raocow's talkhaus

The "bonus" for easy/medium/hard names is just a bit of fun, 1-2 points isn't going to make too much of a difference in a 100-point scale. And the 5-point penalty is just because mulligans shouldn't be necessary at all: Unlike with the "boxes" from MaGL2, you get 5 options, so one or two bad dice rolls won't punish you. I'm not sure if anyone took the mulligan option at all.

And yeah, I personally think that a contest called "make a good level" should be one without gimmicks whatsoever, and a contest with a gimmick should be named after the gimmick. But hey, this is how things went down. The time to voice grievances over the format was way back during the planning stage. This scoring system has been locked since January, and everyone made their levels with these particulars in mind.

Ditocoaf wrote:The "bonus" for easy/medium/hard names is just a bit of fun, 1-2 points isn't going to make too much of a difference in a 100-point scale. And the 5-point penalty is just because mulligans shouldn't be necessary at all: Unlike with the "boxes" from MaGL2, you get 5 options, so one or two bad dice rolls won't punish you. I'm not sure if anyone took the mulligan option at all.

And yeah, I personally think that a contest called "make a good level" should be one without gimmicks whatsoever, and a contest with a gimmick should be named after the gimmick. But hey, this is how things went down. The time to voice grievances over the format was way back during the planning stage. This scoring system has been locked since January, and everyone made their levels with these particulars in mind.

MaGL was named to counter the "chocolate" and "vanilla" contest gimmicks on SMWC, though, so I think after the first (which as I recall had no gimmick) they should be free to add pretty much whatever gimmick as long as it doesn't meaningfully limit what sorts of assets you can use in your level.

Shoulda just scored on a 1 to 2 scale, it would've been perfect.

I think the level name gimmick has fostered a startling amount of creativity. Google "creativity working within boundaries" for a selection of resources on that topic.

I note that Ignoritus gave Little Ruins a far lower score than either of the other two judges, taking into account his self-imposed curve. He scored it 58/100, the same score he'd given to Jump the Canyons (112th), Too Much Lava on this MFing Island (119th), and Flying Space Fish (126th) - all World 1 or World 2 levels.

So, if someone is questioning why Little Ruins didn't rank higher, that question probably is most fairly addressed to Ignoritus.

Voltgloss wrote: So, if someone is questioning why Little Ruins didn't rank higher, that question probably is most fairly addressed to Ignoritus.

If it had abided by the naming gimmick it would have had a 68 from me since I (for the most part) treated adherence to level name as a binary (0 points or 10). That would place it pretty much up there with the "this is pretty nice I guess" levels, which I think is about what it would deserve given the super broken boss.

The only judging criteria that makes any sense to me is an overall Value score for levels which encapsulate them entirely - that is, the final result of all their elements together. Sure you can get 5 points just for having "fitting" music, but what if I use my music in a really great way that really adds to the experience? I still get 5 points for music. Or does that spill over and affect fun factor? There's like no advantage to having this rigid system.

I think it's really easy to judge the Value of something. Would I recommend it to my friend? Was it worth sacrificing some small amount of my lifetime to experience? I would recommend Little Ruins, SMB2 but Dead, Descent of Aging Link, Dudes, SMB1 Level but Nicer, and some others. Those levels have high Value. Levels that are interesting and not broken. Levels that aren't a rehash of the same old thing. For me, Value = fun. But hey, you guys can do what you want.

MrDeePay wrote:Scoring for level names and penalizing entrants for essentially being unlucky with what they got is really stupid. Just do a straight LDC with no "gimmicks" attached.

I doubt I would have bothered entering if not for the gimmick.

Kil wrote:The only judging criteria that makes any sense to me is an overall Value score for levels which encapsulate them entirely - that is, the final result of all their elements together. Sure you can get 5 points just for having "fitting" music, but what if I use my music in a really great way that really adds to the experience? I still get 5 points for music. Or does that spill over and affect fun factor? There's like no advantage to having this rigid system.

I think it's really easy to judge the Value of something. Would I recommend it to my friend? Was it worth sacrificing some small amount of my lifetime to experience? I would recommend Little Ruins, SMB2 but Dead, Descent of Aging Link, Dudes, SMB1 Level but Nicer, and some others. Those levels have high Value. Levels that are interesting and not broken. Levels that aren't a rehash of the same old thing. For me, Value = fun. But hey, you guys can do what you want.

You try giving assigning 134 levels an arbitrary number between 1-100 based on how much you enjoyed them and then tell me how accurate those rankings are. I don't think that would work out as well as you seem to think.

Kil wrote:The only judging criteria that makes any sense to me is an overall Value score for levels which encapsulate them entirely - that is, the final result of all their elements together. Sure you can get 5 points just for having "fitting" music, but what if I use my music in a really great way that really adds to the experience? I still get 5 points for music. Or does that spill over and affect fun factor? There's like no advantage to having this rigid system.

I think it's really easy to judge the Value of something. Would I recommend it to my friend? Was it worth sacrificing some small amount of my lifetime to experience? I would recommend Little Ruins, SMB2 but Dead, Descent of Aging Link, Dudes, SMB1 Level but Nicer, and some others. Those levels have high Value. Levels that are interesting and not broken. Levels that aren't a rehash of the same old thing. For me, Value = fun. But hey, you guys can do what you want.

Really fitting music would spill over into Fun Factor and get you more points there.

I'm pretty sure once every few pages of this thread we seem to come to the agreement that judging is hard and that it all basically worked out for the overall level placement. Then we get mad at the level placement in the next video.

Yay internet!

EDIT: Actually, in retrospect, I can't think of a single thing about this contest that hasn't been complained about. Level placements, hub world, and even the freakin' thread titles have each made somebody grumpy at some point.

I'm not so much against the name gimmick. In fact, I thought it was a step in the right direction to establish limits by giving five names designed to bound, but not stifle because of the ways each of the five could really be interpreted, whereas with the heavily controversial box system it was more strict and along the lines of "use this block and this gimmick or fail forever", and it was far more exact and unforgiving. This one gives you a number of avenues in which you can take each name, and it being ten points wasn't a total killer if you just didn't want to work with the gimmick.

But, I do agree that a vanilla gimmick free MaGL would be very welcome.

MrDeePay wrote:Scoring for level names and penalizing entrants for essentially being unlucky with what they got is really stupid. Just do a straight LDC with no "gimmicks" attached.

The problem with having no gimmicks is that there's no way to verify that the level wasn't started a long, long time before the contest was even announced. Gimmicks are hardly unique to this contest either. For example, the biggest and most reputable indie film competition in Australia (Tropfest), which is large enough to get national mainstream attention, has a different gimmick each year: usually an item or concept that has to be included in the film. It's the only way to verify that the film was actually made that year.

Surprised I made it this far to be honest. I think my level is good, but nothing spectacular. I'll probably make an appearance in the next few videos.

MrDeePay wrote:Scoring for level names and penalizing entrants for essentially being unlucky with what they got is really stupid. Just do a straight LDC with no "gimmicks" attached.

They got 5 to choose from. If they can't make a level that fits one of five names, they wouldn't have done well in a non-gimmick contest either.

Ometeotl wrote:

MrDeePay wrote:Scoring for level names and penalizing entrants for essentially being unlucky with what they got is really stupid. Just do a straight LDC with no "gimmicks" attached.

They got 5 to choose from. If they can't make a level that fits one of five names, they wouldn't have done well in a non-gimmick contest either.

There were also optional mulligans that caused your score to drop 5 points, but gave you 5 more names, and the choice of name difficulty also helped mitigate potential issues with the gimmick.

sedron wrote:

Ometeotl wrote:

MrDeePay wrote:Scoring for level names and penalizing entrants for essentially being unlucky with what they got is really stupid. Just do a straight LDC with no "gimmicks" attached.

They got 5 to choose from. If they can't make a level that fits one of five names, they wouldn't have done well in a non-gimmick contest either.

There were also optional mulligans that caused your score to drop 5 points, but gave you 5 more names, and the choice of name difficulty also helped mitigate potential issues with the gimmick.

Looking at some of the easy names given, I'm actually glad I went with medium, since ironically enough, the "easy" names looked like they would have been *harder* to craft an interesting stage around.

(Edit: Why does it always seem like whenever I post, I end up with the very last post on one page, or the very first post on the next? )

Ignoritus wrote:

Kil wrote:The only judging criteria that makes any sense to me is an overall Value score for levels which encapsulate them entirely - that is, the final result of all their elements together. Sure you can get 5 points just for having "fitting" music, but what if I use my music in a really great way that really adds to the experience? I still get 5 points for music. Or does that spill over and affect fun factor? There's like no advantage to having this rigid system.

I think it's really easy to judge the Value of something. Would I recommend it to my friend? Was it worth sacrificing some small amount of my lifetime to experience? I would recommend Little Ruins, SMB2 but Dead, Descent of Aging Link, Dudes, SMB1 Level but Nicer, and some others. Those levels have high Value. Levels that are interesting and not broken. Levels that aren't a rehash of the same old thing. For me, Value = fun. But hey, you guys can do what you want.

You try giving assigning 134 levels an arbitrary number between 1-100 based on how much you enjoyed them and then tell me how accurate those rankings are. I don't think that would work out as well as you seem to think.

I have tried. I'm going to post the scores after I see all the levels.

There's no way your value of experiencing something can be anything but accurate, because comparing the value of two things is so simple. You simply act as if you have to give one of them up, and the one you give up is the one with less value.

I have tried. I'm going to post the scores after I see all the levels.

There's no way your value of experiencing something can be anything but accurate, because comparing the value of two things is so simple. You simply act as if you have to give one of them up, and the one you give up is the one with less value.

Oh, are you the kind of person that thinks that the best book is the one you'd like to end up with in a desolated island?

(because I've tried thinking like that and it made me crazy).

Structured judging isn't the best kind of judging there is, but people are people and people get tired of judging and the only way to judge every level with the "same" mindset is to create some kind of skeleton for your judging... right?

Kil wrote: There's no way your value of experiencing something can be anything but accurate, because comparing the value of two things is so simple. You simply act as if you have to give one of them up, and the one you give up is the one with less value.

Have fun comparing 134 different levels to 133 other levels each. Because unless you're comparing each level to literally every other you're going to, in the end, look back and find discrepancies where the arbitrary number you assigned to one level is lower than the arbitrary number you assigned to another level that you liked less.

Kil wrote:There's no way your value of experiencing something can be anything but accurate, because comparing the value of two things is so simple. You simply act as if you have to give one of them up, and the one you give up is the one with less value.

This isn't accurate. You're not comparing two things together. You're comparing 134 separate things to the other 133. That's a lot to keep track of and by the time you've done even 20 or so the ones you've already done are going to blend together fairly badly.

are we really going to argue about the contest gimmick again

I still maintain that having a starting point to work from (or a gimmick, as the case may be) is way easier on the designer's side than "just make anything from scratch".

MrDeePay wrote:Music: x/5 - Five is enough to scale all sorts of way music could be implemented. (Quality of music, application of it in terms of the level's atmosphere, etc.)
Graphical Choices: x/10 - The way this seems worded feels off to me. Could vary from which type of graphics are used to how they're utilized.
Composition: x/10 - What exactly is graded on this?
Adherence to the Level Name: x/10 - See bottom.
Creativity: x/10 - I would personally combine this with the below category, but.
Fun Factor: x/30
Bonus: x/2 (Easy Name: 0, Medium Name: 1, Hard Name: 2)
Mulligan -5*(number of mulligans)
Scoring for level names and penalizing entrants for essentially being unlucky with what they got is really stupid. Just do a straight LDC with no "gimmicks" attached.

why would you score them out of 65 that makes no sense
The score for the name difficulty is nearly inconsequential and is basically just to 'reward' candidates that wanted to challenge themselves (...more or less); and with being given five names to choose from, getting a completely terrible list with no useable names is very unlikely (pretty sure Horikawa said somewhere along the way that if someone got a particularly bad list, she'd reroll it to get something more fair).

This is entirely my own thoughts and not those of the judges, just by the way.

Also giving things a completely arbitrary score out of 100 doesn't seem at all plausible?? I'd personally have no idea what to do if I wasn't given specific categories to base it on.



Submarine Of The Mushroom Kingdom and Descent Of An Aging Link seemed like alright levels that just had very obvious smaller flaws. I wonder if World 7 will be the end of "Horikawa rates levels super-highly but 8flight and Ignoritus are less than impressed"? :v

Speaking of World 7, hooray!!! Congratulations to everyone still in this thing. Everyone that's not in the Top 10 will be at this party in the Bar. I'm expecting my level will finally show up here because I'm not expecting to be in the Top 10.

phencer42 wrote:EDIT: Actually, in retrospect, I can't think of a single thing about this contest that hasn't been complained about. Level placements, hub world, and even the freakin' thread titles have each made somebody grumpy at some point.

That's true of every mario contest LP raocow's ever done. In fact, just before this LP, lots of us familiar with this effect were already bracing for the months-long shitstorm. It's pretty much an inevitable result of ranking a bunch of creative efforts, then putting a microscope on them day after day, then hanging out in a thread discussing that. Disagreement will rise and even spill over even into incidentally related things. But also people will have lots of fun meanwhile, so it's worth it!

Ignoritus wrote:Because unless you're comparing each level to literally every other you're going to, in the end, look back and find discrepancies where the arbitrary number you assigned to one level is lower than the arbitrary number you assigned to another level that you liked less.

Yuuup! If you think you can rank 134 options without a single uncertainty, you're deluding yourself.

In fact, even if you went through each and every one of the 8911 one-to-one comparisons and chose which level you preferred, you'd probably end up somewhere with a rock-paper-scissors circle, where you said you liked A better than B and liked B better than C but liked C better than A. And when you go to resolve that conflict by changing your answer to one of those three questions, you might create a circle like that somewhere else.

Horikawa Otane wrote:So... You knew it was coming!

What were peep's favourite World 6 levels?

That dead SMB2 level. It was both fun and stylish.

Willhart wrote:That dead SMB2 level. It was both fun and stylish.

Seconded. It managed to tell a decent story through its environment and still managed to possess good (and clever) level design. It's probably my favorite level in the contest so far.

Horikawa Otane wrote:Favourite World 5 levels/videos?

Horikawa Otane wrote:What were peep's favourite World 6 levels?

Since I missed one! Link's Depressing Circus was a joy to watch in world 5. The Toad powder rain was brilliant.

It's a SMB2 Level Except Way More Dead in world 6 is my favorite level of the contest so far. Good job, Compound Fraxure!