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BLDC - Results!

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Why am I pleasantly not surprised that worldpeace won?

Congrats, all! That was a good competition. I wonder if I'll join next time.
Windowless ride, feeling alive
Are you alive or just breathing?
while cdmerkel may have not done better than her vldc11 placement, its still a placement to be proud of.

thanks to the folks who enjoyed gbreeze and i's entry. if theres anyone id want to kick my ass to hell and back again, its my buddy worldpeace.
Congrats to the rest of the top 10, especially the top 3! Very well deserved.
And thanks to the judges for their feedback, it's much appreciated =)
Well, the results are here! First of all, i'd like to thank the judges for their work put into judging all entries! Great job!

I'd also like to congratulate the winners! Worldpeace, Idol/Gbreeze and FrozenQuills! And also, congratulations to everyone else in the top 10. Great job everyone!
(i've yet to play most levels in the contests, i'll have to get to that at some point)

Also, can we just appreciate the fact "Enclosure of Agony", made by "Blind Devil" got a score of exactly 66.66...? That's like, the most fitting score i've ever seen for a level lol

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Alright, now, let's actually talk about my results, shall we?
I gotta say, i didn't really have any expectations for my results this time. I ended up having to rush a portion of my entry, and i took a few unfortunate design decisions that ended up hurting the overall quality of the level, and after the deadline, i had a lot of time to look back at the level and realize the many problems it had (Idol's feedback thread also helped me a lot with noticing some of them).
So i knew my entry didn't quite come up to the quality i know i could have offered (And i've talked about this in 2 post already, both in Idol's Feedback Thread and in Things you regret about BLDC, so you can refer to those for more detail on my view on the mistakes in my entry)

With that said, i think 21st is a great placement! To be honest i'm happy to just be in the top half of the contest! I'm actually pretty impressed at how great my creativity scores were! And some of the positive judge comments did give me a bit of relief to know that they liked my level to some degree.

Also, oh boy, i got a trophy! lol
Really wasn't expecting that, as i thought the trophies would be Top10 only. It's actually ironic how this far, my best result in a contest, which was VLDC11, was the only one to not give me a trophy xD

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Now, as i always do, i'll comment a bit on some of the judges reviews.
First, i'd like to say the judges comments are fair, and i anticipated some of the problems they mentioned. It's actually interesting how the reviews focused on different points, and each of them kinda reflected different parts of my worries.

Originally posted by Teyla Review
[...]but I just think there's too much -level- here.

Originally posted by Sinc-x Review
I ran out of time the first time I played this level and almost ran out a second time as well.

Originally posted by S.N.N. Review
My primary problem is that the level goes on, and on, and on, and it starts to wear you out. [...]
[...] The time limit is way too tight. I ran out, and I was going decently quick with a couple of resets.

Yea, it's quite clear the length was the single biggest problem with it. Having to rush the entry to be done in time plus wanting to execute the different ideas i had for this level did make it be far longer than i wanted it to be. I wanted to shorten it, but didn't have the time to. It's actually fun to think my level ended up too long because it was rushed.

Originally posted by Teyla Review
I feel like you could've cut out a decent chunk, and shortened the level, and it would've been -way- stronger.

Originally posted by S.N.N. Review
If you had stopped at the after the second section and made some of the set-ups at the end of that a little more complex, I think this would have been an amazing entry overall.

I completely agree with you guys! The third section was by far the most rushed, and as such i agree it would've been best to just not have it in the level in the first place.

Originally posted by Teyla Review
I think this level had some really creative ideas, and I can say it's the only variable scroll layer 2 level I've played where it didn't make me want to tear my hair out

Originally posted by Sinc-x Review
The part with the scrolling water was definitely the most interesting of the level, and the setups that involved those blobs of water were much more enjoyable.

Originally posted by S.N.N. Review
I feel like the third section is completely unnecessary - not only does it introduce an L/R gimmick that feels too janky when taken with the rest of the level as a whole (yes yes, coming from someone who made an entire level around this gimmick), but it's unnecessary padding.

It's interesting to see the mixed opinions about this section.
Since the early stages of planning, the Variable Scrolling Layer 2 section was supposed to be the peak of quality and creativity in the level, and even though it was rushed, i see the creativity in it could still stand out.
But boy S.N.N is right, that thing is janky lol. But i guess you know that gimmick pretty well xD (in fact, it's fun you mentioned you made a level with it, Wetsuit Columns was actually the inspiration for the whole moving layer 2 aspect of my level!)
And yea, with how long the level had been before this section, i agree the section feels unecessary.

And in fact, my initial plans were to have only 2 sections in the level, the first half already starting with the Layer 2 Scroll, and the second half being the Variable Scroll section, but later i ended up deciding on adding the actual first section in order to introduce the Bubble Flower and all the stuff you can do with it (which is a lot!). And this leads to...

Originally posted by Sinc-x Review
I think this level suffers a lot from expecting the player to understand the mechanics of the bubble flower. There’s no learning curve or explanation, just an expectation to figure it out on your own

This was a really interesting thing to see being mentioned, because this was actually one of my main worries when making this level.
When i was testing the custom resources provided with the BaseROM, the Bubble Flower initially didn't really call my attention, it was only after i accidentally used it in water and discovered the water affects the bubble speed and height that i picked it as my level gimmick. Then i went through a period of testing to find out everything you could do with the Bubble Flower, which was actually a lot of stuff!
After seeing the potential the Bubble Flower had, one thing i was constantly worried about was whether i'd be able to make all these mechanics intuitive for the player, and this is exactly what got me to build the first section of the level as a tutorial of sorts focused on the power-up itself.
But this review was actually the first time i saw someone mentioning lack of a learning curve, or that it feels unintuitive. I mean, i know for sure the level expects the player to figure out the Bubble Flower mechanics, as that's kinda a thing when we're using an entirely new power-up, but none of the people who played it before mentioned having a problem with that, so i thought it was fine... (and there were no explanations because the entire level uses Layer 3 BGs, so no Message Boxes. I thought about making an optional tutorial room that would have text and teach stuff, but decided against it.)

Originally posted by S.N.N. Review
Good introduction to the bubble power-up.

And in fact, even between the judges there's been mixed opinions about whether my level introduces the mechanics well or not lol.

Originally posted by Teyla Review
Aesthetics-wise it's a vanilla forest. I would've liked to see even a custom palette or something here.

Originally posted by S.N.N. Review
Nice music. Wish you'd at least tried to make a custom palette or something, though.

Yea, aesthetics were kept rather simple. I blame part of that on the absolute lack of Forest graphics in the BaseROM xD
I could probably have tried to mix and match some stuff like people do in VLDCs, but i'm not really good at that, and i also didn't have the time to try it.
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