The 2021 Cacowards

baja blast rd. · December 10, 2021

2 hours ago, FrancisT218 said:

What a bumper year and I think adding 21 more 'this wad still definitely deserves some attention' (runners up to runners up haha) was a very nice addition.

1 hour ago, Tristan said:

Congratulations to the winners and thanks again to the judges for their tireless work on these writeups for another year. Really nice to see honourable mentions escape the sidebar and to see more winners in general. Xaser was a great pick for the Espi.

I just wanted to weigh in since I saw a bit of stink about this in the thread, I admit I thought the MIDI packs of this year would collectively win the Dootaward - to my fellow composers though, our craft is getting a whole section and a fairly long sidebar piece dedicated just to the stuff we're making, (even I got a mention and I've done barely anything for Doom this year). Let it not be forgotten that a few years ago we weren't getting anything, the Plutonia MIDI Pack went completely unmentioned in the 2013 Cacowards, for example, so personally I'm just glad music is getting attention at all now.

Glad people appreciated these. The "21 more" and extra music coverage were among my proposals, it can't be 100% guaranteed that they would have been brought up otherwise, and features like that are also extra time and energy spent on top of other things -- so I appreciate when people feel they were worthwhile. :>

Dimon12321 · December 10, 2021

@Major Arlene Thank you very much for writing all these articles for Cacowards! Personally, I would go nuts trying to share the best out of my impressions on those dozens of topics.

Deadwing · December 10, 2021

Congratz for all the winners, runner-ups and the team behind the Cacowards!

Definitely a year with so much outputs, so I loved the idea to add the "21 more" and the soundtrack sections. Great to see that "Atmospheric Extiction", "Perpetual Powers" and "Cydonia" got mentioned, which were works that I also enjoyed a lot!

Matthias · December 10, 2021

It's nice @romsu89 was mentioned twice in Cacowards 2021 :))

I remember when he sent me his megawad on Facebook before the release and I didn't know him yet, so I expected it to be very bad... I started playing and holy moly :D So detailed maps :)

Anyway, congratulations the winners and all mentioned people

Gibbon · December 10, 2021

49 minutes ago, Peter said:

The Plutonia MIDI Pack 10000% deserves to retroactively be awarded a 2013 Cacoward. This MIDI pack from a brilliant pool of talent in the Doom community completely changes how you get to experience the Plutonia IWAD. It was the first time we ever got to experience a community made MIDI pack for Doom. It's absolutely shocking how it never received one yet lives on as what has become an essential add-on for Plutonia.

Without this MIDI pack, I'd never have made the Master Levels MIDI pack or lead the No Rest For The Living MIDI pack.

Bringing in the oldest and the newest talent in the community this year to bring everyone well over a hundred original songs of high quality deserves more than a half-arsed brief mention on a sidebar.

I would tend to agree with you. It is unfortunately still heavily biased towards mapsets rather than other artistic areas like MIDI's. I can say, NRFTL is unplayable without that MIDI pack.

I would say, each area that is currently on Cacowards should all have a 'top twelve' to go with it. So top 12 maps, midi's, wads, coders etc.. Otherwise it kind of feels like it is tacked-on rather than something truly appreciated.

Biodegradable · December 10, 2021

20 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

I would say, each area that is currently on Cacowards should all have a 'top twelve' to go with it. So top 12 maps, midi's, wads, coders etc.. Otherwise it kind of feels like it is tacked-on rather than something truly appreciated.

Given how substantial the uptick in quality the community has managed to deliver over the past few years, I reckon the Cacoaward committee will indeed have to shake up the formula a bit, introduce some new awards and expand its scope a bit in terms of contribution categories. Perhaps even bring in a few more judges/writers to help out. We've already seen it with the Silver Cacoaward for runner-ups, let's see what else we can come up with!

Edited December 10, 2021 by Biodegradable

Kinsie · December 10, 2021

4 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

I would say, each area that is currently on Cacowards should all have a 'top twelve' to go with it. So top 12 maps, midi's, wads, coders etc.. Otherwise it kind of feels like it is tacked-on rather than something truly appreciated.

While I understand what you mean, this isn't really realistic for a couple of reasons. For example, some categories, like music, get considerably fewer releases than others. For another, I was the only dedicated Gameplay Mod judge this year (although thankfully the rest of the team helped where they could!) and I can't say I'm in a position, both life and skill-wise, to churn out... uhh... 600 words x 12... ~7,200 words about mods without the vast majority of those words sucking! Or, for that matter, anyone reading them.

lokbustam257 · December 10, 2021

~~ah fuck I missed it~~

Very nice to see stewboy work at Heartland, definitely one of my favorite soundtracks this year

~~Also @Endless when's the next wadazine came out?~~

Edited December 10, 2021 by lokbustam257

7Mahonin · December 10, 2021

Happy for you all! Congratulations

Murdoch · December 10, 2021

Congratulations to all of the winners, and good job to all the writers. A remarkable year of amazing high quality releases.

antares031 · December 10, 2021

48 minutes ago, rd. said:

Glad people appreciated these. The "21 more" and extra music coverage were among my proposals, it can't be 100% guaranteed that they would have been brought up otherwise, and features like that are also extra time and energy spent on top of other things -- so I appreciate when people feel they were worthwhile. :>

It was indeed a very cool addtion to the award article for sure, bringing more mapsets and megawads to the scene this year. It's always nice to see more community projects get a spotlight, and it's also nice to see more extra contents, such as "25 Years of Doom" back in 2018. But on the other hand, in my honest opinion, I concern that adding way too many stuffs for the award article might give too much workload to the Cacoward team every year. Just take a look at the Cacowards article 10 years ago, and compare the volume of it with the recent one. Heck, even just 5 years ago, we didn't even have a room to appreciate community-made music. Both of them are still really good award articles, but I think we didn't have much opportunities to appreciate other community creations.

But now take a look at what we have nowadays. The volume of article is significantly larger, we now have multiple slots for both gameplay mod awards and multiplayer awards, an award to praise the programming achievement and an award to appreciate the unusual creativity. We now also have a Dootaward for well-made soundtrack. As a person, who consider the soundtrack as the backbone of the level's theme & environmental design (just imagine The Mucus Flow without its music), I was really happy to see the new award to appreciate community-made music.

Surely it's impossible to satisfy everyone in the community with Cacowards (we're all humans, after all), and there's been always voices of disappointment every year. While I understand the reason of frustration, I'd like them to take a moment to see how the Cacowards has been changed, and how it's been improved than before.

Bridgeburner56 · December 10, 2021

Doom is good
Doom is good
Doom is good
and stuff

Just finished my run down of the Cacowards, I think it was a very worth selection all round. Only thing that didn't get a mention that was on my list was Deadtech by @wolfmcbeard and co. Easily one of the best releases of the year in my books.

Personal favourites though were:
Unhallowed by @CyanoBlugron, a map that could easily have flown under the radar due to its release time (just after last year's Cacowards), a relatively unknown mapper and it being a somewhat smaller scope single map. Very happy to see Cyano get well deserved recognition for his immense talent.
@Kaapeli47 getting his just deserts for the insane (HA!) amount of effort put into Insanity Deathmatch. We've been playing it almost nonstop for the last 6+ months and it's a testament to his efforts that this ridiculous weapons pack is actually balanced. It shouldn't be, but it is. It's also ridiculously fun for both experienced players and new comers alike.
And finally, much like LOTR, the end of the trilogy takes the crown for 1K lines 3 led by @Liberation . It's been building and building but the third installment takes the gong. While the final episode is more than worthy of the award, I feel like it's recognition of the quality of all 3 editions. Epic effort.

@PRIMEVAL getting another doot award? Clearly rigged.

Spoiler

kappa

Some technical feedback on the page layout. I like that the "lesser" awards were mixed in with the main ones. But they're not listed on the side bar other than on the front page. That's going to hide them from the casual browser in months to come. Definitely needs rectifying (just match the front page sidebar for each of the 4 following pages).
21 for 21 was a great idea. Giving recognition to those slightly peripheral projects is only a good thing.

Congrats to I AM A @Xaser :D much deserved for the jack of all trades and also master of all trades.

Spoiler

@Doomkid for espi award when?

Congrats to all the winners! Soak it up. You earned it. We shall bask in your glory.

Also I'm hiring @Demon of the Well to write my epitaph. What prose.

Widosm · December 10, 2021

Some very nice looking picks this year. An interesting read, as always.

Marisa the Magician · December 10, 2021

I've been a @Xaser fangirl since I joined the community, so saying he left "fingerprints" in my work is a bit of an understatement. Other than that, hugely well-deserved award.

Also huge congrats to @Jekyll Grim Payne for that gameplay award. Painslayer is one hell of a beast, both from the perspective of a player and a modder. There's some crazy work going on under the hood in there, and I'm very much impressed.

Nirvana · December 10, 2021

Thanks for the awards for Fractured Worlds and Haste, big shoutout to Scotty and Gazebo for FW and all the contributors to Haste, was a fun year of Doom. Also thanks to Demon of the Well for the fantastic write-ups, always a pleasure to read his words!

Also Down the Drain was easily my number one pick this year so I certainly wished it had won, but we can't have it all I guess.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Nirvana

baja blast rd. · December 10, 2021

53 minutes ago, Marisa Kirisame said:

I've been a @Xaser fangirl since I joined the community, so saying he left "fingerprints" in my work is a bit of an understatement. Other than that, hugely well-deserved award.

for reference, the strong sense of fingerprints as attributes/traits/etc. it's not meant as understatement.

Horus · December 10, 2021

1 hour ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

21 for 21 was a great idea. Giving recognition to those slightly peripheral projects is only a good thing

Tbh a lot of them aren’t even slightly peripheral - MSCP to give one example could have easily got a gold in another year imo.

In a way, I see the ‘winners’ as gold cacowards, the ‘runners-up’ as silver cacowards and the ‘21 for 21’ as bronze cacowards - if you see your content anywhere in the cacowards, then you won a cacoward.

Also this year is so packed that there are a number of other excellent releases - you gave one example in Deadtech, Axolotl strikes me as probably one of the most creative releases this year, and Festering Cesspool gave me a feeling of immersion I very rarely experience when playing Doom.

Marisa the Magician · December 10, 2021

8 minutes ago, rd. said:

for reference, the strong sense of fingerprints as attributes/traits/etc. it's not meant as understatement.

I know, I just feel in my case it's more like straight-up full handprints stamped on the fresh cement that was my modding career when I first started.

I was just a lil' teen at the time, I looked up at this absolute madman and went "he's so cool, I want to be like him". I'm not lying when I say that out of everyone in the community, he's been one if not the biggest inspiration and influence in my work.

Scuba Steve · December 10, 2021

3 hours ago, Peter said:

The Plutonia MIDI Pack 10000% deserves to retroactively be awarded a 2013 Cacoward.

For a few years now, there's been talk of a special feature--similar to "to missed awards"--which would examine the best music from 2004-2020. It's a bit challenging since earlier music output by the community was sporadic and relegated to just a small handful of creators.

Sena · December 10, 2021

Good read, agreeable choices (for the few that I recognised at least), only complaint I have is that the one for Tarnsman's Projectile Hell spelled Kirisame wrong.

Plats · December 10, 2021

Congratulations to all :D

Teo Slayer · December 10, 2021

I bet Cacowards 2021 will be the thing I would watch instead of Game Awards 2021. Good job to the winners and maybe, the first year of Doom for me

Nefelibeta · December 10, 2021

My life is fulfilled.

Vile · December 10, 2021

Congratulations to all of the winners/mentions and thank you for all of the awesome content you created this year!

Lord_Z · December 10, 2021

Congratulations, everyone! And thanks to the Cacoward team! You all did some great work!

Boomdav · December 10, 2021

Another year with many great wads and mods!Congrats to the participants and the review team!

Doomkid · December 10, 2021

Alright fellas. I get how it is.

I hear you loud and clear.

Heading MIDTWID, Bourgeois Megawad AND Ray Mohawk 2 this year simply wasn’t enough. I’m gonna have to head twice as many projects, make twice as many MIDIs, make twice as many maps, AND run a contest celebrating 21 years of Doom mapping.

You run a hard bargain, Cacowards Team.. a damn hard bargain.

..but, ah hell, what can I say. I’M IN.

this is 100% a joke please don’t think I map for clout!!

also these write ups were SO well done this year!

I’m actually stunned that you managed to whittle it town to “this few” wads, even when you combine ALL the awards, runner-ups and 21 honorable mentions, there was still a bunch of unfortunate content that went unmentioned. Absolutely no fault of the Caco team, there was just a simply unprecedented amount of content this year.. So much hell for some, so much heaven for others!!

I wonder if this insane rate of content is going to continue in perpetuity? There’s so many EASY AS PIE tools these days, I see newcomers becoming gods right before my eyes over the years. These damn kids don’t know the struggle we went through, back in my day we used to climb 21 miles uphill just to get a halfway usable map editor!!... (continues ranting at cloud as everyone walks away)

Seriously, all jokes aside - what an incredible year for Doom and Doomers....

so.. much.. content..!!

Terminus · December 10, 2021

I just finished my drink, sat down and prepared for my favorite reading event of the year. By the time I was done reading, three hours have passed without me even noticing.

I'm always enthralled at how the Cacowards are written in such a fun way, and even as there's a whopping 50+ projects nominated this year, I felt zero repetitiveness during the entire read. Kudos to the team, this was an absolute treat.

Silver Cacowards is definitely my favorite new addition to this year's article - It feels so much more special than "Runner-up" status and having it appear side by side to the actual top 10 12 is definitely their deserved spot. I couldn't disagree with a single award this year even if I tried.

(Although I do agree with Bridgeburner on the technical portion that it's not mentioned anywhere else other than actually getting in the award page itself, this should definitely be fixed so these amazing projects don't get skipped by accident.)

Shoutouts to Lullaby, Tarnsman's Projectile Hell and Infraworld: Coma Moonlight for winning, some of my absolute favorite 2021 releases. And I still haven't played some of the winning wads of the year! *cries in backlog*

I'm really glad to see the music recognition becoming much more prominent this year as well. While I've been very busy with real life stuff, I had to put aside music-making and streaming unfortunately. However I really hope to get back to it soon, thanks to the phenomenal musical inspirations in this community I've got some great ideas for tracks for projects I signed up to compose for (sorry guys I'm alive I swear).

The 21 for 2021 section is full of great wads (pretty sure I mentionated like 5 or 6 in there :P ) that definitely don't shy away from the actual Cacoward winners, so thank you for adding this! Can't wait for 22 for 2022.

Man this accidentally turned into a blog post but honestly this is one of the most exciting days in the year for me and I hope it is for you guys as well. I'm honestly looking forward to more incredible projects to come by the next year!

I love this community so fucking much.

Doomkid · December 10, 2021

8 hours ago, RomDump said:

I might sound like a sore loser, but this is a real problem. There has been a trend in mapping to do everything possible to keep modders of of there maps. Either by using dehacked assets or the eternity engine which is designed specially to counter mods. That might be an unfair assumption to make, but it really feels that way.

I know you apologised, and I doubt this was your intention anyway - but damn, reading this made me feel bad for packing (practically) all my mapsets / community projects with built-in gameplay mods. It never occurred to me that people might think I’m trying to say “screw your mod, no fun allowed in my mapset!!” (definitely not what I want, mod it to your hearts content!)

While they’re almost never “standalone mods”, I think of myself as a modder as much as I am a mapper..

I know DeHackEd “doesn’t count” in the eyes of many since it’s so limited, and many don’t even consider it vanilla either. Poor thing sits in this undefined limbo of Doom editing..

Everyone asks, “is DeHackEd vanilla”, but no one ever asks “how is DeHackEd?” 😔

ok I’m gonna stop half sarcastically ranting now, literally both of my posts are pure BS, I’m tipsy, it’s the after party, what the heck do you people want from me?!?!

5 minutes ago, Terminus said:

Silver Cacowards is definitely my favorite new addition to this year's article - It feels so much more special than "Runner-up" status and having it appear side by side to the actual top 10 12 is definitely their deserved spot. I couldn't disagree with a single award this year even if I tried.

(Although I do agree with Bridgeburner on the technical portion that it's not mentioned anywhere else other than actually getting in the award page itself, this should definitely be fixed so these amazing projects don't get skipped by accident.)

I love this community so fucking much.

QFTING this and now I’m done for really really real this time!!

yakfak · December 10, 2021

great write-ups & lots of picks I have to catch up on <3 thanks to Demon of the Well for the nod and rd for organizing that 21 extras section!

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The 2021 Cacowards

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