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VLDC11 - Results!

So uhh I get DQ'd because I set the time limit one second higher as an joke, even though my level is fairly short and you can 100% it well under 500 seconds? Thats harsh.

And I personally dont get the comments towards not having power ups in last 1/3 of the level, you already have mushroom at that point by default(you cant skip midway point), and if you explore you should have cape+fireflower or mushroom in reserve(and if you explore even more there is mushroom available in the hidden path) so that should be more than enough power ups in one level, plus having either cape or fireflower makes the setups so easy to cheese(by design, if player wants the easy mode Im not gonna stop you) there shouldn't be any complains in my option.
Congrats to the winners and thanks for all the participants and judges!!
I'll accept the critism of judges and will try to make better level next year!
you took an inherent risk by being cheeky and purposely playing with the rules - ultimately you paid for it, jp32. what is there to complain about?


on a lighter note... i'm really happy about winning this contest with lazy! this is my first time collaborating for a contest with another level designer - prior with katrina she just provided asm, so adjusting to the level design contributions between the both of us was something for me to get used to. i ended up handling a lot of the ideas for setups, but lazy really designed the brunt of our entry. i instead ended up spending a lot of time harassing sinc-x for our beautiful monkey ball port and spending like two weeks on the aesthetics.

speaking of which... the aesthetics! i definitely made it knowing that...

a) judges would clearly identify it with me given my VLDCX entry.
b) judges would question the legality of it, but not bother looking into it given its' complexity.

so to elaborate on how the level was built, the fg is just the regular cave set but with the castle block siding and the castle background pillar as the underneath. those little stars i forgot about until i saw them in the underwater ghost ship tileset - and i think they work so well here.

the layer 3 background took considerably less time than the foreground did, being frank. with layer 3 i only have 3 colors to have to worry about, plus the rules on palettes are much looser for layer 3 since conversion from 4bpp to 2bpp was allowed, whereas with the foreground i needed to make sure all the details had the same base color and went together well.

the layer 3 background (which for those of you who haven't seen, looks like this) was made from a mix of random shaded bits and the details in the layer 3 smasher. the background is smasher as well, alongside magikoopa magic. the galaxy - which i'm most proud of, is actually made of the slope lava from the underground lava set.

i'm glad people liked what lazy and i brought to the table. now i can retire from vldc forever in peace
Holy shit, 7th?! I knew my level was better than last time, but not THAT better. I'm impressed, to say the least. Never thought I'd get such high scores from every judge.
I must say I have no idea what Morsel's going on about with Super Castlevania 4... I've never played that game.
Anyway, congratulations to idol and Lazy! This was a great contest, even if I didn't get the chance to play most of the entries. I guess I should go do that now!
66th? I was expecting to rank lower, but for a first contest, I think it turned out well. I agree with all the judges' reviews.
Also, congratulations to the winners!
Originally posted by idol
you took an inherent risk by being cheeky and purposely playing with the rules - ultimately you paid for it, jp32. what is there to complain about?


It was made clear that if level takes longer than 500 seconds to beat on first, legit, attempt, but is beatable within the 500 seconds, it doesn't get DQ but loses points. In my case there is one extra second added, but you can beat it well under 500 seconds on first attempt. How does this make any sense?
I'm in the top 100, good enough for a level I made several key mistakes on. Next time imma aim for that top 50 however. Be prepared. Very prepared.

...Congrats to all prize winners!
38th. Big improvement on VLDC10 (89th)!
As always, congrats to all the winners! #smw{:TUP:}
Wow, that far exceeded my expectations! Congratulations also to Lazy and idol for that wonderful level, as well as some of my favorites Dan Drigues, Pyro, Sixcorby, and ECS.98.
Originally posted by JP32
So uhh I get DQ'd because I set the time limit one second higher as an joke, even though my level is fairly short and you can 100% it well under 500 seconds? Thats harsh.

And I personally dont get the comments towards not having power ups in last 1/3 of the level, you already have mushroom at that point by default(you cant skip midway point), and if you explore you should have cape+fireflower or mushroom in reserve(and if you explore even more there is mushroom available in the hidden path) so that should be more than enough power ups in one level, plus having either cape or fireflower makes the setups so easy to cheese(by design, if player wants the easy mode Im not gonna stop you) there shouldn't be any complains in my option.


If you die in the second half, like I did, you don't respawn with any powerups, and you can't go back for any of them because of the Pitchin' Chuck/Muncher tunnel just to the left of the midpoint. The one you needed the shell on the other side of the setup to get through.

As for the timer, the rules were that you can't make your level be longer than 500 SMW seconds, and I remember telling people multiple times that they couldn't set the timer above 500 seconds. Every single other participant managed to follow the rules, and if you hadn't decided to take the risk with the joke you would've been fine. Jokes are okay in these contests, but don't break the rules to make them.
Oh wow we were aiming for the top quarter. We haven't had Top 10 on our Radar at all so this is quite the nice surprise to wake up to haha.
Although to be honest, many of the really great leveldesigners didn't participate this time for one reason or another so that most likely made it easier for us to claim a spot that high.

I didn't play many of the levels while the contest was going on but I think I will check out at least the Top 3 levels later today. Anyways good job everyone and congrats to everyone who reached the Top 10 because even though you didn't get first being up there out of over 100 submissions is definetly a great achievement!
Also huge thanks to Darkdlp for creating such a great level with me. I'm really proud of the level we managed to create and how far it brought us in this contest.
// Layout by Maxo
I didn't participate in this one, because I didn't have good ideas for my level. But I must congratulate all participants, especially winners, for their amazing entries #smw{:TUP:}
So, I'm going to accept my placement of 67th because I don't care that much and it's been long enough since the contest for me to lose to interest, but the judges comments just further exacerbate my opinion that contest judges and the smwcentral hacking community at large is stuck up and love the smell of their own farts.

I mean, could any of the judges have sounded like less of a dick in any of their entries besides like the top 15? It certainly doesn't do a good job of making people excited about attempting another level design contest.

Take Ryaa for example, who flat out contradicted himself in his review of my level: "Leaving my own personal tastes out of this, I will aggressively argue that this level takes everything about water levels that isn't desired and magnifies them by at least 250% (Which in and of itself is a personal opinion). I'm not sure if the creator ran out of time or anything of the sort, but what I'm noticing is that this key gimmick is very underwhelming. You'd think that something that important that's needed to progress would have a bit more depth rather than searching around and hoping you find it."

Searching around? You had coin trails, and also, they weren't even really "searching" they were practically handed to you. They were meant to be DIFFICULT to find. That wasn't the goal of the level. They were only intended as a another means of obstacle avoidance. So clearly 2 of the judges entirely misinterpreted the level they were playing. Both Ryaa and FP are guilty of this. Shoutout to FrozenQuills and Morsel for actually getting it.
                                                                                                                  
                              
could any of the participants have sounded any more appreciative that the judges took the time out of their lives to play and review a hundred and fifteen goddamn levels
soundcloud / bandcamp / twitter / buy/stream my EP / buy my touhou music / buy my NEW album!!!
Originally posted by Sinc-X
if your level causes enough confusion that the concept can't be understood by multiple judges then maybe it isnt a good level

It got 50%

50% of the judges thought it was good (morsel and frozenquills) because they found the keys and realized their purpose.
50% of the judges thought it was bad (ryaa and fp) because they couldn't find keys that were blatantly handed to them, or they thought they were supposed to "search" for them.

Okie-doke.

Sure, sure on top of that there is boos and bullets and each judge had their qualms with that. But they certainly don't amplify EVERYBODY'S hate for a water level by 250%
                                                                                                                  
                              
So is your goal here to act like you’re 5 years old because you don’t like the way your level was judged? You don’t think that passively approaching the judges that felt a different way to see what they thought would have been the better solution instead of being dramatic??? You make it seem like there was some million dollar prize at stake and you were cheated out of it. We aren’t a daycare. Calm down.
Originally posted by Ryaa
So is your goal here to act like you’re 5 years old because you don’t like the way your level was judged? You don’t think that passively approaching the judges that felt a different way to see what they thought would have been the better solution instead of being dramatic??? You make it seem like there was some million dollar prize at stake and you were cheated out of it. We aren’t a daycare. Calm down.

My final thoughts on the matter are if you couldn't see keys that were within one screen of their intended destination, you probably shouldn't have been judging these levels.

I don't care about my 67th place! It's the way in which my level was judged that irks me!

But alright, I'm through, carry on!
                                                                                                                  
                              
Originally posted by Plasmodium00
50% of the judges thought it was good (morsel and frozenquills) because they found the keys and realized their purpose.
50% of the judges thought it was bad (ryaa and fp) because they couldn't find keys that were blatantly handed to them, or they thought they were supposed to "search" for them.

If you spent time actually reading my comments instead of deciding it's a good idea to make snide comments towards the judges' credibility and the community-at-large, you'd read that my point wasn't that this level was full of "searching" or that I had a hard time finding the keys that were "blatantly handed to them", it's that it actually wasn't about searching at all. There's never any extended search for anything here. All of the keys and p-switches required to progress are never more than one or 2 screens away from where they need to be used, so I questioned the point of even having them at all. All they did was extend the gameplay for about 10 seconds longer than if you'd just made the pipes accessible as soon as you got to them. There was nothing clever about going out to grab and bring them back. If you'd handed me the item at the start of the section and basically said "alright, now you have to carry this with you while swimming," that could have been interesting since swimming physics get altered. Swimming through boo rings or avoiding spikes while carrying an item would have been an interesting way to handle underwater stuff. Play to a level's strengths. If you want me to carry something underwater, make me have to deal with the unique consequences of carrying something underwater.

Originally posted by Plasmodium00
I mean, could any of the judges have sounded like less of a dick in any of their entries besides like the top 15? It certainly doesn't do a good job of making people excited about attempting another level design contest.

I take umbrage with this. Point out to me where I sound like a dick in my scores. I go out of my way to judge every single level on as individualistic a basis as possible. I make sure I don't reference other levels as I play because it would be unfair to compare two levels in the same contest to one another. I make sure I judge every single level on its own merits. Even when a level frustrates me I try my hardest not to let it spill over too much into my commentary. It will sometimes because that's how it goes. That's just a consequence of being human. I go out of my way when I feel like a level is one most likely made by a newcomer to leave generous, positive feedback.

So I want to know where your claim comes from that I'm being a dick. Because with comments like these...

Originally posted by Plasmodium00
So, I'm going to accept my placement of 69th because I don't care that much and it's been long enough since the contest for me to lose to interest, but the judges comments just further exacerbate my opinion that contest judges and the smwcentral hacking community at large is stuck up and love the smell of their own farts.

...it seems to me that you're the dick in this situation. Seriously, if you want me to be a dick about things, I can be. Grow up, and stop strawmanning us and the community because of a perceived slight against you.