CSTSF 2016 Modding Competition Showcase & Voting Thread

-your execution of ideas is bad
-your music makes me want to kill myself
-you actually expect me to play trough this garbage to vote
-my eyes are bleeding
-this boss fight is terrible

Don't look at it in such a negative way.
- Think on how to incorporate your ideas better. If you want to have auto-interaction, make it so the mod still flows. For example, avoid scenarios where you need to jump over doors to progress. If you really need to, design levels around the automatic interaction so you don't need to include invisible walls.
- I'm not too fluent on music, though you could try having more people listen to it in order to rake in more feedback. That way, you would have known it was sub-par ahead of time, giving you time to improve it.
- It was one of the longest, if not the longest, mods in the contest. After playing through a ton of short mods, it felt like a slog to go through the entire mod. It also didn't help that it had the aforementioned issues irritating the player.
- Same case as the music. If you ask more people for feedback on it, you will get more opinions on how your graphics look. You can then apply those opinions and suggestions to your improvements if you feel like they are correct.
- When you make a boss fight, you have to ask yourself a few questions. One such question is: "Is this balanced?" Keep in mind that you, the modder, have a lot more experience fighting this boss than anyone else does. You may be able to dodge it with ease and know its dirty tricks, but if it kills the average player for making two mistakes, you have a bit of a problem. The same goes for attacks that have little to no cues or tells; you may know the safe spots or methods of dodging attacks, but the average player most likely does not.

Spoiler

yes doors I see now. this amazing feedback is all I need to make the perfect mod. all this amazing, entertaining criticism really makes me want to go andhang myselfmake an mazing mod that will bowl a way the CSTSFs and all its uscer base

This was entirely uncalled for.

 

Don't look at it in such a negative way.
- Think on how to incorporate your ideas better. If you want to have auto-interaction, make it so the mod still flows. For example, avoid scenarios where you need to jump over doors to progress. If you really need to, design levels around the automatic interaction so you don't need to include invisible walls.
- I'm not too fluent on music, though you could try having more people listen to it in order to rake in more feedback. That way, you would have known it was sub-par ahead of time, giving you time to improve it.
- It was one of the longest, if not the longest, mods in the contest. After playing through a ton of short mods, it felt like a slog to go through the entire mod. It also didn't help that it had the aforementioned issues irritating the player.
- Same case as the music. If you ask more people for feedback on it, you will get more opinions on how your graphics look. You can then apply those opinions and suggestions to your improvements if you feel like they are correct.
- When you make a boss fight, you have to ask yourself a few questions. One such question is: "Is this balanced?" Keep in mind that you, the modder, have a lot more experience fighting this boss than anyone else does. You may be able to dodge it with ease and know its dirty tricks, but if it kills the average player for making two mistakes, you have a bit of a problem. The same goes for attacks that have little to no cues or tells; you may know the safe spots or methods of dodging attacks, but the average player most likely does not.


This was entirely uncalled for.

Well, I get it that we're supposed to take the criticism as good feedback, but it's really frustrating when you spend a really long time on a concept and then being told it's shit/garbage.

The hell area is where the quality goes from ok to shit. It stops being "unique" and starts just being another overly generic hell area that is absurdly difficult and extremely unforgiving for no real reason. I stopped playing here, but supposedly the final boss after this is really bad too.

What a shame. You should've seen how I made it :^)

 

Well, I get it that we're supposed to take the criticism as good feedback, but it's really frustrating when you spend a really long time on a concept and then being told it's shit/garbage.

To be blunt, spending a long time making something doesn't guarantee that it will be good.

 

Well, I get it that we're supposed to take the criticism as good feedback, but it's really frustrating when you spend a really long time on a concept and then being told it's shit/garbage.

Well to be fair, I don't recall anyone calling zxin's mod shit/garbage directly. Everybody gave him mostly polite or at least neutral-sounding criticism. I think I'm the only one who called anyone's mod shit/garbage literally, and I wasn't saying it about zxin's mod, I was saying it about RAVE BAR.

EDIT:

By the way, I'm not restating anything or trying to bring up another conflict with Spirit, I'm just saying, I'm the only one who's been a total jerk so far (that I've read).

 

Probably final tech ratings unless I get some more input/discussion

Spoiler

Uppest Tier
Autopilot - 38
STARZZ - 37

Upper Tier
Critter TD - 36
H4CK3R.STORY - 35
The Final Level - 35
Metronari - 34

Mid Tier
Precious Thoughts - 32
KILLJOY - 32
cat gay - 31
Cave Story - Live and Uncut! - 31
catfall - 30
Valastos - 29

Vanilla Tier
Pierce Brosnandream - 29
RAVE BAR - 28
The Water Challenge! - 28
WTDWM - 27

Not-Mid Tier
Σο ψου Χαμε - 28
One Eye Story - 26
Lara - 26

Also STILL NEED VOTES, it's very close for the prize placings currently!!
and if we could finish this off without any more arguing that would be great

 

I'm too lazy to vote, although I had a good laugh at some of these mods.

But...

If anyone's mod has custom orgs, and has won the contest, I'll be happy to make (and host on my Dropbox) the mod's soundtrack in .mp3/.flac format.

 

I'm too lazy to vote, although I had a good laugh at some of these mods.

But...

If anyone's mod has custom orgs, and has won the contest, I'll be happy to make (and host on my Dropbox) the mod's soundtrack in .mp3/.flac format.

TBH that's not too difficult to do...

 

TBH that's not too difficult to do...

Eh, but I like doing stuff for people, and it's a nice gesture.

 

Don't look at it in such a negative way.
- Think on how to incorporate your ideas better. If you want to have auto-interaction, make it so the mod still flows. For example, avoid scenarios where you need to jump over doors to progress. If you really need to, design levels around the automatic interaction so you don't need to include invisible walls.
- I'm not too fluent on music, though you could try having more people listen to it in order to rake in more feedback. That way, you would have known it was sub-par ahead of time, giving you time to improve it.
- It was one of the longest, if not the longest, mods in the contest. After playing through a ton of short mods, it felt like a slog to go through the entire mod. It also didn't help that it had the aforementioned issues irritating the player.
- Same case as the music. If you ask more people for feedback on it, you will get more opinions on how your graphics look. You can then apply those opinions and suggestions to your improvements if you feel like they are correct.
- When you make a boss fight, you have to ask yourself a few questions. One such question is: "Is this balanced?" Keep in mind that you, the modder, have a lot more experience fighting this boss than anyone else does. You may be able to dodge it with ease and know its dirty tricks, but if it kills the average player for making two mistakes, you have a bit of a problem. The same goes for attacks that have little to no cues or tells; you may know the safe spots or methods of dodging attacks, but the average player most likely does not.

@zxin basically the overall message here is try to get lots of feedback/testing done during mod development and before release. Most if not all of these issues could be fixed if you knew about them beforehand.

What a shame. You should've seen how I made it :^)

The modified ballos you have at the end there is actually pretty neat but it's overshadowed by the fact that it has way way way too much HP to reasonably kill it. A lack of difficulty balance is really what kills most of zxin's mod, especially near the end.

 

Hahaha, are you kidding? He's a total pushover!

Hey wtf? I don't recall the Sharp Shooter dealing that much damage!!!

 

Hahaha, are you kidding? He's a total pushover!

You're using the strongest weapons at their max levels, and it still takes you over a minute and a half to kill it while nearly perfectly dodging all its attacks and getting in hits at all the right times. I don't think you understand what "reasonable difficulty" is.

A good way to judge difficulty I find is that, if a player is very good at the game they should be able to destroy/steamroll most of the game. Your game is designed that you HAVE to be very good at the game just to beat that last stage.

 

Judging by the boss combined with the BS that is the previous stage you pretty much have to be PERFECT in order to beat it. Not to mention preserving all your weapon levels.

 

Judging by the boss combined with the BS that is the previous stage you pretty much have to be PERFECT in order to beat it. Not to mention preserving all your weapon levels.

Preserving weapon levels while going through spikes is easy - Just switch to a weak weapon that you don't want to level up anyway when you are going through a spike passage.

 

Preserving weapon levels while going through spikes is easy - Just switch to a weak weapon that you don't want to level up anyway when you are going through a spike passage.

No normal player would be thinking of using that strategy though, mang. :V

 

votes

Spoiler: votes

1. Hacker Story
2. Precious Thoughts
3. The Final Level
4. Live and Uncut
5. cat gay
6. autopilot
7. STARZZ
8. Critter TD
9. Metronari
10. Killjoy
11. So you Camue
12. Lara
13. One Eye Story
14. The water challenge
15. What to do when modding
16. Catfall
17. RAVE BAR
18. Valastos
19. Pierce Feverdream

 

Live and uncut is the only mod that matters.

 

edit.
i will admit that due to my drowsiness this morning while playing and ranking the mods, some of the rankings came out rather odd. i'm fully awake now and i will go back and redo some ranks.
i'm very tired.
my z key has been acting up, so mods that required precise platforming i probably played very little of.
also im not going to write notes because as i said i'm way too tired.
who is cave story.
------------------------------
1. live and uncut
2. final level
3. hacker story
4. cat gay
5. lara
6. starzz
7. critter tower defense
8. what to do when modding
9. killjoy
10. precious thoughts
11. rave bar
12. autopilot
13. metronari
14. one eye story
15. catfall
16. valastos
17. water challenge
18. greek thing
19. pierce feverdream

 

Here we go.

Spoiler

1. Precious Thoughts
2. H4CK3R.STORY
3. CTD
4. Metronari
5. hey
6. The Final Level
7. STARZZ
8. Killjoy
9. Autopilot
10. Live and Uncut
11. One Eye Story
12. Valastos
13. Lara
14. rave bar
15. FS_PF
16. Catfall
17. Greek
18. WTDWM
19. The Water Challenge!

 

Well, I don't have enough time to post my thoughts about other mods, so I might as well just skip to voting!

Spoiler: Votes

(note: I made separate list about what i found most "unique/creative", and what i plainly liked the most, and then compared those to make this list.)
1.catfall
2.Precious thoughts
3.H4CK3R.ST0RY
4.Metronari
5.STARZZ
6.cat gay
7.Critter TD
8.Killjoy
9.Lara
10.Live and Uncut!
11.Σο ψου Χαμε
12.RAVE BAR
13.The Final Level
14.Autopilot
15.Pierce Feverdream
16.Valastos
17.What To Do When Modding
18.One Eye Story
19.The Water Challenge!