kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
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Registered: 07-11-2014
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Hey look, it's that time of year again!

I wasn't planning on hosting this this year as I've been away from DROD for most of 2017, but nobody else is looking to take control and Insoluble has offered to write the blurbs for the winners, so I'm happy to do the hosting again.

An early discussion in chat has suggested that This and That be treated as the same entry instead of two separate holds, and I agree.

Island of Adventure, treat it as Collaboartion, or not? I don't know how I'd categorise Gigantic Jewel Lost as a collaboration or not these days for example.

Here are this year's eligible holds:

* Beethro's Dream by disoriented
* Blind Race #4: Hit the Four Running by mauvebutterfly (Collaboration)
* City Sewers by superluminal
* Collection by navithmastero
* Deadly Rooms of Dance by Xindaris
* For the Sake of Succulent Burgers by navithmastero
* Hold Title Mixup Contest Compilation by Xindaris (Collaboration)
* Island of Adventure by Nuntar and Skell
* Klatzl's palace by DyingFlutchman
* Left and Right by Romain673
* new hold by Xindaris
* Outings with a Delver by ThemsAllTook
* Putting the Pieces Together by Dragon Fogel (Collaboration)
* Roaches and Walls by Dragon Fogel
* Shards by Someone Else
* Slayer manipulation by Resert On
* Take Five by Insoluble (Collaboration)
* Tarstuff Horticulture Facility by larrymurk
* The Adventure of John by Resert On
* The Tower by Scattercatt
* This & That by Skell
* Trek to "No Air" by Garlonuss
* T R E F O I L by Xindaris

RPG
* Get Your Stuff Back (RPG) by hyperme
* Rock Island (RPG) by kieranmillar

This year I'm gonna need some help finding out which holds are eligible for some of the following awards because I've barely played any of them.

Here's each of the 15 voting categories from last year:

1) Best Custom Game Element
I have absolutely no idea what custom game elements are present in any of this year's holds, except for Left and Right, which has 5 different elements but they're all a fairly similar concept, so I don't know if we would prefer to group these together as a whole?

2) Design Excellence in a Modification or Addition
What non-hold contributions were released in 2017? Help me out!

3) Technical Design Excellence in Scripting
I guess we could go down the easy route of just listing everything for this one?

4) Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics
This award usually gets everything up for vote. That's a lot to vote on.

5) Technical Design Excellence in Concept
Again this is another category that usually gets everything listed all at once.

6) Creative Design Excellence in Storyline
And this one, not sure if we want to bother removing any candidates.

7) Creative Design Excellence in Difficulty
Traditionally this category is for holds that have a difficulty rating of 7 or more brains. Unusually, there are only 4 holds in this list this year, everybody making a much higher proportion of easier stuff this year it seems. Here's what fits into that list this year:


8) Creative Design Excellence in Entertainment
And then the list of 6.5 or lower brain holds:


9) DROD Hold of the Year
As always, seems best to have everything has to be up for voting in this category. Like last year, there will be 23 entries.

10) DROD RPG Level Set of the Year
Nothing much to say here.

11) Best Voice Artist in a Distinct Role
Were there any voice acted holds this year?

12) Novice Architect Award
This is typically people with their first non-collaborative release this year. Under that criteria we get:
* Dragon Fogel (Roaches and Walls)
* DyingFlutchman (Klatzl's palace)
* Resert On (Slayer manipulation, The Adventure of John)
* Romain673 (Left and Right)
* Scattercatt (The Tower)
* superluminal (City Sewers)
* ThemsAllTook (Outings with a Delver)

13) Erik Hermansen Award for Lifetime Architectural Achievement
The criteira for this has always been:
* Release a non-collaborative hold this year
* Not previously won the award
* Have 4 or more non-collaborative releases with an average vote of 7 or more fun.
* First non-collaborative release was 3 years ago (2015).

Using these criteria we get:

* kieranmillar (RPG)
* Someone Else (RPG)

14) Best Community Contributor
I think the previous procedure for nominations for this category have worked out fine the last three years and see no reason to change it.

15) Best DROD Let's Player
Again I need help compiling this one.

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I need your help more than ever this year folks! Help me out here!

skell
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I think Thid and That are a good fit for 'Creative Design Excellence in Difficulty'. It's been what, 9 months, and so far only one peraon solved them (I mean the metapuzzle really is the actual content)

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kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
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Am happy to move This and That into the Design Excellence in Difficulty category if nobody objects. I can agree with the argument that the unique nature of this hold means that maybe the standard rules don't apply well.

Jeff_Ray...
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I guess this counts as a modification? Though I wouldn't necessarily claim this to be award-worthy

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I make Let's Plays too!
Click here to find out my LPs' progress, and find out what I plan to tackle next!

Currently playing:


My Holds:
-Completed:

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kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
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Yes that counts, thanks!

Insoluble
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For the Best "Custom Game Element" category, here are some things that seem like they might count as scripted game elements. These are things with their own custom character names that use default scripts from holds last year. A couple of holds have edit privileges set to "only you" so I had to guess a bit. Also, most of these were from contest entries complicating things a bit as the contest compilation architect (and in some cases the level architect) is typically not the same architect of the that designed the element.

This and That had the remote item placers/manipulators. Don't know what they were called for real since the hold is "only you edit" and they were done with image overlays (I think) so I can't click on them. Skell can probably give a better name.

Hold Title Mixup Contest had several:
Devourling from the Exit Point level by mauvebutterfly
Sad Trombone from its eponymous level by Dischorran
Stones and Moveblockers from the Sticks and Stones level by disoriented
Beethro's Foot Would be my favorite custom element ever (I'm only partially joking here, but this is probably not a serious suggestion.)

Beethro's Dream had several (all by disoriented)
Birds
MG Balls and MG Gates (which go together and should probably count as one element)
Pushers (The robots from the robot level) and all the stuff that goes with them.
All the stuff from the nightmare level has custom scripted characters. Not sure what to call these.

Take 5 contest comp. has a bunch, although awkwardly they were all designed for a previous contest that hasn't been published yet. This one's a bit complicated.
Rocket Launchers by hyperme
Fire Trap Counters by disoriented
Briar Seeds by mauvebutterfly
The Net by disoriented and Crimson Moon
The girkle gun by mauvebutterfly
All of the above appear in the level by mauvebutterfly, and though the named architects designed each element, mauvebutterlfy designed and scripted weapon tokens for them specifically for this level
duplicators by doom also appear in another level.

Left and Right had several, but they could possibly be lumped into one category as they were all variations on the same idea. All are made by Romain673.
Custom roaches, custom goblins, custom golems, custom constructs, custom eyes, and custom queens.

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Below are some things that are most likely not custom elements but I'll list them in case anyone wants to argue for one of them to be included.

Klatzl's palace had monster generators on the second floor. Again, don't know what they were called since the hold is "only you edit"

Slayer manipulation had scripted green sister gates that were scripted in the JtRH engine. Might have counted back in the JtRH days but probably not now? Not sure.

Deadly Rooms of Dance had the scripted Dancer element. Not sure if these count as they do different things from one room to the next and don't use a default script, but they do have their own named custom element.

Shards had a Mirror generator

Hold Title Mixup Contest also had the recursive maze, not sure if this can be counted as a custom script or not since it seems catered to this specific room.

Probably some other things too. But none of these really seem to meet the criteria of custom elements. Again, I could be completely off base on this so feel free to disagree.

____________________________
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[Last edited by Insoluble at 02-13-2018 08:16 AM]

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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This and That's remote item placers/manipulators don't really have a name and, frankly, the whole metapuzzle is scripted but I wouldn't call it a custom game element. Neither would the remote item placers/manipulators because every room was a custom-scripted minigame.

Also they were done with Ghost display as far as I remember.

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Xindaris
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For the record, the Dancers in Deadly Rooms of Dance are individually scripted; I would consider them "scripting" rather than "a custom element", personally. There were some "rules" they all obeyed but each one takes his own path.

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Here are some links to Things!

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 02-13-2018 03:08 PM]

kieranmillar
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Thanks all, and especially Insoluble for the big list. Happy to discount dancers and the This and That elements from this category.

By the way, if anybody is aware of something that falls into any of the other categories, like voice acting, or DROD LPrs, then please don't hesitate to just list what you know, you don't have to compile a full list yourself, any contribution helps.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
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I've figured I might as well open up the nominations for the Community Contributior Award. This award is entirely driven by your nominations, so please contribute! For those who don't know what it is, this is an award that recognises contributions made by members that don't necessarily fit into the other categories. Anybody can be nominated for basically any reason at all. Here's how it works:

Send me a PM with a list of everyone you'd like to consider for this award. There's no limit to the number of people you're allowed to nominate, and if the list of nominees gets too large it will be culled to the 10 or so who had the most votes. However, for each nominee you must include at least one reason why you are nominating them. It doesn't have to be in-depth or anything, you just have to provide a reason. Also, you aren't allowed to nominate yourself.

Click here to PM me with your nominations!

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 02-15-2018 08:00 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
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I guess this weekend I shall get started on the donkey work for the Deadlies.

Also submit your nominations for the community award! Major thanks to the 3 people that have nominated someone so far, boo to all the rest of you for not doing so yet!

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2670
Registered: 07-11-2014
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Someone let me know if I've missed a DROD Let's Player from the last year:

* Alex Denier (ThemsAllTook)
* Leylite (Chaco)
* Sentinel Proxima (Nuntar)
* BeethroBuskin07 (Jeff_Ray...)
* Pearls13a (Pearls)

Also nobody has yet mentioned any holds with voice acting in them, so I will assume there are none and will not hold that award this year, unless anyone tells me otherwise.

I expect voting to begin sometime within the week.

Don't forget to keep submitting those community contributer nominations!

Dragon Fogel
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mauvebutterfly does LPs too.

Insoluble
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For LPs does Xindaris count? He does DROD streams on Twitch most Saturdays but the videos all get saved. I don't really know how the nomenclature works for these things.

EDIT: Also there's at lest a bit of voice acting in "The Hold Title Mixup Compilation." I think Xindaris did the voice work for his entry "Dischorran's and Larrymurk's XTREME Puzzle Extravaganza Platinum Edition Reloaded"

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[Last edited by Insoluble at 03-05-2018 01:14 AM]

kieranmillar
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Just to quickly say:
* Yes Xindaris's streams should count for the LP award. I can't believe I forgot about those.
* Chaco suggested in chat renaming the LP award to something like "video presentation" award, and I agree. Would make things a bit clearer.
* If Xindaris's voice acting is the only voice acting, then it counts, and currently will auto-win with no vote, which is fine, that sometimes happens.

disoriented
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Was the poll posted?

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kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
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Sticky Thread in Contests

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=43105