So uh. I took my time today to play lots of caves and stuff. Every cave I play, if I play it in-depth enough, I give it a decent and reasoned rating, explaining what I liked and what not, giving constructive criticism. And you know what all that is? All that is time consuming. Veeery time consuming.

The reason I'm saying this is this. There have been many caves in the last while which ranked high, even won comps and stuff, and weren't judged fully. Which cave was it, that was stupidly impossible with an arrow aimed at two secret areas in the middle of the cave? That cave won 1st place in some comp, and apparantly nobody even noticed that - meaning nobody even reached half of the cave. Another example is my cave Hydrodynamics, which was rated very high(although ratings were lowered later for some reason) and even won a comp, when it was played wrong.

My point is this. The judging in this IO was made quickly, in a rushed manner, and therefore was very bad in some cases. The idea I'm suggesting here is to make a rejudge of every comp in this IO, except the blog and video comps(perhaps the DDA too). Judge and rate every single entry - slowly, seriously, taking your time. Even if I lose my medals or stuff - rushing with the judging can really hurt our community.  

You do what you want, but I am not going to judge 54 large levels again. It was tiresome enough the first time.

As for that specific round you were talking about, that was the heaviest week for the judges. We had to judge 20 levels, and all of them except for Hydrodynamics, In The Sky IV and 3 Arrows - 5 Minutes were pretty large. When we only have one week to play and judge all these levels, so we aren't going to 100% beat them all.

Plus, not everyone plays levels all the way to the end before rating them.

But yeah, we should probably have higher standards when we officially judge competitions. It just isn't very practical to play these level 100% through, though. Maybe if there were checkpoints....

Shos, I judged Hydronamics on what it was at the time. At the time, it was a fun underwater puzzle cave, that I enjoyed playing, that's why it won first place.

If I made a really crappy cave, it got last place in a competition, but then I realized I made a really stupid error, and then I made an edit about a week later that completely changed the way the cave was played, do you think that the judges would go, "Hey, we should rejudge this competition"? You get judged on what you enter, at the time, it was a pretty fun cave, whether or not it was a cheatable version of the cave.


As for Yaya's impossible entries, I got farther in Threedom than I did in outside reality, advance and retreat, flotsam and dropped, and I had more fun playing that level than any other level in that competition.


He certainly should be testing his levels, but if you expected me to take my time to go thoroughly go through the entirety of every single entry, that could take me up to an hour to play each cave. I'm sorry if I'm not willing to dedicate 6 hours of my day to judging one competition. I'm not you. I can't just play through any normal level on here in 3 tries. I'd have to bring up the level in cavemaker, and edit the cave each time I made it past a trap. And I don't know how I'd ever make it past non-stop speed caves.

And how the hell would you expect us to be able to play through caves like your updated hydrodynamics, and flotsam, where we have no clue how to even beat the cave in the first place?

jell, that's the whole idea. what I was trying to say is that since you had one week to do it all, and you were under pressure and stuff, you judged quickly and in many cases, wrongly.

now to your post, Q. you are correct, too. but that is exactly what I was trying to say. you played, and played, and rated the cave based on the fun you had in the part you reached. this means, you missed all the areas that you didn't reach - in yaya's cave, that is more than half the cave. this is why I suggested this. now after my tests are over, i have one window opened with 12 tabs of large levels that i have yet to play. i go one by one, play them all invest some hour or so per level to seriously think out and rate each one of them. if i had enough of trying to beat a certain thing for example, then fine - close hatpc, view the cave map, and from where i stopped, i keep going through the cave, analysing the traps and the ideas in it. as i said, this is VERY time consuming. but it gives a decent rating of the level, and constructive criticism. livio's post on firecage for example was the kind of a post i'm trying to make for every level. these posts are obviously MUCH harder to make for levels like Outside Reality than for firecage, but still. I'm not saying renew the comps. actually, we can make separate judging, even if unofficial and without medals; but SERIOUS judging.

you don't have to waste 6 hours of your day, understand? you're not time limited - those 6 hours can be spent over a week if you want to, perhaps a month...however much time you'd like.

and for the last paragraph - well, hydrodynamics is quite straightforward imo, as you don't have many options at a time and you know what you're trying to do and what's stopping you from getting it. in flotsam...well i have no idea, i still haven't figured it out, it's one of the opened tabs over here. i played it for some 10 minutes so far, brute forcing stuff and randomly trying out, but i still have no clue.

the spoiler is offtopic, but it's an example for life

Look's like it's currently tied.

hmm, perhaps we could experiment with a "serious judging" panel for the next few comps after the IO. There will be some downtime since everyone will be going back to school, but it could be a perfect time to try out new ideas to fix these judging problems. However, I don't think the answer is to rejudge the current IO, b/c that would be a nightmare.

And by a serious judging panel, I mean a group of judges who devote themselves to judging each level as thoroughly as possible. Perhaps, we could first try it with only a lone judge in charge of one comp, and maybe shos could be that judge. And when you release the results, you could fill it with an in-depth analysis of what you thought of each level.

I may be able to be a judge after the IO. I am planning to make fewer better levels that probably wont fit in with the competition times. I also have some ideas for some competitions that I may PM you about, Livio, if you're interested.

once again, i do not mean to replace the judging as it is now, but in general to make another serious judging...
you know that if that happens, ck will always win..

we need at least 2-3 different styles judges for each comp. i'm willing to be a serious judge as long as i have time(which isn't much usually) but i need others too..

I'm also willing to be a serious judge as well. I really was not happy with the results, too.

Same with me, I got last place in the video comp even though that particular video got 4 5-star ratings. I don't know if it was because it was in a different game or what. I might be a serious judge.

Team GREATS unite! I dunno, I never watched all the vids in the vid comp.

videos are not something i included in my idea, lol. cuz they cannot have such an indepth judging, you see..

what do you mean by that?

that we can't have 3 judges like me, ck, and kro, for hatpc levels; or like kro & jazz for SMF; you get the idea.

you should learn from me, lawl. here's a screenshot of what i still have to do...(look at the tabs opened)

But I wouldn't want these olympics to be rejudged, because you wouldn't want the judges to get a heart attack, do you? I'll say that I support a bit more through judging for future comps but no rejudging.

This is

Though I wasn't happy with some judging decisions  eg. "stick to category vs. make better entry" and "Puzzles are allowed in speed comps vs. not" I would like to congratulate the judges on their speedy results and I do not feel that the IO need rejudging (having rethought my poll vote). I do think though that we need to clarify some competitions better and make sure sticking to the rules is rewarded.

I personally forgot to consider the relevancy of levels to their categories when judging. Although, I'm pretty sure jell never forgot.