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25, 130, 100, 1F0. These are the building blocks of SMW. I kinda agree with both sides honestly. Level design -should- come first and it was emphasized for a few years of vldc... But the rules were incredibly stifling to a lot of people. Even some of the less-busy stuff we've come across wouldn't have been allowed using those rules. That's why it's been relatively unrestricted. Basically to showcase everything you can do just using the assets in the game, graphical or otherwise, but level design is still scored above all. The judging on this one was just a bit weird.
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Apr 26, 2017 07:13
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Sounds about right to me. All that said, it's always funny to see a near-perfect score in a sea of scores barely managing over %15 (and, conversely, a failing score in a sea of near-perfects, the storied 'Russian Judge' of yore).
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Apr 26, 2017 07:57
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Shei-kun posted:I'm gonna be honest here. Well, worry no more! This level is good!  Another long level that had to get split into two but at least this time it was good. I love how consistent this level is with its triangular theme. It's abstract in a great way and the secret exit autoscroll is superbly designed in my mind. (Which is why I take extreme issue with one of the judges giving it a 1/30 in the Design category and taking the score down to the 70s.) I probably could've edited this a little better but I was rushing and I don't like cutting out our commentary much so, sorry for the length/repetition in places.
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Apr 26, 2017 18:04
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Yeah, that actually looked really impressive. Maybe that one judge just didn't find the secret exit or something?
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Apr 26, 2017 19:05
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Cerebral Bore posted:Maybe that one judge just didn't find the secret exit or something? i think he's just a square tbh
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Apr 26, 2017 19:09
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Speaking of the Russian Judge  Seriously, I can understand giving that level poor marks for visuals (the theme could be construed as tacky, and visual design is pretty subjective), and maybe lowish marks for design because of the difficult gameplay and having to deal with lots of slopes over a void (which many people are not going to have much experience with), but it's odd to me to ding both of those AND the creativity. It is a fairly novel level that sticks to its guns pretty hard with its theme. I know that the Hostel has seen a couple of iterations in this contest, is the Triangle Dimension recycled as well, maybe?
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Apr 26, 2017 19:35
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On the topic of judging, I went searching through the VLDC9 topic just to see what the poo poo was going on with Sky At The Weird (because I'm not even PLAYING that poo poo and I wanted to know what the fresh gently caress went on in this guy's head). While I didn't seem to find anything on that outside of people wanting a green goal-door, I did find this. Kind of a lovely thing to do, regardless of your reasons.
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Apr 27, 2017 06:38
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... Wow, that's...surprising. And yet it explains a number of his scores.
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Apr 27, 2017 06:43
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Yeah, that rear end in a top hat should probably be removed from scoring. If you think the level is a bitch, give it a green door. gently caress, maybe make some kind of "This level is hard mark" on the world map, if you don't think just having a green door is enough. Don't purposefully gently caress with a level's scores because you want to send some kind of message.
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Apr 27, 2017 07:12
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That's pretty unethical and goes against the point of having multiple judges in the first place. And if it's about difficulty, the hack pretty much has a way to mark hard levels with the green doors. And those don't automatically mean the level is bad (The swiss hotel seemed pretty fair despite it being a jump up in difficulty.)
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Apr 27, 2017 08:22
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I'm bad at video games and I don't think that level was bad, or possibly even that hard. Who was it that said (in this thread, I think, or even in one of the videos?) that the poor/lazy way to increase the difficulty of a level is to define a very narrow path through it and reward any deviation with failure? Because although this level is definitely difficult, it doesn't do that. There are two or more ways through just about every difficult jump, if you miss a cycle/go too early you can often still progress - often without taking a hit - and I think almost all the "gotcha" moments were telegraphed as you can see the lineguides of offscreen hazards well before you need to jump. It's the exact opposite of the blind drops etc. from the flashy level, or the offscreen lakitu bullshit. Hell, I think there's only one place where you really need to spinjump on an enemy, and that's something I dislike as needing to touch enemies that normally damage you feels like it's against the spirit of the game.
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Apr 27, 2017 12:00
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They're called Sierpinski triangles. 
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Apr 27, 2017 12:33
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Aniodia posted:I did find this. now i'm a bit curious about what the rankings would look like if you discounted that guy's scores.
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Apr 27, 2017 12:51
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Between that and Ninjaboy's awful scoring (his judge comments are worthless, too), I'm pretty sure the actual numerical placement of any level is kind of worthless as a metric for quality Triangle level reminds me of the late 80s/early 90s, I think I had a folder with a similar aesthetic
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Apr 27, 2017 14:15
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Yeah, that score for triangle level was completely bogus. The whole time you were working through the autoscroll section I was just thinking how cool it was that it could do this unpredictable movement without becoming too disorienting to the player and offering challenges that felt like you could learn them and make incremental progress. That feels like top notch design to me. There should be a mutiny over that judging.
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Apr 27, 2017 15:25
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Yeah fixed-screen autoscrolling like that is a cool idea. Is it the same group of judges for each contest?
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Apr 27, 2017 15:42
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My take: Ninjaboy's feedback should have been thrown out as soon as his dipshit scoring came to light. If that required a rerelease of VLDC9, oh well—judge chicanery like this shouldn't be permitted to slide.
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Apr 27, 2017 15:52
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Aniodia posted:On the topic of judging, I went searching through the VLDC9 topic just to see what the poo poo was going on with Sky At The Weird (because I'm not even PLAYING that poo poo and I wanted to know what the fresh gently caress went on in this guy's head). While I didn't seem to find anything on that outside of people wanting a green goal-door, I did find this. Kind of a lovely thing to do, regardless of your reasons. I think it's legitimate to ding a level a few points overall if it's that frustrating--like, I don't really care how nice your level looks if I can't see half of it because it's gated behind insanely difficult sections--but only up to a point. Completely tanking something with single digit scores is well beyond that point.
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Apr 27, 2017 15:58
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adjunct: you should not trust someone who calls themselves "ninjaboy" to have good opinions of any kind.
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Apr 27, 2017 15:59
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More importantly, someone needs to apply that Concrete Block rule to the SMW Central forums.
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Apr 27, 2017 16:10
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Why are we dragging Ninjaboy through the dirt so much for using savestates, when the real issue was with Nimono actually lying about scoring entirely just because a level was hard?
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Apr 27, 2017 16:42
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Nimono made a few really stupid calls, but Ninjaboy is just constantly an idiot and a terrible judge that drags everything down.
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Apr 27, 2017 16:45
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C-Euro posted:Yeah fixed-screen autoscrolling like that is a cool idea. Thankfully, no. I want to say I saw Nimono saying he was a judge for 10, but when actually checking the forums last night to post that link he wasn't on the judge roster. Also, holy poo poo, I didn't mean to stir up a shitstorm.  I honestly thought Zero and Tyty knew about that whole fiasco. Hopefully this won't affect the rest of the LP, because I love seeing some of the crazy poo poo you guys are dealing with.
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Apr 27, 2017 16:53
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RevolverDivider posted:Nimono made a few really stupid calls, but Ninjaboy is just constantly an idiot and a terrible judge that drags everything down. As something that didn't appear to come up in the thread, I'm really missing something here, on account of not being a part of that community.
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Apr 27, 2017 17:00
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Cheez posted:As something that didn't appear to come up in the thread, I'm really missing something here, on account of not being a part of that community. FPzero posted:I have one possible answer for Ninja Boy's score. Allegedly, he liberally used savestates throughout his judging. This means that levels with higher difficulty curves won't have the same effect on him that it did the others and anyone playing without them. Player endurance is no longer a factor when you use savestates. If he used savestates to beat the level, he would've been able to try and retry the saws section until he got it right without having to spend two minutes carefully platforming his way back to try again.
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Apr 27, 2017 17:55
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Crazy Achmed posted:Who was it that said (in this thread, I think, or even in one of the videos?) that the poor/lazy way to increase the difficulty of a level is to define a very narrow path through it and reward any deviation with failure? I'm pretty sure that was me, talking about the MMX1 hardmode hack. But I'm also pretty sure I was just cribbing from some other source elsewhere, so I won't lay claim to any great original insight.
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Apr 27, 2017 18:19
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Yeah, the thread hasn't been commenting on it much, but some of the judges' weird scores have been a running theme in the videos as well. Nimono's approach does seem really sketchy; you could probably ding a level that you feel is way too hard or technical on its design merits, but that doesn't have anything to do with its aesthetics or creativity scores, so purposefully mis-scoring such levels to force their rank lower doesn't seem fair. Do you suppose it would maybe help to have a non-scoring 'difficulty' parameter for the judges to put in a number for? I'd worry it would end up influencing their rating on other metrics if they were forced to assign a number to difficulty (even one that's not a scored variable), but then again, if people are already literally cheating the scoring system in order to try to push entrants around based on difficulty, maybe it would remove that incentive? As for Ninjaboy...who knows. It's good to have a variety of opinion sets on a panel of multiple judges, but they very frequently seem to be the odd one out, sometimes egregiously so. With the disappearing/reappearing objects level, it's a somewhat clever idea that's REALLY, REALLY poorly implemented. How in the hell does it get a near-perfect score across ALL metrics???
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Apr 27, 2017 18:26
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This doesn't line explain people tossing out lines like "just constantly an idiot and a terrible judge that drags everything down" unless there's some crazy elitism in the community, and I'd like to think such statements actually have a solid foundation.
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Apr 27, 2017 18:38
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The real question is, why are the scores using average instead of median?
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Apr 27, 2017 18:43
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Cheez posted:This doesn't line explain people tossing out lines like "just constantly an idiot and a terrible judge that drags everything down" unless there's some crazy elitism in the community, and I'd like to think such statements actually have a solid foundation. Yeah, I think those statements are a bit much as well. Save states clouding judgement is one issue, but deliberately miscoring is a bigger one. I have to wonder what the "best world" is gonna be like after all this came to light. I don't doubt that there will be quality levels there, but I wonder if some of them will deserve it.
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Apr 27, 2017 18:51
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Cheez posted:This doesn't line explain people tossing out lines like "just constantly an idiot and a terrible judge that drags everything down" unless there's some crazy elitism in the community, and I'd like to think such statements actually have a solid foundation. I just figured that were making those statements out of personal opinion from the scores he'd been giving. While the statement does go a bit far, I haven't thought much of his ratings either; with being way harsher than all the others on some levels that were ok, and ranking up some that weren't so good. Though I haven't been paying close enough attention to things to actually be giving examples, just the general impression I've gotten from the scores as the come up.
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Apr 27, 2017 18:52
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Shady Amish Terror posted:Nimono's approach does seem really sketchy; you could probably ding a level that you feel is way too hard or technical on its design merits, but that doesn't have anything to do with its aesthetics or creativity scores, so purposefully mis-scoring such levels to force their rank lower doesn't seem fair. Pointless difficulty would be bad design in any case. So I'd say it'd be pretty fair to hammer a level's design score if there's, say, a situation that's painfully random(maybe sometimes literally unbeatable because of a random factor) or so punishing that without save states, no one would have the patience to get through it.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:58
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Do we have defined rules on how the scoring system should be used or just vague guidelines? (Or worse, just the names of the topics to judge on and nothing else?) Because if there's no concrete method to judging then, yeah, of course judging it going to be sketchy at best. Nothing explicitly says you can't rely on save states during the judging process and what not.
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Apr 27, 2017 20:04
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Is this why every romhack and fangame gets weighed down with ridiculous drama?
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Apr 27, 2017 21:35
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magikid posted:Is this why every Fixed that for you. The fighting is so bitter because the stakes are so small.
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Apr 27, 2017 21:38
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The thing that confuses me about Nimono's decision to tank scores of levels he didn't think deserved higher than low places is that I know the guy. Or I guess I should say "knew" because I haven't actively talked to him in a while (I'm not particularly active on SMWC anymore). See, I was a moderator on the site for four years between 2008-2012 and I worked alongside him as part of the moderating staff there. I generally knew him as a well-intentioned guy with a good grasp of Mario level design and friendly personality. This judging incident feels completely out of character for the person I once worked with. Granted, five years is a long time but that's why his admission is probably more shocking to me than anyone else here. It just feels so out-of-character for him. Weird. Shady Amish Terror posted:Do you suppose it would maybe help to have a non-scoring 'difficulty' parameter for the judges to put in a number for? I'd worry it would end up influencing their rating on other metrics if they were forced to assign a number to difficulty (even one that's not a scored variable), but then again, if people are already literally cheating the scoring system in order to try to push entrants around based on difficulty, maybe it would remove that incentive? For the first five or so years of the VLDC--the years I ran and usually judged the contest--Difficulty was a scored category. When I stopped hosting the contest and handed it over to others, they decided to remove the Difficulty category. See, in my vision Difficulty was graded on whether or not your level exhibited consistent difficulty throughout the level. It could be easy or hard, that was fine, but if difficulty spikes occurred you might lose some points. But back then each of the five categories was weighted equally out of 10 points. Difficulty as I envisioned it was unintentionally more of a binary thing; either it was consistent or it wasn't. So how to you score difficulty in that case? And what is a 10 for difficulty? I think it was a smart idea to rework the categories for future VLDCs because Difficulty works into Design better than when it was separate. (If you're wondering, the five categories were Creativity, Difficulty, Appeal, Functionality and Fun. I can explain these more in-depth if anyone wants to know but I'll save it for another post.) As for a non-scoring difficulty parameter, I ask what the point would be? All it would do is tell the judge "hey this level is easy/hard" but that doesn't really mean much. Also, you'd have to have someone play all the levels to assign those parameters for the judges, because you can't really rely on the level creator to accurately judge their level's difficulty. Ramos posted:Do we have defined rules on how the scoring system should be used or just vague guidelines? (Or worse, just the names of the topics to judge on and nothing else?) Because if there's no concrete method to judging then, yeah, of course judging it going to be sketchy at best. Nothing explicitly says you can't rely on save states during the judging process and what not. The problem with judging level design is that everyone has a different idea of what good level design is. Once you start defining it, then you need to find judges that agree with those definitions, and you run the risk of excluding any other ideas of what makes good design. There's no really good answer to this issue other than having more judges to balance out the average. Hell, just yesterday on SMWC one of the judges for VLDCX quit because he felt that his definition of good SMW level design did not match with the design trends you see in VLDC levels and as such felt that his beliefs would cloud his judgments and end up consistently scoring people low. (He also had a computer failure and school finals but he cited his design philosophy as the primary reason he quit.) Tyty has suggested to me in the past that they should use an Olympic style of judging: 6 judges, drop the lowest and highest scores for each level. You remove outliers on both ends of the scale this way. I think this is a great idea in theory; in practice, finding 6 people qualified and willing to judge for a VLDC is not easy. Hell, VLDCX had 178 entries this year. That's insane! I nearly went crazy when we had 98 entries in 2012 (Maybe that's why I quit hosting it...) so to have to do double nearly double that? I have a healthy amount of respect for anyone willing to take on the position of VLDC judge. And the VLDC only gets bigger every year, especially now that we are no longer limited in the number of levels we can cram into an SMW rom. Still, if they could find the people, I think Tyty's idea would help with the near-yearly judging controversies that occur with this contest.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:16
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The other thing you'd almost certainly want is some way to mitigate judging fatigue. The jury's currently out on whether ego depletion is a real phenomenon, but regardless I doubt that you'd give the same score to a level if it were (say) the 20th you tried in a judging session as opposed to the first.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:30
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FPzero posted:Tyty has suggested to me in the past that they should use an Olympic style of judging: 6 judges, drop the lowest and highest scores for each level. You remove outliers on both ends of the scale this way. I think this is a great idea in theory; in practice, finding 6 people qualified and willing to judge for a VLDC is not easy. What if I'm willing and also lie about being qualified?
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Apr 27, 2017 22:31
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Then you're ninjaboy
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Apr 27, 2017 22:42
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Man, I'd hate to be the guy that has to follow that sick burn. Wait.. no, no! FF6 Rando Part 12 - Ultimas Up Your rear end Today, instead of having a calm chat with Espers, they actually burst out of their realm and set Vector on fire. Ladybrand destroys my sanity with humming.
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