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

also holy shit the targetting on Vitor is real. he screwed up. sad day. we all do.

he had the best of his intentions.
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
1) In hindsight less serious headlines weren't a good idea

Originally posted by leod
Originally posted by ThePat545
2) Ackchyually Vitor's entirely to blame for everything that isn't the judging

[Gigantic post about maths and how Vitor isn't to blame for the judging]

So... you arrived at the same conclusion, that Vitor isn't to blame for the judging, which is what everyone said and what your headline said as well.
It felt like the headline was written as mockingly as it is cause you were trying to debunk it, but you didn't? Was that intended?


no it's just a stupid headline don't worry about it lmao

2) There is actually some blame though

Originally posted by leod
Also, as we said a bunch of times, there is absolutely no blame that can be placed on any of the judges. They dedicated a FUCKTON of time, 358 hours according to your calculations -- which are bound to be hella inaccurate but there's a number there. That is approximately 200 times as much time as anyone else has dedicated to the VLDCX meta management by every single one of them, and they have pulled through.
That's an incredibly large time commitment to do something that stops being fun after the first 50 mediocre boring levels by inexperienced level designers, which is where the burnout comes from that all the judges experienced.


Don't get me wrong, and I probably should have said this sooner: I wholeheartedly respect the judges and their dedication, and my intent isn't to doubt the judges (at least entirely) and certainly not to demean the amount of work they've put into this. In fact, I even stated that Just gave Sinc-X the benefits of the doubt since he hosted Idol. But my own 358 hours number you used against me was the final total, assuming all of these levels were done at the time of posting, with a generous doubled amount of time given to be considerate towards different levels of skill.

What I intend to point out is that even under the worst direction, the judges would know full well what responsibility they were accepting by looking at how many replies the rules and submissions thread has. There were a lot of complaints even then (as far as I know) regarding the quality of the levels, and they still accepted this.

Since I don't know the conditions behind Derpy, Torchkas, and Frost's leave, I'll leave those situations alone. But the 2 replacement judges undoubtedly knew the responsibility too. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if the VLDCX team had doubts about whether the judges would be committed and dedicated until the deadline they set, they wouldn't have been chosen at all. If I'm not mistaken, all of these judges were interviewed beforehand, correct?

The judges taking on the responsibility they're aware of, along with the approximate 195 days they had (being generous here, the original judges had 2 months longer) gave them plenty of time to plan out what to do, etc. Just going to say I'm aware of the original ~2 months deadline, but idol has stated that "deadlines are shit" if nobody wants to work on them, which has clearly been displayed over this 8-month wait. Ignoring the original deadline that definitely was anything that isn't enforced, even with a hypothetical 2-month handicap for the original judges, the total days they have been given is 195 days. Again, I don't doubt the judges' dedication, at least entirely, because according to my calculations they have dedicated more than enough time to prove that they are. What I'm saying is that, as even Noivern has said, judging has taken too long. They're not lazy, far from it, but they haven't put in as much time as they should.

I also still don't have a response to my question, why most of the judges refused to reveal their progress (not even which levels specifically, just how many as Noivern did) for an entire 6-8 months. What I believe, and, what I'd like to think more than 1 person believes, is that this refusal is what has caused some of the tension during the waiting process.

3) My calculations are actually quite good m9

Originally posted by leod
That's why your calculations are bad, by the way. They don't get anything out of judging this beast comprised for the most part of average, way too long levels so motivation dwindles and leaves them with less and less will to do it.


I wouldn't say bad, at least for that reason anyway. There's plenty other reasons why they could be bad (leaving out bathroom breaks, eating; assuming nothing other than work and sleep has taken place) but this isn't one of them. I took Noivern's longest video into consideration, while assuming lolyoshi (being a speedrunner, casually doing the wall jump glitch for shits and giggles) has a higher skill level. I can't speak much for the other judges since I can't accurately evaluate their skill levels, so with what little info I did have I took the liberty of using and even doubling the amount of time Noivern took with his longest video. With what I had, I believe I did a rather good job.

4) You're letting Vitor off too easily here

Originally posted by leod
I could pretend like this is Vitor's fault cause nobody else was allowed any say in ANYTHING regarding VLDCX, so he made the decision to just use the standard "all judges play all these levels" approach, but I doubt anyone could've foreseen the effects this would have on judges.


No, we can stack something on top of what he's made mistakes on, and it's directly related to the workload the judges were presented with in the first place. Overhyping it as "The 10th Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest," describing his ambitious plans for it, and how much time people had to submit entries (nearly 2 months), he's responsible for his own system failing. Had the deadline been more reasonable, we likely wouldn't even be discussing the points regarding the judges right now.

5) Vitor's a dick and I explained this in this post so 20 minutes saved nice

Originally posted by leod
But what I can pin on Vitor once again, is the way he mistreated the judges from the get-go. (tl;dr vitor was a dick lol)

So uh yeah tl;dr the judges are to blame less than you are. At least they finished what they set out to do and dedicated 350 hours minimum of their lives to this, all while being made to feel like they're not allowed to take breaks or do something else because then their time will turn red and Vitor will complain to them in DMs.


Not gonna lie, that was really assholic on his side. But I already talked about how none of the judges ended up following the deadline, already calculated how much free time they would have even after handicapping my own argument several times, and the judges knowing what they would be facing. There's also the fact that Vitor's been gone for 3 months now, so Vitor complaining about the judges stopped being valid a long time ago.

6) What am I doing with my life

Originally posted by leod
(Not to mention Vitor did not bother to get any replacement judges on board, that is idol's doing.)


So idol has been actively working on the VLDCX team at least since the announcement 6 months ago? That means my handicapped calculations take place entirely under idol's direction, more or less, and Vitor had nothing to do with what I put together. My calculations weren't bad st all if we're going by what you said.

7) God damn ninjas and their flying machines

Originally posted by Koopster
I like how Pat emphasized Brazilian work hours when I'm the only Brazilian judge lol


yeah sorry that wasn't meant to be personal lmao forgive me koopy

Originally posted by Koopster
Also 4 judges finished and not 5


my calculations took into account the final total of hours if they did, I don't think we'd be waiting much longer if all 5 judges were finished

Originally posted by Koopster
also holy shit the targetting on Vitor is real. he screwed up. sad day. we all do.

he had the best of his intentions.


to be fair he wasn't very nice to that 6th judge and dumped an overly ambitious project on everyone else, also this isn't the first time one of his contests haven't gone smoothly

8) Another tl;dr for those of you watching this at home

Lots of misinterpretation about my quick maffs, Vitor's a dick, the judges still hold some responsibility, and my quick maffs are pretty valid for someone who can't read minds, also God damn ninjas and their flying machines
Originally posted by ThePat545
They're not lazy, far from it, but they haven't put in as much time as they should.


I'm pretty fucking lazy let's not kid ourselves here.
Originally posted by ThePat545
the judges knowing what they would be facing.
sorry I guess, I didn't expect it to be twice the size of the previous VLDCs and the quality to be majorly worse.

Originally posted by leod
But what I can pin on Vitor once again, is the way he mistreated the judges from the get-go. (tl;dr vitor was a dick lol)
A bit disingenuous in that aspect actually. He wasn't necessarily a dick but he was more awkwardly persistent on people finishing than he may have realized. Which may have seemed irritating unknowingly.

In the calculation, there's too many other factors that has to be based on for it to really mean much. Mood, writing ideas, energy, unpredictable events, and amongst many are a portion of the reason for the speed of the judging.
Originally posted by lolyoshi
Originally posted by ThePat545
the judges knowing what they would be facing.

sorry I guess, I didn't expect it to be twice the size of the previous VLDCs and the quality to be majorly worse.

In hindsight, one of the points I could have put together better is the awareness of how huge this would be. If I do remember correctly, you were all judges before the contest was even officially started. So yes, I understand by the time you saw the final total of 179 submissions it was too late to call it quits by then. This is another reason why the insane deadline just wasn't a good idea at all, bringing me to my next point.

Originally posted by lolyoshi
Originally posted by leod
But what I can pin on Vitor once again, is the way he mistreated the judges from the get-go. (tl;dr vitor was a dick lol)

A bit disingenuous in that aspect actually. He wasn't necessarily a dick but he was more awkwardly persistent on people finishing than he may have realized. Which may have seemed irritating unknowingly.

That was more of a summary of every other point I made regarding him. He was only somewhat pushy in the point I made during this paragraph, but everything leod had already mentioned supports what the headline says, and admittedly, me saying "dick" is kind of fun LOL

Originally posted by lolyoshi
In the calculation, there's too many other factors that has to be based on for it to really mean much. Mood, writing ideas, energy, unpredictable events, and amongst many are a portion of the reason for the speed of the judging.

Yeah, I'm definitely aware of this and considered this the whole time I was typing these walls of text. Considering I don't know these exact things, I just piled different handicaps onto myself hoping to compensate for that. The number is definitely off, and I'm not thinking by a marginal amount, either.

Originally posted by me
There's plenty other reasons why [my calculations] could be bad (leaving out bathroom breaks, eating; assuming nothing other than work and sleep has taken place)

I don't plan on hiding from the considerable inaccuracy of my calculations. But even with this in mind, I do believe it does at least shed a bit of light on the different time budgets the judges could have had while still stating that different people have different schedules and lifestyles. Between the assumption of the max legal hours of working and a generous amount of sleep per day, I believe with what little information I had, my worst-case-scenario calculations weren't too bad in regards to what I was trying to estimate in the first place.


That being said, I do appreciate you bringing up very good points, and I truly want to stress the fact that I respect your commitment and what you've done.
It just goes back to what Ladida said: the 9th vldc had all of us hyped up and with great expectations on the X, which is no surprise that after such wonderful project the 9th was, more people would like to take part in it. But yea, I think having almost double the ammount of entries kind of caught all of us off guard.

I can only imagine how stressful the whole thing has been to the people involved. The judging took to long? God damn I'm impressed it's even FINISHED at all. Looking back at it, everyone was hyped up and wanted to participate no matter what, I'm no exception, and I myself can't get a hold to play my very own entry because it's boring, tiring, and honestly it's just too damn long. Now I can only assume that almost half (if not more) of those 180 entries are just as bad, now imagine having to play this whole shit? Then all of sudden, a few months after the judging proccess starts, judges start dropping out, one by one. Let's add that, to judge ANYTHING properly, you have to be at least close to emotionally stable at the moment. Now guys, all judges are humans unfortunately, and shit happens a lot in real life. You all should be grateful that it's even done now and we'll probably be getting the results this year still.

Vitor might've screwed up. Ok, who doesn't? I mean, it's not like he failed an easy task that everyone had given it done already. This shit was complicated as fuck I can only imagine, as out of all the talented ASMers we have in this site, the only one who could accomplish such was Vitor himself. I'm sure he had all the best of intentions with this project and that he must've felt sad when he had to leave.



Now, I'd be lying if I said I don't care if we have an collab hack or not. I'm totally up for this "best of" hack. And by the way, I think if we ever get to make another VLDC collab hack, it should be a "best of" too. It's a contest after all, isn't it? If you lose you should'nt get into the collab hack. I mean, we're all winners at the end of the day, since we'll all get to play a good hack, instead of not having it because everyone wants in with their not so great levels.

So, yea, +1 for the TOP 50 hack
Pat, I said your calculations are bad because they pretend that this is entirely an issue of maths, when it isn't really. It's an issue of humans being given a gigantic task with no real recompensation or incentive to finish faster than they did while actively being discouraged and real life being more than just a set of hour slots to be allocated (stress, laziness, wanting to just play a game instead of doing work, etc. are all legitimate uses for someone who is 100% a volunteer).

Nothing of what I said was really supposed to question any of your maffing, or even really talked about the number juggling itself, other than using a number you put down to mention how big of a time investment the judges have given.


Originally posted by Pat
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if the VLDCX team had doubts about whether the judges would be committed and dedicated until the deadline they set, they wouldn't have been chosen at all.

You overestimate how many actually suitable people there are. Our concern when picking replacement judges was literally just "does this person have the level design knowledge needed to write coherent scores?" and if the answer was yes, they were asked. This is not a lot of people, since a large part of the people who WOULD fit entered the contest.
And as for the original judges, uh... I thought I was pretty blatant about it so far, but again: there was no VLDCX team, and there still isn't really one. Originally it was just Vitor and Vitor alone, with the rest of staff not being allowed any power in any decisions, because the way we were told about decisions was either when he announced which decision he had just made, or when he announced it in public.

By there not really being a VLDCX team still I mean that basically, other than the judges, Skewer, Medic, idol and I, nobody even has access to the VLDCX organization Discord. Medic was there because he led the ASM side for a short while before retreating as I mentioned earlier, Skewer is only there because he drew some graphical assets for Medic's ASM, I'm only there because I was going to organize the overworld collaboration (that hasn't happened so far and doesn't seem to be happening still) and idol is there cause she leads it and oversees the judges.
So basically, it's just idol. The major difference between her leading and Vitor leading is that she discusses things among staff and/or in public BEFORE making decisions.

Originally posted by Pat
If I'm not mistaken, all of these judges were interviewed beforehand, correct?

Yeah, by Vitor, and we don't actually know what these interviews consisted of other than that he put up unreasonable demands right off the bat.

Originally posted by Pat
I also still don't have a response to my question, why most of the judges refused to reveal their progress (not even which levels specifically, just how many as Noivern did) for an entire 6-8 months. What I believe, and, what I'd like to think more than 1 person believes, is that this refusal is what has caused some of the tension during the waiting process.

Because it would just cause people to be more annoying about it than they already were.
"When is judging done" turning into "how many levels has every judge done now? oh okay so why did x1 judge only y1 levels when judge x2 did y2 levels?" would've been incredibly annoying.

Originally posted by Pat
Overhyping it as "The 10th Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest," describing his ambitious plans for it, and how much time people had to submit entries (nearly 2 months), he's responsible for his own system failing. Had the deadline been more reasonable, we likely wouldn't even be discussing the points regarding the judges right now.

Pretty much what I've been saying, yeah. He set everything up to be a GIGANTIC load of work that nobody else would ever even consider taking up and it was only really happening cause he was assuring everyone that he could do it by himself.
Not much anyone can do about it, which is why this announcement is what happened.

Originally posted by Pat
There's also the fact that Vitor's been gone for 3 months now, so Vitor complaining about the judges stopped being valid a long time ago.

Except when talking about how everything was handled at large, which is what I was doing, yes...
I mean, almost all of those lovely people are done now, so I don't exactly have anything bad to say about the past 3 months.

Originally posted by Pat
So idol has been actively working on the VLDCX team at least since the announcement 6 months ago? That means my handicapped calculations take place entirely under idol's direction, more or less, and Vitor had nothing to do with what I put together.

I'm not actually sure what you mean with "under idol's direction". She found new judges because Vitor was refusing to announce that judges dropped out (he held back info for little reason a lot) and didn't seem to be doing any replacing, so idol talked to people instead, Vitor was still the lead at that point from what I remember.
And even if, you can't do much more than ask the judges to make progress every now and then in that position, which doesn't take away any of the initial burnout and the wearing down that judging 180 mediocre levels brings.




Originally posted by lolyoshi
A bit disingenuous in that aspect actually. He wasn't necessarily a dick but he was more awkwardly persistent on people finishing than he may have realized. Which may have seemed irritating unknowingly.

Hey, that "he's a dick" isn't my writing, Pat put that in the quote.
I'm aware that Vitor tried to do what he thinks is best, just as I'm sure he tried when he was admin, but in the end that hasn't stopped his actions from achieving the opposite with people because he is just an ace at being bad at people.
Your layout has been removed.
1) Quick maffs are inaccurate maffs but still good hypothetical maffs

Originally posted by leod
Pat, I said your calculations are bad because they pretend that this is entirely an issue of maths, when it isn't really. It's an issue of humans being given a gigantic task with no real recompensation or incentive to finish faster than they did while actively being discouraged and real life being more than just a set of hour slots to be allocated (stress, laziness, wanting to just play a game instead of doing work, etc. are all legitimate uses for someone who is 100% a volunteer).

I explained this to yossi so I'll just re-post it.

Originally posted by lolyoshi
In the calculation, there's too many other factors that has to be based on for it to really mean much. Mood, writing ideas, energy, unpredictable events, and amongst many are a portion of the reason for the speed of the judging.

Originally posted by me
Yeah, I'm definitely aware of this and considered this the whole time I was typing these walls of text. Considering I don't know these exact things, I just piled different handicaps onto myself hoping to compensate for that. The number is definitely off, and I'm not thinking by a marginal amount, either.

But even with [inaccuracies] in mind, I do believe it does at least shed a bit of light on the different time budgets the judges could have had while still stating that different people have different schedules and lifestyles. Between the assumption of the max legal hours of working and a generous amount of sleep per day, I believe with what little information I had, my worst-case-scenario calculations weren't too bad in regards to what I was trying to estimate in the first place.

It's not supposed to be some sort of prediction as to how much time the judges have put in, especially since with the little information I have, math is only best guess. It's supposed to be an approximation of how much time they would have to put in the time under a sort of worst-case scenario. It's really more of a "VLDCX judging hypothesis" more than anything. The 358 hours thing is a handicap on myself because different judges have different skill levels; the time that it would actually take to get all of it done certainly fluctuates with different judges. I've also already addressed these flaws. I'll re-post another sentence from my earlier response to you:

Originally posted by me
There's plenty other reasons why they could be bad (leaving out bathroom breaks, eating; assuming nothing other than work and sleep has taken place) but this isn't one of them.


2) Everyone could have handled this better, including Vitor

Originally posted by leod
Originally posted by Pat
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if the VLDCX team had doubts about whether the judges would be committed and dedicated until the deadline they set, they wouldn't have been chosen at all.

You overestimate how many actually suitable people there are. Our concern when picking replacement judges was literally just "does this person have the level design knowledge needed to write coherent scores?" and if the answer was yes, they were asked. This is not a lot of people, since a large part of the people who WOULD fit entered the contest.

There were a couple of ways this could have been handled. Recently we had moderator applications, which is an important job that you have to be dedicated and committed to, much like a VLDCX judge. With this idea in mind, applications and individual interviews could have been carried out instead of going to a select few first.

Another way this could have been dealt with is by contacting some of the other staff. Comparing the list of mods in the staff page to the list of VLDCX entrants, mods like MrDeePay (who was a former VLDC judge), LX5, Sariel, Skewer, or Thomas didn't enter the contest at all. From these 5 people plus the 2 backup judges, even if some were busy with real life, etc. 7 people is still a lot of options, even 1 more than the original amount of judges we had. Clearly they're credible enough to moderate hacks and ASM, so what about a contest?

There could have been a third option if Vitor considered it before announcing VLDCX, which is settling the issue of backup judges before starting the contest. What I can at least gather is that a major problem in deciding who should be a backup judge was difficult because most of the capable people were already in VLDCX. Being that this is a problem that can only happen after VLDCX was announced, I know that the backup judges weren't decided beforehand. If he contacted possible backup judges before there was even an announcement, a shortage of capable people wouldn't be a problem.

3) It's not the people's fault that we're butthurt lmao

Originally posted by leod
Originally posted by Pat
I also still don't have a response to my question, why most of the judges refused to reveal their progress (not even which levels specifically, just how many as Noivern did) for an entire 6-8 months. What I believe, and, what I'd like to think more than 1 person believes, is that this refusal is what has caused some of the tension during the waiting process.

Because it would just cause people to be more annoying about it than they already were.
"When is judging done" turning into "how many levels has every judge done now? oh okay so why did x1 judge only y1 levels when judge x2 did y2 levels?" would've been incredibly annoying.

That's actually not much different than what's already happened. People are still tense and still complaining about VLDCX not being done with judging. The many people who entered in a level are individuals, too, and they've been waiting 8 months for this. It's not fair to keep progress from the public after literally announcing that it's been delayed because 2 of the judges are 2 months behind the other ones.

4) That's not what my sentence was directed at

Originally posted by leod
Originally posted by Pat
There's also the fact that Vitor's been gone for 3 months now, so Vitor complaining about the judges stopped being valid a long time ago.


Except when talking about how everything was handled at large, which is what I was doing, yes...
I mean, almost all of those lovely people are done now, so I don't exactly have anything bad to say about the past 3 months.

This was more directed towards your point regarding Vitor than everything else in general:

Originally posted by leod
So uh yeah tl;dr the judges are to blame less than you are. At least they finished what they set out to do and dedicated 350 hours minimum of their lives to this, all while being made to feel like they're not allowed to take breaks or do something else because then their time will turn red and Vitor will complain to them in DMs.

The problem of Vitor complaining is invalid since he's been gone for 3 months, a good chunk out of the 8-month wait and literally half the time the backup judges have been replacements.

5) "idol's direction"

Originally posted by leod
I'm not actually sure what you mean with "under idol's direction".

I'm guessing idol has a huge influence on how VLDCX is turning out now that Vitor's gone. Besides her choosing the 2 replacement judges and literally leading the project, right now I'm taking what Noivern said into consideration:

Originally posted by Noivern
As someone who has insider information from being a judge, Vitor's hosting was really not good. When Vitor stopped hosting and Idol hopped onto the VLDCX train, things definitely got better. Idol got some backup judges quick and properly bugged us about judging and generally got shit done.

With this little insight I have, my only logical conclusion is that idol has influenced VLDCX greatly (in a very positive way), and since she did a good job with hosting KLDC, I'm assuming she's also making some decisions (either that or discussing decisions with whoever else is working on VLDCX, either way she is directing VLDCX quite a bit).

6) Once is chance, twice is a coincidence, three times is a tl;dr

Quick maffs are still a valid estimation, judging and the judges themselves could have been handled better, "idol's direction" means her influence on the project
Originally posted by Koopster
also holy shit the targetting on Vitor is real. he screwed up. sad day. we all do.

he had the best of his intentions.

Gonna echo this real hard.

Why the actual fuck are you guys trying to blame everything on one single person ? He was the leader of the whole thing, yeah. There were communication issues around the guy, yeah. But you can't possibly say it's 100% his fault. Hell, would you have done better in his place, ? You can't possibly know. You could've spoken against him if he was entering a destructive behaviour. He could've stopped by himself. So much could have been done. Reassure people instead of offering them a public punching bag whose actual fault lied in having a burn-out, by Jove.

You all disgust me. You're desperately trying to find a more or less legitimate scapegoat. VLDCX is gone. Move on. Bright times ahead far surpass dark ones behind.

We should be united by ROMhacking, not be enemies because of... that.

Also, leod: If I'm not mistaken, absolutely nobody complained when these statistics you're referring to were introduced. And the only ones who had access to it, by the way, when "the person whose name starts in V" was at the top were the judges themselves.

Be disappointed all you want. On my end, I'll be looking for future contests instead of using a now past one to shame people in front of a whole website.




I'm fully aware this post might appear as aggressive. But I'm sick of fearing to voice my opinion. So here it is. Take it or leave it, it's your right. But I know I can post it, and that it shouldn't harm my status as a user in general in any way.
just to be clear I didn't 100% blame vitor even if he did make mistakes please don't hurt me
Originally posted by Mathos
You all disgust me.
What did I do!!!!!
ask me if i give a f*ck...
And so... my inner prediction of VLDCX planning disaster has really happened. Being honest here - I'm not surprised.

Welp. The point is that VLDCX collab is in the current state it is because there was too much focus on the collab, and little to none on the contest. Lots of people came to SMWC just to submit a level expecting it to be in the final collab. They didn't come to compete at all. And many of those aren't even active here anymore. So, it obviously would result in lots of pointless entries for judges to play, get frustrated, then lose time finding secrets, writing reviews, and getting even more frustrated with each step. It takes long, very long, for one to give a detailed opinion about a level or hack with proper words in a clean, understandable, and fair way. Imagine doing so with almost 200 levels, including long and bad ones! Well, what I mean with all of this is that this came out like a snowball. There's no "one single person to blame" thing here - just a misled direction. We are all culprit because we let this happen.

In the end, however, I don't really know if there would be any solution for this. Even the concept of vanilla got drastical changes and there's no more point on discussing "X is vanilla, Y isn't". This doesn't represent stuff in SMW hacking scene anymore, in my conception - the word only exists to give this contest a name.

And lastly, contest collabs were one of the main reasons I didn't want to take part on these contests. Almost nobody was there to compete anymore, but just to have a mention, a place in the hack. Feels like those gimmicky C3ses where the gimmicks drove out all the attention from the event proposal (content showoff) to themselves.

----------

tl;dr: The point of making a collab with lots of pointless entries? To make it so nobody is excluded despite the lack of quality? Meh, no. If it's a contest, then the competition should take priority. Screw bad levels which don't deserve one's time to play them just to get annoyed.

I seriously hope from the bottom of my heart that future contests don't primarily focus on having a compillation hack, or the recipe of failure will be granted, just like it's happening with VLDCX. I mean, make a worthy compillation of good levels + World X + whatever flashy ASM etc etc, but focus on the contest for goodness' sake.

The dimension of this got so big that I had to use my moblie to write this. Yeah.
MK2TDS
wow yeah this kinda went down an avenue i foresaw but wasnt terribly pleased with.

i felt this was inevitable. we've been pretty bad on keeping up with our old projects, and a big reason for that is we just keep piling on new big projects. i'll take part of that blame for the kldc and oldc collabs, but both of those are still happening and are being figured out.

vldcx was mostly held by vitor, and yes, it's true he didn't really communicate with anyone else in the team properly. but it is what it is and what it is is the past. much of vldcx relied on vitor being around, especially since he came up with all of the resource rules, or rather the near lack of rules regarding how big you could make your levels and how many sublevels you could use. throwing in moons as a collectable was also part of it.

but all of those things are just parts. regardless of who ran vldcx, the pressure for it to be our biggest thing was inevitable. things might've been communicated better under different leadership, but i think how long judging took would've been rather similar with a different leader, and i think the realization that this project coming to fruition was not for the best would have come as well. for the record, i suggested that months ago to the rest of staff once medic stepped down, as i would rather us finish what we've done already. perhaps we have exhausted everything that VLDC was meant to be. perhaps it is just time to move on to different things. i do think much of how things went was rather inevitable. but the second i stepped up to become VLDCX lead, my concern was getting the results out first and foremost. till the end it's been just that, and the rest regarding this project is much less important.

Originally posted by Wind Fish
So if you guys are doing a best-of VLDCX, does that mean we can use our level we submitted elsewhere? (e.g. a hack)

no one's really stopping you for using your contest levels kinda wherever you want, frankly.

Originally posted by Ladida
it undermines the contest and creates a bigger pile of work, which eats up other contests and events left-and-right like we saw with this one.

yeah this is succinct and to the point, and one of the best things you can take out of these past few pages. the fact that this was promoted as a big collaboration absolutely was the reason this got 180~ entries, and much of those entries ended up being peoples first levels or peoples attempts to just get into a world they wanted. the amount of people talking about how they hoped theyd up in mountain world or abstract world this year was wild, when the primary focus of vldcx should've always been how fun your level would be and how well designed it would be. beyond this, VLDCX ended up preventing both a planned overworld contest and a planned music contest from happening (idol, as sinc-x was a judge of vldcx and wished to host it, along with us not wanting it to run alongside music composition which ultimately never happened). vldcx also ended up pushing back vldc11, which is not going to be happening in february. there'll be more discussion on that post-results, though.

Originally posted by Mathos
But you can't possibly say it's 100% his fault. Hell, would you have done better in his place, ? You can't possibly know. You could've spoken against him if he was entering a destructive behaviour. He could've stopped by himself. So much could have been done.

the aggression in your post doesn't take into consider any behind the scenes info you were not a part of. it's fine to be angry about him being targeted, but it's not wise to base your stance on outsider assumptions.

gonna go ahead and bold this a fucking stupid ton so if anyone doesn't read it it's their own fault:

enough about vitor. let's just keep this to the collab not being a thing, and discussion about if a best of collab would be wise. please do not derail this thread more into targeting him as you've all got your point across already. thank you.
I will continue to push for some sort of random level mode, ala mario maker. It's the only sure fire way to give everybody's level a fair chance of being played. Maybe there can be two options: continuous mode and a certain level cap mode. idk how many levels people would plan on putting in, but let's say it's 50. We could have a random path 10 level, 5/10/15 life challenge mode (i think 5 lives is fair because a lot of levels have a moon.)
again, i know nothing about asm, but it'd be cool if the first two levels are pulled randomly from the 50-40 placement range, next two from the 40-30 range, etc, until the final two levels are from the top 10. Continuous mode could just go until you get a game over.

I'd be fine with keeping a separate overworld too if people really want it, though I've always expressed my disinterest in the final collab becoming an asm showcase for the overworld and the highlight of the hack is the overworld over the levels themselves. The overworld should just be a vehicle for thematically connecting each level, and should mostly be invisible in a hack like this. But if other people are interested in having another one then why not.

I'd say we really dont need a world X but if I said that we wouldn't get another lolyoshi level, so I'm fine with a world x. Maybe beating continuous mode could unlock it. I never really understood the fascination with hyper locking people out of it for an arbitrary reason given the levels you get to are usually pretty whatever lol
ask me if i give a f*ck...
Originally posted by Hobz
I will continue to push for some sort of random level mode, ala mario maker. It's the only sure fire way to give everybody's level a fair chance of being played. Maybe there can be two options: continuous mode and a certain level cap mode. idk how many levels people would plan on putting in, but let's say it's 50. We could have a random path 10 level, 5/10/15 life challenge mode (i think 5 lives is fair because a lot of levels have a moon.)
again, i know nothing about asm, but it'd be cool if the first two levels are pulled randomly from the 50-40 placement range, next two from the 40-30 range, etc, until the final two levels are from the top 10. Continuous mode could just go until you get a game over.

I tried to put this together initially, but I got stuck figuring out how to add extra menus to the title screen LOL
The menus that are there are hardcoded with evil maths I couldn't wrap my head around due to the variable exit counters for every save file, so me and my limited DMA knowledge died in a fire.
I'd still love if someone were to put this together though, as a baserom we could use for all future VLDC collabs. So the process would literally just be plugging in levels and done. It'd be lazy, sure, but it'd stop VLDC from being an annual one-year-lasting project staff has to figure out how to organize that eats up other contests, while people still get easy access to playing the stages without switching ROM 50 times.

Originally posted by Hobz
I'd say we really dont need a world X but if I said that we wouldn't get another lolyoshi level, so I'm fine with a world x. Maybe beating continuous mode could unlock it. I never really understood the fascination with hyper locking people out of it for an arbitrary reason given the levels you get to are usually pretty whatever lol

Judge levels are just fun to have so the judges can sort of enter the contest themselves (and give people an idea of how meaningful those scores really are -- I don't think anyone that played certain judge levels in VLDC9 took that respective judge's scores very seriously afterwards (no, not talking about u Nimono (I can foresee that you'd think I might be and get upset but I'm not)).




Originally posted by ThePat545
There were a couple of ways this could have been handled. Recently we had moderator applications, which is an important job that you have to be dedicated and committed to, much like a VLDCX judge. With this idea in mind, applications and individual interviews could have been carried out instead of going to a select few first.

We found good people though, so there's no need for that. It probably would've been a step if we literally ran out of people.

Originally posted by ThePat545
Comparing the list of mods in the staff page to the list of VLDCX entrants, mods like MrDeePay (who was a former VLDC judge), LX5, Sariel, Skewer, or Thomas didn't enter the contest at all. From these 5 people plus the 2 backup judges, even if some were busy with real life, etc. 7 people is still a lot of options, even 1 more than the original amount of judges we had. Clearly they're credible enough to moderate hacks and ASM, so what about a contest?

MrDeePay isn't allowed cause his judging commentary consistently stirs up drama and he refuses to acknowledge that it's his fault, and the rest are good mods in their sections, sure, but just because they're credible as people doesn't mean that they fulfill the single criterium I outlined of being well known for their eye for level design/ability to formulate consistent thoughts on it. Someone being credible as a person kind of isn't a big barrier in this kind of thing, cause it's not like they get any big power to do bad with. If their scores were to turn out as inconsistent garbage, they would've just been discarded.
Not to mention I highly doubt any of the people you mentioned would've wanted to bother.

Originally posted by ThePat545
There could have been a third option if Vitor considered it before announcing VLDCX, which is settling the issue of backup judges before starting the contest. What I can at least gather is that a major problem in deciding who should be a backup judge was difficult because most of the capable people were already in VLDCX. Being that this is a problem that can only happen after VLDCX was announced, I know that the backup judges weren't decided beforehand. If he contacted possible backup judges before there was even an announcement, a shortage of capable people wouldn't be a problem.

There being 6 judges instead of the traditional 3 is literally the backup mechanism we went with.


Originally posted by ThePat545
That's actually not much different than what's already happened. People are still tense and still complaining about VLDCX not being done with judging. The many people who entered in a level are individuals, too, and they've been waiting 8 months for this. It's not fair to keep progress from the public after literally announcing that it's been delayed because 2 of the judges are 2 months behind the other ones.

People were told whenever a judge finished and there were answers about this that included "and another judge is close to done as well" so often that you basically got regualr progress reports.
What's important is making people wait as little as possible, without creating a pressure situation for specific judges like I just outlined. You can keep complaining about that if you want, but it would just have led to either slower or faster results but less thought-out results, depending on the person, if they were pressured by literally everyone from being compared to the speed of other judges.
Not to mention again, it'd be annoying for all of us.




Originally posted by Mathos
You could've spoken against him if he was entering a destructive behaviour. He could've stopped by himself. So much could have been done. Reassure people instead of offering them a public punching bag whose actual fault lied in having a burn-out, by Jove.

We did, and the response was as idol outlined, we were told to shut up and that we would be demoted if we did it again. You may want to read up on staff threads that happened before your promotion regarding his leadership style, there are more than enough reasons for what's happening here, it literally just being fact notwithstanding.

Originally posted by Mathos
Also, leod: If I'm not mistaken, absolutely nobody complained when these statistics you're referring to were introduced. And the only ones who had access to it, by the way, when "the person whose name starts in V" was at the top were the judges themselves.

Uh... yeah. And the judges are the people that complained. Shouldn't be hard to figure out, that one.
Your layout has been removed.
I figure I'll give my thoughts on this whole situation. Some other people have mentioned this, and I agree that this kind of failure was inevitable due to the trend of the last few VLDCs. Once we started making the collab hacks, the focus started shifting away from the actual contest and more toward the collab aspect.

In particular after VLDC9, people had the idea that VLDCX had to be even better than that. VLDC9 was impressive, but even if VLDCX came out as planned, what then? That kind of trend is unsustainable. Eventually it leads to something like this -- too ambitious and it ends in failure.

I admittedly haven't kept up with this contest since the beginning, but reading through this thread I'm learning that even judging isn't done. It's been over 8 months since the submission deadline, and it's frankly ridiculous that at the very least, this aspect isn't done yet. My intent here isn't to shit on anyone, call them lazy, etc. because I know it takes time and effort to play through all of the submissions and assess them. But clearly the setup this time has not worked. I think 6 judges is excessive, and 4 would definitely be sufficient. There also needs to be a clear deadline set for judging in the future, if there wasn't already one set this time.

At this point, I think the best option is honestly to just kill the collab aspect of VLDCX entirely. Now I don't know how far along things are, but I'd say if this mini collab being talked about here can't be completed in about 1 month's time, it's not worth doing. The time spent on this contest is already excessive and has caused/is causing other events to be pushed back. At a certain point, you need to cut your losses and move on.

For VLDC11, I think a much simpler approach is needed to make it a success. Sure, all of the fancy overworld asm, World X, judge levels, etc. is cool but I think we're losing sight of what VLDC even is. It's first and foremost a contest, or at least it should be. The primary focus should be on getting levels judged, then the collab aspect. I personally like what Hobz has suggested with a level select screen and a random level mode. The whole purpose of the collab should be to give people a more convenient way to play the entries than applying 100+ patches, and we can't even manage that because we're obsessed with making everything too flashy.
I like world x for letting judges in spirit enter the contest #smrpg{y} (tho using said levels as a base to how legitimately those scores should be treated is a little unfair ( Mark Brown's not very good Super Mario Maker level is a strong example of this)), I'm moreso against the ridiculous secrecy of it that has been a part of earlier vldc's. If anything I'd say the rarity and intense blockades put in front of world X builds up its expectations to unreasonable places more than anything. I love the idea of World X, I just think it'd be beneficial to keep it reasonable and avoid hyping it up as the climax of the hack, when that reputation obviously belongs to whomever achieved first place, or best world as a whole.
World X should be more of a fun epilogue to the contest, not the finale, is the main point i want to make.
An idea I had regarding a Random Mode in a way that doesn't involve the final collab, would be to include an executable file in the .zip folder of all the level patches that chooses a level to play at random. It's not exactly ideal as it wouldn't count to any progress made in the final "completed" comp, but it's a good way to leave it up to fate to decide what level the player experiences, rather then leaving it up entirely to deliberate decision.

I still think finding a way to do it in-game would be the preferable alternative by far, but if no such solution can be found it would be a nice alternative to allow chance to play into; or even if the collab does have such an option, allowing all 180 submissions to be played with a degree of randomness could also be a fun idea.
ask me if i give a f*ck...
I think World X is actually a bit detrimental to the spirit of the contest. I know it's not the intent, but it makes it seem like those levels are inherently "better" than the others when you lock them away. Like "hey, beat all of this to get to the good stuff!" Rubs me the wrong way a bit if you know what I mean. I think it would be better if all levels were available from the start.
i agree to an extent, but also feel its important to acknowledge that for the judge levels to be held to the same regard as the submitted levels, they'd ideally have to have some sort of score attached to them; otherwise it can be seen as a case of "they got to be in the collab without competing"! But yes that same argument can be applied to "without having to compete, their levels got placed at the top position of this contest!"

That's why i said it should be treated as an epilogue; idk if allowing them to be accessible from the start is good for the point above, but I think being treated as an extension of the levels already played, rather than a reward for beating the rest of the collab, is an important distinction to make to ensure


But there's no real way to not hype up a world x if its locked off i suppose; though beating the final level spawning a star that warps you to world x would be less flashy than a rocket ship lol. Maybe require best world be beaten in order from 10th place to 1, and then above #1 World X opens and you get to play the judge levels. Just a suggestion though, more suggestions from other people are obviously welcome and encouraged! Because it seems like a good compromise to just give the player the judge levels right away. Maybe if we got with an overworld they can just be appropriately placed on the overworld with their little judge level marking. or not idk :)
ask me if i give a f*ck...
Isn't choosing the best levels out of all of them the point of this contest, though? I see your point if this was just a community effort/collaboration without the contest aspect of it, but once the judging is done there will definitely be a selection of levels (with a few variations between judges) that are considered better than the others. That might sound disparaging toward other users who entered the contest, but they should have known that would be the case the moment they made a level.

Edit: ninja'd by hobz, plus I realize reading more into it that I am completely out of the loop with all of this. Ignore me.