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CuriousShyRabbit
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icon The Seventh Annual People's Choice Awards - WINNERS! (+41)  
Looks like we have some BIG WINNERS of the

Seventh Annual People's Choice Awards!

This year's awards are shared among eight forum members, both new and veterans. The winning holds are relatively short (all but one have 25 puzzle rooms or less), chewy (difficulty ranges from 5.5 - 8.5 brains) and of course very very sweet. 2010 must have been the year of Caramel DROD!

Without further ado, here are the winners.

================================================================

1. Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics

:hooray Detention Complex by Penwielder wins!

Penwielder's second hold, Detention Complex, is designed to look like an actual dungeon. The upper and lower cells have an attractive, functional layout, enhanced with colored lights, that both build atmosphere and highlight important puzzle features. This hold looks great when viewed with Schik's map.php tool. Nice work, Penwielder! You've got a really good eye for light and color.

2. Technical Design Excellence in Concept

:hooray Going in Circles by Jacob wins!

Going in Circles is a clever hold about sword positions. Beethro walks through a series of identical rooms. If he keeps his sword pointed west, he'll be walking identical paths through each room. The puzzle is to find sword positions that allow Beethro to progress to other paths through the rooms, and ultimately to the end of the hold. It's a fun break from monster-killing puzzles. Well done, Jacob!

Because Going in Circles is based on Ravon's idea (see his hold, Lines, in architecture), I'm going to give Ravon some points too.

3. Creative Design Excellence in Storyline

:hooray Rosebud Museum by noma wins!

Beethro visits the Rosebud Museum of Culture and Leisure, and learns perhaps more about Rosebud than about culture or leisure. (Do DROD lightbulb jokes count as culture or as leisure?) Who or what is Rosebud? Play the hold to discover Rosebud's views on life. This well-written story is deliciously silly. This is a wonderful debut, noma!

4. Creative Design Excellence in Difficulty

:hooray Koenigsburg Swamps by incnone wins!

Koenigsburg Swamps is a small swampy level of tightly constructed puzzles, which have bridges as a common element. What motivates players to keep coming back to these challenging puzzles? Probably the fact that even failed attempts are worthwhile, as they provides new insight towards what should happen in the correct solutions. Impressive work, incnone!

5. Creative Design Excellence in Entertainment

:hooray Uncle Arable's Rooms by Jacob wins!

Uncle Arable's Rooms is a lovely set of clever puzzles, each based on a single different trick. Among many neat puzzle ideas, this hold showcases Jacob's talent at making similar rooms that have very different solutions. The puzzles are not too hard, not too easy, and incredibly addictive. It's impossible to put this hold down after playing just one. Excellent work, Jacob!

6. Graphics Design Excellence in a Modification

:hooray Timo006's Better DROD modification for DROD:AE wins!

Timo006 tweaked AE's GeneralTiles.bmp file so that the monsters look like they do in TCB. (With permission, of course.) This is a very nice facelift for the Architect's Edition. Good job, Timo!

7. 2010 DROD Hold of the Year

:hooray Elusive Exhibitions by Jutt wins!

Elusive Exhibitions is rather like a museum. Interactive exhibits in non-puzzle rooms cleverly illustrate the themes of six challenging puzzle levels. Some themes are monster-based, such as brains and wraithwings. But a couple of the level themes are so unique, only Jutt would think of them; these include parity, where the player must break repeating patterns based on tarstuff and snakes, and movement order, where the player must lead lines of monsters around the room. The museum feel to this hold is enhanced by the elegance of the intended puzzle solutions. And there is even some very special eye candy as a reward at the end of the postmastery level. This hold is truly a masterpiece, Jutt!

8. 2010 DROD RPG Level Set of the Year

:hooray Washed Ashore by Dischorran wins!

In Washed Ashore, Dischorran has taken advantage of the RPG's extensive scripting capabilities to create a "mimic sword", whose ATK value keeps changing to equal the DEF of the last monster you killed. This cool idea has tons of puzzle potential, which is well illustrated in Dischorran's level. There is also fun with the grappling hook, and a number of custom scorepoints that make it worth your while to go back and replay the level in different ways. Washed Ashore is full of great ideas, Dischorran!

9. 2010 Novice Architect Award

:hooray incnone wins!

Incnone is the architect of Koenigsburg Swamps, which won the Creative Design Excellence for Difficulty award. In only 8 forum posts, incnone has shown himself to be intelligent, articulate, and adept at designing attractive and challenging DROD puzzles. Hopefully, a couple of awards will lure him back and encourage him to create another hold.

10. 2010 Erik Hermansen Award for Lifetime Architectural Achievement

:hooray Rheb wins!

Since Rheb came on the DROD scene in 2006, we've watched him grow from a good architect to a great architect. He's given us 8 high quality - and high difficulty - holds, including The Underground Civilsation, Beethro is Getting Home, Tar Gate Stronghold, A Slayer's Weakness, Troshian Tower, Rescue Operation, Dungeon of Broken Orbs, and the Smitemasters' Selection Complex Complex.

Rheb's earlier holds show his mastery of efficiency puzzles, while his later holds have become more thorough explorations of selected game elements. Some of Rheb's "research" includes swordless dancing, brained and unbrained goblin manipulation, and different ways of smashing cracked orbs. And I've never seen brained rock giant puzzles even remotely like Rheb's. No matter what the puzzle is, there's always the "Yes! I finally did it!" feeling of satisfaction one gets after completing a Rheb room.

While puzzles are the most important part of Rheb's holds, they excel in other aspects as well. No Rheb hold comes without a story, and Rheb's crowning achievement in this area has to be the story he wrote for Complex Complex. Finally, if you have played these holds, it's worth looking at Dungeon of Broken Orbs and Complex Complex with Schik's map.php tool. Rheb's progress with hold layout and aesthetics has been amazing. You're wonderful, Rheb! We love you!

================================================================

Let's have a big round of applause for all the winners!

Congratulations once again to Penwielder, Jacob, noma, incnone, Timo006, Jutt, Dischorran, and Rheb! Of course, the biggest prize here is being able to say that you won in the Seventh Annual People's Choice Awards. But I do have some mod points for the winners as well... please post here to receive them. Posts to congratulate the winners are also welcome. :)
02-28-2011 at 11:04 AM
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larrymurk
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icon Re: The Seventh Annual People's Choice Awards - WINNERS! (+2)  
Congrats to everybody. Your great work makes DROD what it is. Keep it up!
02-28-2011 at 12:44 PM
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Blondbeard
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Congrats to everybody, and huge thanks to the rabbit. As long as we have such dedicated members the forum is safe and sound :) Hope you had a blast organizing all of this, I sure appreciated it, spoostlefish and all!
02-28-2011 at 05:27 PM
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Timo006
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icon Re: The Seventh Annual People's Choice Awards - WINNERS! (+30)  
Wait, what? I actually won something!! (how is that possible?..)

Anyway, umm, first of all, thanks for the 7 persons that voted for me, even though I get the feeling that the only reason I've won was because I was one of the only two to make a mod this entire year!

Because of that, I would like to use this to encourage more people to create graphical mods. After all, we need (a lot) more entries for this category in next year's annual people's choice awards.

second, I would like to say that I'll probably add some (minor) adjustments to my "Better DROD" mod as I'm not completely happy about Beethro's looks.

and lastly, congratulations to the other winners and to everyone who helped organize yet another wonderful round of the Annual People's choice awards!

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02-28-2011 at 08:22 PM
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Dischorran
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Posty post post. Hooray for small categories, and big ol' congrats to Rheb for some of my favorite holds (and Slayer's Weakness too, but you can't win 'em all...)!

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02-28-2011 at 09:18 PM
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Jutt
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icon Re: The Seventh Annual People's Choice Awards - WINNERS! (+30)  
Wow, Hold of the Year, who'd have thought…
Once again a worthy collection of holds & architects—congratulations to all people who received an Award.
Also many thanks to CSR for the smooth organization of this year's event.

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Holds: An Architects Audition, Artful Architecture, Salamander, Elusive Exhibitions, Leftover Levels, Six Times Six
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02-28-2011 at 09:34 PM
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Penwielder
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icon Re: The Seventh Annual People's Choice Awards - WINNERS! (+30)  
Congratulations to you all! Despite our smaller number of holds in the past year, only one hold won more than one award (nice one, incnone), and every award was well-deserved.

By this year, I was fairly sure that Detention Complex had gone almost entirely under the radar, but I guess this proves that that appearance was just the result of relative forum inactivity. I must admit, I don't review holds often enough myself, either. When I was through making that hold, I had hoped that I would never again make a hold with such a high ratio of [time spent polishing]:[size], but I'm afraid my next hold (my third, as I don't count that compilation as mine) has already surpassed it in that matter.

Thanks to voters, nominators, architects, players... to anyone who is still with us here. Thanks to CuriousShyRabbit for organizing all of this, too.

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02-28-2011 at 09:49 PM
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NoahT
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Congrats to all!

-Noah

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03-01-2011 at 08:06 AM
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Jacob
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Thanks CSR for organising this so well again. I always enjoy it when this event comes around and it's highlighted a few holds I should get around to playing.

I agree about sharing out points with Ravon. I can't really take credit for the concept of "Going in Circles", since that was his (used in his unreleased hold "Lines" on architecture).
I was planning on giving him half my points anyway.

I wonder if we should introduce some more off-the-wall categories for next year...
I remember making some suggestions before like "most overlooked hold"/"cheapest trick"/"best use of non-Beethro player role". "Most frustrating/rewarding room"?

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03-02-2011 at 06:41 PM
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Jatopian
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Aside from "cheapest trick" - not something we want to encourage - that sounds like a fine idea indeed.

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03-02-2011 at 07:11 PM
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CuriousShyRabbit
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Indeed, we did poll people about possible new categories in the Fifth Annual People's Choice Awards voting topic. Due to the much larger number of published holds, we had a lot more categories back then. And we had many more voters too.

If certain things actually happen this year, the "best custom game element" and "scripting excellence" categories might come back. A bunch of people have asked about the "most promising" categories, however, they're going to be disappointed because those categories have traditionally been for new architecture projects that are less than a year hold. And, of the new categories Jacob suggested, people liked "best single room or puzzle best" in the FAPChA voting.

Looking at how the "best concept" category seems to fill up like the kitchen sink, I can see how it might be nice to split it up. "Best use of a non-Beethro player role" is one possible offshoot, however, we didn't really have examples of that this year. What we are seeing a lot more of, is in-depth explorations of selected game elements. This year, we had Deconstructed Dungeon and Cycles (and one might argue that Elusive Exhibitions also fits.) Last year, there was Token Effort and Lightning (and possibly Gigantic Jewel Lost and Complex Complex). And the year before that was Advanced Concepts, Museum of Ooze, Dungeon of Broken Orbs (and possibly Choose Your Adventure). Not sure what a catchy name would be for such a category, but I don't think exploring a selected game element is really a new "concept" any more, and these very nice holds could surely use their own category.

This year's confusion over what category Uncle Arable's Rooms belongs in suggests another category is missing somewhere. Maybe there should be categories for "easy," "medium," and "hard" holds, rather than just "easy/medium" and "hard". Maybe "best lynchpin hold," where the nominators and voters decide what "lynchpin" means in the context of DROD. I don't know.
03-02-2011 at 09:27 PM
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Rheb
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Wow! Third time's the charm I guess. It was really just a coincident that brought me to the list of possible nominees (the releasing of the Copycat Contest Compilation). But it feels wonderful to see that I still have support from all the lovely people around the forums, and for the first time in a very long time I can actually say that I have some drod related projects coming up :)

So I'll see you soon. Big congratulations to all the other winners and nominees!!!

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03-03-2011 at 09:37 AM
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Jeff_Ray...
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Congrats to all! I wish I could've been part of the winners this year, or at least a nominee... But maybe this year I'll be more active, who knows? :)

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03-04-2011 at 09:33 PM
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noma
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Congratulations to all the nominees and winners. Thank you to those who nominated and voted for me; it really was an honour... and a surprise in some of those categories if I'm honest. I mean, I only voted for myself in two. :D But thank you! This forum and game are a fun sandbox to play and experiment in, and a lot of that has to do with the people who hang around here: some of whom, with their good advice and seemingly endless patience, helped me make Rosebud into a much better hold than it otherwise would have been. And although life/work has kept me from being too active here lately, I always find time to at least quickly check in. A special thank you to CSR for all her hard work in putting this together and keeping it going. I was wondering... since I never requested a spootlefish for voting, I'd like to release one into the wild, if CSR thinks it would enjoy freedom that is. :fish

[Last edited by noma at 03-05-2011 03:35 AM]
03-05-2011 at 03:32 AM
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