New SMWC contest thingy: the 9th Door: the series.

[AUS]

Heh, me too. These videos just really brighten up anything. I've lost 20 pounds while watching his videos on my Ipad while going on the treadmill. Exercise is hemorrhagingly boring otherwise.

I knew raocow helped people.
Well, I didn't.

[Ashan]

I've heard lots of ports of Krook's March into Super Mario World hacks, but whatever version was used in Thehoundsquad's level was really nice.

[Restarr]

yet another video recording session that just leaves me completely drained

This tends to happen when you're dealing with absolute bottom-of-the-barrel at SMWCentral.

[MrDeePay]

I've heard lots of ports of Krook's March into Super Mario World hacks, but whatever version was used in Thehoundsquad's level was really nice.

That's part of a still ongoing DKC soundtrack porting project. Slash Man made most/all of the "truly accurate" DKC2 ports (as in, they sound like they were ripped straight from the game), so credit would go to him for those.

[Kincyr]

oh boy, more overused SMB3 resources. tileset in one level, death music in another

[megamario]

9th door contest: Secretly Vanilochalte Level Design contest 2011

edit: Where are our judge's reasonings and scores?!
It is simply not a SMWC contest if we do not have a set of judgments to bitch &/or poke fun at!

[morsel/morceau]

Slightly saddened to learn people pester raocow to play their hacks. Doesn't seem like it should be a thing that mattered enough to have to do that, imo.

e: Wait, I already knew that; and also that it doesn't tend to end well (see Caramel Cave).

[Ometeotl]

It's worth noting that this level would have ranked a tad higher if it weren't for this major glitch.

How did it rank that high at all? It's near unbeatable and still doesn't at all fit the theme of the contest.

[Paragraph]

yet another video recording session that just leaves me completely drained

You have the patience of a saint, which at times like that comes right around to bite you square in the butt. On today's video, after the second time I died from the glitch, or even after the third, I'd have safestated and tried it out. Or after the tenth time on the hammer bro, because come on, it's the 78th place in a contest, I really don't feel you need to do it "justice" or something, declare it unplayable shit and move on. Saves you half an hour of your life and a major headache afterwards.
Not that I want to order you around or anything, I greatly admire your stubbornness most of the time, but I think sometimes you should really take it easier, especially on yourself!

Simon

[Test Pilot Monkey]

I really hope the highest ranking rooms feel like something Nintendo would make, otherwise this is going to be extremely anticlimactic.

[MrDeePay]

How did it rank that high at all? It's near unbeatable and still doesn't at all fit the theme of the contest.

Judging discrepency mixed in with SNN somehow managing to make it past there, most likely.

[Argumentable]

I am going to state that jumping on an amazin' flying hammer bro shouldn't have been that hard, but it was playing I'd expect from someone who doesn't play mario every day.

Also I have no idea how everything was scored, but if it was me I would knock an unreasonable amount of points off for stuff not using vanilla graphics and the castle music, at least with the theme of this contest. Not that it's worth debating the exact rankings of every level, it's just something that popped into my mind with this video

[MrDeePay]

Also I have no idea how everything was scored, but if it was me I would knock an unreasonable amount of points off for stuff not using vanilla graphics and the castle music, at least with the theme of this contest.

I'm fairly certain that non-SMW material did effect numerous entries (it did with mine, since my entry played more like NSMB/W than SMW.) if it strayed (too) far from SMW.. I haven't looked through all of the higher ranking entries (yet), but I'm sure that Majora's entry was purely SMW and would easily fit in the context of Bowser's Castle. One person complained about THAT entry (he's subscribed to me for some god forsaken reason) so I asked him what "should" have won then. I never got an answer back.

[S.N.N.]

How did it rank that high at all? It's near unbeatable and still doesn't at all fit the theme of the contest.

Why do people even consider 78th "that high"? It's not even a good score at all. It's literally like, sixth last place (and that's simply because I was able to get past that part on my second try or so). Graphics and all that weren't even considered in this contest (unless they completely detracted from the level) - the judging itself came down to nothing but the level design and how authentic it was.

Furthermore, I'm still trying to figure out why raocow even wanted to LP this in the first place. It's not like a chocolate contest where the levels get more and more amazing as time goes on, but rather, the levels get closer and closer to the original game. Not only that, but people are going to bitch about literally every video that is made because 65358th place should have been where 65357th place was.

It's more frustrating than anything.

[raocow]

I really like doing contest series because it focuses on design, and I like all the design talk that it brings out in people. The fact that the contest is really focused lets us be really nitpicky when considering things, and I think that is really fun.

I really don't think about the numbers at all, rather I see this as an exercise in observing the gradual polishing.

[Tatrion]

Plus unlike most contest series, this one should move faster as time goes on, not slower. At least, that's what I would think. I don't think this one will last nearly as long as say, Vanilla contest '10. (Though talk about that prompted me to rewatch the video for Starman vs. WSPSA in that contest, I think that is one of raocow's funniest videos)

[S.N.N.]

I really like doing contest series because it focuses on design, and I like all the design talk that it brings out in people. The fact that the contest is really focused lets us be really nitpicky when considering things, and I think that is really fun.

Different perspectives then I guess. People tend to bitch about everything they can during these, especially how they were judged (rather than actually calling out the levels themselves for sucking). As such, it becomes almost tiring from my point of view. If I or any other judge was 100% correct and professional at reviewing and playing hacks/other things, we wouldn't be screwing around in the ROM hacking scene.

But I digress. I imagine tomorrow's video will bring out more of the "why was level X higher than level Y" since there is one level which is particularly .. difficult.

[MrDeePay]

At this point, I would just straight out disable comments and tell them to take any grievance about a level entry straight to the forum as I'm sure it'll just be them complaining about things based on what raocow shows/how well he plays through it. I expect that they'll just continue with this for days and weeks to come in any case.

Though if it was related to raocow (or even something not related to SMWC at all), they'd just try to downplay it or bat a blind eye.

[limepie20]

But I digress. I imagine tomorrow's video will bring out more of the "why was level X higher than level Y" since there is one level which is particularly .. difficult.

I don't get why people care; if it sucked, it sucked.
Just lump all the 11-20, 21-30, etc. together and have only the top ten levels get their own number.

At this point, I would just straight out disable comments...

But they're funny.

[ZaCloud]

Why do people even consider 78th "that high"? It's not even a good score at all. It's literally like, sixth last place

Scores are scores. If position number doesn't matter, then why even have scores at all? Why not just have a big lump of "These were good" "These were ok" and "These sucked"?

To a lot of people, the position earned for each effort matters. If exact lower positions don't make a difference just because they're lower positions, then what significance would even 3rd, 2nd, and 1st place have? The exact placement should be just as significant for low numbers as it is for high numbers.

The numbers in order should sum up "This one's better than that one". If that doesn't work, then there's something wrong with the judging, and that makes the whole thing pointless.

So it IS very important to a lot of people, because that's the entire point of a contest. Otherwise, why bother with ranking at all?

I know, there will always be disagreements since opinions vary, and that's what makes the world interesting. But, let's face it, a LOT of the lower entries played a LOT more like official Mario levels than some that placed higher, and score-wise, that was supposed to be the whole point.

[Ometeotl]

At this point, I would just straight out disable comments and tell them to take any grievance about a level entry straight to the forum as I'm sure it'll just be them complaining about things based on what raocow shows/how well he plays through it. I expect that they'll just continue with this for days and weeks to come in any case.

Though if it was related to raocow (or even something not related to SMWC at all), they'd just try to downplay it or bat a blind eye.

You seem bitter.

[S.N.N.]

Scores are scores. If position number doesn't matter, then why even have scores at all? Why not just have a big lump of "These were good" "These were ok" and "These sucked"?

It's kind of sad, because honestly, I find this is a great idea. When you get as many entries as a contest on SMWC (80 - 100), it becomes very difficult to rank them 100% perfectly, as I'm sure people have noticed. I'm sure something like a top ten would be possible, but throwing the rest of them into various groups ("good" "mediocre" "bad") might make a lot of people lay off on the "OH LORDY THIS BAD LEVEL RANKED A DECIMAL POINT HIGHER THAN THIS BAD LEVEL".

People would need to put themselves into the perspective of someone playing and scoring the levels for a bit. It may seem rather trivial putting the levels in the perfect order, but there are more often than not exceptions which slide through. This might become more apparent towards the middle-ground of the contest since about 40 entries are pretty much the same in quality with some exceptions in each. How deep do you have to go into a level to determine whether X is better than Y? Level design critiquing becomes extremely subjective in cases like that. I'm sure everyone can agree on that, at least.

[ano0maly]

Isn't the score (reflecting quality) of the work more important than the ranking? Even a dead last place that is decent would get enough points; a terrible submission would get low points even if there are 100 worse submissions.

I think something should be done to encourage looking at each work on its own rather than just ranking them.

[morsel/morceau]

I know the interpretation of the contest rules basically boils down to 'make a castle room that could take the place of any of the original eight', but one of the most interesting things for me will be the attempts at making a ninth area that fits into the existing scheme of Bowser's Castle.

And still no Cirno - what the christ?

[Tatrion]

My opinion on today's levels:

77th LuigiPikachu: I think if he just cut one room or the other, he would've done a lot better. Personally I liked the way it graphically looked as well with the multiple colors of blue stone and the choice to use a no-scroll BG. The way it's designed reminds me of door 8 (The chuck room).

76th notgoodwithusernames: You can tell a good amount of polish went into the design to make everything just barely possible. Of course the sheer difficulty makes it pretty unsuitable for anything you'd find in vanilla SMW which is probably where most of the points were lost. It'd be brilliant in any kind of hardtype hack, however.