VLDC9 Results - Judge comments added

He says that while he doesn't abuse rewind as often while he judges.
Also, I was being very sarcastic when I said Yoshi jumps (I meant like sacrificing Yoshi to get higher) were uncommon knowledge. And the purple triangle thing, that's slightly less common knowledge but still. As chineesmw said, this is why puzzles exist and why Super Foss World is so successful.

Nimono: Giving Lazy a 5/60 is out of whack. I mean at least a 20 for creativity and 8 for aesthetics. I can understand the 0 for design though

MarkD: I have to agree, bullet shooters/generators are usually annoying artifical difficulty. As MrDeePay said, if your level is too easy without it, you need to redesign your level. Also, "However, what's if it's a good design TO ME. People think it's designed badly is a hecking idiot." It's okay to be self-confident, but being stubborn and rudely insulting people for not liking your level is not acceptable here probably.

I also have tons of school stuff yet I got my level done with tons of time to spare. ExGFX does not guarantee a good level. Design and creativity are what really count.

As for a tutorial about making good vanilla levels. Isn't that what everybody wants? .-.

Zyglrox: Your level took less time than a lot of other levels for me (16 minutes). Not hard at all compared to Matterhorn. It's not that terrible of an idea, it's mostly that it took forever for me to figure out what to do because, well, I don't know what to do. You should have also provided switches on the overworld. Also you could have done some more creative things while making the level clear to understand. There are tons of unused sprites and about 40% of the level is red herring, which bothers me.

Koopster: "The judge commentary is a good way to know what you did wrong!" Ha just tell that to ninjaboy.

yoshifanatic: I wouldn't go as far to give you a 50+, I'd say low-mid 40s. That 11 must have really killed. At least when raocow plays the level people will outrage against what that judge was thinking. Let me guess: It was nimono. If not, then ninjaboy. :/ :/ :/

hypershadic: *fare that well

ABOUT MY OWN LEVEL: I thought this collab would look up to people who were minimalist like me so that everything would be supposedly easier to insert. (Isn't there like an 8 secondary exit limit or something?) That's why I did not use any reset pipes even though they were probably really needed for some parts. Oops!

Sorta just inspired me, maybe I'll make a tutorial for fun. One of my best skills is tile mixing with vanilla resources, so I can make something withcthat maybe.

I've read a few posts, and I wanted to express myself for something that, sadly, it's getting way too frequent with contests lately.
I'm mainly talking to those who kept whining at results for quite a few posts: why don't you fucking want to realise that your point of view is different from others'? Why can't you just accept results without the need of publicly express your position? Every time this happens, you're just making judges feel bad for something that, instead, you should appreciate: it's not like anyone accepts going through over 100 levels, so I'd like to ask if you could stop whining and, instead, be grateful that judges were fast enough to post results.

Said this, I don't want to see any more posts containing shit like "x scored too high, y scored too low", because scoring levels is subjective: a level for you can be awful while it can be the total opposite for someone else.
And again, be thankful to judges, who overall did a good job, and that had the motivation to go through all those levels.

^ this, exactly.

objectivity should not be a thing in contests. Otherwise people would aim to create a level just aimed at certain things that would be 30/30 level design, 20/20 creativity points and a fully aesthetic level.

It's cool that we have 4 judges that have different opinions on each aspect. Even if one judge has a different view than others, it does not worsen the score, because the combination of the 4 judge's points is the only important score. Subtracting one judge's score is not a cool idea.

Also, the anonymity thing is also a cool thing. I imagine if that was not a thing, scores would have been different.

I completely agree to what you are saying. However, the issue many people have with ninja boy's scores for example is a different one: It's not the scores themselves, it is that lower scores are often not explained well enough through the comment. Level quality is subjective and I appreciate the huge effort, however the reasons for giving lower scores need to be explained.

Maybe it would help if ninja boy clarified some of the scores where the reasons weren't clear for the authors.

This doesn't really justify anything. You're just basically telling everyone to shut up and deal with it, which isn't really a helpful advice when there is legitimate things to be concerned about (If I were to compare this way of thinking with politics... man that justification wouldn't work.). As for me, I haven't been whining really but I genuinely need to know the reasoning behind the aesthetic score that I received. I'm not asking a lot, just answers. I'm fine with everything else that I got.


Honestly, I'd be okay with the results being delayed if there were going to be double checks for the judging done.


While it is somewhat true that judging a level is rather subjective, there's an unwritten rule to contests (which should really be a thing) that the point of scoring is a balance between subjectivity and objectivity. I shouldn't be able to rate a level extremely low just because I have a particular grudge with some things about it. Keeping up with the current standards is important and open-mindedness is one factor that needs to be considered when judging, which is something that Koopster did really well (it's his first time too!).

I personally don't see anything wrong with being vocal after results being revealed (what's the point of having this thread open if it's not discussing regarding the results?) as it leads to debates what could be done better next time, which is fairly important. Improving is what we try achieve right?

I'm just wondering how does the disappearance of Layer 3 from a Yoshi Message affect the Level Design and Creativity (this is an assumption due to the only info provided)

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There are ways and ways to point out things, and the way a few users are doing this equals to offending all the work judges had to go through. How can you go all the way and say "x scored lower, y scored higher", "I was expecting scores to be a lot different than this" and similars? If you were a judge, how would you feel if I said your judging wasn't fair at all?



While you're right, everyone does the best he can. You can't expect everyone to be aware of such balancings. I know this kind of contest is a big one, but don't forget we're a hacking community: we're doing all this for fun, and not to i.e. select people for developing a game or something. So don't expect results to always be fair according your taste: you may have good sense of judging, but not everyone has such gift.



Yes, but I felt like going ahead and throw a warning, since last time we had people whine at results so intensely, the results thread ended up being closed way earlier than expected.

Oh, and



Don't forget that asking for feedback via PM is the easiest solution. So if you're really curious, go ahead and ask judges if their comments weren't clear and etc. It's sure much better than every partecipant posting here complaining about it.

This is indeed very true. Also thanks for the friendly reply.

...Fair enough, bad choice of words. What MDP said is true, though: 60/60 doesn't necessarily mean "level is perfect", just "I liked the level so much, I can't score it higher".


EDIT: Let me revise my response to this, it was a little rude before. *ahem*

As said previously, what you feel a level deserves isn't necessarily what the judges feel a level deserves. Some of them liked what it did, others didn't. This is normal. That's why we have multiple judges instead of just one! We all balance each other out with our opinions, and that's how we get the fairest result possible. So, there's no need to complain just because one judge's scoring doesn't happen to match your own opinion- everyone has their own, and you'll inevitably find someone whose opinions clash with yours.

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<Adam> I feel like smwc is a prostitute now, because we put up a porn ad for money

Yeah, if there's a question about one of the judges positions, I think it's best to do this through PM. I think from now on, we should do this. Judging is subjective, but it's still okay to ask a judge for clarification/reasons as long as it's not rude. But this thread is getting overboard (not calling anyone out, I was part of it)

Ninjaboy, earlier I was questioning a particular part of your scoring. Let me apologize for calling you out on this forum, I should've taken it though a PM.

As for out of whack judging.. This contest turned out soo much better than vldc7 (remember that wacky judging) and honestly all the top 20 levels are fantastic levels and deserving. Even if a particular judge affected someone's score negatively, it hasn't produced that strange of results. We don't have great levels getting next to last place like Underway and Chineesmw in the vldc7.

Anonymous judging was a good idea to avoid bias.

I don't care cause it's been like 4 years since I've been on this site and no one really knows me anyway unless they were on talkhaus or something
On a serious note though it is a really good idea. The only thing I'm bothered by the judging process is that there were a ton of ties around due to the scoring.

Weren't the yoshi messages meant to be taken care of anyway? As in, in the baserom?
Also it doesn't make much sense to say "it takes points from your design cause if your level was entirely different it'd be a problem".
And I'm pretty sure that creativity means something else as well, if you use the words like you did you could make literally anything take away from all 3 categories.

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It was Nimono that gave me a 11/60. His complaints basically boiled down to saying that my level was way too hard. I'll admit that the second half is fairly hard, especially the first time you play it, but the first half? Was it really that hard? My guess as to why he had trouble with my level was that he wasn't taking his time.

The levels I design usually require a little bit of patience to get through as I tend to place obstacles in a way that makes rushing through them tricky. However, if you're skilled enough or you've played my levels enough, maybe you can rush through them, but otherwise, it's best to take your time. I posted a video on my Youtube channel earlier showing off my level (Link), and I play it mostly like how I expect someone to play my levels. If Nimono was playing my level like I think he was, then that's fine, and I can understand that my way of designing levels isn't the kind of level he (and some other people) likes to play. If he was playing it like I was in the video though, then I'll be very surprised and he should probably elaborate better on what I did wrong.

In the end, it's not that big of a deal. I'd feel similar if I got 3 low scores and 1 high one, and I'd be wondering what that one judge saw in my level to give it a much higher score than the others.

Also, I'll be interested in seeing what raocow and his viewers will think of my level (as well as any other level that got hit with an outlier score, positive or negative) when he starts playing the VLDC9 entries. That ought to be interesting.

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