most or all of them and creates unreasonably long levels.

Another problem is number of entries. First of all blame newbies for this giant number of entries is stupid. I have counted all people that joined SMWC in this year and made entry for VLDCX and their number (including myself) is ... 25. That's not even 1/6 of all entries.

The main reason behind this insane number of entries is that many members that usually didn't participated or participated long time ago joined the contest in order to celebrate 10th Anniversary of VLDC. To make something big. And they did.

I doubt that VLDC11 will have similar number of entries. It will probably drop back to 100 entries.

On the last note, I would rather liked to play 100 boring entries than 100 long, interesting levels in a row.
Originally posted by NGB
You guys sound really elitist if you want to cut "uninteresting" levels.
That is a not an objective quality of a level.
If you really want to cut something, then do it by ranking, but all this shit about "only put interesting levels in" doesn't sound fair to me.
And yeah I know they are not talking about this year, but even if we are going to do something like this in the near future I would strongly oppose it.


Yes.

The whole point of judging is to rank the levels as objectively as possible. That's why we have so many judges with differing opinions. That objectivity is then ruined if we pick and choose levels to remove from the collab on the basis of something as subjective as "interesting".

Originally posted by GbreezeSunset
I'm just saying that the collab would be more interesting if only interesting levels were in it.


The point of the collab isn't to make the most interesting hack. It's already interesting because they're all contest levels. You know that going in. You can play any levels in any order, and since you don't have to get 100%, you can skip levels entirely. That's what makes it exciting.

VLDC collabs also serve an archival purpose. The definition of "vanilla" aside, they also show what the state of vanilla hacking is like at that point. You can see trends if you're paying attention, like the emergence of 1F0, level layer 2, and 1up checkpoints in certain years or the sudden surge in glowy neon levels after VLDC9.

Considering that we're already not requiring 100% to unlock world x, it's unnecessary to take any levels out (for a subjective arbitrary reason that we aren't even judging on!) for anything other than space requirements.

-----

EDIT: All of that argument aside, let's assume we decided to remove "uninteresting" entries anyway. Where's the cutoff? Do we have to play through all of the levels again to determine what gets cut? Remember that levels that aren't very interesting tend to also be unmemorable, so you're not likely to remember what levels you would even cut.
Originally posted by GbreezeSunset
If so called "kaizo" levels like snakes and ladders and swissotel get thrown out, than I will seriously be dissapointed in the vldcx final collab.

what this likely means is levels that would've been in vldc9 and green door'd will exist in vldcx and not green door'd. since 100% exit completion is not required for world x, these normally green door'd levels are not necessary for players not wanting to play them to beat. only genuine kaizo levels & levels dqd from the contest will be dqd from this collab. hard levels & very hard levels will remain. this might be controversial to those who want to get everything 100% since they will have to play hard levels, but hey if the judges had to do it why can't you? #w{=P}

Originally posted by Ladida
RIP VLDC. it was good while it lasted.

so are we replacing it with a different kind of vanilla contest? or what does the staff have planned to replace VLDC? i am legitimately curious

don't need ur sass 🤔. tho i will address this along with talks about uninteresting levels not being in the collab:

vldcx will have every entry except those dqd from the contest essentially. it will be our biggest event yet, naturally.

however, i am not gonna lie. we cannot do things at this scale annually. vldc11 will happen next year, and i believe there will be a collab - however, there will be a discussion thread later this year talking about how vldc11 might be handled, and it will have a lot of stress on user discussion. if we were to cut levels from the vldc11 collab, it would not just be cutting what are deemed "uninteresting levels" - but it would be cutting levels based on ranking. again, that is if we cut levels from the collab. do not think anything is confirmed at this point for vldc11, other than the fact that it will still happen next year.

Originally posted by GbreezeSunset
See the problem is that cutting off the lowest ranking levels does not truly reflect the wide variety of entries to the contest, and we miss out on hilariously memorable levels.

you are correct, but the vldc collab could be a best of vldc collab in the future lol. it does not need to reflect the entire collab, but i am not a fan of the collab cutting out levels based on things that are not objective ranking. we could have users vote for their favorite levels to be in the collab too, but idk. again, this would be better suited for a talk later this year.

Originally posted by Galaer
This encouraged good level designers to cover most or all of them and creates unreasonably long levels.

yeah, i agree with this. i am hoping we can all agree to push for vldc11 to have shorter levels - either by lowering the max time, lowering amount of sublevels, or maybe even doing something wild like banning 1-up checkpoints (which many people effectively used as an extra midpoint to extend their levels length). or we'll do nothing about it! that's the fun of group discussions to get results.

with those little points out of the way, i still stress to keep things in this thread more-related to vldc10 than vldc11. as i mentioned prior, there will be a discussion thread later this year about vldc11 and it will be a better avenue to talk about it than here. thanks.
Originally posted by idol
Originally posted by Galaer
This encouraged good level designers to cover most or all of them and creates unreasonably long levels.

yeah, i agree with this. i am hoping we can all agree to push for vldc11 to have shorter levels - either by lowering the max time, lowering amount of sublevels, or maybe even doing something wild like banning 1-up checkpoints (which many people effectively used as an extra midpoint to extend their levels length). or we'll do nothing about it! that's the fun of group discussions to get results.

This.
Having lot of level is not a problem, but having lot of LONG levels is. It's one of the reason I don't plan to play the collab game when it release.
If I wanted long levels I would play SMBX. #ab{:P}
Joke aside yeah it's a collab so people want to cram as many things as possible in their levels to show how good they are. Which makes the levels longer and a chore to play. And yeah since levels only has one vanilla midpoints people try to work around by using 1up checkpoints. That's not the correct way to do it, just make your level shorter ffs.
SO I'm in favor of banning them. In fact I would find interesting if ALL sorts of midpoints are banned. No midpoints at all. This would force people to directly put the interesting things in their levels instead of extending it too much. Plus people forget but SMW has lot of levels without midpoints that are interesting, like all the levels in the Special World. Nowodays I rarely see levels without midpoints. #ab{:(}
Originally posted by Koopster
weird at the sky
even the name of the level is very weird, well you played it and judged it#tb{^V^}
I hope the credits screen is something different than "Mario and Yoshi walk with Princess Peach and Yoshi Eggs, all who otherwise aren't in this hack".
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If you code something different we'll use it!
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