raocow's talkhaus

Tri-Top Traverse is one of those amusing levels with more than two exits. raocow found two normal goals. There is also a key and keyhole.

After bouncing on the saw to reach the higher path, scroll the screen to see there is a higher path again.

Purple Plateau had some really nice and natural rhythm to it. To me it seemed like everything was placed with care.

If anyone wants to read the the judging breakdown:

Link to the sane judge's results, and link to the "what were you thinking" judge's results.

I ordered the "what were you thinking" judge's results by the total score, since that is probably more useful for comparison.

i love the aesthetic of purple plateau. it feels like a dream or something

Today had glitched sprites and placement shenanigans!

I would have thought mariocool1999 or whoever would have change their handle by now, though.

Man, this is so much more enjoyable if you think of it as a collaboration hack rather than a contest, due to the way it's presented.

haha, honestly yeah. It's just hard not to because of the ratings in the lower right corner.

I was thinking of leaving them out entirely from the next contest when I put it together. I was also thinking about making it more of a progression-based game - that is, you'd have to actually beat the level to proceed to the next one versus having everything open from the start. Just a few things that popped to mind.

Any thoughts on this? I'm actually open to any suggestions to make the 8th VLDC even better than this one organization-wise, so don't hesitate to offer some ideas.

Yeah, I've always thought that these contests shouldn't need to draw attention to the minute rankings between middle levels. The judges can determine a group of "winners", and a single absolute winner, and then place "all the rest" into one or two or three broad groups. The hack can feature the winner(s) in a place of honor, while the other entries feature in a collab-hack-like atmosphere (and maybe shove some particularly bad entries into a corner somewhere).

Basically like what we're seeing here, except without the rankings displayed for anything but the finalists.

the finalists and the poop tier IF THEY DESERVE THE BAD ATTENTION.

Ditocoaf wrote:Yeah, I've always thought that these contests shouldn't need to draw attention to the minute rankings between middle levels. The judges can determine a group of "winners", and a single absolute winner, and then place "all the rest" into one or two or three broad groups. The hack can feature the winner(s) in a place of honor, while the other entries feature in a collab-hack-like atmosphere (and maybe shove some particularly bad entries into a corner somewhere).

Basically like what we're seeing here, except without the rankings displayed for anything but the finalists.

So basically, VLDC6's (2013) ranking format.

raocow wrote:the finalists and the poop tier IF THEY DESERVE THE BAD ATTENTION.

Yeah, I feel like the caveat is SUPER important.

It's really unfair to take a level that scored low because "you didn't do anything offensively bad, but it wasn't memorable, and also there was some cutoff and a glitch here." and put it in the "Crimes against SMW" area that mocks it for being a nigh unplayable mess.

Levels shouldn't be in the "Poop Tier" as raocow put it simply because they were the bottom 10. They should EARN that spot, so to speak.

Classtoise wrote:

raocow wrote:the finalists and the poop tier IF THEY DESERVE THE BAD ATTENTION.

Yeah, I feel like the caveat is SUPER important.

It's really unfair to take a level that scored low because "you didn't do anything offensively bad, but it wasn't memorable, and also there was some cutoff and a glitch here." and put it in the "Crimes against SMW" area that mocks it for being a nigh unplayable mess.

Levels shouldn't be in the "Poop Tier" as raocow put it simply because they were the bottom 10. They should EARN that spot, so to speak.

Hack mods are not nearly as anal about that stuff as you might think they are. But what if they "earned" the bottom ten rankings because they make a level that's was rated low enough to be "bottom ten"? You people make a bigger deal out of that/got "more" offended over the finalized map than the actual entrants did.

This is a contest- someone HAS to rank at the bottom.

The thing is that most of the levels that got lousy ranks got there because they were either unfocused or overstayed their welcome, not because they were painful-looking kaizo wannabes, and putting them in an glitchy-looking overworld is grossly underselling them (or overselling, if you were hoping for gross incompetence). Save the ridicule for if someone decides they want to blow up some speakers or something.

_____

On the other topic, I guess having the vaguest of difficulty curves would be a useful thing if there's going to be a progression-based overworld in place. Figure out the general difficulty of various level themes, put the outliers on secret exits, and throw the resultant level groups in order, maybe giving branching paths if needed? For the best/worst worlds, make the first accessible from the start and the second after beating the last regular world? Throw them in as nested secret worlds, like they were in the original smw? Might be worth waiting to see what the exit counts of the best/worst levels are before settling on a specific way to go.

MrDeePay wrote:But what if they "earned" the bottom ten rankings because they make a level that's was rated low enough to be "bottom ten"?

This is a contest- someone HAS to rank at the bottom.

Someone has to rank at the bottom, but poop world doesn't need to contain a set number of entries. Look at the scores the levels in poop world received:

Nice Ice Adventure: 45.5
Green Muncher Land: 50
The Comeback: 56.25
Bones - Hot Buss: 58
Vanilla Deathkeep: 58.25
Twilight Lakeside: 59.25
Cumulus Crag & Nocturnal Freeze: 60.75

For reference, Wood and Welkin is pretty much in the middle of the pack in terms of rank (not precisely in the middle, but I'm using this one for reference because we've actually seen it,) being in 39th place with a score of 68. Note how most of the levels in the bottom eight are closer in terms of score to the level in the middle of the pack than they are to the level ranked at the very bottom. Only two levels are closer to Nice Ice Adventure in terms of score than they are to Wood and Welkin.

Green Muncher Land scored 4.5 points higher than Nice Ice Adventure. The Comeback scored 6.25 points higher than Green Muncher Land. Bones - Hot Buss scored 1.75 points higher than The Comeback. Overall there are 12.5 points of difference between Nice Ice Adventure (82nd place,) and Bones - Hot Buss (79th place.) There are only 10 points of difference between Bones - Hot Buss (79th place,) and Wood and Welkin (39th place.) Should Bones - Hot Buss and the levels that scored better than it really be lumped in with Nice Ice Adventure?

If Nocturnal Freeze deserves to be in poop world with its score of 60.75, then should Darkest Woods also be in poop world with its score of 61?

Quman wrote:words

The less you care/worry about individual scores, the better off you and everyone else you'll be (I like VLDC6's judging format the most still.). SNN was mainly the person that wanted to have a certain number of levels in the top/bottom maps (my involvement in this compilation is very, very little) and trying to change that is basically asking for a slippery slope to happen to extend/shorten the number of levels to be included. ("How about adding 74th?" "Excluding 75th?") What you are asking for when you try bringing that up is not going to accomplish anything substantial- so don't waste your energy.

Like I said, you people took more offense over the maps than the entrants themselves who knew ahead of time what would happen- it wasn't until raocow chose to LP (big surprise there) this thing when people getting riled up. Oh, and the maps were actually publicly voted on by the users- and it was announced multiple times on the main page- so it wasn't like anything meaningful from stopping you unless you were physically unavailable to vote/enter.

On a semi-relevant note: The map that won out which included the map you people are flipping your lids over was actually even more offensive!

I definitely consider a lot how I would think of these levels in the context of, say, a SMWCP, ASMT or VIP game. I would probably like them a lot more solely due to the context. Collaboration hacks are inherently extremely fun for me to watch, and I have no idea why. I don't even need to see evidence of them being collaborations, like how the VIP games don't have a level list with credits. It just... makes me feel happy to watch them. Kinda strange how the mind works when it comes to connotation.

Leet wrote:To be honest, I know the right thing to do here, in the sake of maintaining peace, is to not bring up once again how weird, angry and condescending MrDeePay constantly acts, my reason for potentially wishing to bring it up being that he makes browsing any lets play thread he posts in an experience that makes me feel highly uneasy and stressed...

But that would be wrong, of course. So I won't bring it up.

"I know it's not 'right' to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway!"

MrDeePay wrote:

Quman wrote:words

On a semi-relevant note: The map that won out which included the map you people are flipping your lids over was actually even more offensive!

This just in, you're the only one "flipping your lids" here, everyone else is giving his opinion in a reasonable manner. If you cannot post without every other word oozing with overdefensiveness, pretentiousness and insults, just stop coming here. This is the last time I'm warning you about this

As this was the 7th Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest, I'd say that the overall quality of the levels has risen from the last contests.

If I had entered this contest I would probably ask for my level to be withdrawn because this ranking is wack man. Men.

Willhart wrote:As this was the 7th Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest, I'd say that the overall quality of the levels has risen from the last contests.

The quality of the levels is a very, very dramatic improvement over previous years, and I think a lot of that is due to the fact that people sought out feedback before submitting their entries this time. VLDC 8 has been going the same way, and from what I've judged so far, the overall quality is rather high (arguably higher than the 7th).

Thanks for your feedback thus far everyone - I can assure you the judging will not be nearly as wonky this year. Of course, there will always be differing opinions on whether level X should have placed higher than level Y, but we have three very experienced judges (not to toot my own horn, but myself included), so I think we'll have a reasonable order this time around.

Levels shouldn't be in the "Poop Tier" as raocow put it simply because they were the bottom 10. They should EARN that spot, so to speak.

I completely agree. Something like Inferno Athletic, which managed to make it out the bottom 10, definitely should have been in the "poop tier" world, while a level like Twilight Lakeside probably could have been placed outside of that submap.

I've played a few levels from VLDC 8 and I can safely say, yeah, they're even better than the ones in this contest overall. It's a shame that I didn't realize that it was a thing until it was too close to the deadline to submit anything good, but I'm looking forward to playing the hack nonetheless.